A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: I posted this video of El Camino del Rey (The King’s Road) back in 2010, but when Willi Kusche suggested it I thought, why not post it again? It shows a walk along the crumbling walkway high on the cliff walls of El Chorro canyon in Andalusia, Spain and is not for those with any fear of heights. Considering the craziness we are enduring with this year’s presidential election, I think this hike is relatively mild in comparison.
An evening pause: In honor of Washington’s actual birthday, today, February 22.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: Performed live August 19, 1972 on The Midnight Special. As one commenter noted on the youtube webpage, “This really happened right?ο»Ώ” Sadly, as Danae noted to me in an email, both are now gone, far too soon.
An evening pause: This footage was taken on July 16, 1969 at 500 frames per second, and shows only what happened at the base of the launch tower as the engines of the Saturn 5 rocket ignited and lifted the rocket into the air. Though the video is more than 8 minutes long, the actual events recorded lasted only about 30 seconds, beginning 5 seconds before T minus 0.
What struck me most as I watched this was the incredible amount of complex engineering that went into every single small detail of the rocket and the launch tower and launchpad. We tend to take for granted the difficulty of rocket engineering. This video will make you appreciate it again.
It is also mesmerizing. A lot happens in a very short period of time.
Hat tip Kyle Kooy.
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: That is a lot of balloons!
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: As today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, I feel compelled to repost my Lincoln tribute from last year. Above all, it is necessary we remember again the amazing good will he repeatedly expressed, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. As I said last year:
We should also remind ourselves, especially in this time of increasing anger, bigotry, and violence, of these words from his second inaugural address, spoken in the final days of a violent war that had pitted brother against brother in order to set other men free:
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
An evening pause: Another nice song performed live on the 1970s television show The Midnight Special..
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: In one of the most powerful death scenes ever, Louise Fletcher plays a scientist who suddenly realizes it is about to happen. From the 1983 film Brainstorm.
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
An evening pause: The music is by “Lost in You” by Lior. The video demonstrates the endless possibilities that drones will bring to us in future years.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: The song, aired initially during World War II by the Nazis for their troops, became a popular hit for soldiers on both sides of the war. Marlene Dietrich then recorded it as part of her effort to win the war for the Allies, in both English and German. She noted once that the German version is “darker”. Here is the English version.
Hat tip Engine Mike.
