“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 143

August 20th, 2020

Travel Thursday!

I thought I’d do something different today. Instead of planes for our first video, trains. And instead of visiting a relatively civilized country, a fifth world banana republic.

“The California Zephyr”! With VistaDome! And courteous waiters!

To be fair, this is from the 1950s, prior to the decline and fall. And somewhat interestingly, Amtrak still runs a train called “California Zephyr” over a similar route (According to Wikipedia, the original Western Pacific Railroad, Burlington Railroad and Rio Grande Railroad incarnation shown here was discontinued in 1970, and Amtrak began running their version in 1983.)

Bonus video #1: More trains, this time the Santa Fe railroad. “Southern California Holiday”. Both of these videos also include some footage of the happiest place on Earth.

“You may cross here from country to country, with no passport problems.” I remember those days. (Never been to Tijuana, but when I was young, my family walked across the border between Texas and Mexico more than once. And when I was older, I made a couple more cross-border trips with friends. Then Homeland Security.)

Bonus video #2: Okay, travel by air this time. “California: World In a Week”, from the 1960s and United Airlines.

It is almost like being there. Except you don’t have to step over the needles and feces. Marineland of the Pacific operated until 1987, when it was bought by the people who owned SeaWorld. The new owners promptly moved all of the animals to SeaWorld San Diego, shut down Marineland, and poured concrete into the drains.

(Also.)

Posted in California Über Alles, History, Planes, Trains, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 142

August 19th, 2020

One thing that I love is a good caper.

Well, I do like capers. But what I really meant was “capers”. You know, heists. Daring robberies. That sort of thing.

Something called “Wonder” has been popping up in my recommendations. I’m a little hesitant about posting much from them, but these are fairly short and part of what appears to be the same series: “Daring Capers”.

The first one is the one that I really wanted to post, for reasons: the December 11, 1978 Lufthansa heist.

You remember the Lufthansa heist, don’t you? Jimmy Burke Jimmy Conway, Paul Vario Paulie Cicero, those guys, those Goodfellas?

I thought this was an interesting supplement, if you will.

Bonus: the January 2, 1972 Pierre Hotel robbery.

This robbery would later be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest, most successful hotel robbery in history.

I chose this one because I’ve read Ira Berkow’s book about the Pierre, which tells the story mostly from Bobby Comfort‘s point of view. I note that the paper of record says $3 million, while the series claims $10 million. The $3 million figure is supported (to the extent anything can be supported) by Wikipedia. But as I recall, there are some questions about whether the robbery victims reported everything they lost: for example, stashes of untaxed cash.

One more: the July 16, 1976 robbery of the Société Générale bank in Nice.

Tunnel heists are awesome. Also, Lawrence gave me a much appreciated copy of The Gentlemen of 16 July for Christmas one year.

Posted in Food, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 18, 2020.

August 18th, 2020

Great and good FotB Borepatch was kind enough to send over an obit for Don Williams. But I’m seeing other reports that Mr. Williams actually passed away almost three years ago, and I’m having trouble sorting out what’s what. I’m going to argue, though, that good music is timeless.

Speaking of good music: Julian Bream.

And not speaking of music at all: Charles Wetli. He was a forensic pathologist and medical examiner, first in Dade County, Florida, then as the chief medical examiner of Suffolk County, Long Island.

He’d been at that job for 18 months when TWA 800 happened. He took a lot of flack for some of his decisions:

When the bodies were not immediately recovered and identified, family members directed their fury at Dr. Wetli. They worried that swift action regarding their loved ones had become secondary to the retrieval of forensic evidence for a criminal investigation.
Beyond that, families and politicians accused him of making blunders that only compounded their grief — he did not immediately work around the clock, he initially refused the help of pathologists from other jurisdictions and he did not allow most family members to see what remained of their loved ones.

But the obit points out that a lot of those decisions were defensible: there was no point in doing autopsies around the clock if they didn’t have fingerprints or dental records, which it took time to get from the families. And he didn’t ask for help initially because he wanted to make sure he had a good process in place with his own people before bringing in others.

“There’s no point having everybody show up and wait around doing nothing or giving advice I don’t need,” he told The New York Times in 1996. “I don’t need 30 dentists at 8 o’clock in the morning.”

And as for letting family see the remains…

The explosion and a plunge of 13,800 feet into a wall of water had sheared the skin, clothes and limbs from many passengers, making them more difficult to identify — and more disfigured — than most bodies that end up in a morgue. He did not want families to see the gruesome remains.

