“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 83

June 21st, 2020

Science Sunday!

No grand unifying theme today, just some things that popped up in my recommendations that I thought were interesting.

“The Penetrating Eye”. From 1970, a documentary about the scanning electron microscope produced by Eli Lilly.

Bonus: “Nuclear Propulsion In Space”, a 1968 joint production of NASA and the old Atomic Energy Commission about experimental nuclear reactors for space propulsion.

There’s a lot of “The Future We Could Have Had” in this video, including discussion of how a manned Mars mission would work. It also includes some nifty reactor test footage.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 21, 2020.

June 21st, 2020

Michael Drosnin, “Bible Code” guy.

“The Bible Code” opens with a stunning moment: The author, having discovered a biblical passage suggesting that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel would be assassinated, hops on a plane in 1994 to deliver a letter of warning. The message doesn’t alter the course of events — Mr. Rabin was shot and killed a year later — but, as Mr. Drosnin writes, it was “dramatic confirmation” of the Bible code.
That may sound like an Indiana Jones plot, but “The Bible Code” had its roots in science. In the early 1990s, the Israeli mathematician Eliyahu Rips and his colleagues performed an experiment in which they laid out the 304,805 letters of the Torah like a giant crossword puzzle and then performed a “skip-code” computer search. They discovered uncanny combinations. “Kennedy” appeared near the word “Dallas.” Hitler’s name, written upside down, appeared 20 rows from “Nazi,” written backward. And so on.
The findings were published in 1994 in the journal Statistical Science. Mr. Drosnin based his book on that research, adding discoveries of his own.
Many critics found the book unscientific, arbitrary and curiously weighted toward people and events relevant to an American living in the 20th century. Skeptics demonstrated that “Moby-Dick,” or a phone book for that matter, would reveal intriguing word groupings if one went looking for them. Mr. Rips himself denounced Mr. Drosnin’s interpretation of his work.

…

Mr. Drosnin offered more revelations in “The Bible Code II” (2002), another best seller, in which he claimed the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center had been predicted and warned that the world might have only three years left to avoid Armageddon. Then came “The Bible Code III” (2010), but by that time the novelty had worn off; it did not make the best-seller list.
Still, Mr. Drosnin had a high batting average as an author. Of his four books, three were best sellers, including the first, “Citizen Hughes” (1985), a portrait of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes as revealed through stolen office memos.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Stupid | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 82

June 20th, 2020

You know, the history of aviation wasn’t all Pan Am and Boeing. There were other companies involved.

Like Delta. And Convair, a division of General Dynamics (as of 1953).

“Introduction to a Champion”, a Delta/Convair promotional film for the then-new Convair 880 jet. The 880, in theory, was supposed to be a competitor to the 707 and DC-8 by being smaller and faster.

The film certainly makes the 880 look comfortable, in that sort of idealized vintage 1960s air travel kind of way. They even manage to make airline food look almost appetizing. It also places great emphasis on the alleged speed of the 880.

Unfortunately, it was not entirely successful. Convair made 65 of them from 1959 to 1962. Delta ran 17 of them between 1960 and 1974. As far as I can tell, there are no currently operational 880s, though there is one in storage somewhere in California. Most of the others have been chopped up and parts put on display (or, in one case, used in a lodge in South Africa).

There is one surviving intact (but not airworthy) example that I know of that is on display. You may even have seen it, which leads me to…

Bonus video: this is a little below my usual standards of quality, but short. “Lisa Marie: The History Tour 1960 – 2015”. You see, Elvis bought one of Delta’s retired Convair 880s in 1975 for $250,000. He then spent a truckload of money having it extensively customized:

…with plush sleeping quarters, a penthouse bedroom with a custom-made queen size bed, an executive bathroom with gold faucets and a gold washbasin, a videotape system linked to four TVs and a stereo system with fifty-two speakers, and a conference room finished in teak.

That source claims the total cost, after refurbishing, was over $600,000. In 1975 money. That’s almost $2.9 million today, according to the US Inflation Calculator, which actually seems kind of cheap for a business jet.

