I’m moving Travel Thursday to Tuesday this week, for reasons. I have something else coming up for Thursday.
Today: “New Horizons: Argentina” from our friends at Pan Am. We’ve done South America in general previously, but we haven’t focused specifically on Argentina.
This apparently dates to 1965, so I can’t really make any “Evita” jokes here, alas.
Bonus #1: But I can put up something relevant to Lawrence’s interests, and maybe Andrew’s as well: “MOUTH-WATERING STEAK at an Argentine Steakhouse in Mar del Plata, Argentina”.
This is also the last entry in MilHisMon. Sort of. It’s complicated.
Somewhere in my collection of books on leadership, I have a thin little pamphlet that I picked up at the National Museum of the Pacific War: “Arleigh Burke on Leadership”.
“Saluting Admiral Arleigh Burke”, circa about 1961 (around the time he retired, after three terms as Chief of Naval Operations).
Bonus #1: This might be the last chance I get to do one of these. Plus: CanCon!
“Canadair CF-104 Starfighter”.
Bonus #2: And as long as I’m taking last chances…”Secrets of the F-14 Tomcat: Inflight Refueling” from Ward Carroll.
As a side note, which I learned from Mr. Carroll this past weekend, did not know previously, and don’t really have a good place to stick it: one of Donald Trump’s final pardons was granted to Randall “Duke” Cunningham.
Bonus #3: A documentary about “Operation Blowdown”.
“Operation Blowdown”? Yes: back in 1963, the Australian military decided to simulate a nuclear blast in a rain forest, just to see what conditions would be like afterwards. Because, you know, why the heck not?
A device containing was detonated to partially simulate a ten kiloton air burst in the Iron Range jungle. The explosives were sourced from obsolete artillery shells and placed in a tower 42 metres (138 ft) above ground level and 21 metres (69 ft) above the rainforest canopy. After the explosion, troops were moved through the area (which was now covered in up to a metre of leaf litter), to test their ability to transit across the debris. In addition, obsolete vehicles and equipment left near the centre of the explosion were destroyed.
For the final Science Sunday, I thought I’d go back to one of my favorite topics – computing history and computer science – and cover two companies whose machines I find fascinating.
“Cray Research at Chippewa Falls – A Story of the Supercomputer”.
I apologize for the quality on this one: it is from 1976, but I think it is worthwhile because…Seymour Cray introduces the Cray-1.
Bonus: During this week’s episode of one of the podcasts I listen to, one of the hosts made a reference to the Connection Machine. The other two hosts had never heard of the Connection Machine, so they were part of that day’s lucky 10,000.
For those of you who fall into the same boat, this is a fairly recent (so higher quality) talk by a guy named Dan Bentley about the Connection Machine and the concept of “Data Parallel Algorithms”.
There’s someone on the ‘Tube who has a channel, “Demolition Dave Drilling and Blasting”. I think he’s ‘stralian, mate.
In this video, Dave reviews a Chinese generator.
How do you say “Harbor Freight” in Australian?
Mike the Musicologist sent me this: it is a little more recent than I’d like, and I think I’ve seen it linked on Hacker News, but I still think it’s worth highlighting here.
“What Really Happened at the Oroville Dam Spillway?” from Practical Engineering.
Finally, here’s something that’s just about 25 minutes long, and that I think some folks will enjoy: “The Unfortunate History of the AMC Pacer”.
“There’s a fine line between uniqueness and strange.”
Content warning/spoiler: The kitchen has everything. Even carpeting on the floor. I repeat, the kitchen is carpeted.
Bonus #2: I really don’t have a good category to stick this under, so I’ll just leave it here: “Boys Town: A Place Called Home”, from about 1951.
As far as I’ve been able to determine, Father Flanagan has been named a “Servant of God”, but has not been canonized yet, and it’s not clear to me that the process has advanced in the past nine years.
Continuing in our tour of the United States: “The Secrets of St. Louis”, a documentary from the 1960s about St. Louis history.
Bonus #1: I’m posting this less to tease certain commenters, and more for the scenery: “America For Me”. Yes, this a Greyhound promo film, but there’s a lot of spectacular scenery. And a love story, but you can skip over that and just watch the scenery go by.
There have been a few mildly interesting police stories in recent days. Here’s a round-up.
1. The police chief of the Manor ISD Police (yeah, the school district police, not the city police) has been “placed on administrative leave“.
The accusations against him seem to amount to two things: “falsifying timesheets”, and “improperly donating used cellphones to a local domestic violence shelter”.