In spite of all this:

Christine Negroni, a CNN journalist who covered the crash and was the author of “The Deadly Departure of Flight 800” (2000), wrote in a recent tribute: “Dr. Wetli should be remembered as a pioneering forensic physician who assembled an array of dentists, X-ray technicians, pathologists and tiny samples of DNA to put a name on every bit of human remains recovered.”

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 141

August 18th, 2020

If you’re a big WWII buff (especially the kind of WWII buff that watches “12 O’Clock High”) you’ve probably heard of, or heard talk about, the Norden bombsight.

It was an early tachometric design that directly measured the aircraft’s ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only estimate with lengthy manual procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that continuously recalculated the bomb’s impact point based on changing flight conditions, and an autopilot that reacted quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects.
Together, these features promised unprecedented accuracy for daytime bombing from high altitudes. During prewar testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP)[a] of 75 feet (23 m)[b], an astonishing performance for that period. This precision would enable direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the USAAF saw it as a means to conduct successful high-altitude bombing. For example, an invasion fleet could be destroyed long before it could reach U.S. shores.
To protect these advantages, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a production effort on a similar scale as the Manhattan Project. Carl L. Norden, Inc. ranked 46th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. The Norden was not as secret as believed; both the British SABS and German Lotfernrohr 7 worked on similar principles, and details of the Norden had been passed to Germany even before the war started.

In practice, it wasn’t quite that accurate: Wikipedia gives a combat CEP of 1,200 feet.

Faced with these poor results, Curtis LeMay started a series of reforms in an effort to address the problems. In particular, he introduced the “combat box” formation in order to provide maximum defensive firepower by densely packing the bombers. As part of this change, he identified the best bombardiers in his command and assigned them to the lead bomber of each box. Instead of every bomber in the box using their Norden individually, the lead bombardiers were the only ones actively using the Norden, and the rest of the box followed in formation and then dropped their bombs when they saw the lead’s leaving his aircraft.[40] Although this spread the bombs over the area of the combat box, this could still improve accuracy over individual efforts. It also helped stop a problem where various aircraft, all slaved to their autopilots on the same target, would drift into each other. These changes did improve accuracy, which suggests that much of the problem is attributable to the bombardier. However, precision attacks still proved difficult or impossible.

I wonder, if you had told WWII bombardiers at the time that the detailed workings of the Norden bombsight would be available to anyone in the world 73 years later, what would they have thought? Maybe nothing. Who knows?

Bonus video: and here’s how you’d actually use one in combat.

According to Wikipedia, the last use of the Norden bombsight was during the Vietnam War: “The bombsights were used in Operation Igloo White for implanting Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detectors (ADSID) along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.“

Posted in Geek, History, Planes | Comments Closed

Stuff’s getting serious, eh?

August 17th, 2020

The Canadian Football League has cancelled the 2020 season.

The league postponed the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but had planned to launch a six-game schedule in early October in a secure bubble environment in Winnipeg.

It seems to have come down to this: the CFL depends on ticket sales at the gate, rather than TV or streaming revenue. Without ticket sales, they wanted a government bailout in order to play this season: and, shockingly (to me) the Canadian government said “No”.

The Manitoba government stepped up with $2.5 million for player accommodations, meals and transportation in Winnipeg.
The league, though, said it still required a significant cash infusion from Ottawa.
The federal government responded with an offer of a short-term loan with interest and fees that the league said it could not pay.

Posted in Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 140

August 17th, 2020

A while back, I summarized a DEFCON presentation on gun safe insecurity. I thought it might be fun today to post some demos, by way of the LockPickingLawyer channel on the ‘Tube.

First up, the “SnapSafe’s TrekLite TSA Gun Lockbox”, a case designed for airline transport of firearms. To summarize the video, this case is so bad that, if it worked as designed, it would actually be illegal to use. But because the design is so awful, it probably actually is technically legal. Still not secure, but technically legal.

Next up, the “Vaultek LifePod Gun Safe”, a waterproof gun safe endorsed by a prominent gun guy. You may remember Vaultek from almost three years ago, when it turned out their Bluetooth enabled product wasn’t secure. Turns out that the LifePod has a problem as well: the type of problem that you can exploit with a fork.

“Don’t read the comments.” But in fairness, Vaultek did respond in the comments and state that they are offering a fix for this problem.

You know what irony is, though? Irony is like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. Okay, that’s not really ironic, that’s just stupid. But it sets up this: the Stack-On RFID Gun Safe.

