Archive for July, 2020

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 105

Monday, July 13th, 2020

The high in Austin today is estimated to be 104. I think it is time to bring out something I’ve been holding in reserve.

“Land of White Alice”. No, this isn’t a Lewis Carroll thing. “White Alice” was a communications system in Alaska that used “tropospheric scattering” for over-the-horizon communications links.

The tropospheric scatter system operated around 900 MHz, and utilized both space diversity and frequency diversity, multiplexing a maximum of 132 simultaneous voice channels. The tropospheric hops used pairs of 60 ft (18 m) or 120 ft (37 m) parabolic, billboard like reflectors pointed at a low angle into the horizon. The radio waves were scattered by the tropopause, returning to Earth beyond the horizon, allowing communication between stations hundreds of miles apart. Having two antennas allowed for space diversity, meaning that if tropospheric conditions degrade on one path the second path might still be clear and communications would not be disrupted. For frequency diversity, each antenna transmitted two separate frequencies. Using both frequency and space diversity was called quad diversity. System power output for most shots was 10 kW and used 60 ft (18 m) antennas. Longer shots used 120 ft (37 m) antennas with 50 kW and shorter shots used 1 kW and 30 ft (9 m), round parabolic dishes.

The video makes it sound like White Alice was a major communications link for civilian traffic, but from what I’ve read elsewhere, it carried mostly military communications at this time (though it was used to coordinate between military and civil air traffic). The system went into place beginning in 1955: by 1970 or thereabouts, the military considered it obsolete, and transferred it to RCA Alascom for civilian use until the late 1970s.

I’m putting this up for two reasons: in addition to my interest in cold war tech, there’s also a lot of great vintage footage of Alaska. There’s even an Alaskan bush pilot, RoadRich.

Bonus: “Seconds For Survival”, from those wonderful folks at the Bell System.

The film tells how the North American Air Defense Command links NORAD, Sage, SAC, the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning), BMEWS, White Alice System, picket ships, Texas Towers blimps and air ships and air patrols into a single giant warning system to protect Americans from Soviet attack.

Posted in History, Planes, Radio | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 13, 2020.

Monday, July 13th, 2020

Kelly Preston. THR. Variety.

Benjamin Storm Keough, Elvis Presley’s grandson. He was 27.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in Movies, Obits | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 104

Sunday, July 12th, 2020

Science Sunday!

I wanted to do something a little different today. From 1960 and those wonderful folks at Shell Oil, “A Light In Nature”.

This isn’t a film about a specific area of science, but: “…shows scientific research and the creative process of discovery in probing radioactivity, astronomy, materials science, geology, biophysics, oceanography, the discovery of DNA, etc.” 1960 was the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, and this was apparently sort of a tie-in to that. There’s some awesome vintage video of members of the Royal Society smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo hanging out, if you’re fond of early 1960s style.

Bonus: Space history counts as science, right?

“Apollo 8 Go For TLI”, a NASA documentary about the mission.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 103

Saturday, July 11th, 2020

This popped up randomly in my recommendations, but I would have posted it no matter what once I knew it existed.

From the “World Of Warships” channel: “Naval Legends: USS Batfish”.

As you may recall, Mike the Musicologist and I visited the Batfish…cheez louise, it has been almost six years?

And as I think I’ve mentioned before, the USS Batfish was damaged in the flooding of 2019, and the Friends of the Muskogee War Memorial Park are trying to raise money to put it back into shape. If you have a few dollars to spare, why not float them over to the Batfish?

Bonus video: an episode of “The Silent Service” TV series about the USS Batfish.

The Silent Service is an American syndicated anthology television series based on actual events in the submarine section of the United States Navy. The Silent Service was narrated by Rear Admiral Thomas M. Dykers, who retired from the Navy in 1949 after twenty-two years of service. He began each episode with this refrain: “Tonight, we bring you another thrilling episode of Silent Service stories, of warfare under the sea.”

Fun fact: “DeForest Kelley appeared in three episodes as Lieutenant Commander James C. Dempsey and Leonard Nimoy appeared in two episodes as Sonarman.” Also appearing at various points: Edward Platt (who played a lieutenant commander, not a chief), Jack Lord, Bob Denver, and Dennis Weaver. And that’s not an exhaustive list.

Posted in Endorsements, History, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 102

Friday, July 10th, 2020

I thought it might be interesting to talk about Nike.

