Simple Tricks and Nonsense

This morning, Jaquandor points us toward a fascinating graphic illustrating the contrast between the highest and lowest points of our globe -- and where British Petroleum's busted oil well lies in relation to those extremes.

As you scroll downward, you'll see lots of fascinating trivia, such as the fact that Mount Everest and its companion peak K2 stand well above those wispy, feathery cirrus clouds you see on dry summer afternoons... that Tibet is higher than the puffy cumulus clouds that roll across the sky like bolls of cotton, and that the Saturn V rocket that sent men to the Moon is about the same height as the Statue of Liberty. But notice in particular Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America at a height of 20,320 feet, and the city of Denver at an elevation of 5,280 feet. Keep those figures in mind as we plunge below the waves and follow the "riser," the pipe that connected the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to the well on the ocean floor before the accident.

The riser quickly descends past the limits of human divers (the "atmospheric diving suit," or ADS, is essentially a wearable submarine that lets a person descend safely to about 2,000 feet). At 3,000 feet, there is no longer any sunlight penetrating from the surface, but the riser keeps going down. It passes the level of the deepest-diving combat submarines, which is roughly 3,500 feet, and keeps going... down to the failed blowout preventer at 5,000 feet below the surface. The leaking wellhead is as far down as the city of Denver is high. The pressure at those depths is 150 times greater than the atmosphere at sea level. Not that I feel the slightest amount of sympathy for BP -- I am heartsick and outraged by what we stupid humans have done to the Gulf of Mexico, and if there's any justice in the world, BP will go bankrupt cleaning it up -- but this graphic provides some invaluable perspective on why they've had such a difficult time stopping the leak. Imagine trying to do anything by remote control, in the endless dark and unimaginable pressure. I almost think building a space station is an easier task.

But the amazing thing is that the well itself, the hole drilled by the Deepwater Horizon, goes much, much deeper yet. Deeper than the Grand Canyon, deeper than the range of the deepest-diving whale, deeper than the wreck of RMS Titanic, almost as deep into the crust of the planet as Mount McKinley rises above it. I don't know about you, but my mind completely boggles at the thought. And there is a part of me -- the same part that marvels at the Moon shots and Hoover Dam, the machine-loving part of my DNA -- that finds it really unbelievably cool that we silly apes can do something like this, something so gobsmackingly big. If only the risks weren't so equally gobsmacking, as we've now learned...

Posted by at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spotted an interesting story over at NPR last night about the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II, whose primary role was to ferry freshly minted warbirds from the factories where they were made to the airbases where they would be dispatched overseas. The idea was to free up male pilots from mundane flying duties so they were available for combat missions.

My Loyal Readers know that I'm fascinated by the aviation exploits of that era, so naturally I've heard of the WASPs, but I confess I really didn't know much about them until today. They have a pretty awesome story, and I advise all of you to click that link and "read more about it," as the old TV PSAs used to say. I've been reading more about it all day during my odd moments of free time, and I'm frankly amazed no one has made a big feature film about these ladies yet. Incredible anecdotes abound. But perhaps the most striking detail I've gleaned from various articles about them is the casual sexism these women confronted nearly every step of the way.

We take women in the military more or less for granted these days. There have been female support pilots flying cargo and tanker planes as long as I can remember, and women fighter pilots for least a decade now (in the U.S. services, anyway -- other nations had women flying combat long before we did). But in 1942, there was a debate over whether women could even physically handle a warplane. (To be fair, this concern wasn't without warrant. The big bombers, in particular, demanded a lot of upper-body strength to operate; I've read that the joke used to be that you could always tell a B-24 captain because of his overdeveloped left arm, acquired through wrestling with his controls during 12-hour -- or longer -- missions.) The military didn't want to expend any extra resources training women pilots from scratch, so basic piloting licenses had to be earned on the ladies' own dime, before they signed up. (By contrast, male recruits could come into the AAF without ever having touched an airplane.) Their parachutes weren't even properly fitted to their bodies, because they were designed for male pilots. And for the 38 WASPs who died in service to their country, there were no funds to ship their bodies back to their families and no flags for their coffins, because they were technically civilian volunteers. The WASPs would be classified as such until the mid-1970s, ineligible for veteran benefits and unrecognized by history until that time.

But in spite of all this crap -- or maybe because of it, because they had something to prove -- the WASPs prevailed. They mastered every type of U.S. aircraft used during the war, from light trainers to high-speed fighters to the lumbering bombers I love. When male test pilots complained that the new B-29 Superfortress was a deathtrap because of various developmental problems, a pair of WASPs demonstrated that it could be flown safely, and repeatedly. (It was likely male egos, as much as anything, that led to the disbanding of the WASPs in 1944... the menfolk figured the war would be ending soon, and they didn't want the competition for aviation jobs.)

Do you get the idea that I admire the hell out of these women? Well, you're right. I am inspired by stories of people who are constantly told they can't do something, for whatever reason, and who then proceed to excel at it, usually to the utter consternation of those who put them down. And my antennae always go up when I get wind of some chapter of history that's been largely neglected.

This morning, these awesome ladies finally got their due, as they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor our government can bestow. Of the 1,100 women who served as WASPs, only about 300 are still alive, and roughly two-thirds of them were present at the award ceremony, along with family members of all the others. living and dead, who couldn't make it.

It's about damn time.

Incidentally, if you like that picture up there at the top -- one of the most famous WASP-related images, I believe -- check out a related NPR article for some gorgeous and rare color photos, all shot by one of the WASPs named Lillian Yonally. This one of a PT-19 at sunrise is breathtaking...

Posted by at 6:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

In case you missed it, this past Friday was the one-year anniversary of the so-called "Miracle on the Hudson," in which airline captain "Sully" Sullenberger successfully ditched his crippled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River alongside Manhattan without losing a single life. (Human life, that is; God only knows how many poor birds got themselves puree'd inside Flight 1549's massive CFM International turbofan engines.)

This morning, there's a new video floating around the 'net that shows what happened after the passengers and crew were rescued. It's a fascinating timelapse of the salvage operation that lifted the sunken airliner out of the freezing waters of the river and got it placed onto a barge. The photographer had a perfect vantage point, and the video is really quite beautiful. In particular, I found the ice surging and waning around the plane's wing and vertical stabilizer -- the only parts of 1549 that were above the water for three days -- weirdly hypnotic. Give it a look:

Exclusive unseen video footage of the Miracle on the Hudson, flight 1549 New York City from David Martin on Vimeo.

I am one of those weirdos who sentimentalize and anthropomorphize machines, especially those that perform beyond expectations to save the lives of the people who ride within them, so I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I teared up a bit when 1549 re-emerges into the air. Of course, the music probably helps. It's a selection from the soundtrack of Michael Bay's Transformers, and I found it unexpectedly effective.

The guy who created this video, David Hugh Martin, has posted a number of still photos and some comments here; I found his video via Andrew Sullivan.

Posted by at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I must confess that I don't always get the punchline in xkcd comics -- I'm not that techy, and I'm certainly not that math-y -- but every once in a while, one comes along that works for me. Here's one that solves the mystery of why I don't have all the cool stuff that was promised to me by '80s-vintage Science Digest magazines:

Yeah, that makes perfect sense...

Posted by at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By some strange confluence of historical currents, there seems to be a number of noteworthy anniversaries happening within days of each other this week. The most significant, of course, is the fall of the Berlin Wall on this very night 20 years ago, when ordinary Germans took matters into their own hands -- literally, considering they went after the Wall with hammers, crowbars, and even their fingers -- and put an end to one of the most powerful symbols of Cold War tension and communist repression, while border guards and secret police stood by and let it happen without firing a shot.

Continue reading "Anniversaries of Note" »

Posted by at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Or so I hope. It's a photo of Sigourney Weaver eating a hot dog:

Why? I dunno. It amuses me, and I thought it might amuse my Loyal Readers. And after the day I had at work, and the heavy associations this day holds, and the earlier unpleasantness over Rep. Wilson, I figure we could all use some amusement.

Incidentally, the hot-dog-shaped hot-dog stand in the background is Tail o' the Pup, a Los Angeles-area landmark and a well-known example of programmatic architecture, i.e., buildings that were made to look like other objects, usually the products sold inside them, like giant donuts and such. Sadly, the Pup has been MIA since 2005, when it was evicted from its old lot by development plans. It was supposedly placed into storage until it could be relocated, but it's been four years now and I can't find any news about it coming back. I hope it does eventually. The world needs a hot-dog stand that looks like a hot dog.

I visited Tail o' the Pup shortly before it closed down, but I was on my way to the airport and had already lunched, so I only had a cherry Coke. That's another reason I hope it eventually reopens, so I can actually experience eating a dog there...

Posted by at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While I was rounding up info links for the previous entry, I stumbled across something pretty cool: it seems there's a Flying Boat Museum in Foynes, Ireland, which was one of the refueling stops for the Pan-Am Clippers on the North Atlantic run between New York and Great Britain. (It was also, according to lore, the place where Irish coffee was first concocted, a notable historical first as well.) The Foynes Flying Boat Museum is apparently the only aviation museum in Ireland, and the only one in the entire world dedicated to the flying boats. All of which is noteworthy, but the thing that really caught my interest is that this museum has a full-scale replica of a Boeing 314!

Behold:

Based on the museum's 314 photo gallery, it looks fairly complete and accurate, inside and out. It may not be a real Clipper, but I'd guess it's as close to real as we can get in this graceless age of ours. This is definitely something to put on my "places to visit" list.

And hey, Jimmy Buffett has been there! Just in case you need anything more to pique your interest!

Posted by at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In addition to those glorious old warbirds I sometimes write about, I've long been fascinated by another extinct class of aircraft from the 1930s and '40s: the flying boat.

Oh, we still have seaplanes and amphibious jobs, but these are tiny, degenerate remnants of a once-proud genus, like the Geico gecko compared to a full-grown T. Rex. What I'm talking about are the big airliners of aviation's Golden Age, Pan-Am's legendary Clipper ships, the first practical transoceanic passenger planes. The largest of these, the Boeing 314s with their sitting lounges and private sleeping compartments, had more in common with Pullman cars than our modern-day jet airliners; the journey across the Atlantic may have taken days instead of mere hours in those days, but the comfort and even luxury offered by these birds would seem downright decadent to an economy-class flyer of the 21st century.

Sadly, none of the mighty Clippers have survived, not even as static display pieces in a museum somewhere. They were all destroyed during the war, or crashed, or, worst of all, were broken up for scrap after they became obsolete. Much like Zeppelins and Titanic-style ocean liners, the Clippers can never be anything more to me than a romantic fantasy of a time I never saw, no more real than the Millenium Falcon.

Which is why I was absolutely gobsmacked to learn the other day (via Boing Boing, living up to its boast of being "a directory of wonderful things") that there are in fact a couple of giant flying boats still around, and one of them is currently helping fight that big fire in the hills above Los Angeles. It's not a Clipper ship, true -- it's something even bigger, a Martin Mars, the largest flying boat ever produced. (Howard Hughes' infamous H4 -- the Spruce Goose -- is bigger than a Mars, but the Goose was only a prototype that never made it into production). With a wingspan of 200 feet and an overall length slightly more than 117, the Mars tops even the Boeing 314, which was a mere 106 feet long, and had a much shorter wingspan of 152 feet. Only seven of these monsters were built, and of those, only two remain. Both were converted into firefighting waterbombers in the 1960s, along with two others that aren't with us any longer (one crashed and another was demolished by a hurricane). Not to bore y'all with too many statistics, but the numbers on these things astound me: they can deliver a payload of 7,200 gallons of water mixed with various fire-retardant chemicals, enough to cover four acres in a single drop, and then they can reload just by skimming across a lake and be back on target in as little as 15 minutes. And they're pretty, too, as the pic above and the others in this gallery demonstrate.

