I thought today I’d fall back to some real authentic history. These are long, and I apologize for that, but I think this might appeal to some people.
“Afghanistan: the Great Game”. Part 1:
“It’s really easy to get into Afghanistan. It’s just the getting out part is very difficult.”
“Don’t go into Afghanistan and get – whatever you do – involved in a tribal war.”
Part 2:
I don’t have a good third party source to link, but Ben Bova, noted SF writer, has passed away.
Edited to add: obit from Lawrence.
I thought it might be fun to do a couple more WWII aircraft videos today.
“P-38 Flight Characteristics”, made by Lockheed around 1943. And in color!
Bonus #1, but this is more for the soundtrack than the video itself: “Warbird Engine Starts — Props & Radials”.
Bonus #2: I thought I’d throw this in. “Eclipse aviation cartridge starter and Plessey starter motor”.
Why? We watched “Flight of the Phoenix” (the good one) a while back, that’s why.
Dave Caldwell out as general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Jacksonville has lost 10 straight games this season, and have gone 39-87 since Caldwell took over in 2013.
Caldwell’s biggest downfall was his inability to draft a franchise quarterback, which included sticking with ineffective Blake Bortles for too long. Bortles was the third overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, going 24-49 in 73 regular-season starts and a 2-1 mark in the playoffs.
During the regular season, Bortles threw 103 touchdowns and 75 interceptions and posted a quarterback rating of 80.6 before he was released by the Jaguars in March 2019. Bortles is now on the Denver Broncos practiced squad.
…
Caldwell failed at his job from talent evaluations to sending away too many veterans in trades in exchange for draft picks instead of equal talent in return. Caldwell traded veteran defensive captain Calais Campbell, cornerback A.J. Bouye, quarterback Nick Foles, safety Ronnie Harrison and disgruntled defensive end Yannick Ngakoue, all for draft picks this offseason.
”We can’t afford a rebuilding year,” Caldwell said in early September. ”Our mindset is to put the best team out there to play, to compete, and to win. We feel like these guys, the guys in this locker room, nobody has seen them play together. Nobody has seen them play a game so, like I said, we’re going to know where we measure up.”
The Jaguars have lost 10 or more in seven of the eight seasons under Caldwell. His lone successful season was in 2017 when the Jaguars fared 10-6 and advanced to the AFC title game. Currently, the Jaguars have lost 16 of their 19 games, which includes 11 by 10 or more points.
Dave Prowse, former British heavyweight lifting champion.
He also did a little bit of acting.
So sad to hear David Prowse has passed. He was a kind man & much more than Darth Vader. Actor-Husband-Father-Member of the Order of the British Empire-3 time British Weightlifting Champion & Safety Icon the Green Cross Code Man. He loved his fans as much as they loved him. #RIP pic.twitter.com/VbDrGu6iBz
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) November 29, 2020
Lawrence sent over an obit for Jery Hewitt. Mr. Hewitt was a prolific stunt coordinator. Among his work: 14 of the Coen Brothers films, every episode of “Law and Order: Original Recipe”, and 22 seasons of “Law and Order: SVU”.
In 1977, he helped mountain climber George Willig scale the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Two years later, he landed his first feature film role as the leader of the Baseball Furies gang in the 1979 cult classic The Warriors.
Once described as “the thinking man’s stunt coordinator,” his hundreds of other coordinating credits include School of Rock, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Sopranos, Reign Over Me, The Manchurian Candidate, Tower Heist, The Birdcage and Angels in America. He also performed stunts on numerous other films, including Independence Day, Scent of a Woman, Ghostbusters II and Coyote Ugly.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week: the Raiders.
Derek Mason out as head coach at Vanderbilt.
The team is 0-8 this season, and Mason was 27-55 in approximately six seasons.
Science Sunday!
Today, I thought it might be fun to take a tour of MIT’s research reactor.
Longer bonus video: “It’s Rocket Science! with Professor Chris Bishop”. Including burning toast (does Professor Bishop have a flambe license?) and a demo of hypergolic propellants.
Coach Matt Patricia and GM Bob Quinn out in Detroit.
The two were tasked with elevating the Lions from their perpetual state of mediocrity to a perennial playoff contender, and instead brought more despair to a franchise that has not won a playoff game since 1992.
