Archive for June, 2020

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 76

Sunday, June 14th, 2020

Science Sunday!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for nukes. Not just nuclear weapons, but civilian use of nuclear energy, the whole Project Plowshare/early reactors type of thing.

“Pioneering with Power”, a promo film for the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts.

According to several sources Yankee Rowe was the first commercial PWR operating in the United States. This view discards the government-sponsored Shippingport Atomic Power Station, which was not built on a commercial basis and relied on several technologies that would not be embraced by the commercial operators. The Dresden Generating Station, a commercial boiling water reactor (BWR), slightly preceded the opening of Yankee Rowe in 1960. US government sources place the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at Dresden-1 on 15 October 1959 and the first one at Yankee Row on 19 August 1960.[6] (These dates probably preceded the entering into commercial operation of either plant by several months.)

It operated until 1992.

Bonus: by way of “Cruise Ships Info” (really?), a tour of the NS Savannah. NS Savannah was the first nuclear powered merchant ship (hence the “NS”, for “Nuclear Ship”).

I have personal reasons for wanting to link to this, but the narration is horrible text-to-speech. You’d do better muting it and turning on captions.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 75

Saturday, June 13th, 2020

This seems like a good day to post some more military themed stuff, so here you go:

“Know Your Enemy: German Equipment”.

The film attempts to educate soldiers, tankers and other combatants about the material resources and equipment of the German Wehrmacht, and discusses how to defeat tanks and other weapons with small arms and anti-personnel weapons.

Bonus: I was trying to figure out if I had posted this before. It looks like I haven’t, but I did post about someone else’s link to it nine years ago. At that level of time and indirection, I think I can get away with it this time.

“Stop That Tank”, a Disney produced 1942 training film about the Boys anti-tank rifle.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 13, 2020.

Saturday, June 13th, 2020

William Sessions, former FBI director.

…in a tenure crowded with troubles and stumbling responses, Mr. Sessions presided for less than six years over an agency that mounted much-criticized deadly sieges at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas; tried to enlist American librarians to catch Soviet spies; and was forced to concede that agents in the past had overzealously spied on Americans protesting government policies in Central America.

…

The first of the sieges under his watch occurred in 1992, when for 11 days the F.B.I.’s hostage rescue team surrounded a fugitive white separatist and others holed up in an isolated cabin on Ruby Ridge, near the Canadian border. After a United States marshal and the fugitive’s wife and son were killed by gunfire, a public furor arose questioning that use of deadly force. Mr. Sessions was not directly involved in the episode or accused of any wrongdoing, but the F.B.I.’s reputation was tarnished.
His agency again faced heavy criticism in 1993 over another violent standoff. This one began when four agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and six members of a cult called the Branch Davidians were killed in a gun battle at their compound near Waco, Texas. After a 51-day F.B.I. siege, President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, fearing mass suicide, authorized a tear-gas assault on April 19. The compound caught fire. At least 75 people died, including many children.
By then, F.B.I. morale was abysmal and Mr. Sessions, a Republican stranded in a Democratic limbo, was under pressure to resign. His critics said he had failed to redefine the F.B.I.’s crime-fighting and domestic counterintelligence missions after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 during the administration of President George Bush. Some associates called him disengaged, a director who relished the trappings of high office but not the grind of bureau business.
But most damaging to Mr. Sessions was an internal Justice Department report — issued late in the Bush administration but pursued by the Clinton administration — accusing him of ethical violations, including using F.B.I. planes to visit relatives and friends around the country, often taking his wife; using agents to run personal errands; and having a $10,000 fence built around his Washington home at federal expense.

Posted in FBI, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 74

Friday, June 12th, 2020

Today’s installment goes out to all the espionage fans out there. You know who you are: you read John le Carré and Ian Fleming and watch old spy movies. If you’re a book person, you might even have a small (or large) collection of spy novels, spy memoirs, and spy histories.

From 1953, “Cutout Devices”, about the various ways spies protect themselves from exposure.

And your bonus: “Espionage Target – You!”, from 1964.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 73

Thursday, June 11th, 2020

Today’s videos are a little longer than I usually like to post, but:

“The Hippie Temptation”, from 1967. According to the YouTube notes, this is an episode of a short-lived CBS News series, and features Harry Reasoner (who was 44 at the time).

Bonus video: Not at all related. This is just a palate cleanser. Like liver flavored sherbet.

The pilot episode of “Space: 1999”.

Posted in History, TV | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Thursday, June 11th, 2020

I’ve mentioned Melville Davisson Post and the “Uncle Abner” stories before, and alluded to this passage from “Naboth’s Vineyard”.

Seems like a good time to actually post it, though.

