Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Jasmine Flower
The first spacewalk
An evening pause: Forty-six years ago today Alexei Leonov became the first man to walk in space. This Soviet-era film shows practically the entire event, using footage from two cameras. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Russian and it is not subtitled. I’d love it if someone out there could provide a translation.
Several things to note as you watch:
» Read more
Clancy Brothers & Robbie O’Connell- Finnegan’s Wake
Hiking the Manitou Incline in Colorado Springs, CO
Julius Caesar (1953) – Mark Antony speech
An evening pause: On the ides of March, why not watch Marlon Brando at his best, as Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1953).
Skeeter Davis — The End Of The World, recorded 1965
Richard Feynman: “Take the world from another point of view”
An evening pause: Part one of a four part documentary about Richard Feynman.
“To know when you know and when you don’t know, and what is it you know, and what is it you don’t know.”
3 year old Jonathan conducting to the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
The table saw that cannot cut fingers
David Lanz & Paul Speer – Ode to a Dark Star
An evening pause: The music is beautiful, but the images tell us how far astronomy has changed our perception of the universe in the last few decades.
Maiden flight of the space shuttle Discovery
An evening pause:I had played this video as an evening pause back in November, when I thought the last mission of the space shuttle Discovery would be launched. Now that it has finally landed, completing its final mission, I think worthwhile to once again go back in time and watch a film of the shuttle’s maiden flight, launched August 30, 1984, narrated by the astronauts themselves. Note that the female astronaut on this flight is Judith Resnik, who died a little over a year and a half later in the Challenger accident.
How to make Hot Ice
Anna Russell – The Ring Cycle explained
An evening pause: Anna Russell, in one of her last concerts, explains Wagner’s Ring cycle. You can see parts 2 and 3 of the entire comedy routine here and here. Trust me, it is worth watching all three parts, even if you know nothing about opera.
Tommy Emmanuel – Guitar boogie
Flying car
Allan Sherman – Hail to thee, Fat Persons!
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home (live @ kcrw)
Matterhorn Glacier Express
John Denver – Back Home Again
Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
Some enchanted evening
An evening pause: The simple, poetic words of Oscar Hammerstein to the music of Richard Rogers, sung by Brian Stokes Mitchell at Carnegie Hall, 2005.
Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons.
Wise men never try.
Northern Lights
An evening pause: When the Sun gets active, such as the solar flare of February 15, 2011, the sky in the high latitudes gives us the world’s best light show.
Bugs Bunny – Haredevil Hare (1948)
Makem and Clancy – Get Drunk
An evening pause: Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers at the National Stadium in Dublin February 1977.
SNL A very British movie
An evening pause: For anyone who likes to watch modern British movies, whether on public television or in the theater.
Miracle on ice, February 22, 1980
An evening pause: Thirty-one years ago, February 22, 1980, Lake Placid, New York, the winter Olympics: The USA hockey team beats the Soviet Union 4 to 3 to set up their gold medal victory.
The Massive February 15, 2011 X Flare on the Sun
An evening pause: On February 15, 2011, the Sun emitted its strongest flare in four years. Though the Sun continues to act relatively wimpy as it ramps up towards solar maximum, this flare was spectacular, mostly because we now have some amazing instruments in space to image and study it. This video does an excellent job explaining what was happening, as it happened. Watch, and enjoy.
And note, as powerful as this flare was, and despite the fact that it was pointed right at the Earth, it represented a relatively minor threat to our technological society, despite what some doomsayers might be claiming. A very active Sun can cause us problems, especially with power systems and electrical grids, but based on past experience during previous solar maximums, most power companies have taken careful steps to protect themselves from this risk. And with the Sun as weakly active as it is, the risks are further reduced. The doomsayers are simply shilling for more government research dollars.