I've said before that it's much more satisfying to see an old machine still working and doing (more or less) what it was built for than sitting dead in a museum like a butterfly with a pin through its back. Don't get me wrong; museums serve an important function, and I'll take a preserved, inoperable airplane or automobile over a yellowing photo any day. But it makes me happy to know that these 64-year-old ladies are still out there proving themselves against newer, less-stylish competitors. If you want to see how awesome these planes are, check out the videos on this page.

There's a detailed history of the Martin Mars here, and you can find the website for Coulson Flying Tankers, the company that owns and operates the last two Marses, here. Be sure to check out that photo gallery!

Postscript: On a related note, see also Telstar Logistics' report on another big-ass plane that's been pressed into service against the Station fire. It's a converted 747!

Posted by at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a note for any local readers who may be looking for something interesting to do this weekend: a pair of World War II-era bomber planes are going to be in the area, on display and open to the public for tours. It's the same pair I've written about before, the B-24 and B-17 that are owned and operated by The Collings Foundation out of Stow, Massachusetts. As an added bonus this year, they've brought along a "little friend" -- a P-51 fighter, just like the ones that used to escort the bombers on their missions over Europe 65 years ago.

Even if you're not into airplanes per se, I urge you to take advantage of this rare opportunity to see three functioning pieces of an increasingly distant moment in history. Take your children, if you've got them, and help them understand that history isn't just a list of dates in some dry-as-dust textbook, that it's composed of real events that happened to real, breathing people. Nothing makes that point more strongly, in my opinion, than something like an ancient airplane that still flies and smells of oil and exhaust and hot metal, something that still lives. When you're around objects like that, it's easier to imagine what our grandparents -- or great-grandparents, I suppose, for the kids today -- experienced and felt and accomplished. You can sense the past in ways you just don't get from a book or a sterile specimen sitting behind velvet ropes in a museum somewhere. I find it exhilarating, myself.

Speaking of exhilarating, if you can afford it, you really must look into booking a flight experience. My dad and I went for a ride in the B-24 a few years ago, and it was one of the flat-out coolest things we've ever done. I can't gush enough about it. It was also a great bonding moment for a couple of grown men who often can't find anything to talk about, if that gives you any ideas.

But if the flight experience is beyond your means, at least go for the walkthrough tour. The Wings of Freedom tour will be stopping at the Heber City airport tomorrow through Sunday, and then will appear at Provo's municipal airport on Monday and Tuesday. I understand the walkthroughs will be offered from 1000 to 1700 hours (that's 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., for you civilian types). In the meantime, you can click that photo up there at the top and be treated to a ridiculously huge view that's almost -- but not quite -- as good as seeing the real thing...

Posted by at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A story that began on a cold April night nearly a century ago has finally come to an end with the death of Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the RMS Titanic. Dean was only an infant when the great liner struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and became the most famous shipwreck of all time. How very strange it must've been for her to live out her 97 years in the shadow of a momentous event that she had no memory of herself.

I've been interested in the Titanic for a very long time, since well before James Cameron's blockbuster movie became a cultural phenomenon in 1997, and even before Dr. Robert Ballard found her mangled remains on the ocean floor in 1985. I can't really explain the attraction, except to say that it's the rare case of genuine history that reads like a densely detailed novel. There is a huge cast of flawed, noble, heroic, lovable, cowardly, and ultimately fascinating characters. There is hubris and tragedy. There are coincidences and outright mistakes that make you wince and whisper to an empty room, "If only..." And there is the ship herself, the technological summit of her age, a thing of beauty and grace that must've been simply breathtaking to behold.

Now with Millvina's passing, I feel as if the novel is complete. And just like when you've been reading one of those fat, rich, satisfying books, I find myself saddened by coming at last to the final page.

Millvina Dean was an interesting woman, in spite of her protest that she was really quite ordinary; you can read about her life and her thoughts on Titanic here. My understanding is that she never saw any of the many movies about the disaster, because she didn't want to think about how her father and the other casualties met their ends. But while she may have had no use for Hollywood, the movie industry was kind to her. In one of those heartwarming gestures that remind us celebrities are human beings after all, the stars and director of the biggest Titanic movie of them all -- Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and James Cameron -- had only weeks ago contributed heavily to a charity fund established to help pay her nursing home bills. I remember spotting that item in one of The Girlfriend's celebrity gossip magazines a while back; I planned to blog about it, but the moment got away from me.

One final thought: in yet another one of those amazingly literary touches that seem to infuse the story of the lost Titanic, the day Millvina died, May 31, just happened to also be the anniversary of the ship's launching 98 years earlier. You rarely encounter a piece of symmetry so fitting.

Posted by at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sometimes, when everything is grim and the world is going to hell around you, the best thing to do is just try and regress back in your mind to the age of about fifteen or so. I find that looking at pretty girls helps (specifically, non-trashy-douchebag-loving girls). If there aren't any real, live pretty girls in the vicinity (or if they all happen to be of the TBL variety that was infesting the mall yesterday), I tend to prefer some old-fashioned pin-up art, the sort of thing that goes by the name of cheesecake or "good girl art." Here's a nice example I picked up in my blog-reading:

I have no idea who this character is -- she apparently comes from a comic-book called Airboy, which I am totally unfamiliar with (although it sounds like the sort of thing I'd probably groove on) -- but I like the drape of her jodhpurs. This sketch is by Gene Gonzales, via Michael May. Gene's got a lot of other fun pieces over at his blog, including a nifty refutation of George Lucas' odd notion that there aren't any foundational undergarments in his far, far away galaxy...

Ah, girls. I feel better now...

Posted by at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Long-time readers of this blog know that one of my favorite local folk heroes is a guy named Melvin Dummar, the blue-collar ne'er-do-well who has claimed for decades that he once gave a lift on a frigid night to a scruffy old man who later turned out to be Howard Hughes. If you'll recall, Dummar was named as a beneficiary in the infamous "Mormon Will," which was determined by a 1978 probate court to have been a fraud. Dummar stuck by his story over the years, however, and in 2006, following the publication of a book that backed up his claims and built a convincing case for how the probate trial may have been rigged against him, he tried again to recover the share of Hughes' fabulous fortune he believes he was promised. He filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court here in Salt Lake, only to have the suit dismissed in 2007 by a judge who sided with the '78 verdict. Dummar is nothing if not tenacious, though, so he filed an appeal...

And this afternoon he lost yet again when the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the '07 dismissal of his suit. I'm ashamed to admit I don't know much about the court system, but I think he's probably finished at this point. No more appeals, no way forward.

I've said many times before that I'm inclined to believe Dummar's story -- what can I say, I'm a romantic who likes a good story, and I like it even better when the story ends with the little guy winning -- so I can't help but feel sorry for him. Assuming he's on the level, it must have been hell for him to have lived half his life knowing that a simple act of kindness put him within inches of the biggest brass ring there's ever been -- Hughes was worth billions, and the Mormon Will promised Melvin 1/16th of that, more than enough to turn any average joe into Daddy Warbucks -- but forces entirely beyond his control ripped it all away from him. To then compound that loss with the knowledge that much of the public thinks he's a liar... it's tragic, really.

Melvin, buddy, if by some chance you ever stumble across my little scribblings here, drop me a line, will you? I can't do much to help you, but I'd love to buy you a cold one and lend a sympathetic ear...

Posted by at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In case you're not sure, you can go to hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com for a definitive answer. The site even has an RSS feed so you can get periodic updates through your aggregator.

I don't know about you, but I feel much better knowing there's a way to verify at a moment's notice whether we're still here. Because sometimes I honestly can't tell...

Posted by at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So, are you wondering exactly what this Large Hadron Collider doohickey actually does? When it's not creating black holes that are going to suck us into the Bearded-Spock dimension, that is? Then check out this informative video that was created by Chris Mann, an employee of CERN (that's the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the scientific group that actually built and operates the LHC):

Pretty fascinating, eh? Of course, everything seems more interesting when it's narrated in an erudite-sounding British accent. This guy could recite his grocery list and make it sound like the most significant bit of scholarship ever conceived. That's just one of those curious facts of life...

(Hat tip to Neatorama, my latest morning-coffee read.)

Posted by at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today is the day scientists in Switzerland activate the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest particle accelerator ever built, which will boost two streams of protons moving in opposite directions to just under the speed of light and then smack 'em together. The goal is to re-create the exotic particles that are theorized to have existed right after the Big Bang, increase our understanding of how all this wonderful stuff around us actually works, and maybe even figure out the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

You may have heard some scary talk about this thing creating a black hole that will pulverize the earth and rip a hole in the very fabric of space and time. Reliable sources say this is bull. Personally, I'm hoping that if we do get sucked into a parallel dimension, it'll be one where I'm taller, cooler, and still have a full head of hair.

Of course, it's possible we've already been pulled into another universe. That would explain so many things that have occurred over the last few years...

[Extra credit to the first Loyal Reader who can identify the image above...]

Posted by at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Far out on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley -- about as far west as you can go without piling into a mountain, actually -- there's a little town called Magna.

My local readers probably all just snickered; Magna doesn't get a lot of respect around here. It began a century or so ago as a company town housing workers for a nearby mine and smelter, and it's never managed to live down its humble roots or its rough-and-tumble reputation. It's certainly not a place you'd think to go in search of an enjoyable night of live theater. But that's exactly what The Girlfriend and I experienced Friday night at a charming little place called the Empress Theatre.

Continue reading "A New Discovery: The Empress Theatre" »

Posted by at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

While I was seeking out links for the previous entry, I came across the photo below and thought it was too awesome not to share:

Continue reading "Speaking of Warbirds and F-16s..." »

Posted by at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hm... I just read some news that kind of startled me: the Air Force is retiring its F-117A Nighthawk fighter planes -- a.k.a. "the stealth fighter" -- this month. Next week, in fact. Monday, to be precise.

And why is this startling, you may ask? Mostly because it doesn't seem like these weird little black arrowheads have been around all that long, but the article I read reveals that they've actually been in service for over twenty years, ever since 1983, although the Air Force denied their existence until 1988. (Makes you wonder how many UFO sightings prior to '88 were actually Nighthawks being tested out and then flown on secret missions, doesn't it?)

Continue reading "Air Force Retiring the Nighthawk" »

Posted by at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Just in case desktop computers, HDTV, and cellphones are insufficiently science-fiction-y for you, we're soon going to have light-emitting wallpaper and vat-grown hamburgers.

I am frankly flabbergasted by this stuff. And also by the fact that I just glanced out my window and it's freaking snowing. On a sunny day, no less. I love springtime in Utah...

Posted by at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Among my various esoteric interests is a curious -- some would say morbid -- fascination for the infamous tragedies of history: Pompeii, the Hindenberg crash, and of course, the grandmother of disaster stories, the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

Today is the 96th anniversary of what author Walter Lord called "a night to remember," i.e., the night the supposedly unsinkable ship struck an iceberg while on her maiden -- and only -- voyage. (Technically, the ship hit the iceberg late on the night of April 14, but it took two and a half hours to go down, so it actually sank on the 15th.)

Public interest in this particular shipwreck never seems to wane, for some reason, and to this day people are still debating over what exactly happened out there in the North Atlantic. Oh, sure, everyone knows the ship hit a 'berg, but was it ripped open like a giant can of anchovies by a sharp spur of ice, as so many movies have depicted? Or was the damage actually something more... subtle? Caused by something innocuous that nobody thought would be a problem, like the stupidly mundane combination of rubber o-rings and freezing temperatures that brought down the space shuttle Challenger?

Here's a theory: it was the rivets that held the ship together. More precisely, according to two authors of an upcoming book, it was rivets made of inferior, brittle materials that shattered when the iceberg gently brushed -- not ripped into -- Titanic's side. According to this theory -- which is backed up by observations of the wreck itself on the ocean floor -- the ship wasn't torn open, as everyone has believed; rather, the broken rivets allowed the hull plates to simply open up along their seams. The end result was the same, of course.