“You threaten me,” he said, “but God Almighty threatens you.” And he turned about to the audience. “The authority of the law,” he said, “is in the hands of the electors of this county. Will they stand up?”
I shall never forget what happened then, for I have never in my life seen anything so deliberate and impressive. Slowly, in silence, and without passion, as though they were in a church of God, men began to get up in the courtroom.
Randolph was the first. He was a justice of the peace, vain and pompous, proud of the abilities of an ancestry that he did not inherit. And his superficialities were the annoyance of my Uncle Abner’s life. But whatever I may have to say of him hereafter I want to say this thing of him here, that his bigotry and his vanities were builded on the foundations of a man. He stood up as though he stood alone, with no glance about him to see what other men would do, and he faced the Judge calmly above his great black stock. And I learned then that a man may be a blusterer and a lion.
Hiram Arnold got up, and Rockford, and Armstrong, and Alkire, and Coopman, and Monroe, and Elnathan Stone, and my father, Lewis, and Dayton and Ward, and Madison from beyond the mountains. And it seemed to me that the very hills and valleys were standing up.
It was a strange and instructive thing to see. The loudmouthed and the reckless were in that courtroom, men who would have shouted in a political convention, or run howling with a mob, but they were not the persons who stood up when Abner called upon the authority of the people to appear. Men rose whom one would not have looked to see-the blacksmith, the saddler, and old Asa Divers. And I saw that law and order and all the structure that civilization had builded up, rested on the sense of justice that certain men carried in their breasts, and that those who possessed it not, in the crisis of necessity, did not count.
Father Donovan stood up; he had a little flock beyond the valley river, and he was as poor, and almost as humble as his Master, but he was not afraid; and Bronson, who preached Calvin, and Adam Rider, who traveled a Methodist circuit.
No one of them believed in what the other taught; but they all believed in justice, and when the line was drawn, there was but one side for them all.
The last man up was Nathaniel Davisson, but the reason was that he was very old, and he had to wait for his sons to help him. He had been time and again in the Assembly of Virginia, at a time when only a gentleman and landowner could sit there. He was a just man, and honorable and unafraid.

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Obit watch: June 11, 2020.

Thursday, June 11th, 2020

Following up to yesterday’s obit watch, “Live PD” is now cancelled.

According to the Deadline article thoughtfully sent to us by Mike the Musicologist, there were discussions about bringing the show back in some form:

But A&E and the show’s production company pulled the plug yesterday.

Airing Friday and Saturday nights from 9 PM-12 AM, Live P.D. was ad-supported cable’s #1 show on Fridays and Saturdays in 2019 and has helped A&E become a leading cable network. The series had risen to the top spots in all cable during the pandemic when live sports were suspended, drawing a total of about 3 million viewers per weekend.

Bonnie Pointer, co-founder of the Pointer Sisters.

She left the group in the late 1970s and signed with Motown; she also married Jeffrey Bowen, a producer there. Her two albums for that label were heavy with disco remakes of 1960s Motown singles, like the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” with Ms. Pointer recording most of the vocal parts herself. The most successful in this formula was “Heaven Must Have Sent You,” which went to No. 11 in 1979.

Mary Pat Gleason, working actress. 174 credits on IMDB.

Pierre Nkurunziza, president of Burundi. He was 55, and apparently died of a heart attack.

Posted in Cops, Law, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 72

Wednesday, June 10th, 2020

I thought I’d put this up today.

“Don’t Be a Sucker”, a War Department film from 1947. Don’t judge it based on the first few minutes: it isn’t about rigged card games or other cons.

Bonus: “I Am Not Alone”. From 1956, and I believe this is an episode of the “Telephone Time” series.

This film documents the personal experiences of a former Moscow prison inmate, who described the psychological torture methods used to try to extract a confession.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 10, 2020.

Wednesday, June 10th, 2020

Not one, not two, but three different people all sent me the news that “COPS” has apparently been cancelled. (It was on infinite hyenas “indefinite hiatus”.)

They know me rather well, don’t they?

Edited to add: Heh. From Twitter:

In the meantime, “Live PD” is also on infinite hyenas. And there’s an interesting development that I missed until the “COPS” story broke.

Back in March of 2019, a man named Javier Ambler was involved in a chase with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department.

Williamson County sheriff’s deputies attempted to pull Ambler over March 28, 2019, after he failed to dim the headlights of his SUV to oncoming traffic. Twenty-eight minutes later, the 40-year-old black father of two sons lay dying on a North Austin street after deputies held him down and used Tasers on him four times while a crew from A&E’s show “Live PD” filmed.
The former postal worker repeatedly pleaded for mercy, telling deputies he had congestive heart failure and couldn’t breathe. He cried, “Save me,” before deputies deployed a final shock.

