Wednesday 1 April 2015
Cro-Magnons
The Nazi Channel Islands
"Thank you for your postcard. I very nearly went to Jersey myself, as I have never been there, and hear from so many people that it is quite delightful.
If you are free tomorrow evening between six and seven, do come round for a drink and a chat.
Ever sincerely, Boothby."
Private note sent by Lord Boothby to Ronnie Kray,
June 6, 1963
Monday 30 March 2015
The Control of Diana Mary Fluck
Jason Lake: Our house was a hotbed of drugs and orgies
IF JASON DORS-LAKE'S life story has a moral, it must be that love is not all you need. No child could have been more adored than the son of the legendary Diana Dors, Britain’s own Marilyn Monroe, and her third husband actor Alan Lake.
Jason Dors-Lake reveals truth about childhood in new book Connecting Dors: The Legacy Of Diana Dors
Jason ’s bedroom was filled with toys, he was denied almost nothing and was constantly fussed over by his parents’ famous friends – from Hollywood star Gregory Peck to associates of the Kray twins.
After two disastrous marriages to controlling men who were only too willing to live off her fame and considerable income, Diana met the love of her life in her late 30s.
Alan Lake, nine years her junior, was different. He had a flourishing career and she could depend on him to earn enough to support the family. For much of Jason’s childhood his parents managed to make sure one of them was at home with their much-loved son.
The problem was that although Jason had been born in 1969 at the very end of the swinging Sixties, neither of his parents were inclined to curb their party lifestyle. Alan, when left alone with Jason, would often push his pram to the pub and, when the toddler got restless, slip a little champagne into his bottle.
A s for his mother, her fame was built on the full figure and smouldering sexuality that she had been exploiting since she was herself a spoiled only child in Swindon, entering beauty contests with the encouragement of her adoring mother.
Many of the rooms at the Berkshire family home Orchard Manor were fitted with spy cameras and two-way mirrors. Starlets who came to Diana’s legendary parties were encouraged to seduce famous guests and it was said Diana enjoyed reviewing the filmed highlights.
Bob Monkhouse, one of her most enthusiastic regular guests, later commented: “The problem with going to an orgy is that one is never quite sure who to thank.”
Jason can recall waking late one night and finding his father hosting a drugs party with friends, one of whom was Andrew Ray, a close pal of the infamous Krays. “I want a funny candy too,” Jason said as he saw something that looked like a giant white jelly bean being handed round and everyone who put their nose to it laughing like a drain.
“Let the lad have some fun,” shouted Ray. “Here, take a sniff of this,” he said, breaking open the jelly bean to release a white smoke. Jason recalls laughing until his tummy ached. He still isn’t sure what it was but is certain it shouldn’t have been given to a five-year-old.
His parents seemed oblivious to the dangers to which they were exposing their son. On a visit to America to stay with his two teenage half-brothers in the Los Angeles house his mother had rented , he found his father smoking cannabis from a water pipe with Mark, then 19, and Gary, 17, the children from Diana’s marriage to Hogan’s Heroes actor Richard Dawson. Jason had learned from an early age that if he pestered long enough, his parents would eventually give him what he wanted. He demanded to join in and persisted until his father agreed. He was nine.
Diana knew what was going on but was reluctant to rock the boat. Her ex-husband had won custody of the two older boys when she divorced him to be with Alan and since for once she had all her boys together, she wanted no friction.
The cannabis sessions continued whenever Jason was home from boarding school and he became an expert spliff-roller for his father and for Gary who was then living at Orchard Manor . When Diana did voice concerns Alan simply said: “Better he does it among friends rather than strangers.”
In Connecting Dors, the book of Diana’s life and Jason’s childhood, he tells of a celebrity upbringing in which he never doubted he was loved but in which he also came to imagine that hosting a drug-fuelled orgy several times a month was what all parents did. ‘‘I thought it was all fairly normal. I thought everyone behaved like that at parties.”
Quite how things would have worked out had his parents lived to old age, Jason will never know because life at Orchard Manor came to a sudden and tragic halt.
The family’s happiness had already been blighted by Alan’s alcoholism but then his mother became ill. Diana died from ovarian cancer in 1984 at the age of 53. Five months later his grief-stricken father, unable to cope without her, shot himself while Jason was at school.
The only adult relatives Jason had left were his half-brothers now back in America. Within days of burying his father, closely watched by the world’s press and refusing to shed a tear for the cameras, he went to live with Gary, then only 22, and embarked on an aimless journey into adulthood.
He became a father when he was 22 but abandoned the mother and child shortly after . He was overtaken by addiction and alcoholism and even made a drug-fuelled suicide attempt by jumping off a girlfriend’s third-floor balcony.
Now 43 he lives a quiet life on the Kent coast surrounded by a small group of friends. He attends regular Alcoholic Anonymous meetings and is trying to turn his life around.