(Probably true story, at least according to a couple of sources: Elvis originally wanted to buy a 707, and had even put down a deposit on one. He probably would have been happier long term with that plane – or at least it would have been easier to find parts, I suspect – but the 707 he put money down on was Robert Vesco‘s, and when the fecal matter of Vesco’s empire impacted the rotating blades of the Federal impeller, that deal fell apart. I don’t know if Elvis got his money back or not: I suspect the IRS or the SEC immediately confiscated it from Vesco’s people, and they didn’t have it to give back. But I digress.)

There’s some good shots in here of the “Lisa Marie”‘s interior, which I guess is pretty much what you’d expect from a plane owned by Elvis.

Posted in History, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 20, 2020.

June 20th, 2020

Ian Holm.

A character actor who eventually played leading roles, Mr. Holm had a kind of magical malleability, with a range that went from the sweet-tempered to the psychotic. In the theater he ran the gamut of Shakespeare, from the high-spirited Prince Hal to the tormented King Lear, and he left his imprint on two roles in Mr. Pinter’s “The Homecoming”: the sleek, entrepreneurial Lenny and his autocratic father, Max.
In films, Mr. Holm incarnated characters of diverse geographic origin and nature, including a tough New York cop in “Night Falls on Manhattan” (1996), a big-city negligence lawyer in Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” (1997) and a bohemian genius manqué in the title role in Stanley Tucci’s “Joe Gould’s Secret” (2000).
Exploring the world of fantasy, he was a malfunctioning robot in Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979) and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) and “The Return of the King” (2003), from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Mr. Jackson’s subsequent “Hobbit” films.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 81

June 19th, 2020

The Tank Museum has a YouTube channel.

And they appear to update with some regularity.

This actually came up in my recommendations, and isn’t something I went searching for – but it is how I found out about the Tank Museum’s YouTube channel.

“Tiger 131: A Twist in the Tale”, a recent short documentary about some new evidence dealing with Tiger 131.

For those of you who are not professional WWII tank historians, Tiger 131 is the only operating Tiger I tank in the world.

This is of particular interest to me because, as Lawrence noted a while back, we recently watched “Fury”. Tiger 131 has a fairly large part in that movie.

I’m not including a bonus video today: instead, why don’t you just pick a random one from the Tank Museum channel and watch it? I’m kind of interested in Curator Q&A #9 myself, and might watch that before I turn in for the night. What’s not to like about armor and gin?

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 80

June 18th, 2020

Time to relax and have a refreshing smoke.

“Tobacco Valley”, a promotional film from “The Shade Tobacco Growers Agricultural Association, Inc.” about tobacco growing in the Connecticut River Valley.

Why am I posting this? I think it’d be hard to find something more politically incorrect on YouTube. If you think otherwise, surprise me.

Bonus video: “Call Us Penn Central”, a promotional film for the Penn Central Transportation Company.

Why this one? The film was made in 1968: Penn Central filed for bankruptcy on June 21, 1970.

The Penn Central bankruptcy was a cataclysmic event, both to the railroad industry and the nation’s business community. The PC and its problems have been the subject of more words than almost anything else in the railroad industry, everything from diatribes on the passenger business to analyses of the reason for its collapse. Of the failed merger, Saunders commented “Because of the many years it took to consummate the merger, the morale of both railroads was badly disrupted and they were faced with unmanageable problems which were insurmountable. In addition to overcoming obstacles, the principal problem was too much governmental regulation and a passenger deficit which amounted to more than $100 million a year.”

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Obit watch: June 18, 2020.

June 18th, 2020

Vera Lynn, singer and rallying point for the troops in WWII.

Long after the war ended, the melodies lingered on: “We’ll Meet Again,” “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”
In those wartime years, she became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart,” and to the end of her life the veterans were her “boys,” still misty-eyed when she sang, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.”