Not the goddess of victory, or the shoe company: the missile system. I’ve always thought that was a cool looking system.

First up, “The United States Army Air Defense Command”. This one is only about 10 minutes.

Bonus video #1, and also short: a vintage AT&T Tech Channel video about the Nike Zeus ABM system.

Nike Zeus was an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system developed by the US Army during the late 1950s and early 1960s that was designed to destroy incoming Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile warheads before they could hit their targets. It was designed by Bell Labs’ Nike team, and was initially based on the earlier Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missile. The original, Zeus A, was designed to intercept warheads in the upper atmosphere, mounting a 25 kiloton W31 nuclear warhead. During development, the concept changed to protect a much larger area and intercept the warheads at higher altitudes. This required the missile to be greatly enlarged into the totally new design, Zeus B, given the tri-service identifier XLIM-49, mounting a 400 kiloton W50 warhead. In several successful tests, the B model proved itself able to intercept warheads, and even satellites.

Bonus video #2, which is a bit longer: “The Nike Hercules Missie System” from the US Army.

List of Nike missile sites from Wikipedia.

San Vicente Park in California. Part of the park was an old Nike-Ajax missile site, which has been preserved and is accessible to the public. I’d like to visit there one of these days.

There were two Nike-Hercules sites in Austin: according to the Wikipedia list, one is in Elroy (which is kind of near the airport and the Formula 1 track, and is the home of Wild Bubba’s Wild Game Grill), and the other “is now the location of the University of Texas System Police Academy”.

(I had no idea UTPD had their own academy. I figured they shared space with the Austin PD’s academy. You learn something new every day.)

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Quick follow up.

Friday, July 10th, 2020

Lawrence linked to a follow up story from Bearing Arms about a weird case I wrote about back in February: an ex-stunt woman formerly from Bee Cave and her husband drove to Ohio to shoot her ex-husband, and instead were shot by the ex.

Spoiler: the grand jury no-billed the ex-husband and his current wife.

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 101

Thursday, July 9th, 2020

Today’s entries are part military aviation, part general aviation. Specifically, both of these focus on the kind of mistakes that got military pilots killed (not in combat) in the 1940s: many of those are equally applicable today, as I’m sure FotB RoadRich will attest. (I don’t know if any of the planes he’s flown have talking oil temperature gauges, though.)

“Unless You Fly With Safety”. This is the short version.

Bonus: “Learn and Live”. This is the long version, but it feels like some has been cut off of the end.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 100

Wednesday, July 8th, 2020

I think it is time for some more virtual travel, back to the past, on a defunct airline.

Where to go this time? How about…Bermuda?

From 1961, “Wings to Bermuda” (in color!), brought to you by Pan Am (and the Periscope Film channel on the ‘Tube).

Bonus video: I’m having trouble deciding: did I post the Paul Shaffer video as a segue into “Wings to Bermuda”, or did I post “Wings to Bermuda” to give myself an excuse for the Paul Shaffer video? Decisions, decisions…

Here: enjoy Paul Shaffer in “Behind The Music”.

And just for grins, !Paul Shaffer:

Posted in History, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 8, 2020.

Wednesday, July 8th, 2020

Ronald Graham, noted mathematician and noted juggler.

Graham published more than 350 papers and books with many collaborators, including more than 90 with his wife, Fan Chung, and more than 30 with Paul Erdős. In addition to writing articles with Paul Erdős, Graham had a room in his house reserved for Erdős’s frequent visits, he administered the cash prizes that Erdős created for various problems, and he created the Erdős number, which is the collaboration distance between a mathematician and Erdős. He also created Graham’s number in a 1971 paper on Ramsey theory written with Bruce Rothschild, which was for a time the largest number used in a proof.

…

Graham was known for his infectious enthusiasm, his originality, and his accessibility to anyone who had a mathematics question. Along with his many accomplishments in mathematics, Graham was also an accomplished juggler, so much so that he served as president of the International Jugglers Association in 1972, and was skilled in gymnastics and the trampoline.

His page at UCSD.

In college days, Ron was part of a circus act, called the Bouncing Bears. He was on stage with Cirque du Soleil and in an issue of Discover magazine about the Science of the Circus. He was a qualified judge for international trampoline competitions and has a unique bungee trampoline for daily exercise.