Continue reading "So What Really Sank the Titanic?" »

Posted by at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love this photo:

Why? Well, why not? It's in groovy black-and-white and has the slightly flattened, zoomed-in perspective that I often shoot with myself. There's some awesome mid-century googie architecture in the background, and it looks like that's probably the famous Randy's Donuts to the right. Oh, and there's frickin' Dr. Zaius sitting on a bus-bench in modern-day (well, 1968, anyway) Los Angeles. How could you not love this?

I found it here, via Boing Boing, of course. I recommend checking out all of the photos in that set. There's a lot of beautiful, nostalgic, and somewhat weird stuff. Be warned, though -- there is some hippie-style nudity. If that sort of thing bothers you.

Posted by at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following up on the possibility that a new clue to the fate of hijacker D.B. Cooper had been found, Earl Cossey, the man who packed the four parachutes given to Cooper on that night in 1971, says the 'chute discovered by some children in Washington state is definitely not one of Cooper's. Cooper's parachutes were made of nylon, and the mystery 'chute is silk. (I'm guessing that would make it much older than Cooper's, possibly even World War II-vintage.)

For the record, Cossey sounds like something of a dick. He apparently told some reporters that the 'chute really was Cooper's, just to yank their chains. I'm sure it must be tiresome being the go-to man whenever anyone turns up a rag that they think might be Cooper-related, but still... playing games like that strikes me as very uncool, especially when it might get somebody fired.

And for the other record, I still think Cooper survived his jump, made off with the bulk of the cash, and spent the rest of his days drinking margaritas in the sun... it makes for a better story that way.

Posted by at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a real affection for unsolved mysteries, the kinds of stories that forever fascinate people so long as we never definitively learn what actually happened. Did Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan run out of fuel, crash in open water, and drown, or did they manage to set down on some uncharted rock somewhere and live as castaways, at least for a time? Were Butch and Sundance killed in a shootout with government troops in Bolivia or did one or both of them manage to slip away and return to the U.S., where they assumed new identities and lived to be old men? Was Brushy Bill Roberts really Billy the Kid, as he claimed, or was he just crazy? The possibilities are invariably more exciting than mundane (and frequently very grim) fact, which is why I always find myself rejoicing a bit when some new piece of evidence in these cases raises more questions than it solves.

Consider, for example, this story about the discovery of an old parachute in southwestern Washington. In a nutshell, some kids found a 'chute partly buried in the woods near where the notorious hijacker D.B. Cooper is believed to have jumped from a 727 way back in 1971 with $200,000 in cash, and there's some speculation that the 'chute may have been his.

That's pretty cool on its own, but here's the interesting thing about today's news: Some of Cooper's money was found on a beach near Vancouver in 1980; the official theory has long been that Cooper did not survive his jump and the recovered cash had washed down the Washougal River to arrive on the beach. But if Cooper came down in the area where this parachute has been found, there's no way that recovered cash could have naturally ended up in the Washougal. In other words, Cooper may have survived his landing and somehow lost some of his dough miles away, or else somebody else found the money and later dropped some of it in the Washougal. Either way, it's a far more interesting thought than the image of a dead hijacker hanging in a tree somewhere with a broken neck and his ill-gotten booty falling into a river. (For the record, I like to believe that Cooper survived, eluded capture, and lived it up somewhere. I also like to think that Butch Cassidy returned to the States and visited his sister in 1925, just as she claimed. What can I say? I'm a romantic with a thing for lovable rogues.)

The FBI is currently examining the parachute to determine if it's the right type and age to have been Cooper's. I hope it is, for the sake of a good story...

Posted by at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Normally I don't dwell over obituaries after I write my own tribute to the deceased, but in the case of Dave Stevens, I'm learning a lot of interesting things about a guy I actually knew little about.

For instance, the LA Times obit notes that Stevens drew storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark -- the Official Star Wars blog specifies that Stevens illustrated the truck-fight sequence and "a famous lost Shanghai scene from Raiders which was later repurposed for Temple of Doom," a little piece of trivia I've never encountered before -- as well as Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video in 1983. (A slight tangent: I just purchased the 25th anniversary CD of the Thriller album, which includes a bonus disc of videos; I'd forgotten just how captivating and entertaining that "Thriller" vid is. Jackson may have turned into a creepy loon over the years, but at his creative peak, he really was something. An immense talent derailed by, I believe, psychological problems that no one wants to call him on.)

Continue reading "More on Dave Stevens" »

Posted by at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Damn. Another one. It seems to be the week for tributes to the departed. This one will require a bit of set-up, so here we go:

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Dave Stevens" »

Posted by at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's another item to put on the list of Everyday Stuff We Grew Up With That's Now Consigned to the Dustbins of History: Polaroid photography.

I just read that the Polaroid company plans to stop making its "instant film" as soon as there's enough stockpiled to carry it through the rest of this year. (The company already stopped making Polaroid cameras a while back.) There is some talk of licensing the technology to other manufacturers, in order to keep die-hard niche enthusiasts supplied, but for all intents and purposes, the photo technique preferred by grandmas everywhere in the 1970s and '80s is dead.

Continue reading "Another Victim of Progress" »

Posted by at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaking of movie posters, I just read on PosterWire.com that the artist John Alvin has died. There's a more detailed article here. He was only 59.

Alvin was the man behind many of the best-remembered one-sheet designs of the '70s and '80s, including Young Frankenstein, Empire of the Sun, The Lost Boys, The Color Purple, and Gremlins. His posters for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Blade Runner are iconic.

As I've mentioned before, I started collecting one-sheets when I was working as an usher and later a projectionist for the local multiplex. Alvin was in full bloom during that period, and many of the posters he designed for movies we ran found their way into my Archives.

If you click over to this fan site, you're sure to recognize much more of his work than what I've linked to here. Alvin's style wasn't as recognizable as Drew Struzan's, but it also didn't suffer from the predictable quality of Struzan's work. (It's always fairly easy to tell which publicity still Struzan has copied a facial expression or a pose from, even though he does magical things with the image.) Alvin's images were frequently more graphical than portrait-like, using silhouettes instead of clear faces, for example, and clean patches of color with no detail in them. It was distinctive. And it was beautiful in its own regards.

Movie posters have always excited me, stirred my imagination, whetted my appetite for the cinematic experience to come, and reminded me of the good times I've had in the dark. Alvin's posters were especially good at accomplishing those tasks. I'll miss the work he may have done in the future.

Posted by at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Catching up on some of the news from over the weekend, I see that the mysterious "Poe Toaster" made his annual visit to Edgar Allan's grave, leaving behind the customary tribute of roses and cognac for the author's birthday. This pleases me; I was afraid the controversy last fall over the Toaster's identity might have disrupted or even ended the tradition for good, and that would have been a real shame. We need these strange rituals and half-legendary figures, I think. If we ever clear up all the mysteries, the world will be diminished for it.

I was a little bummed to hear, however, that "the visitor no longer wears the wide-brimmed hat and scarf he donned in the past." That's too bad. I've always liked the idea that the Toaster was actually Lamont Cranston...

Posted by at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think part of the reason why the American Civil War continues to hold such a grip on the popular imagination is because it was the first major historical event to be extensively documented by photography. Even the most realistic painting doesn't have the immediacy of a photograph, that realization that the person in the image was once a real, living, breathing, sweating, honest-to-god human being rather than somebody the artist made up, coupled with the eerie sense that maybe, if you could somehow figure out how to extend your fingers through the surface of the photographic medium -- the paper, or tin, or glass -- you could actually touch that person, even if they've been dead for decades. Photos from the Civil War are doubly eerie because of the technique that was used to make them, something called collodion, or "wet-plate" photography. For various technical reasons I don't entirely understand and won't attempt to work out here, wet-plate photos are simultaneously very detailed and yet they have kind of a ghostly quality, too, as if the subject isn't entirely of this earth. Every individual whisker stands out on a man's chin, but if the person has blue eyes, they appear to be inhumanly transparent. You can see swirls of the chemicals used to create the image, since they were literally wet and oozing down the surface of the negative, or "plate," at the moment the picture was taken, and this lends a curious, otherworldly patina. And then you add in artifacts created by the cameras of the day, the dark circular vignetting around the corners of the image, the shallow depth of focus, or the slight motion blur created by very long exposure times, and it all adds up to something we've been conditioned to interpret as the look of old photographs. But it isn't really chronological age that produces this unique appearance; it's simply the photographic technique that was used. The pictures looked that way the day they were taken.

For some examples of what I'm talking about, have a look at The Soldier Portraits Project, in which modern-day soldiers are photographed using the 150-year-old wet-plate process. The results are hauntingly beautiful and timeless. The image I've posted above is one I particularly like; I think if this man weren't wearing a wristwatch, it'd be tough to place exactly what era he comes from, and I find that fascinating. It reinforces a truth which I think is lost on a lot of high-school kids as they nap through boring history classes, namely that people who lived 150 years ago were no different from the people you see everyday on the street. Go check out the complete portfolio; it's really neat stuff...

Posted by at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just learned an interesting factoid: on this date in 1933, my own home state of Utah ratified the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, casting the critical vote that established a three-quarters majority and overturned Prohibition. Yes, that's right: because of Utah, the nation was able to start drinking again. Well, legally drinking, anyway. Ironic, considering a lot of modern-day Utahns would probably like to bring back Prohibition, and our local liquor laws seem designed to make getting a drink as inconvenient as possible without outright banning the stuff. But that's history for you. Times change.

This website here has information about the event, including the text of the 21st Amendment and the one it repealed, the 18th Amendment, as well as a proposal that this should be a national holiday in tribute to our Constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms... especially the one that allows us to get plastered if we so choose. Now that's a holiday I can get behind...

Posted by at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I have something of a fascination for Japanese culture, which seems to my admittedly uneducated eye to be equal parts beautiful, mysterious, and childish. Japanese TV is the greatest, a often baffling exercise in... well, silliness. Consider the following, which seems to be something like the old Candid Camera show here in the US. We've got a Spanish speed-walking champion out on the track doing his thing, and a group of phony samurai poised to see if they can get him to break his stride:

I love the dramatic Godzilla/anime-style music as the samurai chase this dude around the track, and the way the speed-walker actually thanks the TV show when he finds out what's going on, as if he's thrilled to have had a practical joke played on him. (He says, "Arigato," which, thanks to the immortal song-writing capabilities of Dennis De Young, we know means "thank you.") And who would've guessed that the Japanese for "stand by" is... "stand by"? Fascinating...

Posted by at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I just came across some very exciting science news: two separate research teams have announced that they've found a way to turn ordinary adult skin cells into stem cells, those amazing little shapeshifters that can become any of the 200 types of cells found throughout the human body and which hold the potential of solving any number of illnesses. Not only is this an impressive technical achievement, but it offers a way out of the pesky ethical debate that surrounds the use of embryonic stem cells for research or therapy.

(For the record, I personally have no problem with using embryonic stem cells for research or therapy. Fertility clinics all over the country dispose of thousands of embryos every day. What's more immoral: chucking them in the dumpster with last night's Chinese take-out, or repurposing them to ease human suffering? Pretty simple equation in my view.)

This new breakthrough isn't without its own problems, of course:

Their enthusiasm notwithstanding, scientists warned that medical treatments are not immediately at hand. The new method uses genetically engineered viruses to transform adult cells into embryo-like ones, and those viruses can trigger tumors.But the cells will be instantly useful for research -- "to move a patient's disease into a petri dish," as Daley put it. And some scientists predicted that, with the basic secret now in hand, it could be a mere matter of months before virus-free methods for making the versatile cells are found.

Nevertheless, it feels like we're really, really close to something truly wonderful. Close enough that I can't help but feel impatient for its arrival. How long before anyone who needs a new heart or liver can get one, a perfect genetic match grown from a simple arm scrape in a matter of days or weeks instead of forcing them to wait for years for a suitable donor to die? How long before men and women like the late Chris Reeve can get up out of their chairs and walk again, thanks to a regenerated spinal cord? How long before the dreaded words "Lou Gehrig's Disease" cease to have any meaning? The end of all that "vale of tears" shit can't come soon enough for me.

