The truth is probably a combination of all three of these things or it could be 2020

4 min readDec 9, 2020

The report supposedly showed the super-fast plane to be “economically wasteful and environmentally harmful,” which theoretically might have helped opponents scuttle further funding to the project. DuBridge, in a letter, wrote that the report was not finalized and “was used as part of a direct input to the President.” That president had asked Congress for $290 million that year for continued development of the SST.

While the intro of Apple Silicon itself was vague on numbers and schedules (more speed bang for less battery buck, available “late this year”), a number of observers, yours truly included, thought they saw a hint of things to come in the extensive demonstration of the accompanying Big Sur operating system and UI. iMore’s Joseph Keller voiced the perception in his article macOS Big Sur makes Macs with touchscreens seem within reach [as always, edits and emphasis mine]:

Thunderbolt, yet another optional standard, is a much faster layer on top of USB-C that allows additional possibilities, like the use of multiple displays daisy-chained from a single port, or the use of an external graphics card. It uses the exact same connector, but can be identified with an additional “lightning” symbol when supported.

Once more, DuBridge showed what it meant to be a science advisor to the White House: sometimes, one must defend the indefensible. Apparently though, the SST incident represented one of the final straws he could tolerate: on August 19 of the same year, 1970, he submitted his resignation.

In the midst of that environment, DuBridge still tried to play the good soldier for his boss. Along with ABM and Vietnam, Nixon’s other major scientific fight was over the SST, or supersonic transport — an extremely expensive, extremely fast airplane, really. In April of 1970, a member of the House of Representatives accused the White House of suppressing a report on the SST; DuBridge acted as the deflector shield.

Beefcake magazines like Male Figure were printed at a time when obscenity laws forbade mailing any materials that promoted homosexuality. They are not gay magazines in positioning, but through their content and design, their true nature is clear to those for whom they were created.

The destruction of enemy cities and the mass slaughter of people is a common practice during this era that is often described in the Hebrew Bible. It is possible that the chaos, confusion, and violence committed by these mysterious Sea People was too much for the civilizations of the region to bear and the destruction and violence led to the unrest that unseated the great nations of the time.

Some scholars believe that these people went on a tear through the region, destroying cities and committing mass atrocities during a particularly effective period of their existence.
In one sense, it worked, as David lasted longer in the role than his predecessor did. He spent his 28 months at the White House again pushing for increases to federal funding for science, helping negotiate international collaborations, and continuing some of DuBridge’s policy fights that smoldered on past his exit. (That suppressed SST report was finally released more than a year after the Congressional complaints, and it did indeed recommend against further government support for the plane.)
The president, of course, didn’t take kindly to a scientific community so diametrically opposed to his actions. For DuBridge, that community’s primary representative in Nixon’s orbit, that meant diminishing access. A few years later, he would say that White House staff “gradually built an impenetrable wall around the President.” In an essay written for a book compiled much later by William Golden, one contributor put it another way:

At last June’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple announced its transition to the homegrown Mac CPUs it calls Apple Silicon, a proprietary derivation of ARM designs for which the company possesses an Architecture License. For Apple, this means full freedom to alter, extend, and own its CPU designs.

While DisplayPort is relatively universal on devices with USB-C ports, Thunderbolt support is a patchwork and requires both devices being plugged in to support it. Apple’s modern MacBooks support Thunderbolt, for example, but Microsoft’s new Surface Book 3 doesn’t. Monitors with Thunderbolt support also tend to be more expensive than those without, because they’re able to support more devices and additional monitors without slowing down.

Nixon replaced his high priest of science with a virtual unknown, Edward E. David, Jr., described as being “well outside the main channel of the American scientific establishment.” Perhaps the idea was to move that dividing line between presidential policy cheerleader and scientific advocate toward the former and away from the latter — if the scientific community didn’t know the new advisor, they couldn’t expect much of him.

Reviews of new Apple Silicon Macs are not out yet. They’re likely to be good. But one small disappointment lingers: Why didn’t Apple use the transition as an opportunity to bring Touch to the Mac User Interface?

(A fact perhaps lost in the mist of time: The original Advanced RISC Machines Ltd was “structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology”. What we see started a long time ago with the ARM processor inside the 1993 Newton.)

Then there’s DisplayPort and Thunderbolt, another set of standards supported by some USB-C devices. DisplayPort allows the use of an external display, such as a 4K monitor, but only supports one at a time at full resolution.

The truth is probably a combination of all three of these things or it could be 2020

Written by spdc