Archive for the ‘Bridges’ Category

Obit watch: February 1, 2024.

Thursday, February 1st, 2024

This is an obit that made me say “Wow.” when I read it.

Jack Jennings has died at the age of 104.

Mr. Jennings was a private in the British Army (1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment) and was serving in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. He was one of “an estimated 85,000” soldiers captured and taken prisoner.

…Mr. Jennings spent the next three-and-half years as a prisoner of war, first in Changi prison in Singapore and then in primitive camps along the route of the railway between Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar).

He and the other POWs were put to work building the Burma Railway.

He survived the searing heat of the Indochinese jungle; a daily diet of rice, watery gruel and a teaspoon of sugar; and a battery of ailments: malnutrition, dysentery, malaria and renal colic. He developed a leg ulcer that required skin grafts, which were performed without anesthesia.
“At least 15 soldiers died each day of malaria and cholera,” Mr. Jennings told the British newspaper The Mirror in 2019. “I remember sitting in camp just counting the days I had left to live. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of there alive.”

His memoir, Prisoner Without A Crime, is available from Amazon in the US.

This is also in the linked NYT obit, but if you don’t want to click over there to watch it, here’s the commercial Mr. Jennings did for the British National Lottery.

An estimated 12,000 to 16,000 P.O.W.s died during construction of the railway. Many civilian prisoners perished as well.

Two months after he came home, he married. He had at least two daughters. (“Complete information on survivors besides Mr. Jennings’ daughters was unavailable.”) The daughters believe he was the last survivor of the captured soldiers.

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 346

Friday, March 12th, 2021

Today’s videos go out to FotB Andrew, because.

“The Original Mackinac Bridge Story”, about the history and construction of the bridge.

Opened in 1957, the 26,372-foot-long (4.995 mi; 8.038 km) bridge (familiarly known as “Big Mac” and “Mighty Mac”) is the world’s 24th-longest main span and the longest suspension bridge between anchorages in the Western Hemisphere.

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.

At the beginning of June, dam operators opened the gates on the left spillway, sending 10,000 cubic feet per second (280 m3/s), less than one-tenth of capacity, down the tunnel into the river below. After a few days, the entire dam suddenly began to shake violently. The spillway was closed down for inspections and workers discovered that the flow of water was causing cavitation – the explosive collapse of vacuum pockets in water moving at high speed – which was damaging the concrete lining and eroding the rock spillway tunnels from the upper ends of the diversion tunnels, which connect to the bottom of the reservoir. This was rapidly being destroyed by the cavitation and it was feared that a connection would be made to the bottom of Lake Powell, compromising the dam’s foundation and causing the dam to fail.

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 216

Sunday, November 1st, 2020

Science Sunday!

Today, random. First up: “RMS Titanic: Fascinating Engineering Facts”. This actually talks about both Olympic and Titanic, and (unlike a lot of Titanic stuff) concentrates more on the engineering and shipbuilding: basically, how do you build and launch something that big?

This is only science adjacent, but I wanted to post this as a tribute: James Randi appears on “I’ve Got a Secret”.

And since that was only science adjacent, James Randi’s TED talk on homeopathy, quackery and fraud. I generally hesitate to link to TED talks, but this is an exception.

More Randi: this time, talking about Uri Geller and Geller’s “repudiation” of his claims to have psychic powers.

(As a side note, when Randi died, I got to wondering what Uri Geller was up to these days. I ran across this amusing bit from Geller’s Wikipedia entry.

In 1997 he tried to help the Second Division football club Exeter City win a crucial end of season game by placing “energy-infused” crystals behind the goals at Exeter’s ground (Exeter lost the game 5–1); he was appointed co-chairman of the club in 2002. The club was relegated to the Football Conference in May 2003, where it remained for five years. He has since severed ties with the club.

I think if Geller offers you his assistance, you should probably run in the opposite direction.)

(The James Randi Foundation channel on YouTube.)

Have you ever wondered, “How do they build those massive freaking mirrors for really big telescopes?” I’ve read some stuff about how the mirror for the Hale Telescope was built in the 1930s and 1940s, but today?

Finally: you’ve seen the footage. But do you know the engineering reason(s) why the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed?

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 98

Monday, July 6th, 2020

This is a little longer than I’d like, but it popped up in my recommendations, and pushes several buttons at once:

  • The Bell System
  • Lee Marvin
  • The 1970s!
  • From 1970, “It Couldn’t Be Done”, a Bell System film about “impossible structures”, featuring Mr. Marvin and the 5th Dimension.

    Bonus video: since we’re talking about what we can accomplish when we want to, “They Came To An Island”. From 1946, a documentary about the Navy Civil Engineer Corps (aka the Seebees).

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 71

Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

I was going to post the Golden Gate construction video. Really, I was. I had it in my YouTube history and everything.