In a lot of ways, I despise living at this moment in history. The future we've been given, full of political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and plain old fear, isn't the one we were promised by popular culture. But there are compensations for all that, aren't there? A few, anyway...

Posted by at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How wild is this: investigators with the Salt Lake County Sheriff's office have recovered several items that are believed to have come from Adolf Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" chalet and may even have been personal possessions of Der Fuhrer himself! The items were apparently brought home from Germany as souvenirs following World War II, and they eventually ended up in a storage locker in West Valley City, from which they were stolen in 2005.

Continue reading "Hitler's Stuff Found in Salt Lake!" »

Posted by at 1:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you, like me, are interested in the strange, sad tale of Melvin Dummar, Howard Hughes, and the so-called "Mormon Will," check out this profile of Melvin in today's Salt Lake Tribune. I think it provides a reasonably balanced overview of Melvin's life and his claims about meeting Hughes, neither supporting nor denouncing him but simply presenting the evidence -- which, at this point in time, is mostly hearsay -- for both points of view. As I've said before, I personally think he's on the level about giving Hughes a ride, and I also think it's plausible that the Mormon Will was the real thing. That said, I highly doubt he's going to see any of the money he's now trying to so desperately to sue out of Howard's surviving heirs. Even though Melvin's experience with Howard sounds like something out of a movie, in real life the little guys almost never win the fight and earn their reward in the end. The odds are too much against them. But I do love them for trying...

Posted by at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two of my favorite stories in my younger days were Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core. (Notice I said stories, because, as it happened, I first knew these tales through their movie incarnations, and only came to the original novels later on, with a detour through the Classic Comics versions in between.) Both works stem from the premise that our planet is hollow, or at least contains vast subterranean open spaces, and that there is life, usually some weird mishmash of prehistoric beasts and highly advanced civilizations, in this interior realm.

It's actually a pretty common idea within a certain subset of fantasy-adventure pulp fiction. But just recently I've learned that there are apparently people out there who think it's more than just a good idea for a story. Some people really think the Hollow Earth theory is possible... and one guy aims to prove it:

Continue reading "Beware of Pterodactyls" »

Posted by at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There were a couple of developments last week in the ongoing saga of Melvin Dummar, the Utah native who claims to have done a good deed for gazillionaire Howard Hughes back in the '60s and has spent the last four decades getting hosed because of it. Neither event was especially good news for poor old Mel.

Continue reading "Melvin's Latest Setbacks" »

Posted by at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I seem to be time-travelling today anyhow (I've already been to 1999 and 1976), let's take a moment to consider the future...

Continue reading "The Future That Never Happened" »

Posted by at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a vintage photo of a B-24 fresh off the assembly line, ca. 1944. Why? 'Cause I think it's a cool photo, and because, if you'll recall, I took a ride on one of these babies a few years back and I have a real soft spot for the model:

Click to embiggen. Source here.

Posted by at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, you remember a year or so back when a cruise ship repelled pirates using a new-fangled sound-based weapon? An entry today at the blog Danger Room features a report from someone who's actually been hit with the Long-Range Acoustic Device, a.k.a. "sonic blaster," as well as a a video of one in operation. There's not much to see in the video, but you can hear what the weapon sounds like. Oddly enough (or perhaps not, given my geekly inclinations), the weapon reminds me of the distinctive sound made by the giant, radioactive ants in the classic "big-bug" movie Them!; who knows, maybe that is the sound effect being played through the blaster, which is essentially just a souped-up loudspeaker.

Danger Room also recently posted a witness account and video of another "less-lethal" weapon being demonstrated, a "pain ray" that makes you feel as if your skin is boiling. That can be found here.

I honestly don't know how I feel about these weapons. I suppose it's a good thing that we are developing options that don't require genuinely injuring the target, but there's something very discomforting about these things. Something creepy. Maybe I'm just having trouble getting used to the idea that the science fiction I grew up on is becoming everyday life...

Posted by at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Telstar Logistics, the blog that got me thinking about maglevs the other day, has posted an account of what it's like to actually ride one, specifically the three-year-old Shanghai Maglev that connects the city to Pudong Airport:

...It was very shaky, despite the magnetic levitation. The train was going so fast that it is constantly bobbing horizontally as it seriously banks from side to side. The rolling/weaving makes it hard to walk around when it reaches top speed; indeed they don't want you to even stand up then. The tracks parallel the highway so cars look like they are going backwards. The entire train rides lasts less than 8 minutes. On the way in to Shanghai it took us 1.5 hours to travel the same distance in a taxi late at night.

I'm surprised (and, truth be told, disappointed) that the ride is so rough. I would've thought that it would be smoother than an ordinary train because of the levitation effect, but then, I suppose at those kinds of speeds it would be difficult (if not impossible) to avoid some kind of buffeting and turbulence from the airflow. Perhaps this is an engineering thing that could be solved, as opposed to a limitation of maglev technology? Anyone?

Posted by at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a follow-up to the previous entry, a video that looks like it was originally a news clip. It details the Japanese effort, shows how the technology works, and includes lots of footage of the prototype train racing along its 18-kilometer test track. The clip is several years old, and a little pessimistic on the funding issue, but it's neat stuff...

[Update: I've found another one, a compilation of home-video clips shot by curious tourists, several of them from ground level, right alongside the track, so you can really get a sense of the speed and relative quiet of this machine. It's on the other side of the break...]

Continue reading "Japanese Maglev Video" »

Posted by at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of the Bennion Archive, I've got a stack of old Science Digest magazines, a gift subscription my parents bought for me around 1982 or thereabouts. I keep meaning to have a look through them some mellow afternoon when I have nothing better to do, and I've even had thoughts of scanning the more interesting covers for my photo gallery, but naturally I never seem to find the time.

Continue reading "A Japanese Maglev by 2025?" »

Posted by at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When last we encountered Melvin Dummar, the Utah native who claims to have once given Howard Hughes a ride and that he's owed a share of the Hughes fortune, his last-ditch lawsuit -- which alleged that new-found evidence showed the original 1978 probate trial was tainted by false testimony -- had been thrown out by the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake. I figured that would be the last we'd hear of old Mel until the time came for an obit.

Looks like I was wrong. Melvin has now filed a new lawsuit in Nevada, repeating the same claims as last year's failed Utah suit. As I've said before, I'm inclined to believe Melvin's story, both because it seems plausible based on what I know about Howard, and also because it's just such a damn good story. Such an American story, really, the tall tale that has the ring of truth, of two self-made (or, in Melvin's case, self-defeating) men who meet by chance in the wide open Western deserts.

I wish him luck with this new suit, although I remain pessimistic about his chances of actually getting anything...

Posted by at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shoot... I wish this wasn't scheduled in the middle of the day, when I'll be tied to my desk here in the Proofreader's Cave: the filmmaker Ken Burns will be speaking at BYU tomorrow at 11 a.m. His masterpiece documentary series The Civil War was one of the most profoundly moving television programs I've ever seen, and I'm looking forward to his new series about World War II with great anticipation.

It'll be interesting to see exactly how he stages this new documentary. His signature style -- slow pans across or zooms into a vintage photograph while actors read from writings contemporary to the photo's subject -- has been much copied, almost to the point of cliche, but Burns can still wring deep emotions from the technique. He's that good at what he does. However, in the case of WW II, there is a tremendous amount of motion-picture footage available -- a resource he obviously didn't have when he was discussing the Civil War -- so will he continue on with the stills because they're "his thing," or make more use of moving images? I suppose it will depend on the effect he's trying to achieve... but if he does go the motion-picture route, what will then differentiate his World War II series from all the other docs about that war, which is probably the most "documentarized" subject in world history?

I guess we'll find out... The War is scheduled to air on PBS stations in September. In the meantime, if anyone reading this happens to attend Burns' presentation tomorrow, drop me a line. I'd love to hear your impressions of him.

Posted by at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some random stuff I've run across in recent days and would like to share with my Three Loyal Readers:

Continue reading "Drive-By Blogging" »

Posted by at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new Airbus A380 superjumbo jetliner arrived on American soil for the first time yesterday (two of them, actually, one in LA and one at New York's JFK) amid much media hoopla. The plane has been somewhat controversial because of production delays and the current inability of most airports to accomodate the behemoth, but to my eye, it's still a pretty impressive machine, if not exactly a pretty one. (Its two-deck design makes the fuselage look rather stocky, but I guess there wasn't any other way to accomodate over 500 passengers without going to a radically different configuration.) I'm especially intrigued by the "tail cam," a continuous video feed from the outside the plane that can be displayed on the individual seat-back monitors. When I flew to Germany a few years ago, I spent a good part of the journey mesmerized by a map feature that showed the plane's progress across the Atlantic in real time, a la the "red-line transit montage" in each of the Indiana Jones movies; the A380 tail cam sounds like a nice companion to that.

For all the talk about the A380's size, however -- every article I've seen mentions that it's bigger than a 747, which, for anyone who's ever flown on one of those venerable birds, is a pretty impressive statistic -- this new liner is still not quite the equal of Howard Hughes' infamous Hercules H-4, a.k.a. the "Spruce Goose." Consider the following nifty chart (which I gleefully swiped from Telstar Logistics):

Continue reading "The A380 and Howard's Folly" »

Posted by at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just to end the day, here are a couple of things that made me say, "coooooo-uhllll," like Bart Simpson when I saw them:

Continue reading "Jet-Man and Earthrace!" »

Posted by at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, the photoblogger Telstar Logistics shares with us pictures from his ride aboard the B-17 Nine o' Nine, a 60-year-old bomber aircraft operated by the Collings Foundation out of Stow, Massachusetts. You may recall that I took a ride aboard another Collings aircraft, a B-24 called -- at that time, anyway -- the Dragon and His Tail, and I absolutely concur with Telstar's assertion that one of these flights is worth every penny of the $400 charge. It's an amazing thrill, and the closest thing to actual time travel I've ever experienced.

Telstar's complete photo set is here; photos of my ride on the Dragon are here (just for comparison's sake, of course!)

Posted by at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Further evidence that we're now living in the future: a Canadian company called XYZ RGB (even the company's name is futuristic!) has created what it calls the "next-generation movie poster":

Continue reading "3-D Video-Enhanced Movie Posters" »

Posted by at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Writing a few days ago about old buildings reminded me of something I read recently. It's yet another passage from the book 1939: The Lost World of the Fair:

Now I've always been fascinated with the world my parents grew up in, I mean the actual look & feel of it, because the change between that time and this seems so uncannily large, as if five centuries had passed and not five decades... I have always wanted so badly to feel what that time was like -- because of a strange belief I suppose I was born with -- that if, somehow, I could feel an era before I was born, the scales would fall from my eyes & and I would then be able to feel my own life, grasp what it is really like, the way you can grasp time after the fact, when it is all over...

--author David Gelernter, speaking through a fictional character's diary in 1939

That quote doesn't entirely capture my own reasons for being fascinated by the artifacts of the past -- a big part of the appeal for me is simple aesthetics; I just plain like all that old stuff -- but it does begin to get at the yearning I seem to feel when I'm around those artifacts. I really would like to experience what the world was like for my parents and grandparents, to know not just how things looked, but how they smelled and sounded, how mundane daily tasks were accomplished. I've always enjoyed historical stories, and stories about time travel and immortal characters, and I think that yearning to have first-hand experience of another time might be partly why.

Shifting gears a bit, I'd like to offer a few thoughts on the book I quoted above. I meant to do a proper review when I finished it a few weeks ago, but as with so many of the entries I plan to do for for this silly blog, the time slipped away from me and I never got around to it.

Continue reading "A Final Word from 1939, and Some Thoughts" »

Posted by at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I discovered it a few months back, EnglishRussia.com has become one of my favorite daily 'net habits. While the photos and videos posted there are sometimes banal or even just plain stupid, they are just as often hauntingly beautiful glimpses of an alien world. Today's entry is especially fascinating: a collection of color photographs taken around the year 1910. The photographer, a chap named Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, came up with a technique of shooting multiple exposures of the same scene through colored filters. When the monochrome pictures were projected over the top of each other, the color of the scene was reconstructed with startlingly realistic accuracy. Nowadays, his images can be easily recombined with digital imaging, and the results look like stills from Doctor Zhivago. But they're not... they're time capsules of people and places that predate the communist revolution that transformed the old Russian Empire into the USSR. Amazing stuff, well worth your time. I especially like these folks...