Mr. Ambler died in custody. There is body cam video from an Austin PD officer that has been released to the Statesman and to one of the local TV stations. There’s also bodycam video from the WillCo officers, but that hasn’t been released.

A Williamson County internal affairs investigation found deputies did nothing wrong. But Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, whose office is tasked with investigating Ambler’s death with Austin police detectives, told the Statesman that she plans to take the case to a grand jury.
Moore accused [WillCo Sheriff Robert] Chody of stonewalling and refusing to provide evidence.

There’s also video from the “Live PD” cameras. At least, there was:

A&E confirmed Tuesday that “video of the tragic death of Javier Ambler was captured by body cams worn on the officers involved as well by the producers of Live PD who were riding with certain officers involved.”
It said that the incident did not occur while the show was airing live and that the video was not broadcast later.
A&E’s statement said that Austin investigators had not asked for the video or to interview show producers. “As is the case with all footage taken by Live PD producers, we no longer retained the unaired footage after learning that the investigation had concluded,” the network said in a statement.

As you may recall, Bob, the WillCo county commissioners were already in a micturition contest with the sheriff over whether “Live PD” should even be there in the first place, as well as who could have access to the raw “Live PD” footage. Now the whole thing’s blown up even more, to the point where three out of four county commissioners want the sheriff to resign:

Chody on Tuesday called the allegations of stonewalling “misleading” and said commissioners’ calls for his resignation were misinformed and politically motivated.
“The Williamson County Sheriff’s Department remains ready and willing to participate in the investigation being conducted by the Travis County DA’s office,” Chody said in a statement. “However the Travis County DA’s office has not contacted us for any reason related to this investigation. Any attempt to say we have slowed or impeded the investigation is absolutely false.”
In a response, Moore said the investigation was conducted by the Austin police special investigations unit “with our oversight.”
“I stand by my representations regarding the lack of cooperation,” she said.
As more than a dozen protesters gathered outside the Commissioners Court’s regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, Williamson County commissioners had strong words for Chody.
“I, like you, am outraged over the circumstance of his death, shocked at Sheriff Chody’s failure to cooperate with the investigation into Mr. Ambler’s death and heartbroken for his family and loved ones who almost 15 months later still have no answers,” said Williamson County Commissioner Cynthia Long. “Sheriff Chody must resign immediately.”
Commissioner Terri Cook also said Chody should resign.
“I have no confidence that he has the temperament, operational intelligence, administrative ability nor the people skills to handle the job,” Cook said.

Posted in Obits, Politics, TV, WillCo | 3 Comments »

“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.

Posted in Bridges, History, Planes, Travel | Comments Closed

Random gun crankery, some filler.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

Here’s an interesting essay I’ve been meaning to bookmark for a while, and finally got around to.

“Chesterton: Patron Saint of Handgunners” by Patrick Toner, from “Crisis” magazine.

The jumping off point is a Chesterton quote, talking about his preparations for his honeymoon:

It is alleged against me, and with perfect truth, that I stopped on the way to drink a glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in another. Some have seen these as singular wedding-presents for a bridegroom to give to himself, and if the bride had known less of him, I suppose she might have fancied that he was a suicide or a murderer or, worst of all, a teetotaller.

Mr. Toner uses this to discuss the idea that defense of one’s self or those one loves is an obligation. More to the point, it is an obligation one has to assume on their own, rather than delegating to other people.

If a thing is worth doing, Chesterton tells us, it’s worth doing badly. (What’s Wrong With the World, 175) Defending one’s wife is worth doing, and hence worth doing badly. But more, it must be done principally by oneself. “These things, we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.” (Orthodoxy, 250) Chesterton’s examples are things like writing one’s own love letters or blowing one’s own nose, but the incident of the revolver shows that he would include the husband’s duty to protect his wife. It’s simply not a job that should be subcontracted out. Of course, we band together in communities that provide mutual support and defense, and the forces of law and order can do their best to provide the safest conditions possible, in general. Our laws and policies and so forth can and should serve to keep the pirates at bay to a great extent. (Whether they, in fact, accomplish this, or whether our policies create criminals like moisture creates mold is an extraneous question.) None of this runs contrary to my point. We ask for doctors, researchers and public health officials to try to create as high a general level of health as possible—but that doesn’t mean we ask them to wipe our noses for us.

He goes on to propose that Chesterton be named the patron saint of handgunners, though he doesn’t shy away from the two major problems with this idea:

  • Chesterton wasn’t a saint at the time. He was under consideration, but the latest information I’ve found indicates that the effort has been abandoned.
  • There already is a patron saint of handgunners. Sort of. It’s complicated.

Slightly more seriously, this month’s essay by Tiger McKee in “American Handgunner”, “3 Questions To Stay Alive“, is worthy of your consideration. I think this is especially relevant if you are a new gun owner, but I’d argue that even experienced ones could benefit from asking these three questions. I’ve asked some of those questions myself in the past. I particularly like his “kitchen fire/building fire” analogy.

