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
…I can post this.
There’s a new Lame Excuse Books catalog out. Books from Lame Excuse Books make fine presents for the SF and/or fantasy fan in your circle of family and friends.
I feel like I got an early Christmas present this year. Maybe. I haven’t decided if I’m going to go see this in a theater, or wait for the home video release.
David Fincher has a new movie coming out. Apparently it will be released to Netflix on December 4th, but there is a theatrical run already at the Alamo Drafthouses in Austin.
I think Fincher is an interesting director. But: he has scientifically designed this movie to get me to put money on the table for it.
Travel Thursday! And happy Thanksgiving!
I was hoping that Pan Am would have done “Wings to Turkey”, or something similar. But, alas, no. So how about a tour of a turkey farm with Temple Grandin, from the National Turkey Federation?
Bonus #1: “To Mount Lowe With Love”, a documentary about the Mount Lowe Railway. Because I feel like putting the “fun” back into “funicular”.
Bonus #2: Stretching the definition of “travel” a bit here, but I wanted to do something appropriate for Spaghetti Carbonara Day.
There are an awful lot of spaghetti carbonara videos on YouTube, many of which seem to be responses or complaints about Gordon Ramsey’s version. I thought I’d use this one, since I believe Lidia Bastianich is pretty trustworthy when it comes to Italian food. If you’re cooking for my mother, though, please leave the onions out. (She loves Lidia, but she hates onions. I actually don’t think onions are part of a traditional carbonara, but I welcome being proved wrong.)
She had a strong TV career, and an interesting theater one:
What would have been her Broadway debut — “The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake” (1967), a generation-gap comedy — closed in previews, reportedly because its Hollywood star, Jean Arthur, was ill. Ms. Dietrich’s first official Broadway appearance was also brief: “Here’s Where I Belong,” a musical based on John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” opened and closed on March 3, 1968.
Then her luck changed. Ms. Dietrich played a sensible older sister in Mike Nichols’s Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1971). The play, starring Peter Falk and Lee Grant as Manhattanites struggling through a bad economy, ran for almost two years and won two Tony Awards.
She was most famous, though, as “Mother Nature” in those 1970s commercials for a margarine company. (“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”)
Ian Finkel, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest xylophonist”.
Mr. Finkel’s path took him from the borscht belt resorts in the Catskills to playing with the New York Philharmonic. He also worked as a composer and musical arranger for stars like Sid Caesar, Tito Puente and Ginger Rogers, his brother, Elliot Finkel, said.
As a percussionist, he worked in orchestras that accompanied the likes of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross and Tony Bennett.
Today, music.
To start with, something short-ish. I think this dates to 2011, and was produced by the Oklahoma History Center as part of an exhibit: “Pickin’ and Grinnin’: Roy Clark, ‘Hee Haw’ & Country Humor”.
And a longer bonus that I think is really cool: a 1969 documentary for Granada Television, “Johnny Cash In San Quentin”.
For the historical record: Diego Maradona. ESPN.
Techmoan is kind of a fun channel, but one that I try to avoid overusing. I’m using it today because this video popped up, and it answers a question that’s been in the back of my mind.
Whatever happened to portable televisions? Remember the Sony Watchman?
Obviously, the digital transition killed off the old analog portables. But why don’t we have portable digital televisions?
Short answer: we do, but not from any major manufacturers, and they’re pretty much crap as televisions. (Some of them may be decent portable media players, but do they do anything you can’t do with a small laptop or tablet?)
When I’m out shopping in thrift stores and other odd places, and see one of those cool looking old portable devices with a TV built in, I think about picking it up and hooking up a converter box, just for the lulz.
Bonus: “Prison Tech”. Not really the kind of thing people in prison improvise, but rather what kind of tech you’re allowed to have (and can purchase) for prison use.
This is another one of those weird intersections.
Apple’s head of security, Thomas Moyer, was indicted last week along with three other people. The others were Harpreet Chadha (an insurance broker), Santa Clara Undersheriff Rick Sung and Captain James Jensen.
Why is this weird? Because it is also a gun thing, and you don’t often see “Apple” and “guns” together.
Specifically:
…
In another incident, Sung “extracted” a promise from Chadha for $6,000 worth of luxury box suites at a San Jose Sharks game on Valentine’s Day, 2019, before issuing Chadha a CCW permit, [DA Jeff] Rosen said.
“Sheriff Laurie Smith’s family members and some of her biggest supporters held a celebration of her reelection as sheriff in Chadha’s suite,” Rosen said.
All of this is part of an ongoing investigation into Sheriff Smith’s office. Captain Jensen was previously indicted in August:
An obit roundup, because I’m a little behind.
Jan Morris, British writer and historian. I haven’t read any of Morris’s work, yet. But John Crowley in his beautiful novella “Great Work of Time” cites Morris’s history of the British empire as a major source, and I’ve been hunting for reasonably priced copies. (Like I need three more volumes of history to read, in addition to Gibbon and the two volume history of the Canadian transcontinental railroad.)
Ken Spears, co-creator of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!”. The other creator, Joe Ruby, passed away in September.
Daniel Cordier, one of the legendary figures of the French Resistance. He was 100.
David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City.