Posted by at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've mentioned before that I'm fascinated by the life of Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviator, movie producer, Lothario, and eventual recluse and nutcase. There are many chapters in Howard's life story that are worth considering, but one of the most interesting to me personally is the epilogue that comes after his death, the tale of Melvin Dummar and the so-called "Mormon Will."

Continue reading "Melvin and Howard" »

Posted by at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One more item before I call it a weekend. I spotted the following on Boing Boing this morning and thought it was just amazingly cool:

Continue reading "Antique Style" »

Posted by at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A couple of articles that have caught my eye here in the gloaming of a Friday afternoon:

Continue reading "Late Friday Reading" »

Posted by at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the high thirties art, technology and design are so intertwined it is sometimes hard to pry them apart. ...Since 1939 art and technology have broken apart, for many reasons. Architects still design skyscrapers, but they are rarely technological showpieces. we have stopped building bridges. Locomotives nowadays are not candidates for design competitions. Airplanes never were. Artists no longer paint heroic murals. Even if they did, one suspects that technology might not be a favorite subject. (Unless it were the villain?)

The art-and-technology divorce has been a disaster for both parties, and it has profoundly alienated us from the future. "The story of the relcamation of the site and the building of the [New York World's] Fair on it," says the 1939 Guide [to the Fair], "is a romantic saga of modern engineering." Yes, once upon a time, engineering was romantic. ...Today we respect technology, spend heavily on it and can't live without it. But the spiritual glow is long gone. Art has lost its grip on technology, we have lost our grip on the future; and the American religion, in which skyscrapers and steam engines were beautiful and inspiring and numinous sacred objects, is dead.

--David Gelernter, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair

I've been saying for years that one of the most disheartening things about the modern-day world is that, aside from a handful of rare exceptions, nothing has any style anymore. Looks like this author agrees with me.

Posted by at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of my stranger interests -- fueled, no doubt, by seeing Highlander and various Hollywood swashbucklers in my younger days -- is swords. I love a well-choreographed swordfighting scene, and the weapons themselves are often (though not always) beautiful pieces of craftsmanship that verge on genuine art. (I'm talking about actual historical swords now, not the flimsy "decorator" models you can buy for 50 bucks at the state fair.)

If you start to explore the history of swordmaking, it doesn't take long before you run across a mention of Damascus steel. Blades made of this substance could supposedly do things you routinely see in movies but which seem too far-fetched to happen in real life, such as cutting a piece of silk in mid-air, or slicing through other, lesser swords or even stone without losing their edge. The knowledge to make true Damascus swords was lost centuries ago, and today their rumored abilities have the air of legend about them. Like all good legends, they make for good stories, but they're pretty hard to believe in the bright sunshine of everyday life.

Except some researchers think they may have figured out the truth behind the legends, and that truth has a surprisingly 21st Century quality to it. According to an article over at National Geographic.com, German researchers have discovered bundles of carbon nanotubes and nanowires in a Damascus blade made in the 17th Century. These tiny molecular structures are known to be immensely resilient; the scientists believe that layers of them in a blade with softer steel in between results in a unique combination of strength and flexibility. In other words, the stories about Damascus swords could be true.

There are skeptics, of course, who believe that the nanostructures are probably not unusual in well-made blades, and that modern steels far outperform the ancient Damascus metal. It's an interesting finding, nevertheless; I've heard of nanotubes, of course, but I've been under the impression that they were entirely synthetic and only recently created. Maybe those ancient craftsmen knew more than we give them credit for, eh?

Posted by at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Any Star Wars fan worth his shipment of spice will, of course, recognize the tall, white object in the photo above: it's a moisture vaporator, a marvelous machine that pulls fresh water out of the very air and enables human life to survive on the desert planet Tatooine. Nifty idea, but it's just science fiction, right?

Apparently not... Wired.com is reporting that a company called Aqua Sciences has developed a machine that does exactly what Uncle Owen's condensor units supposedly did, and cheaply to boot (about 25 cents to the gallon, according to the company's website). Naturally, the first customer is the Pentagon, which has long sought a way to keep U.S. troops easily supplied with a sustainable water source while operating in arid places like Iraq.

The company spokesman quoted in the article is coy about how the thing works -- it's apparently got something to do with salt -- but the gadget is described as a "20-foot machine [that] can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts." In addition, the machine is not dependent on humidity, like other types of condensation-type technology. Very cool... the only thing I find disappointing is that the actual units look more like ordinary reefer trailers than anything Luke Skywalker ever tinkered with. Ah, well... that's the curse of being a science-fiction fan, I guess: nothing ever looks as cool when it's finally invented for real as it did when it was imagined in the movies.

Posted by at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Today is my 37th birthday, an event I've been anticipating with about the same degree of enthusiasm I usually reserve for defrosting the fridge. Yes, I realize that I just dated myself terribly, since I don't know anyone who's actually needed to defrost their fridge in years, but I'm feeling pretty dated today anyhow, so what the hell. (Incidentally, I apologize to any youngsters out there in the InterTubes that don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Not to worry, it's just grown-up stuff.)

Continue reading "Happy Birthday to Me... and to the Armored Cavalry" »

Posted by at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You're looking at one of the most awesome photographs I think I've ever seen... that big mass of thingies that look like titanium ping-pong balls (and which reminds me of the starship Fesarius from that old episode of Star Trek) is the tip of a tungsten needle, supposedly the sharpest object made by man, under extreme magnification. So extreme, in fact, that each of those little ping-pong balls is in fact an individual atom. That's right, this is a photograph of freakin' atoms. I find that simply astounding... almost as astounding as the fact that the technology to take these photographs has been around since 1951. Isn't science amazing, kids?

The photo originated here; details of the technique used to take the photo are here.

Posted by at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If WMD-shaped computers don't make your pulse race, how about tales of lost airplanes pulled from watery graves?

Continue reading "Recovered Warbird" »

Posted by at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's an interesting tidbit from the weekend's headlines: the last American survivor of Titanic has died at the age of 99.

Lillian Gertrud Asplund was five when the great ship went down; she lost her father and three brothers in the disaster, while her mother and a fourth brother made it into the lifeboat with her. Curiously for a woman of her generation, she never married, and, unlike other survivors, she rarely spoke about what happened on that cold night in the Atlantic.

Continue reading "And Then There Were Two" »

Posted by at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Among my various and sundry oddball interests, I am fascinated by the life and legend of Howard Hughes. His biography is, in my humble estimation, a quintessentially American tragedy, the story of a guy who possessed all the superficial trappings that everyone thinks will make them happy -- wealth, fame, power, sex appeal -- but who ended up as a miserable and pathetic wreck of a human being. The very trait that made him so successful in his various pursuits -- his obsessiveness -- was also his ultimate downfall.

Continue reading "Howard Stories" »

Posted by at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Courtesy of Boing Boing, I've just stumbled onto an absolutely amazing time-capsule: somebody with lots of time on their hands has scanned what looks to be the entire 1983 Sears Wishbook for our Friday viewing pleasure.

I used to love the Sears Wishbook when I was a kid, as well as a similar catalog published by a local Utah retailer called LaBelle's. (I think LaBelle's was local -- I don't recall ever hearing about it being in other states -- but I'm not sure. I may not even be spelling the name correctly. The company carried appliances, electronics, impractical gift items, and fancies for the home; it folded sometime in the late '80s, as I recall.) Reviewing these doorstop-sized paeans to materialism was practically an autumn ritual at my home; I can remember sitting by the fireplace with my mom around Thanksgiving time, paging through the Wishbook and the LaBelle's catalog and circling all the must-have Christmas items with a red Magic Marker. Naturally, I was most interested in the toy pages, especially when they featured some new Star Wars figures, but looking at this online archived version today, I find myself gravitating toward the items that no one really thought to hold onto or collect, the everyday goods that remind me of what it was really like to live in 1983. Seen through my usual haze of nostalgia, twenty years ago doesn't seem that far away to me, but so much of this stuff looks so archaic when you really look at it, especially the electronics with all their tacky, faux-woodgrain cabinets... wow. My late grandmother's antique '30s-vintage radio (which now resides in my living room) actually looks more timeless than that stuff.

Here are some highlights:

Continue reading "Sears Wishbook" »

Posted by at 4:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In my roamings on the InterWeb, I've seen lots of Web sites devoted to "case mods," i.e., computer housings that are custom-built by their owners to be something more interesting and unique than the basic off-white rectangular box you get when you buy a new Dell. I think of case mods as the geeky equivalent of the hot-rod automobiles my dad and his friends love to build, a sort of folk art that enables the builders to express themselves through technology. I've seen some cool ones, too, everything from a TIE fighter computer with an integral desk surface between the wings to a PC built into an antique Philco television. But now I think I've seen it all:

Yes, that is exactly what you think it is: a mannequin of a pretty, vaguely anime-style girl in a bikini with a computer sticking out of her back.

While my first reaction upon seeing this was a vague sense of irritation -- to paraphrase Cedric the Entertainer's line from Be Cool, must you play into the stereotype (of the geek who can't get a date)? -- but the more I studied the photos on the builder's Web site, the more I started to admire the craftsmanship and effort that went into this. The "girl" is actually pretty not-creepy-looking when seen from the front, and having your very own "femputer" (as opposed to a fembot) would definitely make for an interesting conversation starter. Assuming that you're the sort who could get anyone to come over to the house in order to have a conversation, that is. (Hey, just because something is a stereotype doesn't mean it isn't true...)

I don't know -- I think I like it after all. And no, not just for the obvious prurient reasons. It really is a kind of art work, just like a cherry T-bucket. Go have a look at the site and see if you don't agree. The text is all in Japanese, but there are lots of photos showing the construction of the, um, casing in exhaustive detail.

Posted by at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

According to Scalzi, there's a new meme going around based on the historical things that occurred on one's birthday. The idea is that you run over to Wikipedia, enter your birth date (but not the year), and then select some interesting tidbits from the resulting list of information about that date. You're supposed to choose at least three historical events, two births, and one death that all happened on the day you were born. I, of course, find this sort of meaningless trivia fascinating, so I selected a few more items than what was called for...

Continue reading "Birthday Meme" »

Posted by at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's something kind of cool: This morning, a fellow blogger named David left a comment in my entry on those curious scopitone thingies, informing me that today is Joi Lansing's birthday. (She would've been 78 years old, if she hadn't died 34 years ago.) He also linked to my humble site in his own entry on the subject. I don't think I've ever been linked to before; it's rather flattering. Thanks, David!

On a related note, I learned from David's blog that someone has written a novel that revolves around Joi, or at least the idea of Joi:

...Comfort and Joi records one weekend in the life of a man suffering a "low-grade obsession" with real-life bosomy blonde bombshell, Joi Lansing. He shuts himself away in a borrowed house on the coast of California to try to write a book about the minor glamour girl who appeared in such "classics" as Hillbillys in a Haunted House and Queen of Outer Space. But the deeper he goes into her career, the more questions he asks about himself. Offbeat movie history from the fringes of Hollywood triggers haunting personal memories as he follows this "beautiful beacon in a Sargasso of bad filmmaking" and finds an unexpected path to his own past.

I have, of course, added this volume to my wishlist.

Posted by at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In case anyone is curious, the winning bid price on that Enigma machine that was up for auction on eBay came to 55,000 euros, or approximately $67,480.29. The thing I wonder is whether that's a significant investment for the winner or merely pocket change...

Posted by at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm somewhat disappointed that the goofy music video I posted the other day didn't draw more of a response from my three loyal readers, but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. Not every entry can be a winner.

Still, I thought the "Trapped in the Web of Love" clip was interesting enough to warrant some googling, to see if I could figure out what the heck that thing was supposed to be and where it came from. It turns out that my campy little curiosity has a pretty interesting history...