Manor is about 34 miles down the road from here, and has an estimated population (as of 2019) of about 13,000 people. Small town politics…but I’ll come back to that in a bit. (I also have some questions about why small school districts need their own police departments, but that gets into other issues: how big does a school district have to be to justify their own police force? Does not having a police force for a small school district divert resources from a small city police force? Is it just a question of which pocket the money comes out of? I haven’t though through all of this yet.)
2. Lorenzo Hernandez used to be a deputy with the Williamson County sheriff’s department. He also appeared on “Live TV”, back when they were in WillCo and “Live PD” was a thing.
3. This one is in my own backyard, but I’ve avoided writing about it. The story broke late Friday afternoon, and I’ve been trying to get a little more clarity about what’s happening.
There is a lot of speculation on NextDoor about what’s going on. Most of it I find unreliable. The theory that I do find compelling is: this is related to a move by the council to eliminate contracts for all city employees and convert them to at-will status. This is something I can get behind for most city employees, but not for the police chief and police officers. I think law enforcement people should be on a contract basis – one which allows termination for clearly defined reasons. I don’t think a cop who murders or rapes someone should keep their job, but I don’t want them being fired because they didn’t fix a ticket for the mayor’s brother-in-law.
Did you know that Chrysler built turbine powered cars?
I’m not talking about the one that raced at Indy: Chrysler had an active program from (roughly) the 1950s to 1979 developing turbine powered passenger cars. Between 1963 and 1964, they produced 55 cars.
“Here’s why the government made Chrysler destroy its 46 jet cars.”
(I know the numbers don’t quite match: Chrysler kept two, five are in museums, and two are privately owned.)
Bonus #1: “The Mazda RX-8 Is a Fun Car You Probably Shouldn’t Buy”.
Bonus #2: Breaking slightly from the car theme, but…”Evel Knievel: The True Story” from 1998.
But I’m going to start off with an exception. Today is Tax Day in much of the United States. (In parts of the country that were impacted by winter storms, tax day falls on June 15th this year.)
So here’s something thematically appropriate for today: “Helping the Taxpayer” from…
…I’m sorry, I can’t keep a straight face…
…I’m laughing too hard…
…Okay, better now. Those wonderful folks at the IRS (in cooperation with the American Institute of Accountants).
With that out of the way: Ward Carroll has a YouTube channel!
That name may not ring any bells with some of you: Mr. Carroll is a former Navy pilot who has written several books. I liked Punk’s War quite a bit, and need to pick up the other Punk novels (when I see them at reasonable prices: cheese louise, Mr. Carroll, time for Kindle editions of those.)
“Dogfighting 101”. Bending a rule here, but I’m obsessed with dogfighting (in the aviation context, not in the Ron Mexico context). Have been since I was a little kid reading WWI and WWII histories and wondering, “Okay, so Dick Bong shot down a bunch of planes. How?” Textbooks on dogfighting were not readily available in elementary and middle school libraries: I didn’t actually pick one up until I was in my mid-30s.
I thought I’d do a sampler platter today. Roughly from short to long:
“The Creation and Behavior of Radio Waves”. This is a 1942 Army Signal Corps film: I guess technically this could be MilHisMonday, but it is more about the theory of radio than specific military radio usage, so I feel like it qualifies here.
“The Nuclear Look”, a pro-nuclear power propaganda film from Westinghouse.
And speaking of nukes, “Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation”.
Finally: I know this was just posted recently, and I’m trying to avoid using anything that’s not older than at least a month. But I haven’t done any space science recently, I haven’t done anything from the Soviet perspective, and we’re moving towards closure here, so: “Conquerors Of the Universe”, a documentary about the Soviet space program. Don’t worry, it’s narrated in English.
“Skallagrim” discusses “End Him Rightly”, a fighting technique from the Gladiatoria.
Bonus #1: Here’s another video from the good folks at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC): “Integrity in the Workplace”. Or, things you shouldn’t do as a Federal employee.
Bonus #2: A little something for FotB RoadRich again. Guy picks up a 1973 Piper Cherokee Cruiser for $9,000 (it needs an overhaul and the owner couldn’t afford it) and does a restoration and rebuild.
Besides putting this up as RoadRich bait, I’m posting this because that’s a really nice looking airplane. I could see myself flying something like that.
Bonus #3: And speaking of the Cherokee, “50th Anniversary of the Piper Cherokee” from the good folks at Piper.