But what if you don’t have a fork? Or a spoon? What if you just have a broken milk carton an orange juice bottle?

Coat hanger?

And now we know why the Knights Who Say “Ni!” wanted a shrubbery:

Posted in DEFCON, Guns, Locks | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 139

August 16th, 2020

Science Sunday!

I’ve been doing a lot of space history, so I wanted to change things up a bit. And I promised some abstract math, so here you go.

From the Numberphile channel (of which the Computerphile channel is an offshoot): “Hat Problems”.

Come on, you know I had to do that. Okay, bonus videos.

Number 1: “Fermat’s Last Theorem”, with Simon Singh (who as you may recall, wrote a book on FLT).

I actually didn’t know about The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, and I generally look sideways at these TV tie-in books. But I might take a flyer on that if it shows up used.

(All links are affiliate links.)

Number 2: “The Riemann Hypothesis”.

Posted in Clothing, Geek, Hats | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 138

August 15th, 2020

I thought perhaps I could do something on the lighter, cheerier side for Saturday.

The late John Hillerman tells the funniest joke he’d ever heard. As an admirer of Churchill myself, I approve of this joke, even though I have heard it before. Really, Hillerman’s delivery makes up for it being oft cited.

I don’t want to post a bunch of these, but just one more that I couldn’t pass up. Because: Shatner.

(“There’s no rule that says a mule horse can’t play football baseball!” My DuckDuckGo-fu may be weak, but I looked through the 2019 MLB rulebook, and I actually do not see any requirement that players be human. I guess as long as your horse isn’t on baseball’s permanently ineligible list…)

(“Bojack Horseman, call the commissioner, please.”)

Anyway, I actually had not heard that one. And it gives me a nice transition into this video, which I thought I’d post since Eddie Gaedel was mentioned earlier in the week:

One thing that’s been popping up in my recommendations recently is “STEP promotion” videos. Now, we’ve already established that I never served, and there’s probably a few (okay, more than a few) people who think I place an awful lot of emphasis on military stuff, military history, and military leadership for someone who didn’t serve.

There may be some truth to that. But the STEP videos reinforce something that’s important to me where I am now, and where I hope to be in the future: immediate public praise and reward for exceptional performance.

And finally, someone commented earlier this week: “Veronica Lake always gets the thumbs-up seal of approval.” I usually don’t like linking fiction or movie clips here, unless I’m using them to illustrate a throwaway joke or a larger point.

I’m making an exception in this case to give you something even better than Veronica Lake: Veronica Lake, wet.

Posted in History, Leadership, Movies, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 137

August 14th, 2020

Here’s something that’s right at the intersection of military history, computer science, and general geekery.

By way of the Computerphile channel, “Turing’s Engima Problem”. This explains how the Enigma machine worked, and the problems Turing et al faced in breaking it.

This is a little long, but neatly divided into two parts. Part 1:

And part 2:

I think for Science Sunday we’re going to see some more abstract math from a related YouTube channel, so stay tuned.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

August 14th, 2020

Jim Boylen out as Chicago Bulls coach. Tribune.

He was 39-84 over “parts of two seasons”, which I believe works out to a .317 winning percentage.

(Are they playing pro basketball now? I haven’t noticed.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 136

August 13th, 2020

Travel Thursday!

I know we went to Singapore last week, but here’s a different view, from a different airline that still exists and is one of my personal favorites. Why?

“Singapore Stop Over”, from Qantas sometime in the 1960s.

Bonus video: in all our travels, I’ve been neglecting the United States. So let us fix that. And it is the time of year when I want to visit someplace slightly cooler.

“This Land of Ours: Montana”, from 1947.

To be fair, yes, I probably picked this just so I could use the Frank Zappa video.

Posted in History, Planes, Travel | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

August 13th, 2020

Apropos of nothing in particular:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

–G. K. Chesterton, The Thing

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Obit watch: August 13, 2020.

August 13th, 2020

Sumner Redstone, media mogul.

Beginning with a modest chain of drive-in movie theaters, Mr. Redstone negotiated, sued and otherwise fought to amass holdings that over time included CBS, the Paramount film and television studios, the publisher Simon & Schuster, the video retail giant Blockbuster and a host of cable channels, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. At their peak, the businesses were worth more than $80 billion.
Toward the end of his life, he controlled about 80 percent of the voting stock in Viacom and CBS, presiding over both through National Amusements. And almost to the end, his grip was tight and his enthusiasm undiminished.