Continue reading "Joi Lansing and the Scopitones" »

Posted by at 5:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here's a little something for you history buffs who have plenty of disposable income: Via Boing Boing, I see that someone has what appears to be a genuine Enigma cipher machine up for auction on eBay.

The Enigma was, of course, the cryptographic device famously used by the Nazis during World War II to generate coded messages. It also happens to be a cool-looking artifact of the pre-electronic world; I'd love to have one of these things in my curio cabinet! (Hint hint, if there are any really generous and wealthy people reading my humble blog...)

Posted by at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The latest blogging innovation seems to be embeddable video players, like the one you see below. (Evanier, in particular, has become very fond of this new gimmick in the last couple weeks.) I wouldn't want to miss out on a happening new Internet trend, so I thought I'd give the technology a try and share with you all this vintage music video that a friend sent to me this morning. The clip is more effective if you've got sound, but even if you don't, just sit back and bask in the surreal (and curiously sexy in a dopey kind of way) imagery. I especially like the scrawny little guy in the zebra-skin collar who is stirring his big, bubbling cauldron of luscious girl-singer stew. Freud would've loved that sequence...

Let me know how this player thingie works for you all and if you'd like to see more of this sort of thing here at Simple Tricks.

Posted by at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

If you're looking for something to read during your Friday morning java break, there was a nice article in the LA Times a few days ago about the legendary pin-up model Bettie Page. Virtually forgotten for decades, she became a cult figure after comic artist and illustrator Dave Stevens included a very Bettie-like character in his classic Rocketeer stories. Her notoriety was further enhanced by cheesecake artist Olivia de Bernardis and the revival of interest in all things retro. Now, at the age of 82, she's probably the best-known model of her time (the late '40s and '50s), next to Marilyn Monroe.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about Bettie. In some photos and poses, I find her very attractive; in others, there's something odd about her appearance that leaves me wondering what all the fuss is about. (To her credit, Bettie herself would probably say the same thing.) But I do like vintage and retro-style pin-up art, and I also like a good story, and Bettie's life has definitely been one of those. It even has an effective ending, at least if you're a sentimental old schmuck like me:

Page had one request for this story -- that her face not be photographed.

"I want to be remembered," she said, "as I was when I was young and in my golden times... I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

But this much can be shared. Her face remains smooth and fresh, and one can still see the face of the young woman in the old. Her eyes, bright blue, still sparkle.

Posted by at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To go along with my previous entry, here's an amusing photo I've had kicking around in my files for a while:

Why is this amusing, you may wonder? Because it demonstrates how far we've come just in my relatively short lifetime: According to the e-mail in which I received this photo, the big object being wheeled around by the guy in the bunny suit is a 1975-vintage hard disk good for only about 500 KB of data. By contrast, even the smallest capacity digital-camera memory stick on the market these days -- which is physically smaller than a credit card, remember -- stores roughly sixteen times as much data (8000 KB, or 8 MB).

In the interest of full disclosure, however, I'm not sure how accurate my information on that photo is. I tried to verify the 500 KB figure, but I encountered a lot of dispute over whether or not the photo is even real. One confident-sounding person claimed this hard disk came from an old IBM storage system that would've had a capacity of between 5.4 and 11.2 MB. Which would still make this monster only equivalent to one of those low-end modern memory sticks, for all of its size. That's something, isn't it?

Posted by at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Once, a long, long time ago, I wrote on this blog that I remembered "when computers were large metal cabinets that contained spinning tape reels and lots of blinky lights." If you remember that, too, and want to reminisce, or if you're one of them youngish whippersnappers who can't imagine what those zinc-plated, vaccuum-tubed days of yore must've looked like, head on over to James Lileks' latest offering, a collection of vintage promotional computer photos enlightened by his wry (and unabashedly geeky) commentary.

I especially liked the commentary on this one, in which Jim manages to reference Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Terminator, Young Frankenstein, and Star Wars in less than 300 words. Gotta admire that.

Posted by at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is kind of cool... remember a while back when I discovered those old British sea-forts left over from World War II? The ones that were used as pirate radio stations in the '60s? Well, just this morning, a gentleman by the name of John Vincent left a comment on one of my entries about those forts. To make sure his comment gets noticed, I'm reproducing it here:

Just let you know that Radio 390 is back online at
http://radio390.co.uk.tt
http://radio390.uk.tt
http://radio390.org

Thanks for the info, John!

Posted by at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By the time my three loyal readers see this entry, The Girlfriend and I should be well on our way to West Yellowstone, Montana, where a quick weekend adventure awaits. It's a long story, but basically, she had some business dealings with a place up there that offered to give her and a guest (that would be me) complimentary lodgings and a snowmobile tour of the park. Neither of us are exactly what you'd call outdoorsy types, but the lure of a virtually free weekend away from the wintertime smog of Salt Lake was too tempting to resist. We said yes about a month ago, we bought ourselves some long underwear a couple weeks ago, and by tomorrow we'll be looking for moose in America's first National Park.

However, I didn't want to leave all you folks in InternetLand with nothing to look at on the dull final Friday of January, so in the spirit of last week's post -- that is, in an effort to clean out one of my bookmark folders -- here are a few links you may find interesting. I know I did...

Continue reading "Some Friday Reading" »

Posted by at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seeing the recent movie Good Night, and Good Luck sparked my curiosity about the legendary newsman Ed Murrow, so I've been reading a book by former NPR host Bob Edwards called Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism. It's a short little volume, less an in-depth biography than a concise overview of Murrow's life and philosophies. Sparse as it is, though, the book provides plenty to think about. Consider, for instance, the following passage:

Continue reading "Unthinkable" »

Posted by at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You know, for all the build-up the holiday season receives, it certainly always seems to end on an abrupt note. Think about it -- for weeks and weeks and weeks, people are decorating, shopping, cooking, and otherwise preparing, and then, come New Year's Eve, it all ends in just a matter of seconds. The clock strikes twelve, the ball drops, somebody kisses Dick Clark, and it's all over with. If you're lucky enough to be at a good party, the festivities may continue for a couple of hours, but that's just inertia and wishful thinking, right? The genuine propulsive energy of the season all evaporates at midnight and, come first light, the tinsel looks as outdated as muttonchop sideburns. I don't know about you guys out there in the InternetLand, but the end of the holidays strikes me as a huge anti-climax.

Not that I'm especially bummed to see the holiday season end this year. As I mentioned the other day, I've had a hard time catching the Christmas Spirit this year. Even though I sound like a colossal grinch for saying so, it really is a relief to have it finished for another eleven months. Still... I will miss the lights. I always do when the Christmas season ends. I love driving around and seeing all the houses and trees and lampposts wrapped and illuminated by strands of red, blue, and green bulbs. It makes everything seem... quaint. And it makes me a little sad when those lights aren't there anymore. There's always a few die-hards, of course, who leave their lights burning until March or April, but the overall effect will be drastically diminished by tomorrow night. Sigh...

Continue reading "Random Observations on the Cusp of the New Year" »

Posted by at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've found a little more information about those old British sea-forts I referenced the other day. There are actually quite a few Web sites that mention the "Maunsell forts" -- so-called because they were designed by an engineer named Guy Maunsell -- although, curiously, most of these sites seem to be more focused on the "unofficial" radio stations the forts hosted in the '60s. I guess the pirate stations were quite popular in their day, either that or else anyone who had anything to do with them now has a Web site.

In any event, I have learned that efforts are underway to save one of these old structures after all. Project Redsand is an organization working to restore Redsand Towers, one of the two remaining Maunsell forts in the Thames Estuary. (There were also offshore forts built in other locations around Britain.) Redsand is considered the best candidate for preservation, since all seven of its towers are still standing and a 2004 survey revealed them to be in surprisingly good condition.

The project's Web site contains quite a bit of information if you're interested in this sort of thing, including a detailed history page. Among the factoids that caught my eye:

...three forts... were built in the Thames estuary, between May and December, 1943. They were known as the Nore, Redsand and Shivering Sands Army Forts. Each fort accommodated up to 265 men.

...the Thames forts shot down 22 planes, 30 flying bombs, and were instrumental in the loss of one U-boat, which was scuttled after coming under fire...

I find these forts fascinating, and I'm not quite sure why. Something about the way they look, maybe, crouched over the water on giant legs anchored to the sea-bed. I'm intrigued by oil-rigs, too, not because I have any particular interest in the oil industry, but just because they look cool to me; the Maunsell forts have the added attraction of an interesting history and the romantically run-down appearance that some old industrial sites acquire after going without maintenance for a while. To see what I mean by "romance," check out the photos of Redsand at sunset on this site.

Posted by at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

From the Department of Random Coolness comes a nifty photo gallery of abandoned World War II-vintage sea-forts constructed in the Thames Estuary to defend Britain from Nazi attacks. There were three such forts in the Estuary, all consisting of off-shore platforms similar to modern-day oil rigs, bristling with guns and arrayed around a central control tower. One of these forts has collapsed in the 60 years since the end of the war, but the others are still standing out there in the water, slowly decaying memorials to a time most of us Internet users can't even imagine. I especially like this photo, in which the towers look like Martian war machines straight out of H.G. Wells.

And there's more, too: At one point in the '60s, one of these abandoned forts was home to a pirate radio station. Photos from that time period are here, along with the sad news that the British government wants to demolish these fascinating old relics...

If you've got nothing else going on right now, check 'em out!

Posted by at 10:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One of the coolest things I ever saw on TV when I was a kid -- "coolest" in the sense of "scared the hell out of me but in a good way" -- was the famous scene of the giant squid attacking the Nautilus in Disney's 1954 masterpiece 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Now here's something even cooler: Japanese scientists have taken the first-ever photos of a real-live giant squid in the wild. Previously, the only evidence we had that these things even existed was an occasional corpse washing ashore, so seeing a living one is truly remarkable.

From the linked article:

The animal — which measures roughly 25 feet (8 meters) long — was photographed 2,950 feet (900 meters) beneath the North Pacific Ocean. [The] scientists attracted the squid toward cameras attached to a baited fishing line.

The most striking of these images are here and here. Simply fascinating...

Posted by at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Writer Peter David tells a heartbreaking story today about a little boy who loves Spider-Man. He wears Spidey-branded shoes, plays the Spidey video game, owns the Spider-Man movies on DVD and regularly watches the animated series on the Cartoon Network. But he's never read a Spider-Man comic. Even worse, he has no interest in reading one. Zero. Zip. The very source of the character and stories that he's made the center of his young life holds as much appeal for seven-year-old Steven as sitting through a grad-school lecture on macroeconomics. (Not that a lecture on macroeconomics holds much appeal for anybody except the tiniest handful, but you get my point.)

It is stories like this that are propelling me down the road to premature Grumpy Old Man-hood.

Continue reading "Kids Today..." »

Posted by at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Say what you will about the French -- and I know people who will say plenty -- they are the clever folks who brought us the wonders of the self-cleaning street toilet. And now they've come up with another "duh, why haven't we had this before?" invention: the Maxi-Livres book-vending machine. Five such machines, stocking 25 titles that range from The Odyssey to a French-English dictionary, have been installed in various locations around Paris. According to the linked article, the books cost only $2.45, an incredible bargain these days, especially when you factor in exchange rates. And the thing that makes these machines really cool?

...Maxi-Livre's distributors were designed to bypass the characteristic vending-machine-drop, which can be punishing for books.

"We knew that French bibliophiles would be horrified to see their books falling into a trough like candy or soda," [Maxi-Livre president Xavier] Chambon said. "So we installed a mechanical arm that grabs the book and delivers it safely."

While my first choice will always be a quirky, independently-owned bookshop -- preferably one with a live-in cat or other animal mascot -- I really like this idea. If nothing else, it would solve that nasty problem of what to read on the train-ride home if you finish your book during your lunch break...

Posted by at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

What does it say about me that I know more about Baby Boomer pop culture than my parents?