…

At 22, in 1939, she won The Daily Express newspaper’s “Forces’ Sweetheart” poll in a landslide. In 1940, she began her own BBC radio show, “Sincerely Yours,” which was beamed to troops around the world on Sunday nights right after the news.
“Winston Churchill was my opening act,” Ms. Lynn once said.
She read letters from the girlfriends, wives and mothers the troops left behind. She sang her sentimental songs, “We’ll Meet Again” being the most popular. In the blitz that sent the Luftwaffe on nightly raids over London in 1940, she sometimes slept in the theater until the all-clear sounded, then drove home through the rubble left by the bombings.
“The shows didn’t stop if a raid started,” she said. “We just used to carry on.”
Often, it seemed, Luftwaffe bombers droned over London just as Ms. Lynn sang “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” which became the theme song of the blitz.

…

In 1944, Ms. Lynn toured Burma (now Myanmar) for three months, earning the enduring affection of the so-called Forgotten Army, which battled the Japanese Army in jungle combat there. She started her journey with chiffon ball gowns, and when they fell apart, she finished in shorts that wound up as an exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London.

…

Ms. Lynn’s popularity endured well into the 21st century. In August 2009, she became the oldest living artist to reach the British Top 20 album chart when her collection “We’ll Meet Again” was reissued to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. A month later, the album reached No. 1.

…

Though the decades passed and she drifted out of the entertainment mainstream, she remained the Forces’ Sweetheart, evoking nostalgia with her old hits, appearing at reunions of veterans’ organizations, rallying support for soldiers’ widows and charities that helped Britain’s wartime generation. (Oddly enough, one of her greatest hits, “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” was written by Americans: Walter Kent, who admitted he had never seen the cliffs, and Nat Burton.)

She was 103.

From the legal beat: Ronald Tackmann, artist. And by “artist” I mean in both the visual sense and the escape sense.

At the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Sept. 30, 2009, Mr. Tackmann, a neophyte artist and professional prisoner, put on a light-gray three-piece suit and covered his orange inmates’ slippers with black socks to try to pass as his own lawyer. (At the time, inmates were allowed to change into court clothes before facing a judge.) Briefly uncuffed and unchained and momentarily out of the view of guards, he fled down a back staircase, sauntered outside and vanished into the streets.
It wasn’t his first escape attempt. Twice before he had tried to hijack Correction Department vans that were transporting him and other convicts to court or to prisons upstate, using fake guns he had fashioned out of bars of soap and remnants of eyeglasses and aluminum cans.

…

His escape attempts made him an obvious security risk, and he was confined in solitary for about 20 years. There, improvising where he had to, art became his life.He substituted food coloring for paint, used his own hair to create brushes, and molded papier mâche out of white bread and toilet paper. Among his Dalí-like drawings, he depicted a child gleefully clinging to a supermarket-ride rocket, a jet outracing an eagle, and a skeletal inmate serving a 210-year sentence. A carving of a buffalo, made out of prison soap, shows an intricate touch.

There’s a picture of that buffalo carving in the obit, and I have to give the man credit: it’s well done. I wanted to post this obit so I could work this in:

During his last robbery spree, in Manhattan a little more than a decade ago, he netted $100 or so from a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Upper East Side; a similar amount, along with a cup of pistachio ice cream, from a Sedutto’s store; and a beating at a World of Nuts & Ice Cream outlet.

Delbert Africa, one of the MOVE members. He wasn’t present at the 1985 MOVE headquarters bombing: he was serving time in prison after being convicted of third-degree murder (along with eight other MOVE members) for killing police officer James Ramp in 1978.

Posted in Art, History, Law, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 79

June 17th, 2020

I’m thinking it is time for some more travel video.

From those wonderful folks at Pan Am, “Wings To Ireland”.

Oddly, my major associations with Ireland are Ken Bruen and “all the bright young things were throwing up their Guinness in the gutters…”

You don’t recognize the latter? Let’s fix that.

That wasn’t a bonus video, this is a bonus video. And it isn’t from Pan Am this time.

“Time Flies”. Yes, yes, like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. But seriously, this is a 1960s promo film for Lufthansa.

Posted in History, Planes, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 78

June 16th, 2020

I might be the only one, but I’m interested in torpedoes and torpedo history. For example, the famous Mark 14 torpedo.

