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Archive for December, 2020

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 255

Thursday, December 10th, 2020

Travel Thursday!

How would you like to go to Sweden this week? I feel like I’ve done Sweden in the past, but not with…the US Army?

From 1958, “Modern Land of the Vikings”.

Bonus: As far as I can tell, I haven’t done this one before. Certainly, it doesn’t show up in a search. So let’s fix that: “Wings to Scandinavia”. The YouTube notes date this to 1962, and it covers Norway and Finland as well as Sweden. (I have done “Wings to Suomi”, which is Finland specific, before, but I think this is different enough to qualify.)

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 254

Wednesday, December 9th, 2020

Self-indulgent Wednesday!

“How to Order an M1 Garand from the Civilian Marksmanship Program”, by way of Black Flag Armory. Take advantage of this now: you never know what might happen in the future.

(As I understand it, the Texas State Rifle Association is a legit CMP affiliate.)

Bonus #1: Why would you want an M1 Garand? Because. “America’s Rifle”.

Bonus #2: Okay, I know everyone watches hickok45, but just for reference once you get your M1 from CMP: “How NOT to Load an M1 Garand!”.

Bonus #3: “How to load the M1 Garand the US Army way”.

Posted in Bookmarks, Guns, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 253

Tuesday, December 8th, 2020

I’m still a little behind schedule from yesterday. Also: recent events.

So today I thought I’d do a couple of videos on the X-1.

“Frontiers of Flight: The Sound Barrier”.

(Here’s a higher quality version, but it feels like some has been cut off of this.)

“Bell X-1: Breaking the Sound Barrier”, from Deep Space TV. This is a little shorter and better quality.

Bonus: this is long, but…a 1991 interview with Gen. Yeager.

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Obit watch: December 8, 2020.

Tuesday, December 8th, 2020

World War II ace. Aviation pioneer. A giant within the Air Force.

Join us in celebrating the extraordinary life and mourning the loss of Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager. May he rest in peace and his legacy live on forever. pic.twitter.com/gJ0113M5ge

— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) December 8, 2020

Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.

— Chuck Yeager (@GenChuckYeager) December 8, 2020

(Edited: fixed link.)

NYT obit. I can’t do justice to the man. I’m not sure who can.

Fred Akers. Statesman. ESPN.

Natalie Desselle-Reid, actress. She was 53.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Monday, December 7th, 2020

The man who Tuesday Morning Quarterback refers to as “the tastefully named” Gregg Williams is out as defensive coordinator for the New York Jets.

And speaking of TMQ, another recurring theme:

Williams was universally criticized for calling a risky, Cover 0 blitz while protecting a four-point lead against the Las Vegas Raiders. The result was a 46-yard touchdown pass with five seconds left in the game that gave the Raiders a 31-28 win and dropped the Jets to 0-12.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 7, 2020.

Monday, December 7th, 2020

As previously noted, I got a little behind yesterday, so I’m playing catch-up.

David Lander, prominent TV actor perhaps best known as “Squiggy” on “Laverne and Shirley”.

Interesting connections:

He and his comedy partner, Michael McKean, were members of the cast of “Laverne & Shirley,” a sitcom about boy-crazy brewery workers in 1950s Milwaukee, from its debut in 1976 until it left the air in 1983.

…

Lenny and Squiggy were not the brainchild of the show’s creators. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean invented them in college (Squiggy was called Ant’ny then) and had been performing as those characters with the Credibility Gap, a comedy performance ensemble that also included Harry Shearer.
The characters sometimes broke away from their own series. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean appeared on the fictional talk show “America 2-Night,” hosted by Martin Mull.
Portraying two imaginary actors who supposedly played Lenny and Squiggy (but looked and talked just like them), they made small talk and sang “Creature Without a Head.” That song was also on the 1979 album recorded by Lenny and the Squigtones, their imaginary musical group (which included Christopher Guest on guitar). Principal Squiggy (Mr. Lander) appeared in “Scary Movie” (2000), and Squiggy himself turned up on a 2002 episode of “The Simpsons.”

