Man, one year of this. And I haven’t missed a day of being a lazy, shiftless blogger.
I thought today I’d do a sort of call back to the video that started it all, but from a different time – the 1980s – and a different source – the US Air Force. Even though it is an Air Force video, I consider it to be closer thematically to “Vehicle Ambush: Counterattacks”.
“Terrorism: A Survivable Threat”.
Bonus #1: “5 Police Cars Most Police Wish They Still Drove”.
Bonus #2: I’m not a huge fan of Jay Leno’s Garage, but since I’m doing cop stuff, and since I’ve written some in the past year about the California Highway Patrol, I thought I’d put this up: “Classic California Highway Patrol Cars”.
I’ve got a few things for you today. First up: “ABCs of Radiation” with “Illinois EnergyProf“, which gives a nice explanation of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation for the uninitiated. You know, for kids.
Bonus #1: Some kind person appears to have uploaded all of Jonathan Miller‘s “The Body In Question” series to the ‘Tube. I wanted to see this when it was first run on PBS in America, but for some reason I don’t recall at the moment was unable to.
Bonus #2: Have you ever asked yourself, “How do atomic clocks work?”
Here’s how the The NIST-F2 Atomic Clock works:
And here’s a more general introduction:
Bonus #3: which, of course, was nicely set up by the previous videos. This guy’s voice is right on the ragged edge of annoying for me (he reminds me of Inspector Clouseau), but I thought the content was worthwhile for HP fans: the HP 5061A Cesium Clock.
When I win the lottery, one of the things I want to collect is a complete run of the “Notable British Trials” series. I have a few paperbacks which contain edited versions of some of the trials, but I don’t have any complete volumes, reprint or otherwise.
One of the paperbacks I do have contains the trial of William Joyce. Students of history may know him better as “Lord Haw Haw“.
“The Story of Lord Haw Haw and his Trial”, a 2015 BBC radio documentary. Since this is radio, you could put it on as background while you do something else.
Bonus: As long as we’re talking about trials, here’s a little something from the “Timeline” folks: “The Origins of Witch Trials”, part 1:
Here’s a two-parter for you. From 1966, and an old show for children called “Discovery“.
“The World Beneath the Sea”, part 1. This is mostly about marine animal life.
“The World Beneath the Sea”, part 2. This concentrates a lot on things like scuba diving, minisubs, and SeaLab II, which would have been right up my alley when I was a child (and is still right up my alley today).
Well, actually, not that one, though these folks did manage to control the horizontal and the vertical.
This is a vintage (1969) promo film from Boeing, “The Outer Limit”, about the flight testing and introduction of the 747.
I’m fudging the definition of travel a bit with that one, but it is short. The next one is, admittedly, long, but it lets me cross another state off the list, and it is a place I enjoy visiting.
“The City of Las Vegas, the Early Years”. This covers the period from 1905 to 1920. See? Who says Vegas doesn’t have a sense of history?
Bonus: I’ve griped before about the hard hat tour of Hoover Dam (which I was lucky enough to go on) and how it was shut down after 9/11. Well, here’s a video (a little over 30 minutes long) of the hard hat tour from March 2001.
“If you’re going home by plane, wear the hard hat on the plane. It scares the heck out of the other passengers.” Man, wasn’t that a simpler time?
“The £299 Aldi Espresso Machine – How Bad Could It Be?”
Oddly enough, I don’t shop at Aldi either, and for the same reason: the nearest one to us is about 30 miles away.
Bonus #1: Since we’ve talked about an espresso machine, how about we talk about a can opener? A very specialized can opener, that is: this one opens powder cans for the 16″ guns on the Battleship New Jersey.
Bonus #2, and a little shout-out to the Saturday Night Movie Group. From the “Old Car Memories” channel, Jim Rockford’s Firebird.
I was talking with my brother about calculator watches recently, which reminded me of this video from Techmoan: “Hewlett Packard HP-01 1977’s Smartest Watch”.
As a HP geek, I would kind of like to have one of these: however, examples in good condition are expensive.
Bonus #1: I also thought it might be interesting to do some startup videos. Not tech startups, but starting up things. For example, an Airbus A320:
Bonus #2: Or a railroad locomotive.
Bonus #3: Or a DC-3.
Bonus #4: Or a tractor, “with a 12 guage shotgun shell”. I believe this gives new meaning to the term “shotgun start“.
Yeah, I think we’re doing Military History Monday. Also, I have a doctor’s appointment today, and expect to be pretty much useless afterwards, so I’m queuing up a couple of longer ones.
This is an OSS training film from 1944, “Undercover”.
I have an idea that I’m still kicking around in my head for a post on a somewhat related topic: OPSEC, or operational security. You’d be surprised (unless you’re someone like Borepatch) how many people seem to have no concept of OPSEC and make basic stupid mistakes…
I’ve been fascinated by rocks and rock hunting and geology since I was a young child.
I’m just not very good at it. So instead, I enjoy reading the works of others, like John McPhee.
Mr. McPhee talks with Eldridge Moores, a University of California geologist (and collaborator with Mr. McPhee on Assembling California) and reads from Annals of the Former World (affiliate link).
Bonus #1: “A Brief History of Colorado Through Time”. I used to collect those “Roadside Geology of…” books. I should at least go out and replace my copy of Roadside Geology of Texas (affiliate link). Perhaps I will be able to use it soon.
Bonus #2: “Flood Basalts of the Pacific Northwest”. Or, giant lava flows!
This is a short film from the 1980s about Lloyd’s of London and how it works.
Something that I find kind of interesting is the Lloyd’s Open Form (LOF). The basic idea is: if something comes up at sea that requires a salvage operation, the two parties (the one being salvaged and the one doing the salvaging) sign a LOF.
Back in 1978, an oil tanker, the Amoco Cadiz, ran into some problems: it encountered a storm that damaged the rudder and caused a hydraulic fluid leak. The captain called for assistance: the responding salvor wanted the captain to agree to a LOF.
One of the books I’ve read on the subject states that the captain was resistant to signing a LOF, as he felt he’d be signing an open-ended commitment, while the salvors were reluctant to proceed without a LOF. Ultimately, the captain agreed, but the situation had deteriorated…
…and the Amoco Cadiz ran aground off the coast of Brittany and dumped over 220,000 tons (metric) of oil into the sea.
Semi-related, because we’re talking about oil: “Fires of Kuwait”. For once, something in high-res.
I’ve been neglecting the United States. Technically, I still am, as today’s presentation is a place that isn’t a state: the place that my sister and her family refer to as “WashingtonDCOurNation’sCapital” (all one word).
From 1945, “The District of Columbia”, part of the “This Land Of Ours” series.
Bonus: and if you liked that one, here’s another one from 1954 and Esso (aka “Standard Oil Company of New Jersey”). “Welcome to Washington”.
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.
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.
I 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.”