Here’s some insight into how they work: “Otto Fuel II”, a Navy technical documentary on the Navy’s torpedo mono-propellant.

Bonus: You will believe…Northrop made a rocket sled gag reel.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

I heartily endorse this event or product. (#20 and #21 in a series)

June 16th, 2020

I’ve backed the Kickstarter for Escape the City: a How-To Homesteading Guide by Travis J I Corcoran.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Corcoran, he’s won two Prometheus awards (back to back) for his SF books, The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation.

Unlike those books, this is not fiction: this is a how-to/things I wish I had known/lessons learned book from someone who abandoned suburban life, moved to a farm in the country, and maintains an active coding career while raising his own food and living as close to a self-sustained lifestyle as he can get.

I have personal reasons for backing this book. But even if you don’t plan on moving to a farm, there’s almost certainly something in it that will justify the $20 you spend on the e-book: stuff about meat and meat processing, recipes, workshops and workshop tools…well, there’s a table of contents on the Kickstarter page.

Mr. Corcoran probably doesn’t need my help, though I’m happy to provide it: we’ve had friendly correspondence in the past. The Kickstarter is already at $25,000+ out of an initial $2,000 goal. But I’d like to make sure that everyone who can get any sort of benefit from it has a chance to kick in and get early access.

====

Noted: The National African American Gun Association. I didn’t know about this (though it’s been around for five years) until SayUncle mentioned it. Now that I do know about it, I’m delighted and fully support the organization, just like I support the Pink Pistols/Operation Blazing Sword.

Posted in Books, Endorsements, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 16, 2020.

June 16th, 2020

Sushant Singh Rajput. He was a major Bollywood star:

Mr. Rajput started his acting career on television, where he was best known for his role as a car mechanic, Manav Deshmukh, in “Pavitra Rishta,” a soap opera that debuted in 2009.
After leaving the show in 2011, he made his Bollywood debut in 2013 as a gifted but troubled cricket player in “Kai Po Che,” a film based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat. For his performance he was nominated for a Filmfare Award, a coveted honor in the Hindi-language film industry of India. The critic Taran Adarsh said Mr. Rajput was “blessed with wonderful screen presence.”

He was 34 years old. The family did not specify a cause of death, but the paper of record reports that the Mumbai police were investigating it as a suicide.

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 surprisingly good page of additional resources. Suicide.org has a list of numbers and organizations in India.

Edén “Commander Zero” Pastora.

Mr. Pastora, in a life of danger and adventure that stretched from the jungles of the Miskito Coast to the halls of Congress in Washington, was instrumental in toppling the military dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last of the line in a repressive family dynasty that had ruled their Central American country for nearly a half century.
But deprived of a major role in the revolutionary government he had helped to install, and increasingly disillusioned by its Marxist-Leninist tendencies, Mr. Pastora went into exile and for years challenged the regime, led by Daniel Ortega, first with an international campaign of political pressures and later with hit-and-run guerrilla attacks inside Nicaragua.
Along the way he courted sympathizers and bankrollers in the United States, Europe and Latin America; took money and air support secretly from the Central Intelligence Agency; attacked cities in Nicaragua; was denounced by Managua as a traitor and tried in absentia; was seriously wounded by an assassin’s bomb that killed eight people; and once ran for the presidency of Nicaragua. He lost — and two years later, in 2008, announced that he had reconciled with the Ortega government.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 77

June 15th, 2020

This is a little outside of my usual, but it’s short and I have a reason: “The Last Will And Testament Of Tom Smith”.

“Tom Smith, an American pilot, is shot down and captured by the Japanese. While imprisoned and awaiting execution, he recalls his life at home in the USA.”

My reason here is: look at that cast! George “Superman” Reeves, Walter Brennan, and Lionel Barrymore! They don’t make them like that any more.

And today’s bonus, from 1944: “Personal Health in the Jungle”. You never know when this might come in handy.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Today’s bulletin from Bizarro World.

June 15th, 2020

I feel like I’m coming to this story a little late. It seems like it just broke today, but I was busy at work all day and only just found out about it.