Then ASM826 beat me to it. Drat. So something else.

This might be a day for more travel on Pan Am. I’ve got a couple of these in the queue. What exotic destination sounds good?

Well, right now, it is 99 degrees in Austin. And 71 degrees below the equator, in the exotic land of…

“Wings to Brazil”, another 1960s travelogue.

Carnival starts at about the 24 minute mark, if you’re interested.

And as a bonus totally unrelated to travel (except you need these to get places): “The Suspension Bridge”, from the United States Steel Corporation.

And now here’s something we hope you really like…

Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

A little late on this one, but: Ken Whisenhunt out as offensive coordinator of the worthless Los Angeles Chargers.

The Arena Football League (also apparently known as Arena Football One) has “shut down all local business operations and services for all six of its teams“. I think I speak for everyone here when I say: they were still in business?

The paper of record asks the musical question:

Just How Bad Are the Miami Dolphins?

Summary: pretty bad.

And something non-sports related for my people: the Squibb Park Bridge, a pedestrian bridge in Brooklyn, is being demolished and replaced.

By the time the new bridge is completed, the group that operates Brooklyn Bridge Park will have spent about $14 million — $7.5 million for the original bridge and the failed attempts at repairs, and $6.5 million to $7 million for the new one.

Why? Well, the old bridge was designed to be bouncy. Turns out, it was a little too bouncy.

It was fun, at least at first, and it was deliberate. Its designer, Ted Zoli — the winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2009 — intended it to bounce underfoot as people walked along.

It also was moving in unintended directions. Hilarity (and lawsuits) ensued. And then it turned out the wood was rotting…

TMQ Watch: January 6, 2015.

Wednesday, January 7th, 2015

Sex! Gambling! After the jump, this week’s TMQ

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This one’s for Andrew.

Friday, July 4th, 2014

This year is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge.

Earlier this week, the NYT ran a retrospective piece about the young reporter who covered the construction of the bridge; a man named Gay Talese, who later went on to bigger and better things.

The Times piece includes links to some of Talese’s original articles, if you want to feel nostalgic for the old NYT, or the Robert Moses era, or…

(Obligatory.)

Random notes: December 10, 2013.

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

One bright and lovely morning in September, on the first day of school, three traffic lanes that went from the streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the George Washington bridge were suddenly shut down:

Cars backed up, the town turned into a parking lot, half-hour bridge commutes stretched into four hours, buses and children were late for school, and emergency workers could not respond quickly to the day’s events, which included a missing toddler, a cardiac arrest and a car driving into a building.

The lanes were ostensibly closed for a “traffic study”:

But the workers testified that the Port Authority already collected data on how many cars traveled in each lane, so such a traffic study would have been unnecessary.
The director of the bridge, Robert Durando, testified that in 35 years at the Port Authority, he had never heard of lanes being closed down for a traffic study.

The lanes were shut down for a total of four days. The Port Authority controls the bridge, and gave the order to shut down the lanes. And the members of the Port Authority are appointed by Chris Christie.

The mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, complained in a letter in September that the lane closings were “punitive” — Mr. Christie, a Republican, was leaning heavily on Democratic mayors to endorse him for re-election so he could present himself as a presidential candidate with bipartisan appeal, but the mayor was not going along.

So now the New Jersey legislature is holding hearings, and it sounds like there’s very little paperwork documenting exactly why the Port Authority decided to hold a traffic study on one of the busiest days of the year. It also sounds like there’s a lot of…obfuscation, shall we say?

On the one hand, I want to give this the “NYT covers a Republican politician” discount. On the other hand, there seems to be no dispute that three access lanes to the busiest bridge in the United States were closed for four days, and not for emergency repairs. That to me is simply inexcusable; in a case like this, I would support individuals taking it upon themselves to reopen the “closed” lanes, as well as the liberal application of tar and feathers.

Speaking of tar and feathers, here are some excerpts from yesterday’s testimony in the Kelly Thomas trial that are designed to enrage you:

“That would not be good proper police procedure,” [John A. ] Wilson [testifying as a “use of force expert” – DB], a 26-year FBI veteran, said when asked hypothetically about a suspect being hit on the head. Such a blow “is going to cause serious bodily injuries.”

Prosecutors maintain that Thomas was struck repeatedly in the face with the front of [Jay] Cicinelli’s Taser and that the injuries contributed to his death. Audio from the night captures Cicinelli saying he hit Thomas 20 times in the face with his stun gun.

Wilson also testified that when the video captures [Manuel] Ramos putting on latex gloves and threatening to punch Thomas, it was a show of force by Ramos: “It indicates there’s going to be contact made, or blood or some body fluid may be exposed as a result of a violent contact.”

In the video, Ramos puts on the gloves and tells Thomas, “See these fists? They’re getting ready to [expletive] you up.”

