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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 252

Monday, December 7th, 2020

Today, December 7th, 2020, a date which will live in infamy…

…having reached a certain age, I have a doctor’s appointment this morning for a routine procedure, and expect to be out of it for a bit.

(I’ll take the 15 yard penalty for oversharing.)

So I’m scheduling this post in advance. Given the history of the day, the fact that I’ve only linked to him once, the fact that these are short-ish, and the fact that I’m a lazy shiftless blogger who is (I hope) lying around in pajamas and slippers right now, I thought I’d link to Drachinifel‘s series on the salvage of Pearl Harbor.

Part 1: “The Smoke Clears”.

Part 2: “Up She Rises!”

Part 3: “The First and the Last”.

Posted in History, Ships | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 251

Sunday, December 6th, 2020

When I was young, my paternal grandparents gave me a gift subscription to a magazine called “Science ’85” (later “Science ’86” and so on). As the linked Wikipedia entry discusses, this was a general interest science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). (AAAS also publishes “Science”, which is a highly prestigious and technical peer-reviewed journal.)

One of the articles I remember from that magazine was about Kurt Gödel. That was the first time I’d ever encountered the man, and I find him fascinating in general. I think one of the reasons I’m fascinated by Gödel is the relationship between his Incompleteness theorem and Turing’s “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.”

This is a lecture: “Kurt Godel: The World’s Most Incredible Mind” by Mark Colyvan of the University of Sydney. (The title given in the video is “Kurt Gödel and the Limits of Mathematics”.) Each of these chunks is about 15 minutes long, so you can take some time to recover between parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 250

Saturday, December 5th, 2020

I thought it might be fun today to go down to the sea in ships…

…which (because I am a jerk) promptly sink. Since today is Saturday, I feel like I can run a bit long, at least for this first one. The bonus videos are all shorter.

“The Shocking Truths Of King Henry VIII’s Ship The Mary Rose”.

The Mary Rose is a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She served for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight
The wreck of the Mary Rose was discovered in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of great value as a Tudor-era time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England. “Details from listed building database (1000075)”. National Heritage List for England.

Bonus #1: One of the things I’d like to do before I die is to see the Vasa.

Vasa or Wasa[a] (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship foundered after sailing about 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannon were salvaged in the 17th century until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet (“The Vasa Shipyard”) until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden’s most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 35 million visitors since 1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognised symbol of the “Swedish Empire”.

I’m putting this here only because I know one person who might like it: Bill Burr rants about the Vasa.

Bonus video #2: More seriously…a 4K video tour of the Vasa Museum from 2015.

Bonus video #3: “Who Sank the Vasa?”.

Posted in History, Ships | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 3, 2020.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing est mort.

I’ve seen very little reporting of this elsewhere, but Lawrence has posted a nice obit for economist Walter E. Williams.

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 247

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020

I’m going to be a little self-indulgent today.

I know I’ve said in the past that I don’t want to post a lot of “Forgotten Weapons” stuff, because I figure if folks are interested, they already subscribe. I’m making an exception here because:

a) This is a pretty recent entry.
II) Smith and Wesson.
3) Australia, Australia, we love you, amen.

Specifically, a Smith and Wesson pistol-carbine made for the South Australian Police.

Bonus #1: I actually thought about posting this yesterday, but couldn’t find it in my recommendations. It popped up again today, and this is some real history: “Hannibal’s Elephant Army – The New Evidence”.

Bonus #2: For some reason, I’ve been getting a lot of car repair videos in my feed. Especially ones from “Precision Transmission”. I thought I’d post this one because I shared it with some other folks privately and it seems like they enjoyed it.

“Nitrous doesn’t play well with others! Especially when you have pretty much stock unit.”

Posted in Cars, Guns, History, Mammals | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 246

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020

I thought today I’d fall back to some real authentic history. These are long, and I apologize for that, but I think this might appeal to some people.

“Afghanistan: the Great Game”. Part 1:

“It’s really easy to get into Afghanistan. It’s just the getting out part is very difficult.”

“Don’t go into Afghanistan and get – whatever you do – involved in a tribal war.”

Part 2:

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 245

Monday, November 30th, 2020

I thought it might be fun to do a couple more WWII aircraft videos today.

“P-38 Flight Characteristics”, made by Lockheed around 1943. And in color!

Bonus #1, but this is more for the soundtrack than the video itself: “Warbird Engine Starts — Props & Radials”.

Bonus #2: I thought I’d throw this in. “Eclipse aviation cartridge starter and Plessey starter motor”.

Why? We watched “Flight of the Phoenix” (the good one) a while back, that’s why.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Annals of law (#13 in a series)

Saturday, November 28th, 2020

I have heard stories like this before, but I thought this Twitter thread was worth noting:

I’ve also heard this referred to as “swoop and squat” fraud. It is actually a key plot point in Dan Simmons’s Darwin’s Blade (affiliate link).

Someone in the thread linked to an old Fortune article, which I am re-linking here for your convenience. No need to thank me: full service blog, here.

Posted in Books, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 243

Saturday, November 28th, 2020

This could, maybe, fall under travel, but I thought I’d use these here today instead.

Great and good FotB RoadRich joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, and we spent some time afterwards sitting around, chatting, and watching a few videos on the ‘Tube. Here’s one that came up: Jimmy Stewart talks about flying planes out of LAX…before it was LAX.

In 1928, the Los Angeles City Council selected 640 acres (1.00 sq mi; 260 ha) in the southern part of Westchester for a new airport for the city. The fields of wheat, barley and lima beans were converted into dirt landing strips without any terminal buildings. It was named Mines Field for William W. Mines, the real estate agent who arranged the deal. The first structure, Hangar No. 1, was erected in 1929 and is in the National Register of Historic Places.