There is a couple in Natick, Massachusetts that publishes an online e-commerce newsletter. I don’t know the name of the newsletter or where to find it, but some of their articles were critical of eBay.

eBay was not happy with their coverage.

In response, one company executive wrote to another saying the newsletter editor was “out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to text messages included in the complaint. The other executive responded: “Let me ask you this. Do we need to shut her entire site down?”

And so, eBay employees – apparently at the direction of upper management – started harassing the couple. Some of their tactics:

  • sending fly larvae and live spiders
  • sending a box of live cockroaches
  • sending “a bloody pig mask” (picture in article)
  • sending “a book of advice on how to survive the death of a spouse”
  • sending a funeral wreath
  • sending porn to the couple’s neighbors, but making it appear to have come from the couple
  • they apparently tried to send a fetal pig, but for some reason that wasn’t delivered
  • and, of course, the ever popular “place a Craigslist ad saying they’re swingers, and folks should come over any night after 10 PM if they want sex”

The employees also sent a series of increasingly aggressive direct messages on Twitter, asking the newsletter editor what her problem was with eBay, the complaint said. The court filing said they followed up with threatening messages, culminating with publishing the couple’s home address.
As an excuse to covertly surveil the couple in the home, the complaint said, two employees also registered for a software conference in Boston in August, and, lest they were stopped by the police, went to the couple’s house carrying false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the publishers for threatening eBay executives.

Six “former” employees have been indicted on federal charges. (eBay says they were all fired in September of last year.) I won’t name them here (they are entitled to a presumption of innocence), but their titles were:

  • “director of safety and security”
  • “director of global resiliency”
  • “senior manager of global intelligence”
  • “manager of global intelligence center (GIC)”
  • a contractor “who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC”
  • “senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team”. (This individual was, according to the articles, a former police captain.)

Two unnamed executives are included in the complaint that had roles above [the “director of safety and security”].

I wasn’t following this closely at the time, but eBay’s CEO, Devin Wenig, left the company last year “weeks after the government began investigating“.

“The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband,” the statement said. It added: “However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure” from eBay.

Edited to add 6/16: the main Hacker News thread on this story adds some additional details, including links to the supposed newsletter and to the FBI’s affidavit requesting charges against two of the employees. I have not had a chance to read the affidavit yet.

Also: Lawrence.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 76

June 14th, 2020

Science Sunday!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for nukes. Not just nuclear weapons, but civilian use of nuclear energy, the whole Project Plowshare/early reactors type of thing.

“Pioneering with Power”, a promo film for the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts.

According to several sources Yankee Rowe was the first commercial PWR operating in the United States. This view discards the government-sponsored Shippingport Atomic Power Station, which was not built on a commercial basis and relied on several technologies that would not be embraced by the commercial operators. The Dresden Generating Station, a commercial boiling water reactor (BWR), slightly preceded the opening of Yankee Rowe in 1960. US government sources place the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at Dresden-1 on 15 October 1959 and the first one at Yankee Row on 19 August 1960.[6] (These dates probably preceded the entering into commercial operation of either plant by several months.)

It operated until 1992.

Bonus: by way of “Cruise Ships Info” (really?), a tour of the NS Savannah. NS Savannah was the first nuclear powered merchant ship (hence the “NS”, for “Nuclear Ship”).

I have personal reasons for wanting to link to this, but the narration is horrible text-to-speech. You’d do better muting it and turning on captions.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 75

June 13th, 2020

This seems like a good day to post some more military themed stuff, so here you go:

“Know Your Enemy: German Equipment”.

The film attempts to educate soldiers, tankers and other combatants about the material resources and equipment of the German Wehrmacht, and discusses how to defeat tanks and other weapons with small arms and anti-personnel weapons.

Bonus: I was trying to figure out if I had posted this before. It looks like I haven’t, but I did post about someone else’s link to it nine years ago. At that level of time and indirection, I think I can get away with it this time.

“Stop That Tank”, a Disney produced 1942 training film about the Boys anti-tank rifle.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 13, 2020.

June 13th, 2020

William Sessions, former FBI director.

