Simple Tricks and Nonsense

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 (2)

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