I’d heard of the man, in the context of his recent legal struggles, but this was something I did not know:

It was in 1979 that Mr. Redstone almost died in a fire at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, started by a disgruntled former hotel employee late at night, when most guests, including Mr. Redstone, were asleep.
“I was enveloped in flames,” he wrote. “The fire shot up my legs. The pain was searing.” He staggered to the window and hung from a ledge on an upper floor until firefighters rescued him. He suffered third-degree burns over 45 percent of his body, and it took five operations over several months to restore him to health.

He was 97.

Kurt Luedtke. He was a journalist with the Detroit Free Press:

At The Free Press, Mr. Luedtke became the first writer of Action Line, a column that cut through red tape and helped solve readers’ problems. It ran on the front page for 14 years and was copied throughout the newspaper industry.
By 1967, he had been named assistant city editor. That summer, Detroit exploded in one of the most destructive periods of civil unrest in the nation’s history. Five days of violence, fueled by deep frustration with racism, unemployment and police brutality, left 43 people dead, most of them African-American. More than 1,300 buildings were burned, and the National Guard and Army were called in.
Mr. Luedtke joined his reporters on the streets, dodging bullets and bayonets. After the riots, he assembled notes from other reporters, who had conducted more than 300 interviews, and wrote a hard-hitting article that concluded that few of the 43 who died had been rioters and that their deaths had mostly been avoidable. The article was part of a Free Press package that won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting.
He also wrote about how, during the rioting, the police had stormed the Algiers Hotel and killed three young Black men who were staying there. That infamous episode became the subject of a book, “The Algiers Motel Incident” (1968), by John Hersey, author of “Hiroshima” (1946), and of a critically acclaimed movie, “Detroit” (2017), directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

He left the newspaper and went into screenwriting. His first produced screenplay was “Absence of Malice”, which you may remember for Wilford Brimley’s short but significant appearance. He was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay, but lost to “Chariots of Fire”. He did win an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for “Out Of Africa”.

At the movie’s Detroit premiere, he was interviewed by an old friend, Mort Crim, a local television anchor. In an online tribute on Monday, Mr. Crim recalled their conversation:
“He said, ‘Crim, you and I both went to journalism school; I ended up kissing Meryl Streep, and you end up interviewing me. Where did you go wrong?’”

Bill Yeoman, noted University of Houston football coach.

Yeoman was the man responsible for turning the University of Houston football program from relative obscurity into national prominence in two-and-a-half decades. He guided the Cougars to four Southwest Conference championships and 11 bowl games, posting a 6-4-1 mark in postseason competition.
Off the field, Yeoman played a key role early in the integration of college athletics with the signing of running back Warren McVea in 1964 as the Cougars’ first African-American Football student-athlete.
The Cougars had 17 winning seasons under Yeoman, including nine campaigns with at least eight victories. UH finished nationally ranked 11 times, concluding the 1976 season with its highest national ranking at No. 4 by both the Associated Press and United Press International.

Posted in Media, Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 135

August 12th, 2020

Some military aviation stuff today. One short-ish, one longer.

The short-ish: I’m a fan of the US Naval Institute. I intermittently subscribe to “Proceedings”, and have actually gotten some valuable leadership tips out of it.

(I don’t want to post it here, but I think I have a PDF of that article somewhere, if you can’t access it through your local library.)

“David McCampbell: Ace of Aces” is a short documentary produced by USNI (including material from his oral history) about Captain David McCampbell (USN – ret.), the Navy’s leading fighter ace, the third highest scoring ace during WWII, Medal of Honor recipient, and F6F Hellcat pilot.

On October 24, 1944, in the initial phase of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in the Philippines, he became the only American airman to achieve “ace in a day” status twice. McCampbell and his wingman attacked a Japanese force of 60 aircraft. McCampbell shot down nine, 7 Zeros and 2 Oscars, setting a U.S. single mission aerial combat record. During this same action, his wingman downed another six Japanese warplanes. When he landed his Grumman F6F Hellcat aboard USS Langley (the flight deck of Essex wasn’t clear), his six machine guns had just two rounds remaining, and his airplane had to be manually released from the arrestor wire due to complete fuel exhaustion. Commander McCampbell received the Medal of Honor for both actions, becoming the only Fast Carrier Task Force pilot to be so honored.

Longer bonus video: “Gaining Altitude: The Mosquito Reborn”, about the de Havilland Mosquito…and the restoration of a vintage one.

Oh, what the heck. Nibbles: the Mosquito at Oshkosh in 2019.

