Ah, the Fyre Festival. Brings back memories.
Archive for March, 2021
I haven’t laughed so hard since the hogs et my kid brother.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2021“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 351
Wednesday, March 17th, 2021Today, some real history.
A while back, when Morlock Publishing’s Twitter feed was public, he retweeted a fascinating quote from someone’s book.
“The meteorite itself was so massive that it didn’t notice any atmosphere whatsoever,” said Rebolledo. “It was traveling 20 to 40 kilometers per second, 10 kilometers — probably 14 kilometers — wide, pushing the atmosphere and building such incredible pressure that the ocean in front of it just went away.”
These numbers are precise without usefully conveying the scale of the calamity. What they mean is that a rock larger than Mount Everest hit planet Earth traveling twenty times faster than a bullet. This is so fast that it would have traversed the distance from the cruising altitude of a 747 to the ground in 0.3 seconds. The asteroid itself was so large that, even at the moment of impact, the top of it might have still towered more than a mile above the cruising altitude of a 747. In its nearly instantaneous descent, it compressed the air below it so violently that it briefly became several times hotter than the surface of the sun.
That someone turned out to Peter Brannen, and his book is The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions (affiliate link).
Here’s a talk at Google from 2017. He does go off into climate change about 25 minutes in, so you could maybe punch out when you’ve had enough. I think his discussion of things like Chicxulub make this worth it. (I was actually not aware that there was a controversy over whether that killed the dinosaurs: I thought the science was settled.)
Bonus: since the Ides of March have just passed, how about an episode of “Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall Of An Empire” on Caesar?
Bonus #2: while I guess this is semi-thematically appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day, I’m bookmarking this here because of my interest in crime, law, and prison breaks.
“Unlocking the Maze”, about the escape of 38 IRA prisoners from the maximum security Long Kesh prison on September 25, 1983. Again, I am not making a political statement here: I just find prison breaks fascinating.
Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AF of a series)
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021I’m a little behind on this, but I have to note it here anyway: after a little more than four years on the job, Art Acevedo is leaving as chief of the Houston PD…
…to take over as chief of the Miami PD.
(“The Tom Brady of police chiefs”? Fark that.)
My personal feeling? He decided to leave town before he got run out on a rail behind the narcotics scandal. But that’s just my opinion: I could be wrong.
More interesting question that someone asked me last night: could Flint Ironstag Brian Manley be headed to Houston?
Well, it is close to home, and it is a larger department, and he does have a proven track record, and it seems Houston is slightly more reasonable (and less hostile to the police) than the current Austin city council. But: 30 years in at APD, 97+% of his salary in retirement…what incentive does he have to take another police job in the current environment?
Other than the challenge, I guess.
Edited to add 3/17: Ha!
Farewell to Art Acevedo, the LeBron James of performative self-promotion
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 350
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021I got dragged into a meeting that took a lot longer than I expected. Which means I’m starting my lunch a lot later than I expected. Which means I’m queuing up this post a lot later than I expected. Which means a handful of random today.
First off, you know I had to include this, even if it does draw a little too much on random gun crankery: Lena Miculek shoots her mom’s “Space Gun”. Which is actually a custom Remington XP-100 chambered in 6mm BR.
Bonus: here’s something for Lawrence, and for other “Simpsons” fans: “Worker and Parasite” exists. No, really. And I’m not talking about this:
This is something called “The Millionaire”, an animated Soviet propaganda cartoon.
What the Hell was that?
Bonus #2: “Inside The F1 Medical Car”. This is fairly recent, and also fairly short.
Bonus #3: I’m not a real big car guy, but I found this video weirdly compelling. I think there’s actually something compelling in general (well, at least for me, but it seems like I hear this from other folks, too) about watching people do teardowns. In this case, the presenter is tearing down a Corvette LS7 engine that is totally locked up: it won’t even turn. But why?
Bonus #4: “C’est un Nagra. C’est suisse, et tres, tres precis.”
Obit watch: March 16, 2021.
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021Man, what a career. “Alien”, “Live and Let Die”, “Raid on Entebbe” (he was Idi Amin), and tons of TV work. Including the good “Hawaii 5-0″…
…and “Mannix” (“Death in a Minor Key”, season 2, episode 18. He plays a jazz musician who is dating Peggy, and gets arrested and extradited to a Southern town. Mannix goes down to help him out. We watched this episode recently, and while I haven’t seen all of “Mannix”, I think I’d put this one in the top ten. Without going into spoilers, it goes in some surprising directions.)
…and, of course, one of my favorite roles: Lt. Al Giardello on “Homicide: Life on the Street”. (He also crossed over to “Law and Order”. And he made an unaccredited appearance on “The Wire” as a different character.)
Thing I did not know: that there were two TV movies based on Edna Buchanan’s true crime books (affiliate link), in which he apparently has a starring role.
I hear good things about “Badge of the Assassin”, a TV movie that you can find (for the moment) on the ‘Tube, in which he co-stars with Jimmy Woods.
Edited to add: NYT obit, which was not up when I originally posted.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 349
Monday, March 15th, 2021Military History Monday!
I have a long one today, but let’s start off with something that’s a little shorter.
