This will hurt me...

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Today I've found an interesting ad for US Savings Bonds from 1952. Essentially, They have decided that the best way to promote the bonds is by drawing up a map of Communist Party members in each State. One assumes the thinking was that the terror provoked by the knowledge of five fifth columnists in Alaska potentially getting up to no good would be enough to scare the housewives out of a few dollars to stump up for another H-Bomb! This is one of my all time favourite ads, as it reveals a certain mindset (paranoia) at a time when the Cold War (still in its infancy) threatened to turn hot. I'm sure that the Bonds people saw this as a public service announcement of sorts, kind of like mapping of the outbreak of some horrible disease. Maybe the implication implicit here is that Bobby Joe down in Kansas better start rooting out the seditious six! When I look at this map though, there is one thing that I can't help but ponder. I wonder about that lonely Red down there in Mississ...