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.
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:
It will be reinstated with back pay in 18 months.
— Hypertorus (@Rite_Brite) June 10, 2020
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
How do you know when you’ve got a problem with bibliophilia?
One clue is when you start buying bibliographies.
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.
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.
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.
Since it is June 6th, I thought I’d put up some D-Day related videos from the National Archives.
“D-Day to Germany”.
Bonus #1: “D-Day to D Plus 3”.
Bonus #2: “Normandy, The Airborne Invasion of Fortress Europe”.
Two by way of Hacker News:
Akira Kurosawa’s storyboards. Oh, wait, I’m sorry: Akira Kurosawa’s painted storyboards.
(They keep saying “hand-painted storyboards”. As opposed to what: machine painted? Foot painted?)
The early history of computer chess, including the first national computer chess tournament.
I’m fascinated by computer chess, so I would probably have posted this anyway. Interestingly, though, this article also features (and quotes) an unexpected appearance by a now very prominent science fiction and fantasy writer, who at the time had recently graduated from Northwestern University and was interested in both computers and chess.
Bruce Jay Friedman, noted writer.
He also wrote the screenplays for “Splash” and “Stir Crazy”, and the works that were turned into “The Lonely Guy” and “The Heartbreak Kid”.
For the historical record: Hutton Gibson, Mel Gibson’s father.
Hutton Gibson belonged to a splinter group of Catholics who reject the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, known as Vatican II. These traditionalists seek to preserve centuries-old orthodoxy, especially the Tridentine Mass, the Latin Mass established in the 16th century. They operate their own chapels, schools and clerical orders apart from the Vatican and in opposition to it.
But even among these outsiders, Mr. Gibson, who had early in life attended a seminary before dropping out, was extreme in his views. He denied the legitimacy of John Paul II as pope, once calling him a “Koran Kisser,” and said Vatican II had been “a Masonic plot backed by the Jews.” He called Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a traditionalist leader until his death in 1991, a “compromiser.” Mr. Gibson earned the nickname “Pope Gibson” for his outspoken, dogmatic opinions on faith.
After he was expelled from a conservative group in Australia, where he had moved with his family from New York State in 1968, Mr. Gibson formed his own, Alliance for Catholic Tradition. Beginning in 1977, he disseminated his ultra-Orthodox views in a newsletter, “The War Is Now!,” and through self-published books, including “Is the Pope Catholic?” (1978) and “The Enemy is Here!” (1994). The Wisconsin Historical Society library and archives holds Mr. Gibson’s published works among its extensive collection of religious publications.
…
In 2003, as Mel Gibson was directing “The Passion of the Christ,” his film about the crucifixion, Hutton Gibson gave an interview to The New York Times laced with comments about conspiracy theories. The planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, had been remote-controlled, he claimed (without saying by whom). The number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was wildly inflated, he went on.
“Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body,” Mr. Gibson said. “It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million?”
In a radio interview a week before the February 2004 release of “The Passion,” Mr. Gibson went further, saying of the Holocaust, “It’s all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is.” The comments added to an already simmering controversy that the film was anti-Semitic; the chairmen of two major studios told The Times that they wouldn’t work with Mel Gibson in the future.
This is another “no real theme” day, just a couple of things that came up in my recommendations that I thought were diverting.
“The White House: Past and Present”, one of those old Coronet films from the 1960s that you may remember from school (if you were a certain age). I don’t recall ever seeing this one, personally…
Bonus video: “Behind the Ticker Tape”, a 1957 film about the American Stock Exchange (now the NYSE American). If you ever wondered what stock trading was like in the 1950s…
I haven’t put up any Canadian content (CanCon) in a while, so let’s fix that today. Plus: explosives!
“Handle With Care”, a 1943 documentary about TNT production during the war.
Bonus video #1: “Birth of a Giant”. From 1957, about the construction of the Canadair Argus, a massive Canadian built anti-submarine aircraft.
Bonus video #2: This is a little longer, but at least one reader might enjoy it: “Challenger: An Industrial Romance”, about the design and construction of the Canadair Challenger executive jet. This is also from 1980, so at least you’ve got color. Plus, you know, I kind of like the National Film Board of Canada.
I haven’t thrown FotB RoadRich a bone in a while, so this one is dedicated to him. It combines two! two! two! things in one: planes and Japan!
“So Small My Island”, a 1960s Pan Am promo film for travel to Japan.
Bonus: More Pan Am! From 1959, “Jet Terminal”, about the opening of Terminal 3 (aka “Worldport”) at Idlewild.
Bonus #2: Heh, heh. He said “Idlewild”.
Wes Unseld, NBA center.
There are only two players who have been named MVP and rookie of the year in the same season. The other one is Wilt Chamberlain.
Pat Dye, Auburn football coach.
Elsa Dorfman, photographer. She specialized in taking portraits with the giant 20×24 Polaroid camera, about which I have written previously.
By way of Hacker News (and I don’t think the WSJ link is going to work for many people): Irene Triplett. Ms. Triplett was 90 years old, and was the last person still receiving a Civil War pension.
According to the WallyJ, which I can read but can’t link here, her father (Moses Triplett) started out fighting for the Confederacy, then defected to the Union side in 1863. He married a woman named Elda Hall in 1924, had Irene Triplett in 1930 (he was 83, his wife was 34), and died in 1938 at 92.
Her pension was apparently $73.13 a month, though she received other benefits as a ward of the state. In addition, “…a pair of Civil War buffs visited and sent her money to spend on Dr. Pepper and chewing tobacco, a habit she picked up in the first grade.”