We’re pretty much right in the middle of the anniversary of the Battle of Khe Sanh, so please to enjoy this Marine Corps documentary (“in color!”). I’m not totally happy with the quality of this, but I feel like it is appropriate to post something in remembrance of the battle.
Long bonus, so you’re only getting two today: I’ve got to save something for next week. “The Foreign Legion : Men Without a Past”, about the current (as of 2005 or thereabouts) French Foreign Legion.
Obit watch: March 15, 2021.
Monday, March 15th, 2021Marvin Hagler, middleweight champion.
…
Leon Gast, director of “When We Were Kings”, which I have heard is a swell documentary. (Amazon affiliate link: I actually did not know there was a Criterion edition of this.)
This is another one of those cases where the story behind the documentary is almost as interesting (if not more) than the documentary itself, but I will leave that for the obit. One tidbit:
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 348
Sunday, March 14th, 2021Science Sunday! And Happy Pi Day!
I was hoping to find some good Pi related videos on YouTube. Instead, I turned up a lot of crap about something called “Pi Coin”, which sounds to me like a scam cryptocurrency. (Is “scam cryptocurrency” redundant? In any case, I’m putting my money into DogeCoin.)
I thought about posting some pie related videos, but I can’t quite stretch my definition of science that far.
So maybe a grab bag of science randomness?
“I Make Guncotton (Nitrocellulose) With Hardware Store Ingredients, Again.” Never know when this might come in handy.
Bonus #1: “The Rocket: Solid and Liquid Propellant Motors”. Vintage 1947, and a nice explanation of how solid and liquid propellant rockets work.
Bonus #2: This is a little on the darker side, but I feel like there’s at least one person (besides me) who might find it interesting: “A History of Nerve Agents” with Dan Kaszeta, the author of Toxic: A History of Nerve Agents, from Nazi Germany to Putin’s Russia (affiliate link, but since this is from Oxford University Press, it’s a bit on the pricy side).
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 347
Saturday, March 13th, 2021Talk, talk, it’s only talk. Elephant talk.
But seriously, folks: from our pals at the National Security Agency, “The Last Elephant Cage”, a short documentary on the FLR-9 antenna in Alaska.
Bonus #1: in keeping with today’s radio theme, and crossing over with some other folks, from the OH8STN Ham Radio channel, “Grid Down Comms Ham Radio & Texas”.
Bonus #2: and along the same lines, but longer: “Mike Glover Talks Ham Radio and Preparedness” with Josh from the Ham Radio Crash Course channel.
Noted: the Ham Radio Crash Course channel has a video coming up on “Building A Communications Go Bag or Get Home Bag“. Might be of interest to some folks in my audience.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 346
Friday, March 12th, 2021Today’s videos go out to FotB Andrew, because.
“The Original Mackinac Bridge Story”, about the history and construction of the bridge.
Bonus #1: because one bridge documentary isn’t enough. “Building the Mighty Mac”. This one is a little better quality, I believe.
To the best of my recollection, I have never been on the Mackinac Bridge. I wouldn’t mind making that drive someday, but the last time I was in Michigan, I wasn’t anywhere near the bridge.
Bonus #2: “Challenge at Glen Canyon”. Back in 1983, the Glen Canyon Dam had a problem. There’d been a heavier than expected snowfall that winter, which in turn led to more runoff as the snow melted. This in turn required the dam operators to open the spillways.
While some people might have enjoyed seeing the dam fail, it would have caused a lot of problems downstream. So the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had to fix the spillway issue. But how?
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 345
Thursday, March 11th, 2021Travel Thursday!
Have you ever considered exotic Pakistan as a destination? No? Let’s change that!
“New Horizons: Pakistan” from our friends at Pan Am sometime in the 1960s.
I bet it was a lot easier to bring home a little souvenir from the Khyber Pass back then, too.
Bonus: “Flying with the KLM from Amsterdam to Paris in 1929 in color!” As I understand it from the YouTube description, this is originally from 1929, but the poster (Rick88888888) has done a lot of work: “motion-stabilized, speed-corrected, A.I. enhanced and A.I. colorized”.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 344
Wednesday, March 10th, 2021I’m going to start out today with a little advertising.
From StudioCanalUK, “The Making of the Dam Busters”. I’m classifying this under “Movies” rather than “Military History”, so I can avoid having more than one military history per week. Also, I think it more appropriately belongs there.
Here’s the advertising: there’s a new US region blu-ray of “The Dam Busters”, which was released yesterday. This is something I think everyone in the Saturday Night Movie Group wants to see, and I will be ordering it directly. (There was a 2018 blu-ray, but it is region B/2 according to Amazon.)
(No, we do not have a region free blu-ray player.)
Bonus: since I want to stay away from military history, and sort of keeping thematically with the previous post: “This Is Triumph”.
I confess to a sneaking fondness for the TR7 back when I was a young lad…
Bonus #2: Why not? “Life In the Fast Lane”.
Oh, wait. I’m sorry. That was the wrong one. This one is from 1981, and discusses the US freeway system.
I may not be terribly bright, but honestly, I did not know about the odd/even numbering distinction. Or if I did know, I’d forgotten it.