Wilson said officers should have stopped hitting Thomas after he started complaining that he couldn’t breathe and a pool of blood started forming on the concrete.

Morning coverage of the Spaccia conviction:

Spaccia probably faces a sentence similar to the 10 years to 12 years in prison that her former boss, Robert Rizzo, is expected to receive, prosecutors said. Rizzo pleaded no contest to 69 corruption charges in October.

I promised more coverage of the LA County Sheriff’s Department indictments, but I’d be doing it anyway. There is a lot of “Wow” going on here.

The indictments allege two assaults on inmates and three on people who visited the jail. They also include claims that deputies wrote false reports to justify using force and conducted illegal arrests and searches of jail visitors.
A sergeant who supervised deputies in the visiting area of Men’s Central Jail was accused of encouraging violence and reprimanding employees “for not using force on visitors … if the visitors had supposedly ‘disrespected'” jail deputies, according to an indictment.

Remember, these aren’t inmates (not that it would be any better if they were): these are visitors. But wait, it gets better:

In one case, prosecutors say, an Austrian consul official trying to visit an Austrian inmate was arrested and handcuffed even though she had committed no crime and would have been immune from prosecution, the indictment said.

There’s even more. A crooked jailer smuggled a cell phone in for an inmate who was an FBI informant.

After the discovery, sheriff’s officials moved the inmate — identified only as “AB” in the indictment — and changed his name. They then altered the department’s internal inmate database to falsely say he had been released, prosecutors allege. Deputies continued to isolate the inmate even after federal authorities had told sheriff’s officials that a judge had ordered the inmate’s appearance before a grand jury, the indictment states.

Can you say, “obstruction of justice”? I knew you could. But it gets even better:

Stephen Leavins, a lieutenant in the unit that handles allegations of criminal misconduct against sheriff’s employees, was accused of directing two sergeants to confront an FBI agent working on the investigation outside her home. The sergeants — Scott Craig and Maricella Long — falsely told the agent that a warrant was being prepared for her arrest, prosecutors said in court records.

They tried to intimidate an FBI agent? Does LACSD make it a practice to hire and promote deputies who are dumber than a bag of hair?

For a while now, I’ve felt like the HouChron is trying to become more like BuzzFeed; if you look at their website, there’s a huge emphasis on slideshows and listicles. I generally don’t like linking to that crap (though the slide shows of fair food are often interesting) but here’s an exception: historical photos of Bonnie and Clyde. The HouChron isn’t kidding around with the “graphic photos” warning, either; there are a couple of photos of Bonnie and Clyde after the shootout. (There’s also some nice photos of a couple of their guns, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

(Yeah, it is tied to the mini-series, which I didn’t watch, but the photos are still interesting on their own.)

Edited to add: Grammar question. “A FBI agent” or “An FBI agent”? “A FBI informant” or “An FBI informant”?

The Bridges of Cuyahoga County.

Sunday, July 14th, 2013

Well, just one bridge, really.

I keep thinking of these as “Egyptian”, but they’re not, really: they’re Art Deco.

bridge1

bridge2

bridge3

These are a couple of the pylons, known as the “Guardians of Traffic”, at the ends of the Hope Memorial Bridge in downtown Cleveland. (AKA the “Lorain-Carnegie Bridge”.) We drove across this bridge several times, since it is the best route to the Westside Market. (“The bridge connects Lorain Avenue on Cleveland’s west side and Carnegie Avenue on the east side, terminating just short of Progressive Field.” Heh. My mother observed that everywhere we went in Cleveland, it seemed like we had to drive past Progressive Field. By the end of the trip, she was rather tired of it. In comparison, I think we drove past Browns Stadium twice, and Quicken Loans Arena once.)

The “Hope” in “Hope Memorial” is William Henry Hope, Bob Hope’s father. Mr. Hope was a stonemason who worked on the pylons when the bridge was built.

A reliable source tells me:

When the Cavs were in the playoffs, the city put Cavs sweatbands on the foreheads of the two closest to the Q, where the Cavs play.

There’s really no good place to park near the bridge and the pylons, so these photos were taken either with the iPhone camera or compact cameras, by myself and my mother, out of or through the windows of a moving rental car, while trying not to obstruct traffic. If I get a chance to go back and the weather is nice, I plan to get some better pictures with the big camera.

TMQ Watch: February 5, 2013.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

Today’s the last TMQ of the season!
Hurrah, hurrah!
No more “cosmic thoughts”!
Hurrah, hurrah!
The readers will cheer and the blogger will shout!
And we’ll all feel happy after the last TMQ of the year…

(more…)

When are we going to get to the fireworks factory?

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

How about “never”? Is “never” good enough for you?

A truck laden with fireworks exploded on an elevated expressway in central China on Friday, unleashing a blast that threw vehicles 30 yards to the ground below and killing at least nine people, state news reports said.