Diana Dors built her career on smouldering sexuality and privately her parties were equally racy
I thought it was all fairly normal. I thought everyone behaved like that at parties
Jason Dors-Lake
He has built a relationship with his daughter and sees her regularly. He has acquired the rights to his mother’s estate and created a small business selling Diana Dors merchandise to her many loyal fans . He is also trying to revive the musical talent his mother once hoped would provide him with a future.
The friend who wrote his story for him, Niema Ash, recalls a rare outburst of grief from him over the death of a pet bird he had raised by hand after it fell out of its nest. “Everything dies on me,” Jason told her. “Everything leaves me. My mother died, my father died.”
She believes it was possibly the first time he had ever been able to mourn the loss of his parents. Even at his father’s funeral, the 14-year-old Jason had only been able to mutter “I love you” into the grave, hoping no one would hear.
It took weeks of mourning for his dead chick before he told Niema: “It’s okay. I’ve stopped crying now.” He was almost 40 years old. It had taken him more than a quarter of a century to cry for his lost parents.
Connecting Dors: The Legacy Of Diana Dors by Niema Ash, Purple Inc Press, £14.99. To buy this book directly from the author with autograph and dedication, visit www.niemaash.com
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Saturday 28 March 2015
Checkmate
The Mosaic Pavement
The black and white checkered floor has existed in temples
since the times of ancient Egypt. More than simply
decorative, the mosaic pavement bears a profound esoteric
(special) meaning. Today it is one of Freemasonry’s most
recognizable symbols and is the ritualistic floor of all
Masonic lodges. The pavement is the area on which
initiations occur and is “emblematic of human life,
checkered with good and evil.”
“The mosaic pavement in an old symbol of the Order. It is
met with in the earliest rituals of the last century. It is
classed among the ornaments of the lodge along with the
indented tassel and the blazing star. Its party-colored stones
of black and white have been readily and appropriately
interpreted as symbols of the evil and good of human life.”
In the Entered Apprentice Degree, the mosaic pavement
represents the ground floor of King Solomon’s Temple. In
the account of King Solomon’s Temple in the Bible, the
ground floor is said to be made of pine or fir, depending on
the Bible translation (1 Ki 6:15).“The checkerboard floor upon which the modern
Freemasonic lodge stands is the old tracing board of the
Dionysiac (Greek) Architects, and while the modern
organization is no longer limited to workmen’s guilds it
still preserves its symbols.
When thinking of the idea of Duality and the concept of
good and evil, black and white, sacred and profane, an
image that immediately enters my mind is that of the Ying-
Yang.
While this symbol has become a sort of pop culture icon in
recent times, its symbolism is deep and its meaning
applicable to this subject. While it has numerous
interpretations the ying-yang demonstrates the concept of
duality and balance. The synonym balance is an important
term because of the position of the checkered carpet, the
floor, where the foundation of the erect human body may
be found. The mason is taught to avoid irregularity and
intemperance and to divide his time equally by the use of
the twenty four inch gauge. These lessons refer to the
importance of balance in a Mason’s life. Therefore the
symbolism of the mosaic pavement could be interpreted to
mean that balance provides the foundation of our Masonic
growth.Maintaining balance allows us to adhere to many Masonic
teachings. By maintaining balance we may be able to stand
upright in our several stations before God or man. The
entered apprentice is charges to keep balance in his life so
that he may ensure public and private esteem. It is also very
interesting that the concept of Justice is represented by a
scale which is balanced and that justice is described as
being the foundation of civil society in the first degree of
masonry
“The Floor, or groundwork of the Lodge, a chequer-work
of black and white squares, denotes the dual quality of
everything connected with terrestrial life and the physical
groundwork of human nature – the mortal body and its
appetites and affections. “The web of our life is a mingled
yarn, good and ill together”, wrote Shakespeare. Everything
material is characterized by inextricably interblended good
and evil, light and shade, joy and sorrow, positive and
negative. What is good for me may be evil for you;
pleasure is generated from pain and ultimately degenerates
into pain again; what it is right to do at one moment may be
wrong the next; I am intellectually exalted to-day and to-
morrow correspondingly depressed and benighted: The
dualism of these opposites governs us in everything, and
experience of it is prescribed for us until such time as,
having learned and outgrown its lesson, we are ready for
advancement to a condition where we outgrow the sense of
this chequer-work existence and those opposites cease to be
perceived as opposites, but are realized as a unity or
synthesis. To find that unity or synthesis is to know the
peace which passes understanding i.e. which surpasses ourpresent experience, because in it the darkness and the light
are both alike, and our present concepts of good and evil,
joy and pain, are transcended and found sublimated in a
condition combining both. And this lofty condition is
represented by the indented or tesselated border skirting the
black and white chequer-work, even as the Divine Presence
and Providence surrounds and embraces our temporal
organisms in which those opposites are inherent.”
Furthermore, the checkered floor is representative of earth,
the material world and contrasts the ceiling, which is made
to represent the heavens and the spiritual realm.
“The Covering of the Lodge is shown in sharp contrast to
its black and white flooring and is described as “a celestial
canopy of diverse colours, even the heavens.
