The Latest for June 30, 2024

1. Jaws

Post on Facebook on June 29th mentioned the Quint speech from Jaws, which, for all it’s wonderful, has the wrong date

"So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Anyway, we delivered the bomb."

https://www.history.navy.mil/.../after-action-report-of... BUT...the date is completely wrong. It was July 30, 1945 - just after midnight, local time, right about 2 weeks after Trinity, a week before Hiroshima.

http://www.ussunderhill.org/html/sorryno.htm About a week before Indianapolis was sunk, a destroyer escort USS Underhill, was attacked in the same area. An article about the attack, "Sorry, No Ice Cream," was written by one Nathaniel Benchley....father of Peter Benchley, author.

Some later posts wished Robert Shaw a happy birthday. It's not June 29th, or even July 30 - it's August 9. Born in 1927, he turned 18 the day Nagasaki was bombed, so wasn't actually GI generation nor able to be in the war. (But also he was British, not American, and so was dealing with the war in Britain for all of his teenage years.)

Quint says he saw the first shark 30 minutes after they went in the water - but that would have been between midnight and 1AM. However, the moon was up (it had risen at 10:28PM) and was just past full, so (to the extent the exact details matter in this speech) there probably would have been enough light to see by.

2. Brats and and the start of Gen x politics

Heathers - I was off by a year, it was released in 1988, not 1989.

Writer was Daniel Waters, born 1962.

Highlander  - got the release year right, but according to IMDB screenwriter Gregory Widen was born in 1958, making him a later Boom generation.  

Steven Soderbergh is solidly X, born 1963. He wrote and directed Sex Lies and Videotape, which was released in 1989.

3. On the state of the election

On inflation, government efforts, and the end of the Fourth Turning.