Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AE of a series)

July 14th, 2020

I kind of thought I was done with the Art watch. But great and good FotB RoadRich sent me a second tip yesterday.

In a June 2 video, the current Houston police chief takes aim at Austin diversity while also seemingly blaming the city’s residents for inciting violence in Houston.
…
“I plead with you, [Houston] is the most diverse city in the United States. This isn’t Austin, Texas, where they’re diverse as long as they’re on the east side of 35,” said the police chief. “This is Houston, Texas. And for the people of Austin who want to come here and tear shit up, you’re in the wrong fucking city.”

Yeah. People from Austin were driving 300 miles round trip to tear (stuff) up in Houston, Art.

It’s unclear from the series of videos how Acevedo gets the megaphone, but he uses it to take another shot at Austin. “I know there are people here from Austin yelling at me and stuff from Austin, but I’m here to tell you, you ain’t in Austin,” Acevedo says. “You are in Houston. You are in H-Town.”
“One of the things I know is I’ve been coming here my whole life,” he continues. “We may fight, we may be angry at each other, but we know that when all these fucking people come out here from the outside trying to tear this shit up while the rest of the country’s burning. Nothing’s burning in Houston.”

Yeah, you’re in H-Town, all right, where Art Acevedo’s police department executed two innocent people during a drug raid. But somehow this is all Austin’s fault. We’re just out to get Art and his police department.

“One of the things I know is I’ve been coming here my whole life…”

Acevedo served as Austin police chief for nine years before taking the top job in Houston in 2016. He grew up in California, according to his HPD biography, and began his career in law enforcement in 1986 with the California Highway Patrol.

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Obit watch: July 14, 2020.

July 14th, 2020

Judy Dyble. I was unfamiliar with her, but she had an interesting career. She appeared on the first Fairport Convention album, but was let go from the group before it came out. She went on to do a lot of prog rock and electronic stuff:

After leaving Fairport Convention, Ms. Dyble met the saxophonist Ian McDonald. They advertised their services to work with other musicians and were answered by the brothers Peter and Michael Giles and the guitarist Robert Fripp; the three had already made an album as Giles, Giles and Fripp. All five recorded demo songs together, later released as “The Brondesbury Tapes,” before Ms. Dyble moved on. Mr. Fripp, Mr. McDonald and Michael Giles formed the now-eminent progressive rock band King Crimson.

Grant Imahara, for the record.

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Happy Bastille Day, everyone!

July 14th, 2020

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Dedication. It’s a word.

July 13th, 2020

I’m stealing that title from great and good FotB of the blog, RoadRich, who tipped me off to this story from Plane and Pilot.

Carolyn Guertin turned 92 on June 29th.

…the State of Virginia issued a proclamation making June 29th Carolyn A. Guertin Day, and if ever there were anyone deserving of it, it is this woman. Oh, and the CAP also marked the day by awarding Guertin the rank of Colonel.

If you do the math, that makes her 13 in 1941.

Guertin joined the Civil Air Patrol in 1941 on the first day of its existence. She said she was first in line, but 10 guys took officially sanctioned cuts, so she wound up being cadet #11 in the State of Virginia. She was also the first female cadet in the state. That means her recent CAP anniversary commemorated 78 years in service, continuous service, that is. She started a squadron, which is still in active service and is today named after her, served as a member across eight decades and has met more famous aviators than you can shake a stick at, including a dance with General Chuck Yeager. She also met and spent time with Igor Sikorsky and General Jimmy Doolittle, and has met astronauts and presidents. But the thing that means the most to her is the chance she’s had to be a positive influence in the lives of so many young men and women, so many of who look up to her as an inspiration. As we now do, as well!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.)

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Quick follow up.

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

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.

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

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:

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Obit watch: July 8, 2020.

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.

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

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.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 98

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

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