If the flooring symbolizes man’s earthy sensuous nature,
the ceiling typifies his ethereal nature, his “heavens” and
the properties resident therein. The one is the reverse and
the opposite pole of the other. His material body is visible
and densely composed. His ethereal surround, or “aura”, is
tenuous and invisible. Its existence will be doubted by
those unprepared to accept what is not physically
demonstrable, but the Masonic student, who will be called
upon to accept many such truths provisionally until he
knows them as certainties, should reflect
(i) that he has entered the Craft with the professed object of
receiving light upon the nature of his own being,(2) that the Order engages to assist him to that light in
regard to matters of which he is admittedly ignorant, and
that its teachings and symbols were devised by wise and
competent instructors in such matters, and
(3) that a humble, docile and receptive mental attitude
towards those symbols and their meanings will better
conduce to his advancement than a critical or hostile one.”
The mosaic pavement is a esoterically-charged space on
which stands the ceremonial altar, the center of most
rituals. The ceremony for the Apprentice Degree
symbolically takes place in that location.
“Why is the chequer floor-work given such prominence in
the Lodge-furniture? Every Mason is intended to be the
High Priest of his own personal temple and to make of it a
place where he and Deity may meet. By the mere fact of
being in this dualistic world every living being, whether a
Mason or not, walks upon the square pavement of mingled
good and evil in every action of his life, so that the floor-
cloth is the symbol of an elementary philosophical truth
common to us all. But, for us, the words “walk upon” imply
much more than that. They mean that he who aspires to be
master of his fate and captain of his soul must walk upon
these opposites in the sense of transcending and dominating
them, of trampling upon his lower sensual nature and
keeping it beneath his feet in subjection and control. He
must become able to rise above the motley of good and
evil, to be superior and indifferent to the ups and downs of
fortune, the attractions and fears governing ordinary men
and swaying their thoughts and actions this way or that. Hisobject is the development of his innate spiritual potencies,
and it is impossible that these should develop so long as he
is over-ruled by his material tendencies and the fluctuating
emotions of pleasure and pain that they give birth to. It is
by rising superior to these and attaining serenity and mental
equilibrium under any circumstances in which for the
moment he may be placed, that a Mason truly “walks
upon” the chequered ground work of existence and the
conflicting tendencies of his more material nature.”
There is a vast variety of symbolism presented to the new
initiate in the first degree. It is easy for the symbol of the
mosaic pavement and its several meanings to be lost in the
sea of information provided upon our first admission to
lodge. A deeper look demonstrates that this symbol serves
to demonstrate the ideals which form the foundation of our
individual Masonic growth, the Masonic fraternity, and
even the entire human society.
Living in balance makes us healthy, happy and just. If our
feet are well balanced, both literally and figuratively, we
may be able to serve the purpose of the Fraternity better.
R.W. Bro. John K. Johnston
Lawrence of Freemasonry : The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
MasonicWorld.com
Friday 27 March 2015
Airbus Fly by Wire Technology
"The use of fly-by-wire controls with their optimised side-stick controllers is a primary competitive advantage for Airbus, which has applied this innovation on each jetliner in its product line since the technology’s introduction in the civil air transport sector with its A320.
Fly-by-wire has now become the industry standard, with a large majority of pilots praising the handling qualities of Airbus aircraft and their commonality across the complete range of products, from the company’s smallest aircraft – the A318 – to its double-deck A380 and new-generation A350 XWB.
Years of reliable service around the world have underscored fly-by-wire’s significant benefits through commonality, improved flight safety, reduced pilot workload, a reduction of mechanical parts, and real-time monitoring of all aircraft systems.
GROUNDBREAKING INNOVATION
A key element of Airbus’ continued innovation is the application of digital fly-by-wire technology – which brings improved handling, enhanced safety and operational commonality to its product line of modern jetliners.
Introduced into civil aviation with Airbus’ single-aisle A320, fly-by-wire technology has allowed the company to develop a true family of aircraft through the highest degree of operational commonality, featuring nearly identical cockpit designs and handling characteristics.
SAFETY AND PERFORMANCE
Overall safety is increased with the use of fly-by-wire, which provides direct input through electrical signals for more precise commands. In addition, the control system monitors pilot commands to ensure the aircraft is kept within a safety margin called the “flight protection envelope.” As a result, pilots always can get the maximum performance out of Airbus aircraft without running the risk of exceeding these limits.
The use of fly-by-wire technology provides a number of operational advantages for Airbus aircraft, including higher precision during flight and lower maintenance costs.
OPERATIONAL BENEFITS
Operators benefit greatly from this key innovation, which allows for simplified crew training and conversion. In addition, pilots are able to stay current on more than one aircraft type simultaneously without supplementary takeoff/landing requirements, recurrent training and annual checks.
The weight savings from the replacement of heavy mechanical control cables provides a significant reduction in fuel consumption. As electrical controls are less complex and easier to maintain than mechanical ones, the use of fly-by-wire also translates to lower maintenance costs for operators.