What are you willing to risk your life for? Only you can answer this question. But, I recommend asking it in advance. Remember, fighting is problem-solving at high speed. The more questions you can answer in advance the more efficiently you arrive at a solution.

I think we’ve all heard the Creepy Joe quote about how police officers should be trained to just shoot people in the leg. Everyone who is a person of the gun (and a lot of people who are not) should realize this is obviously bolshie bushwa. (If you don’t understand why: try hitting a small target like a leg under extreme cognitive and physical stress. This is why police officers are trained to shoot “center of mass” aka “the biggest part of the body”.)

I’ve had this video in the back of my head for a while now, and I thought I’d post it as another reason why “shoot ’em in the leg” isn’t such a good idea. This is from Iran: the suspect in this video allegedly robbed a bank.

As best as I can tell, the police officer shoots the suspect in the leg at about the 30 second mark. Two points:

1. The suspect is still conscious and capable of putting up a fight for another 45 seconds or so after he was shot. How much damage do you think someone can do with a knife in 45 seconds?

2. The suspect bled out and died. Shooting someone in the leg does not mean “not lethal”. If you hit an artery, the person you shot can bleed to death before the ambulance gets there.

Posted in Bookmarks, Guns, Religion | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 70

Monday, June 8th, 2020

I’m hoping to be able to post some more firearms related stuff over the next week, including (if I can get my stuff together and am lucky) two gun porn entries.

In the meantime:

“A Federal Case”. A very 1970s promo film about the production of ammo by the Federal Cartridge Corporation.

Bonus video #1: the good folks at Starline Brass make cartridge cases, including cases for a lot of obscure ammo. As I recall, they even produced .356 TSW brass, though I can’t find it on their website at the moment.

Here’s a behind the scenes tour of their brass manufacturing. It has the advantage of less 1970s music.

And they have a YouTube channel, though it doesn’t look like they’ve uploaded anything since 2016.

Bonus video #2: You know who else has a YouTube channel? Norma. You know who updates their channel more often? Norma. You know who else uploaded a factory tour?

One of the things Mike the Musicologist and I keep talking about doing is taking some time off and driving to Nebraska to visit the SAC Museum. From Ashland, Google Maps says it is only about two hours to Grand Island and the Hornady plant, which is something else we’d like to see (and tour, if they’ll let us in).

One of these days, when all this stuff is over and we’ve got time and money. Until then, this will have to do.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

More hoplobibliophilia.

Monday, June 8th, 2020

How do you know when you’ve got a problem with bibliophilia?

One clue is when you start buying bibliographies.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 8, 2020.

Monday, June 8th, 2020

Kurt Thomas, gymnast.

He competed in the 1976 Olympics, but didn’t win any medals. He won a gold medal at the world championships in 1978: he was the first American to do so.

Thomas followed up his breakthrough at the 1978 championships by winning five world championship individual medals in 1979, including gold in the floor exercise once more and in the horizontal bar, at Fort Worth, and he finished sixth in the all-around standings, based on his totals in the six individual events and his individual triumphs.

He was a favorite to medal in the 1980 Olympics, but we all know what happened there.

He also starred in the 1985 film, “Gymkata“, a fact the NYT curiously omits from their coverage.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 69

Sunday, June 7th, 2020

Science Sunday!

I’m drawing pretty heavily on AT&T/Bell System stuff, but they do have some of the best science videos on YouTube. Not just about phone stuff, either.

For example, lasers.

From 1969, “Lasers Unlimited”. If you want to skip the introduction, fast forward to about 2:25.

Bonus video #1, since that one was short: a 1978 interview with Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, right after their Nobel Prize was announced.

If you don’t know the story, Penzias and Wilson were Bell Labs employees working on microwave receivers, specifically ultra-sensitive and cryogenically cooled ones. Since they were trying to pick up really really weak signals (bounced off Echo balloons), they eliminated all the noise they could from their equipment. But there was still some noise that persisted and that they couldn’t find a source for. Finally, and with the help of some astronomers, they figured out that what they were hearing was the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is taken to be evidence in favor of the Big Bang theory. Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery. (It was shared with Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, who was awarded the prize for unrelated work on low-temperature physics.)

I know it’s talking heads, but I think the Penzias and Wilson story is a great one. You go chasing faint radio signals, you come back with one of the keys to the universe. How cool is that?

(Apparently, their receiver was quite cool. Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Try the veal and remember to tip your waitress.)

Bonus video #2: This one is equally short, and silent: “A Computer Technique For the Production of Animated Movies”. This is how computer animation was done…in 1964.

Posted in Geek, History, Radio | Comments Closed

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