MacTutor page:

In 1963 there was a Number Theory Conference in Boulder, Colorado. Graham attended the conference as did Paul Erdős and the two mathematicians met for the first time. Graham recalled [2]:-

I saw this rather senior guy of 50, already quite famous, playing ping-pong during one of the breaks. He asked me if I wanted to play and I agreed. He absolutely killed me! I had played casual ping-pong but I couldn’t believe that this old guy had beaten me. … I went back to New Jersey … I bought a table, joined a club, started playing at Bell Labs, and in the State league. I eventually became the Bell Labs champion at ping-pong, and won one of the New Jersey titles.

…

Almost every professional mathematician knows his “Erdős number” – the number of links in the shortest chain of papers, adjacent ones with an author in common, leading to Erdős. For example my [EFR] Erdős number is 2 since I have written a joint paper with a mathematician who has written a joint paper with Erdős and mine [JOC] is 3 since I have written a paper with EFR. This notion (now a part of MathSciNet) was due to Graham in a 1979 paper On properties of a well-known graph or what is your Ramsey number? If you look up this paper you will find that the author is Tom Odda. That was the pseudonym under which Graham wrote the paper (in fact Tom Odda is a Mandarin term of abuse – Graham was learning Mandarin at the time).

Henry Martin, one of the old time New Yorker cartoonists. The NYT obit features a few examples of his work, and I have to admit: they did provoke a chuckle or three.

Finally: Mary Kay Letourneau.

Posted in Geek, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 99

Tuesday, July 7th, 2020

I know I’m running a little long (again) but in my defense, this is in color, and I think better quality than usual.

“Survival”. The YouTube notes say this dates to the 1980s, but the opening says 1978. I’m kind of wondering if at least one person on my blogroll saw this when they were serving.

At mark 01:00, a platoon of soldiers is caught in an enemy attack, and their armored personnel carrier destroyed. Separated from their unit, they must now survive in the field with limited equipment — and survival is a matter of life over death.

The other thing that makes this interesting to me is that the setting looks more like Europe (or some areas of the US) rather than the general run of “survival at sea” films I see a lot of on the ‘Tube. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but I’m far more likely to be lost in the woods than to be bailing out of an aircraft at sea.

Bonus video: “Land and Live in the Jungle”. From 1944 and featuring Van Heflin.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“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).

Posted in 1970s, Bridges, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 6, 2020.

Monday, July 6th, 2020

Bad day for music.

Ennio Morricone. Variety.

Imitated, scorned, spoofed, what came to be known as “The Dollars Trilogy” — “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965) and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966), all released in the United States in 1967 — starred Clint Eastwood as “The Man With No Name” and were enormous hits, with a combined budget of $2 million and gross worldwide receipts of $280 million.
The trilogy’s Italian dialogue was dubbed for the English-speaking market, and the action was brooding and slow, with clichéd close-ups of gunfighters’ eyes. But Mr. Morricone, breaking the unwritten rule never to upstage actors with music, infused it all with wry sonic weirdness and melodramatic strains that many fans embraced with cultlike devotion and that critics called viscerally true to Mr. Leone’s vision of the Old West
“In the films that established his reputation in the 1960s, the series of spaghetti westerns he scored for Mr. Leone, Mr. Morricone’s music is anything but a backdrop,” The New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote in 2007. “It’s sometimes a conspirator, sometimes a lampoon, with tunes that are as vividly in the foreground as any of the actors’ faces.”
Mr. Morricone also scored Mr. Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and his Jewish gangster drama, “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), both widely considered masterpieces. But he became most closely identified with “The Dollars Trilogy,” and in time grew weary of answering for their lowbrow sensibilities.
Asked by The Guardian in 2006 why “A Fistful of Dollars” had made such an impact, he said: “I don’t know. It’s the worst film Leone made and the worst score I did.”

“Lowbrow sensibilities”, my Aunt Fannie.

Mr. Morricone looked professorial in bow ties and spectacles, with wisps of flyaway white hair. He sometimes holed up in his palazzo in Rome and wrote music for weeks on end, composing not at a piano but at a desk. He heard the music in his mind, he said, and wrote it in pencil on score paper for all orchestra parts.

…

Mr. Morricone never learned to speak English, never left Rome to compose, and for years refused to fly anywhere, though he eventually flew all over the world to conduct orchestras, sometimes performing his own compositions. While he wrote extensively for Hollywood, he did not visit the United States until 2007, when, at 78, he made a monthlong tour, punctuated by festivals of his films.