The Lions went 13-29-1 with Quinn and Patricia in charge and are in the midst of their third consecutive losing season. Patricia’s .314 winning percentage was far below that of the man he replaced. Jim Caldwell, who Quinn fired after going 9-7 in 2017, won 54.5% of his games, best among full-time Lions coaches in the expansion era.
I always say: “It’s not Thanksgiving until Detroit loses.” And the final straw seems to have been Detroit losing to Houston, 41-25.
Not exactly firings, but I don’t have any place else to put these:
1) The Denver Broncos have no quarterbacks for their game tomorrow against the Saints.
Driskel tested as COVID positive on Thursday.
2) Santa Clara County (who you may remember from “iPads for Permits”) has banned all contact sports in the county for the next three weeks, at all levels: San Francisco 49ers hardest hit.
You know, they told me if I looked hard enough, something positive would come out of this. And they were right.
I have heard stories like this before, but I thought this Twitter thread was worth noting:
In the 1990s the Russian immigrant community in NYC grew by orders of magnitude. One thing the newly imported entrepreneurs quickly figured out is that America is extremely vulnerable to large scale fraud in almost every sphere of life. Story time! 👇 1/11
— Slava Akhmechet (@spakhm) November 28, 2020
I’ve also heard this referred to as “swoop and squat” fraud. It is actually a key plot point in Dan Simmons’s Darwin’s Blade (affiliate link).
Someone in the thread linked to an old Fortune article, which I am re-linking here for your convenience. No need to thank me: full service blog, here.
This could, maybe, fall under travel, but I thought I’d use these here today instead.
Great and good FotB RoadRich joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, and we spent some time afterwards sitting around, chatting, and watching a few videos on the ‘Tube. Here’s one that came up: Jimmy Stewart talks about flying planes out of LAX…before it was LAX.
Bonus #1: “The Story of Modern Airline Transportation”, from American Airlines. “Modern”, in this case, being 1933.
Bonus #2: RoadRich mentioned this to me, and I couldn’t pass it up. This is actually what got us started down this path. From 1953, “Flying With Arthur Godfrey”, a vintage Eastern Airlines promo film.
In addition to Godfrey actually flying a Constellation, Eddie Rickenbacker shows up as well.
“I used to sit around up there at 20,000 feet with the sun at my back waiting for the enemy Fokkers to come around.”
Tony Hsieh, Zappos guy.
I’ve never bought shoes from Zappos, but as someone who tries to pay a little attention to what’s going on on the Internet, I’d heard about Mr. Hsieh, his leadership of Zappos, and his plans for downtown Las Vegas.
Also, this is shocking: he was only 46. The paper of record says that he died as a result of injuries sustained in a house fire.
If you didn’t check the batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when the time changed, you might go do that now.
Great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn sent over a fascinating page from the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum a few days ago.
There’s a whole bunch of great stuff there: much of it I haven’t had a chance to watch fully yet, but it pushes my buttons. The “Heros On Zoom” series is fairly short. I thought I’d single out “The Battle of New Orleans” for this one:
Mostly as a sleezy and transparent excuse to use this:
Bonus: I know this is long, but today is Black Friday. I hope most of you aren’t working, and it isn’t like you’re waiting in line outside Best Buy at 3 AM peeing on each other to keep warm while you wait for a PS5.
“Leadership Lessons from Fredericksburg”. I have complicated feelings about the Civil War, but (as you know, Bob) I’m a student of leadership, and Civil War leadership is one of the aspects of the war that does intrigue me. I’d really like to find good copies of Douglas Southall Freeman’s books in unabridged editions. (I have his collection of essays on leadership, but nothing else by him.)
Geoffrey Palmer. He did a lot of film and TV work: his most famous role may have been Lionel Hardcastle in “As Time Goes By”, which shows up on PBS a lot.
Daria Nicolodi, Italian horror actress and co-author of the screenplay for the 1977 “Suspiria”. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
This is a noteworthy Twitter thread:
Short threead on Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde, who died this week. He was a doctor in Michoacan, MX, when the Caballeros Templarios cartel controlled the state. pic.twitter.com/ZHwIcg0duB
— NS (@elaphos_) November 26, 2020