…in a tenure crowded with troubles and stumbling responses, Mr. Sessions presided for less than six years over an agency that mounted much-criticized deadly sieges at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas; tried to enlist American librarians to catch Soviet spies; and was forced to concede that agents in the past had overzealously spied on Americans protesting government policies in Central America.

…

The first of the sieges under his watch occurred in 1992, when for 11 days the F.B.I.’s hostage rescue team surrounded a fugitive white separatist and others holed up in an isolated cabin on Ruby Ridge, near the Canadian border. After a United States marshal and the fugitive’s wife and son were killed by gunfire, a public furor arose questioning that use of deadly force. Mr. Sessions was not directly involved in the episode or accused of any wrongdoing, but the F.B.I.’s reputation was tarnished.
His agency again faced heavy criticism in 1993 over another violent standoff. This one began when four agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and six members of a cult called the Branch Davidians were killed in a gun battle at their compound near Waco, Texas. After a 51-day F.B.I. siege, President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, fearing mass suicide, authorized a tear-gas assault on April 19. The compound caught fire. At least 75 people died, including many children.
By then, F.B.I. morale was abysmal and Mr. Sessions, a Republican stranded in a Democratic limbo, was under pressure to resign. His critics said he had failed to redefine the F.B.I.’s crime-fighting and domestic counterintelligence missions after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 during the administration of President George Bush. Some associates called him disengaged, a director who relished the trappings of high office but not the grind of bureau business.
But most damaging to Mr. Sessions was an internal Justice Department report — issued late in the Bush administration but pursued by the Clinton administration — accusing him of ethical violations, including using F.B.I. planes to visit relatives and friends around the country, often taking his wife; using agents to run personal errands; and having a $10,000 fence built around his Washington home at federal expense.

Posted in FBI, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 74

June 12th, 2020

Today’s installment goes out to all the espionage fans out there. You know who you are: you read John le Carré and Ian Fleming and watch old spy movies. If you’re a book person, you might even have a small (or large) collection of spy novels, spy memoirs, and spy histories.

From 1953, “Cutout Devices”, about the various ways spies protect themselves from exposure.

And your bonus: “Espionage Target – You!”, from 1964.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 73

June 11th, 2020

Today’s videos are a little longer than I usually like to post, but:

“The Hippie Temptation”, from 1967. According to the YouTube notes, this is an episode of a short-lived CBS News series, and features Harry Reasoner (who was 44 at the time).

Bonus video: Not at all related. This is just a palate cleanser. Like liver flavored sherbet.

The pilot episode of “Space: 1999”.

Posted in History, TV | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

June 11th, 2020

I’ve mentioned Melville Davisson Post and the “Uncle Abner” stories before, and alluded to this passage from “Naboth’s Vineyard”.

Seems like a good time to actually post it, though.

“You threaten me,” he said, “but God Almighty threatens you.” And he turned about to the audience. “The authority of the law,” he said, “is in the hands of the electors of this county. Will they stand up?”
I shall never forget what happened then, for I have never in my life seen anything so deliberate and impressive. Slowly, in silence, and without passion, as though they were in a church of God, men began to get up in the courtroom.
Randolph was the first. He was a justice of the peace, vain and pompous, proud of the abilities of an ancestry that he did not inherit. And his superficialities were the annoyance of my Uncle Abner’s life. But whatever I may have to say of him hereafter I want to say this thing of him here, that his bigotry and his vanities were builded on the foundations of a man. He stood up as though he stood alone, with no glance about him to see what other men would do, and he faced the Judge calmly above his great black stock. And I learned then that a man may be a blusterer and a lion.
Hiram Arnold got up, and Rockford, and Armstrong, and Alkire, and Coopman, and Monroe, and Elnathan Stone, and my father, Lewis, and Dayton and Ward, and Madison from beyond the mountains. And it seemed to me that the very hills and valleys were standing up.
It was a strange and instructive thing to see. The loudmouthed and the reckless were in that courtroom, men who would have shouted in a political convention, or run howling with a mob, but they were not the persons who stood up when Abner called upon the authority of the people to appear. Men rose whom one would not have looked to see-the blacksmith, the saddler, and old Asa Divers. And I saw that law and order and all the structure that civilization had builded up, rested on the sense of justice that certain men carried in their breasts, and that those who possessed it not, in the crisis of necessity, did not count.
Father Donovan stood up; he had a little flock beyond the valley river, and he was as poor, and almost as humble as his Master, but he was not afraid; and Bronson, who preached Calvin, and Adam Rider, who traveled a Methodist circuit.
No one of them believed in what the other taught; but they all believed in justice, and when the line was drawn, there was but one side for them all.
The last man up was Nathaniel Davisson, but the reason was that he was very old, and he had to wait for his sons to help him. He had been time and again in the Assembly of Virginia, at a time when only a gentleman and landowner could sit there. He was a just man, and honorable and unafraid.