Bonus #1: “The Story of Modern Airline Transportation”, from American Airlines. “Modern”, in this case, being 1933.

Bonus #2: RoadRich mentioned this to me, and I couldn’t pass it up. This is actually what got us started down this path. From 1953, “Flying With Arthur Godfrey”, a vintage Eastern Airlines promo film.

Godfrey used his pervasive fame to advocate a strong anti-Communist stance and to pitch for enhanced strategic air power in the Cold War atmosphere. In addition to his advocacy for civil rights, he became a strong promoter of his middle-class fans vacationing in Hawaii and Miami Beach, Florida, formerly enclaves for the wealthy. He made a television movie in 1953, taking the controls of an Eastern Air Lines Lockheed Constellation airliner and flying to Miami, thus showing how safe airline travel had become. As a reserve officer, he used his public position to cajole the Navy into qualifying him as a Naval Aviator, and played that against the United States Air Force, who later successfully recruited him into the Air Force Reserve. At one time during the 1950s, Godfrey had flown every active aircraft in the military inventory.

In addition to Godfrey actually flying a Constellation, Eddie Rickenbacker shows up as well.

“I used to sit around up there at 20,000 feet with the sun at my back waiting for the enemy Fokkers to come around.”

“No, no, no – these fokkers were Messerschmitts!”

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 242

Friday, November 27th, 2020

Great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn sent over a fascinating page from the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum a few days ago.

There’s a whole bunch of great stuff there: much of it I haven’t had a chance to watch fully yet, but it pushes my buttons. The “Heros On Zoom” series is fairly short. I thought I’d single out “The Battle of New Orleans” for this one:

Mostly as a sleezy and transparent excuse to use this:

Bonus: I know this is long, but today is Black Friday. I hope most of you aren’t working, and it isn’t like you’re waiting in line outside Best Buy at 3 AM peeing on each other to keep warm while you wait for a PS5.

“Leadership Lessons from Fredericksburg”. I have complicated feelings about the Civil War, but (as you know, Bob) I’m a student of leadership, and Civil War leadership is one of the aspects of the war that does intrigue me. I’d really like to find good copies of Douglas Southall Freeman’s books in unabridged editions. (I have his collection of essays on leadership, but nothing else by him.)

Posted in History, Leadership | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 241

Thursday, November 26th, 2020

Travel Thursday! And happy Thanksgiving!

I was hoping that Pan Am would have done “Wings to Turkey”, or something similar. But, alas, no. So how about a tour of a turkey farm with Temple Grandin, from the National Turkey Federation?

Bonus #1: “To Mount Lowe With Love”, a documentary about the Mount Lowe Railway. Because I feel like putting the “fun” back into “funicular”.

Bonus #2: Stretching the definition of “travel” a bit here, but I wanted to do something appropriate for Spaghetti Carbonara Day.

There are an awful lot of spaghetti carbonara videos on YouTube, many of which seem to be responses or complaints about Gordon Ramsey’s version. I thought I’d use this one, since I believe Lidia Bastianich is pretty trustworthy when it comes to Italian food. If you’re cooking for my mother, though, please leave the onions out. (She loves Lidia, but she hates onions. I actually don’t think onions are part of a traditional carbonara, but I welcome being proved wrong.)

Posted in History, Trains, Travel | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 240

Wednesday, November 25th, 2020

Today, music.

To start with, something short-ish. I think this dates to 2011, and was produced by the Oklahoma History Center as part of an exhibit: “Pickin’ and Grinnin’: Roy Clark, ‘Hee Haw’ & Country Humor”.

And a longer bonus that I think is really cool: a 1969 documentary for Granada Television, “Johnny Cash In San Quentin”.

Posted in History, Music | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 239

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

Techmoan is kind of a fun channel, but one that I try to avoid overusing. I’m using it today because this video popped up, and it answers a question that’s been in the back of my mind.

Whatever happened to portable televisions? Remember the Sony Watchman?

Obviously, the digital transition killed off the old analog portables. But why don’t we have portable digital televisions?

Short answer: we do, but not from any major manufacturers, and they’re pretty much crap as televisions. (Some of them may be decent portable media players, but do they do anything you can’t do with a small laptop or tablet?)

When I’m out shopping in thrift stores and other odd places, and see one of those cool looking old portable devices with a TV built in, I think about picking it up and hooking up a converter box, just for the lulz.

Bonus: “Prison Tech”. Not really the kind of thing people in prison improvise, but rather what kind of tech you’re allowed to have (and can purchase) for prison use.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Geek, History, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 24, 2020.

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

An obit roundup, because I’m a little behind.

Jan Morris, British writer and historian. I haven’t read any of Morris’s work, yet. But John Crowley in his beautiful novella “Great Work of Time” cites Morris’s history of the British empire as a major source, and I’ve been hunting for reasonably priced copies. (Like I need three more volumes of history to read, in addition to Gibbon and the two volume history of the Canadian transcontinental railroad.)

Ken Spears, co-creator of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!”. The other creator, Joe Ruby, passed away in September.

Daniel Cordier, one of the legendary figures of the French Resistance. He was 100.

David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 238

Monday, November 23rd, 2020

Since I’ve done copper mining, I thought it might be fun to do another element.

Lead. Sweet, sweet, lead.

From 1972, “The Lead Matrix”, brought to you by the Lead Industries Association.

And as a bonus: “A Story Of Lead”, from the Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines circa 1948.

Posted in Geek, History | 2 Comments »

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