And from the RAF Museum: “Under the RADAR: Mosquito versus Me 262”.

I’m fond of the Mosquito: how can you not like a fighter made of wood? At the same time, I’m not sure I’d actually want a Mosquito with the infinite money I don’t have, because I’m not sure I want to try to maintain a plane made out of wood. The Me 262 is closer to being my jam as far as vintage fighters, all that pesky Nazi stuff aside. Or a F6F Hellcat, but they aren’t making those anymore.

(I can’t find it now, but I have a general recollection of a company – somewhere up near Dallas? – that was building Me 262 reproductions with current engines. I think they were asking a little over a million each, but I have no idea what the current status is. If I am remembering this right, that seems a lot more feasible and fun than trying to find a vintage F6F and parts, or trying to maintain a Phantom jet.)

Posted in History, Nazis, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 12, 2020.

August 12th, 2020

Joan Feynman, noted astrophysicist. She was 93.

Over the course of her career, Feynman made many breakthroughs in furthering the understanding of solar wind and its interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere, a region in space where the planetary magnetic field deflects charged particles from the sun. As author or co-author of more than 185 papers, Feynman’s research accomplishments range from discovering the shape of the Earth’s magnetosphere and identifying the origin of auroras to creating statistical models to predict the number of high-energy particles that would collide with spacecraft over time. In 1974, she would become the first woman ever elected as an officer of the American Geophysical Union, and in 2000 she was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.

…

“Joan Feynman made important contributions to physics,” said APS President Philip Bucksbaum. “Her work on solar wind and the earth’s magnetosphere led to the discovery of the cause of auroras. She also developed a method to predict sunspot cycles. Her efforts in the geophysics community for fair treatment of women, together with her own example as a leader in solar physics, helped to change society’s attitudes in the mid-20th century about the contributions that women can make in physics.”

…

In 1971, Feynman accepted a job at the NASA Ames Research Center, where she developed a way to detect solar coronal mass ejections from the sun by searching for the presence of helium in solar wind. She would go on to hold positions at the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado; the National Science Foundation; and Boston College. In 1985, Feynman accepted a position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where she would conduct research until her retirement.
As part of her research at JPL, Feynman identified the mechanism that leads to the formation of auroras and developed a statistical model to determine the number of high-energy particles expelled from coronal mass injections that would hit a spacecraft during its lifetime. After her retirement from a senior scientist position in 2003, Feynman continued to conduct research on the impact of solar activity on the early climate of the Earth and the role of climate stabilization in the development of agriculture.
“Joan Feynman leaves a legacy of exemplary scientific research, having made important contributions to our understanding of the solar wind, the earth’s magnetosphere, and the origin of auroras,” said APS CEO Kate Kirby. “Despite being discouraged to pursue science by women in her family, she persevered, and her accomplishments serve as an inspiration to women who wish to pursue a career in science.”

For the record, she was Richard Feynman’s younger sister. There’s a story:

Her pioneering work on these processes led to an understanding of the mechanism responsible for auroras. She found this work wonderful, and her immediate reaction was to tell her brother, who’d first introduced her to these beautiful phenomena all those years before.
But then a second thought crossed her mind. “Richard is pretty smart, and if I tell him about an interesting problem, he’ll find the answer before I do and take all the fun out of it for me.” So Joan decided to strike a deal with him. “I said, Look, I don’t want us to compete, so let’s divide up physics between us. I’ll take auroras and you take the rest of the Universe. And he said OK!”

…

Her brother Richard had kept his original promise to her not to work on auroras. Despite an impressive polymath career in which he applied his genius to a spectacular spectrum of problem-solving across the fields of maths, physics, chemistry, and biology, he had never turned his attention to Joan’s chosen field.
But then he traveled to Alaska, an important centre for aurora studies. On a tour of the facility, the head of the lab pointed out many of the interesting geophysical phenomena that were yet to be explained. “Would you be interested in working on it?” he enquired. Richard responded that he would, but added that he’d have to ask his sister’s permission. Joan remembers that he came back and told her the story. “I’m sorry Richard,” she replied, “but I’m not giving you permission.” Richard duly reported back that his sister had refused to allow him to study auroras!
Word of this story eventually got round, and people would come up to Joan at conferences and ask her if it was true. At one meeting, a colleague from UCLA told the gathering that he wanted “to publicly thank Richard Feynman for not studying aurora, so that we can all have some fun!”

Posted in Geek, Obits | Comments Closed

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