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Obit watch: June 11, 2020.

June 11th, 2020

Following up to yesterday’s obit watch, “Live PD” is now cancelled.

According to the Deadline article thoughtfully sent to us by Mike the Musicologist, there were discussions about bringing the show back in some form:

But A&E and the show’s production company pulled the plug yesterday.

Airing Friday and Saturday nights from 9 PM-12 AM, Live P.D. was ad-supported cable’s #1 show on Fridays and Saturdays in 2019 and has helped A&E become a leading cable network. The series had risen to the top spots in all cable during the pandemic when live sports were suspended, drawing a total of about 3 million viewers per weekend.

Bonnie Pointer, co-founder of the Pointer Sisters.

She left the group in the late 1970s and signed with Motown; she also married Jeffrey Bowen, a producer there. Her two albums for that label were heavy with disco remakes of 1960s Motown singles, like the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” with Ms. Pointer recording most of the vocal parts herself. The most successful in this formula was “Heaven Must Have Sent You,” which went to No. 11 in 1979.

Mary Pat Gleason, working actress. 174 credits on IMDB.

Pierre Nkurunziza, president of Burundi. He was 55, and apparently died of a heart attack.

Posted in Cops, Law, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 72

June 10th, 2020

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.

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Obit watch: June 10, 2020.

June 10th, 2020

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:

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.

Posted in Obits, Politics, TV, WillCo | 3 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 71

June 9th, 2020

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.

Posted in Bridges, History, Planes, Travel | Comments Closed

Random gun crankery, some filler.

June 9th, 2020

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:

It is alleged against me, and with perfect truth, that I stopped on the way to drink a glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver with cartridges in another. Some have seen these as singular wedding-presents for a bridegroom to give to himself, and if the bride had known less of him, I suppose she might have fancied that he was a suicide or a murderer or, worst of all, a teetotaller.

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.

If a thing is worth doing, Chesterton tells us, it’s worth doing badly. (What’s Wrong With the World, 175) Defending one’s wife is worth doing, and hence worth doing badly. But more, it must be done principally by oneself. “These things, we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.” (Orthodoxy, 250) Chesterton’s examples are things like writing one’s own love letters or blowing one’s own nose, but the incident of the revolver shows that he would include the husband’s duty to protect his wife. It’s simply not a job that should be subcontracted out. Of course, we band together in communities that provide mutual support and defense, and the forces of law and order can do their best to provide the safest conditions possible, in general. Our laws and policies and so forth can and should serve to keep the pirates at bay to a great extent. (Whether they, in fact, accomplish this, or whether our policies create criminals like moisture creates mold is an extraneous question.) None of this runs contrary to my point. We ask for doctors, researchers and public health officials to try to create as high a general level of health as possible—but that doesn’t mean we ask them to wipe our noses for us.

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:

  • Chesterton wasn’t a saint at the time. He was under consideration, but the latest information I’ve found indicates that the effort has been abandoned.
  • There already is a patron saint of handgunners. Sort of. It’s complicated.

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.

What are you willing to risk your life for? Only you can answer this question. But, I recommend asking it in advance. Remember, fighting is problem-solving at high speed. The more questions you can answer in advance the more efficiently you arrive at a solution.

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.

Posted in Bookmarks, Guns, Religion | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 70

June 8th, 2020

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.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

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