To explain: my folks don't have their own e-mail addresses, e-mail apparently being something akin to the arcane arts of blackest magic as far as they're concerned. That means that all their buddies who are e-literate tend to send their jokes and stories and other assorted spam to me, hoping that I will be a good son and relay it to the parental units. Most of the time I don't bother because very little of it is worth their time, or mine, either. (I especially despise the would-be heartstring-tuggers!) But every now and again something comes through that's kind of fun and worth passing along.

Case in point: a trivia quiz that arrived yesterday, composed of questions about TV, music, and historical events from the late 1950s and '60s. When I first opened the message, I was confident that I'd know quite a few of the answers, since I spent a good part of my childhood watching re-runs of the previous decade's television programming, but imagine my surprise when I got more of these correct than my parents. Obviously something is seriously amiss in the space-time continuum...

Here's the quiz, slightly edited by me for grammar and such:

Continue reading "Boomer Trivia" »

Posted by at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I've always had a thing for a car without a roof. There's nothing I like better than driving through a balmy summer's twilight with the top down and the wind fluttering through what's left of my hair.

I come by it naturally enough, I suppose. My dad is an Old-Tyme Car Guy who still gets a kick out of souping up engines and burning rubber. He's owned motorcycles, hot-rods, antiques, classics, and clunkers over the years; I grew up surrounded by his collection and not realizing that it was unusual for one family to own a dozen or more cars. I never did acquire Dad's passion for tinkering -- I'm sorry to say I'm the sort who doesn't like to get his hands dirty -- but I love driving a stylish car and, thanks to my dad's collection, I've been fortunate enough to have access to some very stylish cars indeed.

Continue reading "My Babies" »

Posted by at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

After reading the previous entry, a friend of mine e-mailed to let me know of someone else whose passing is worth noting: Shelby Foote, the soft-spoken Southern novelist and historian who became a minor-league celebrity after appearing in the landmark PBS series The Civil War. Foote died Monday at the age of 88.

Continue reading "Shelby Foote" »

Posted by at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've finally made good on my threat to reorganize this site's photo gallery. If you go over there now, you'll find that I have folded everything into three basic groupings: Random Snapshots, Travels, and Diversions. The "Random Snapshots" album remains unchanged since the last time you may have looked at it; it's your basic grab-bag of personal subjects that most of you probably won't care about, i.e., miscellaneous photos of myself, my girl, friends, etc. "Travels" is self-explanatory. And the "Diversions" album is where you'll find photos of things I'd like to share, but which don't quite fit into the other two categories, things like my warbird flight experience or some of the weird stuff I've been involved in or which interests me. For example, I plan to put up a sub-album showing you how my father and I once transformed a twenty-foot-long classic automobile into a rolling replica of the RMS Titanic, complete with the movie characters Jack and Rose on the "bow." If that makes no sense to you, be patient; you will understand at some point in the (hopefully) near future...

In the meantime, check out the latest addition to the gallery, a selection of shots taken yesterday as Anne and I toured the B-17 Fuddy Duddy with her parents. (In my earlier posts, I was under the impression that the plane coming to Ogden this past weekend was the Aluminum Overcast, but I found out yesterday that the Overcast was damaged in a bad landing a year ago and is currently undergoing a complete overhaul and restoration. The Fuddy is owned by the same organization, the Experimental Aircraft Association, and has been filling the other plane's tour obligations.)

The Fuddy Duddy is a beautiful example of this model -- it includes most of the vintage equipment that a B-17 would've carried back in the day, including one of the legendary Norden bomb sights and a stack of radio equipment the size of your average filing cabinet. I also liked the Fuddy's color scheme, which consists largely of the plane's own aluminum skin, unpainted and polished to a shiny finish. (The nose-art was disappointingly tame, however.) This plane is fitted out a bit differently than the Nine o' Nine, the last B-17 I toured, so it's easier for tourists to negotiate a walk-through, and I would imagine that it's also fairly comfortable for those who choose to take a flight: unlike the B-24 I flew on, this B-17 actually has jumpseats for passengers to sit in during take-offs and landings. (I had to sit on the floor when I flew on the Dragon...)

Incidentally, touring that particular aircraft on Father's Day had a special significance for Anne's dad, whose own father built B-17s for Boeing during the war. I can only guess what he must've been feeling as he imagined his late father's hands working the metal, installing avionics, or pounding in rivets. (Unfortunately, no one in the family is quite sure of what Anne's grandpa actually did on the Boeing line, aside from "building B-17s.")

Posted by at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I caught a few seconds of video on the news last night of a B-17 being welcomed to Ogden. "Odd," I thought, "the Aluminum Overcast isn't supposed to be here until the weekend." I figured I must've misinterpreted what I was seeing and paid it no further mind.

This morning, however, I got an e-mail from my fellow warbird enthusiast Dave. Apparently, the bird on the news last night is a different B-17 called the Sentimental Journey. A little googling reveals that this B-17, which is supposed to be the most fully restored example around, is owned and operated by the Arizona Wing of the Confederate Air Force, a nation-wide volunteer group dedicated to preserving old planes in their flyable condition. It's on display right now at the Ogden-Hinckley Airport and will be open to the public, 9:00 AM to 8 PM, through Thursday. The plane will depart on Friday morning, the same day the EAA's B-17, Aluminum Overcast, arrives. As Dave said in his message to me, "This could be a terrific opportunity to see not one, but two B-17s within the same week!"

(If the timing works out right, they might both be on the ground at the same time, a spectacle rarely seen since the '40s.)

The CAF requests a $5.00 donation to tour the Sentimental Journey, and flight opportunities are available. Once again, I can't stress how amazing that experience is; if you have the extra cash, by all means, take a ride aboard one of these historic planes. You won't regret it.

You can learn more about the Sentimental Journey here, and don't forget that the Aluminum Overcast will be at the same airport this weekend.

Posted by at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For all you folks who may be into that InterWeb voyeurism thing, I've uploaded a new album to my photo gallery. It's a collection of shots I took two years ago when the Collings Foundation "Wings of Freedom" tour stopped off in Utah for a weekend. As you may have gathered from my warbird-themed entry earlier this week, the Wings of Freedom tour consists of two World War II-vintage bomber aircraft, a B-17 and the only airworthy B-24 left in existence, which travel around the country giving people the rare opportunity to see them up close and in the air.

Even more exciting than seeing them, however, is the chance to actually ride in one of them. My dad and I took that chance, and even though the initial price tag seemed ridiculous in return for a mere twenty minutes of airtime, we've never regretted spending a dime of it. For the record, we chose to fly on the B-24, reasoning that if it's the only one left, we may never get another chance with this particular model.

Feeling the vibration of the plane's engines in your belly, shouting to make yourself heard over their roar, smelling the exhaust and the hot oil and the sun-baked aluminum fuselage... there's no other word for it except "thrilling." It's the closest thing to time-travel you're ever likely to experience. If you have any interest in history, any desire to know, at least in some small way, what the grandfathers of Generation X went through some sixty years ago, you really must try and catch one of these flights. Some day I intend to write a detailed blog entry about the experience, but for now take my word for it and check out the photos.

A quick technical note: I haven't linked directly to the new album because I plan to reorganize the gallery's directory structure in the next little while (as well as add lots more pictures!), and I didn't want to leave dead links all over the place. So, for now, just hop over to the gallery and open the new album manually. It's the first one at the top of the page.

In addition, for anyone who may be interested, I've posted a recent picture of my girlfriend Anne and myself in the Random Shots album.

Enjoy!

Posted by at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, now, this is just cool: a company in England is making travel trailers small enough to be towed by a Mini, and which resemble classic American trailers of the 1940s and '50s, right down to the pastel color palette. I'm a big fan of most things retro, and these caravans -- that's Brit-speak for "trailers," just in case you're not an Anglophile -- have the added appeal of being tiny and, therefore, cute.

Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of the always-interesting Boing Boing, I give you The Pod.

Posted by at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Longtime readers of this blog may recall my affection for World War II-era bombers, or "warbirds," as they are sometimes called. There aren't many of these beautiful antique planes left, and even fewer are still in flyable condition -- most of the surviving examples have been taxidermied for air museums, where usually you can only admire their exteriors from behind velvet ropes -- so the opportunity to see a functional one up close or in the air is a rare treat.

On that note, here is the text of an email I recently received from my friend Dave Wall, who organized last year's visit from the Collings Foundation's B-24 and B-17:

To all who might be interested:

The bad news is, it looks like the Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom Tour is not coming through Utah at all this year. I will write to them and see if we can't maybe get them back next year.

The good news is, EAA's B-17G "Aluminum Overcast" is scheduled to come to Ogden Hinkley Airport on June 17-19. I don't have any more details at the moment. [Ed. note: details are here.] You can find out more about the plane at http://www.b17.org.

It is possible that the Collings Foundation did not schedule to come this year since Aluminum Overcast was previously scheduled to come here.

If you live anywhere near the Wasatch Front (that's the combined Salt Lake-Ogden-Provo area, for you out-of-staters), I urge you to make the drive and see this piece of living history. If you can afford it, please consider taking a flight aboard her, too. The money goes to a good cause -- keeping the plane flyable -- and it's an experience you'll never forget. The plane will be here over Father's Day weekend, so take your dad or your son, and think about all the other dads and sons who once flew aboard these fascinating machines under much different circumstances.

Just in case it's too much trouble to click that link above, here's the scoop: you'll be able to tour the plane's interior from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day, $10 for a family, $6 for adults, $5 for students, and free for WWII vets or children under 8. You can learn more by going to the EAA's Website or calling 800-359-6217.

Posted by at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Way back in February, I commented on rumors that the public would soon learn the identity of "Deep Throat," the legendary anonymous source that led investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the truth behind the Watergate scandal. Today the rumors came true.

According to an article in the new issue of Vanity Fair, Deep Throat is a man named Mark Felt, who was Deputy Director of the FBI at the time of the scandal. These days, Felt is a frail 91 years old and lives with his daughter in California. Woodward and Bernstein have issued a statement confirming the magazine's claims, and their former editor, Ben Bradlee -- who also knew Deep Throat's identity -- was quoted as saying, "The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long."

So it looks like another big historical mystery is solved. Kind of anticlimatic, really, and regrettable, too. Like I said the other day in regards to Blackbeard's lost pirate ship being found, it's more fun to have some things remain unknown.

One interesting note (well, interesting to people who live in Salt Lake, anyhow): the local TV news says that Felt ran the Salt Lake office of the FBI for two years in the 1950s. Strange how often these big stories have some kind of Utah connection. Sometimes I think my home state truly is the nexus of the universe... and that scares me on many, many levels.

Posted by at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're still hanging around the computer on this beautiful, sunny, pre-MemDayWeekend afternoon, you're more than likely looking out the window and longing for anything other than work to occupy your attention. Allow me to help by tossing out a few links I've been meaning to post for a while...

Continue reading "Friday Afternoon Reading" »

Posted by at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received an email this morning from a fellow named Rex, who is the proprietor of The Deep Throat Blog and a proponent of the theory that the infamous (yet anonymous) Watergate informant was actually Ferris Bueller's economy teacher. Rex informed me that since I and other bloggers linked to one of his articles last month, he's been receiving lots of interesting new clues, the latest of which is detailed in his most recent entry.

Essentially, this new piece of the puzzle connects the dates on which reporter Woodward met with Deep Throat with the dates when the McGovern Campaign was in or near Washington, D.C. (Background for those who don't their recent history: McGovern was the Democratic candidate for president that Nixon's people were trying to bring down by, among other things, bugging the campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.) As Rex describes it, this clue fits the so-called "Bradlee Riddle," explains why Woodward couldn't call a meeting with DT whenever he wanted, and lends credence to the Ben Stein theory:

...in our opinion, Deep Throat must have been someone who wasn't normally in Washington. We think Throat was someone at the Republican CRP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) who traveled around the country conducting operations against the Democrats, much like Don Segretti. This person could have been a "mole" on McGovern's staff (and the Watergate hearings uncovered at least one named Thomas Gregory) or someone who carried out "sabotage" against the Democrats such as hiring hecklers, demonstrators, etc. Our theory is that Ben Stein worked with the CRP and met with Woodward when his travels took him to the Washington/Baltimore area.