Of course, Guest, McKean, and Shearer were all in Spinal Tap. I kind of wonder why Lander wasn’t involved. (According to Wikipedia, Guest was actually credited as “Nigel Tufnel” on the Lenny and the Squigtones album.)

Lawrence sent over an obit for Pamela Tiffin. She had what seems like an odd career: Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three”, “Harper” (a Ross MacDonald adaptation), “State Fair”. “The Hallelujah Trail”…and a bunch of Italian movies.

Paul Sarbanes, the man who put the “Sarbanes” in “Sarbanes-Oxley”.

Also by way of Lawrence, and this is breaking as I write it, so no links yet: Fred Akers. Links probably tomorrow.

For the historical record: NYT obits for Warren Berlinger and Walter E. Williams.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

“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

Your loser update: week 13, 2020.

Monday, December 7th, 2020

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

New York Jets

I was concerned about this game: as it turns out, probably rightfully so. It sounds like the Raiders pulled this one out at the last minute.

Next week: Seattle in Seattle. I’m feeling good about this one.

(Edited to add: Sorry about the weirdness with this. I started a draft of this in advance, published it this morning because I was distracted yesterday afternoon, but WordPress for some reason published this with a date of December 5th.)

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 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

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 249

Friday, December 4th, 2020

There’s a guy on the ‘Tube, “Missionary Bush Pilot“. For some reason, I find his videos oddly compelling. Also, this is RoadRich bait.

“Delivering the Kodiak Airplane for Maintenance in Papua New Guinea”. This one is just slightly over coffee break size.

Bonus, slightly longer: “Solo International Flight over the Ocean to Australia in a Single Engine Small Airplane”.

This reminds me a little of a semi-awful show that used to air on Quest. I’m blanking on the name of it at the moment, but it involved ferry pilots. The actual flying parts of that show were fine: what I hated about it was the manufactured “characters” and imposed drama. The nice thing about this channel is that Chris seems to be flying alone, so there’s no interpersonal drama.

Posted in Planes | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: December 4, 2020.

Friday, December 4th, 2020

Warren Berlinger, prolific TV and movie actor.

He was in a lot of stuff: “Cannonball Run”, multiple appearances on “Happy Days”, “The Shaggy D.A.”, “Operation Petticoat”, and the list goes on.

Hamish MacInnes, mountain climber. I note this for two reasons:

1) Not making fun of his name, but if “Hamish MacInnes” isn’t the most Scottish name imaginable, it’s in the top ten.

2) Not only was he a climber, he was also one of the pioneers of mountain rescue:

As inventive as he was adventurous, Mr. MacInnes built a car from scratch when he was 17. He later used radar to search for bodies in the snow and, in 1961, founded the Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team. He also trained dogs to help search for avalanche victims. His friends called him “the fox of Glencoe” for his cunning in finding lost climbers.
Perhaps his most famous invention was the first all-steel ice ax. It was a significant improvement on the wooden-handled ax, which snapped under pressure.
He also developed a foldable lightweight mountain rescue stretcher that is still in use today and an avalanche information service. His “International Mountain Rescue Handbook” (1972) became the go-to manual for rescue teams all over the world.
All told, his inventions and services saved countless lives.
“No one man has done more to help put in place the network of emergency response efforts designed to keep climbers from harm’s way,” The Scotsman newspaper wrote after Mr. MacInnes’s death.

Scary story:

When he was 84, he was found unconscious in front of his house. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was deemed demented and held against his will for 15 months. During that time, he was sedated and put in a straitjacket, his weight plummeted, and his memory vanished. He made several attempts to escape; at one point he scaled the outside wall of the hospital, only to end up on the roof with nowhere to go.
Doctors eventually discovered that he had been suffering from a chronic urinary tract infection that produced dementia-like symptoms.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, TV | Comments Closed