…

Talking to Mr. Pareles, Mr. Morricone placed his acclaimed oeuvre in a modest perspective. “The notion that I am a composer who writes a lot of things is true on one hand and not true on the other hand,” he said. “Maybe my time is better organized than many other people’s. But compared to classical composers like Bach, Frescobaldi, Palestrina or Mozart, I would define myself as unemployed.”

Edited to add: Just got this: a nice tribute to another aspect of Mr. Morricone’s work that I was unaware of.

Morricone, a man of staunch yet humble faith, was part of a gathering of 60 artists who paid musical tribute to Pope Benedict XVI’s 60th anniversary of his ordination.
The Vatican’s obituary goes on to tell how Morricone was so inspired by Pope Francis’s elevation that he wrote a Mass to celebrate both the new pope and all Jesuits. Titled Missa Papae Francisci, the work was also dedicated to his wife, Maria Travia, who had been encouraging Morricone to write such a sacred work for years. The Mass was premiered on the 200th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Jesuit order.
Morricone went on to work with Pope Francis to organize a concert “with the poor and for the poor” in 2016. The charity concert was performed by the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra, the National Academy of St. Cecilia, and Fr. Marco Frisina, raising much needed capital for several charitable projects of the Pontiff. Pope Francis later awarded Ennio the Pontifical Gold Medal, presented by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, on April 15, 2019.

This article also quotes the eloquent and touching statement Mr. Morricone requested be read on his passing.

Charlie Daniels. I loved “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” when I was a kid. Still have a soft spot for that song, even though some people might say I have “lowbrow sensibilities”.

There are many candidates for the libertarian national anthem. I’d argue this is one of the better ones:

A drunkard wants another drink of wine, and a politician wants your vote
I don’t want much of nothing at all, but I will take another toke
‘Cause I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
If I can’t get it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
You just leave this long haired country boy alone

And because it is there:

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 97

Sunday, July 5th, 2020

Science Sunday!

Nobody has said this to me directly, but I am sure that some folks out there are saying under their breath, “These videos you keep posting are about as exciting as watching paint dry.”

Well, maybe. I like to think that these are slices of a bygone era, a time when we worked together and got things done. But I also keep telling myself:

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been…

Anyway, for the “as exciting as paint drying” group, I bring you: “Paint”. A 1967 film about paints and paint making, from our good friends at the Shell Oil company.

And as a bonus, also from Shell: “The Diesel Story”.

Posted in History | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 96

Saturday, July 4th, 2020

Skyrockets in flight!

Okay, this is another “not quite random” pick. But in honor of the 4th of July, I thought it might be fun to post some things that go “boom”.

“10 INCREDIBLE Space Launch Failures!” In 4k, for the discerning viewer.

Here’s a short one: eyewitness video of the 2015 Tianjin explosion. I’m posting this based on the assumption that the people filming made it out okay (seems reasonable).

My initial reaction when I first saw this was: “Why did you wait? Why didn’t you start running IMMEDIATELY!” But on second thought, what’s safer: sheltering in place (and hoping the blast doesn’t knock over your building, or send fragments through the windows), or running into the street and hoping you don’t get hit by falling fragments or inhale toxic byproducts? I honestly don’t know.

Every once in a while, I spend a little time watching BLEVEs on YouTube. Here’s a good compilation: and, if you are unfamiliar with the term “BLEVE”, it also explains what those are. Life pro tip: you don’t want to be anywhere near one.

Here’s another point of view of the Murdock BLEVE, featuring a news crew who found that out the hard way.

Posted in Explosives, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 95

Friday, July 3rd, 2020

I’m easing into the July 4th weekend myself. So there’s no overarching theme here, other than: America!

“Grayhounds of the Sea”, a history of U.S. Navy destroyers, narrated by none other than Mr. Jack Webb.

Ordnance Lab builds a replica of the Syrian Hell Cannon Mortar. This is part 1: as far as I can tell, they haven’t posted part 2 yet. (The Wuhan Flu probably has something to do with that. But it looks like they’ve been doing stuff recently with the Roomba-Boomba.)

“Ten Years To Remember”. This is a promo film from the Martin Company (which later merged and became Martin Marietta, and even later on merged again and became Lockheed Martin) from 1964, covering ten years of rocket development.

1972 NASA promo film for Skylab. I’ve always been kind of partial to Skylab.

I was only going to do three, but this one popped up, and it is short: a tribute to Robin Olds from AirForceTV.

Tomorrow: things blow up real good.

Posted in Explosives, History, Planes, Ships | Comments Closed

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