As I explained to Rex, I'm not a serious Watergate buff. I haven't done a lot of extensive reading or research on the matter, beyond seeing the fine movie with Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and Hal Holbrook (All the President's Men) and reading the occasional article. But I am interested in historical mysteries, and they don't get much more mysterious than this one. The Ben Stein theory is plausible (in my opinon, at least), and Rex's blog makes for an interesting read. Go check it out. (You'll probably want to review his detailed explanation of the Stein theory as well.)

Posted by at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

You may recall that a while back I was lamenting how our public architecture has evolved into "post-postmodern" monstrosities that may function as individual works of art but fail to integrate with their more prosaic surroundings. Here's an extreme illustration of what I was talking about: the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Concert Hall in LA is undergoing some renovations because its reflective surface is focusing ordinary sunlight into high-temperature heat-rays that are frying pedestrians and annoying residents of nearby condos.

And this isn't the only Gehry building that has issues with its neighbors. The Peter B. Lewis Building in Cleveland has a nasty tendency to drop ice and snow on pedestrians as well as producing the same kinds of heat and light effects as the Disney Hall. It appears that it's not only aesthetically unsettling to be in the vicinity of a Gehry building, it's also downright dangerous.

Continue reading "Architecture Out of Context" »

Posted by at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few days ago, John Scalzi posted an entry on his blog called 10 Things I've Done You Probably Haven't. As he explained, this is another of those LiveJournal triggers, or "memes," that are supposed to get you thinking about your life. In this case, you're supposed to list ten experiences or accomplishments that are unique to you. Presumably this exercise is intended to help you realize how cool you really are, or at least give you something to write about.

Since I'm always on the lookout for new blogging inspirations -- that is, I'm a copycat -- I figured I'd take a stab at this one myself. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It turns out that a lot of the cool things I've done aren't so very different from things I know my friends have done themselves. For example, most of my really memorable experiences are somehow related to travelling, and I know that several of the folks who read this blog have travelled to the same or similar places that I have. In some cases, my friends were actually with me and shared my most memorable experiences, so I can't really say that all of the things on my list are unique to me. But I gave it my best effort and I think I came up with a few items that most of my readers probably haven't experienced. In any event, here's my list, presented in no particular order:

Continue reading "Ten Things" »

Posted by at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I was doing some follow-up research on a couple of recent post topics and I thought I'd share some interesting findings with all you bored cubicle dwellers out there.

Continue reading "Ancient Treasures, a Theory on "Deep Throat," and a Black Bird" »

Posted by at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I should've known better than to publicly announce the topic of my next post on Friday. Events have a disconcerting habit of continuing to occur, regardless of my writing plans. Case in point: the death last week of Arthur Miller must sadly take precedence over my oft-promised musings on the remake of Battlestar Galactica.

Continue reading "Death of a Playwright" »

Posted by at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The other night I caught part of a fascinating PBS documentary about a boxing match that took place in 1938 between the American heavyweight Joe Louis and a German named Max Schmeling. Now, I normally have about as much interest in boxing as I do in watching dust collect on the window ledges, but this particular bout represented much more than a mere sporting event. It was a battle of ideas and symbolism in which the racist philosophies of Hitler's Third Reich (symbolized by Schmeling) confronted the reality of the so-called lesser races (Louis was black).

Continue reading "Historical Footnote: Max Schmeling" »

Posted by at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two more notable figures have left us: comic-book writer and artist Will Eisner and illustrator Kelly Freas, both of whom died earlier this week.

Continue reading "Eisner and Freas" »

Posted by at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I mentioned in my review of Spider-Man 2, I like comic books. I've been reading them fairly consistently throughout my life, with the exception of a few years in my mid- to late teens when I thought I was too grown-up for such things. (Ironic, since the teen years seem to be the time of life when most comic fans are most heavily involved in the scene, but then I've always tended to be out of synch with whatever my peers are doing.)

My interest in the medium was rekindled while I was a student at the University of Utah. It happened almost by chance: I was passing through the Student Union one afternoon when I spotted another student setting up a table in the large open area between the video arcade and the food court. People were always selling items there of one sort or another, and sometimes those wares were actually kind of interesting, so I stopped to see what the guy had to offer. It turned out that he was a comics fan who'd decided to liquidate part of his collection. I wasn't too interested -- I figured comics were something I'd put behind me long ago -- but one title caught my eye before I could walk away: Aliens vs. Predator.

Continue reading "Movie Review: Alien Vs. Predator" »

Posted by at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Well, it's Friday afternoon, and if you're at all like me, you're just watching the clock in the corner of your desktop and waiting for Mr. Slate to pull that little pteranodon's tail feathers for the last time this week. Under these circumstances, it's a fair bet that you won't be too interested in reading anything too heavy, so in place of the usual pedantic rantings and meandering attempts at criticism, I'll offer up a selection of the fun stuff I've encountered during my recent surfing.

Continue reading "End-of-Week Linkage" »

Posted by at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There's another one of those big personality surveys making the rounds on the 'net this morning, 100 questions about your cultural preferences called the "Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index." This survey originated on a blog belonging to a Manhattan music and drama critic named Terry Teachout. Given Teachout’s credentials, it's not too surprising that some of the items on this survey are a bit, well, hoity-toity, and not really the sort of thing that would appeal to a non-New York intellectual. (That's a roundabout way of saying that I, like fellow blogger Kevin Drum, didn't know enough about many of the choices to have any preference. I hang my head in shame at my apparent Philistinism.) However, Teachout does state that his blog is about "all the arts, high, medium, and low," and, true to that declaration, his survey has plenty of the lower-brow stuff that I can relate to. Besides, I like taking these things. And therefore I offer the following window into my tastes, or lack thereof:

Continue reading "Wherein I fail the "Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index"" »

Posted by at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is one of those days when I have a lot of things I'd like to blog about and little time to do any of them justice, so I apologize in advance for throwing out a bunch of unconnected (and unedited) nuggets:

Continue reading "Randomness" »

Posted by at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As I mentioned a while back, I've got a passion for World War II bomber planes. I think they're beautiful in the same way that antique cars, boats, and trains are beautiful. They were designed according to the aesthetic and engineering standards of another era and, for whatever reason, I admire those standards. In many cases, I admire them more than current standards. Machines from the mid-20th Century are not primitive so much as simple, and they are authentic and unique in a way that most modern machinery is not. (Can you tell the difference between the vast majority of modern cars unless you're close enough to read the markings? I know I can't, aside from a handful of exceptions.)

Even though the vast majority of warbirds were broken up for scrap or otherwise removed from the earth a long time ago, it is still possible to see one outside of a picture book. There are airplane museums all over the United States that have at least one or two of these craft in their collections. Here in Utah, for example, the museum at Hill Force Base in Ogden contains a number of large warbirds, including a B-17 Flying Fortress (like the Memphis Belle), a B-25 Mitchell, and a B-24 Liberator. However, seeing airplanes in a museum is something like viewing a stuffed bear. You can study the size and shape of the animal, but you won't see it move. You won't understand its essence. Museum planes are dead things, mounted and displayed behind velvet ropes, dusted by attendants, lovingly preserved for the ages... but they're cold and emptied of their spirit.

A far better option is to try and see one of the handful of warbirds that is still flying. When you see a "living" warbird "in the wild" you can hear the roar of piston engines that don't sound like any engine made today. You can see the sun glinting off wings and plexiglass nose bubbles. You can feel the wind of the plane's passage and smell the exhaust. Watching a warbird pass overhead, it is possible for one brief moment to imagine what it must have been like on a sunny English morning in 1943, when the skies were filled with machines and the combined sound of their engines made the ground hum beneath a man's feet.

If you live in the Salt Lake-Provo area, you're about to have the chance to see not just one but two "living" warbirds. The Collings Foundation "Wings of Freedom" tour, which consists of a B-17 called the Nine O' Nine and a colorful B-24 known as The Dragon and His Tail, is coming to our area. The planes will be in Heber City on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then they will fly down from the mountains into Provo on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At each stop, walkthrough tours will be available (a very reasonable $8 gets you into both planes) as well as flight opportunities.

That's right, you will have a chance to go for a ride on an authentic warbird. The price for a ride seems pretty steep at first glance -- $400 for approximately twenty minutes in the air -- but I can tell you from experience that it's worth every penny. My father and I rode on The Dragon during last year's Wings of Freedom stop in Heber, and I can honestly say it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. The cost is tax deductible, the money goes toward keeping the planes flying, and you will be able to tell your friends that you've done something few other living people have.

Even if you don't have the scratch to go for a ride, I urge anyone who is remotely interested in seeing authentic living history to try and get out to one of these two tour stops. The Foundation's mission is to keep these machines in the air where they belong, and they need your help to do it. And for you, this really is a rare opportunity -- there are a mere fourteen B-17s still flying in the United States, and only one single B-24, The Dragon and His Tail. How often do you get to see a one-of-a-kind anything these days? Go on, see a piece of history, and know that your support will ensure that others will be able to do the same, hopefully for years to come...

Posted by at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'm still working on a couple of additional entries about CONduit, but I wanted to note that the last of the Salt Lake movie theaters I remember attending as a kid, Trolley Corners, quietly closed its doors on Thursday after 27 years of business.

Continue reading "Trolley Corners closes" »

Posted by at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For those who may be keeping a list, another of my random interests is architecture. I've never taken any classes in the subject and don't have the vocabulary to articulate many of my ideas about it, but I nevertheless have some strong opinions. I tend to approach the subject like I approach art -- I may not know who painted something or why it's considered important by the initiated, but I can tell you whether or not I like it, and whether or not I'd want it hanging in my home. And I have to say that, for the most part, I don't like what passes for public architecture these days. (I'm not too keen on modern domestic architecture either, but today I'm talking about a public building.)

Continue reading "Architecture is Dead" »

Posted by at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Ed. note: Yesterday I was gushing enthusiastically about the futuristic concept of human spaceflight. Today I'm going to wax nostalgic about ancient airplanes. Hey, it's these little contradictions and paradoxes that make people interesting, right?]

Among my assorted interests, enthusiasms and oddities is a love of old propeller-driven airplanes, especially the "warbirds," the combat aircraft of World War II. People who are familiar at all with that term usually think of the fighter planes of the era, but in my usual non-conformist fashion, I prefer the bombers.

Continue reading "Captain of the Memphis Belle" »

Posted by at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Great news for fans of stout! It seems that the old advertising slogan is quite correct: Guinness is good for you.

Among other benefits gained by choosing this hearty Irish brew instead of lighter and less-manly beers are "less alcohol, fewer calories, fewer carbohydrates and, to top it off, protection against heart attacks, blindness and maybe even impotence," according to the article I linked to above. Hell, the stuff even seems to improve bone density -- take that, milk drinkers!

Continue reading "Guinness Research" »

Posted by at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For those who care -- and there probably aren't too many of you -- the post about my All-Time Favorite Movies is still forthcoming. To keep you amused in the meantime, however, let me direct your attention to Stagworld, the latest irreverent (or is that irrelevant?) section of James Lileks' very funny Institute of Official Cheer web site.

A little background information: James Lileks is a collector of ephemera,which consists of old paper items like postcards, matchbooks, magazines and cookbooks. On the Institute site, he shares with us the more dated and bizarre stuff in his collection, supplemented with his own amusing commentary and captions. This exercise sounds kind of pointless, and I suppose it is -- making fun of stuff produced by the naive America of fifty years ago is sometimes like shooting fish in the cliche'd barrel -- but James has a sharp wit and these pages always make me laugh out loud. Sometimes they're even educational, giving us a glimpse of a long forgotten pop culture that existed before the rise of Cable TV.

If you go exploring around James' site, be warned that his blog can sometimes get a little shrill, depending on your politics. Hope you enjoy yourselves.

Posted by at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)