A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
An evening pause: You need to watch to understand the title. And though the “spy hippo” is a bit of a gimmick and I suspect did not take all the underwater footage, the show does appear have gotten some fascinating film of the hidden life of hippopotamuses.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: This engineering not only illustrates the human ability to develop complex technology, it also illustrates how difficult it can be to accomplish what nature does naturally. Think about this the next time you hear someone talking about terraforming Mars.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: Here what counts is the audience. From the youtube webpage:
Mongkol is a 61-year-old former logging elephant. His captive-held life was spent hauling trees in the Thai forest. His body shape is deformed through hard labor, he lost his right eye and tusk in this brutal logging practice. Mongkol was rescued and brought to Elephants World to spend the rest of his days relaxing peacefully in freedom by the River Kwai. I discovered Mongkol is an extremely gentle, sensitive elephant who enjoys music, especially this slow movement by Beethoven which I play to him occasionally in the day and night.
I think he listens with as much rapt pleasure as anyone who loves Beethoven.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: Technology developed with slide rules and the English system of measurements, more than half a century ago, that still works today.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: Stay with it. It will soon remind you of modern DC politics.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
An evening pause: Performed live in Los Angeles in 1983. Somehow, everything about this song symbolizes to me the entire sixties generation.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: This appears to be a youth orchestra, but unfortunately everything on the webpage is in Portuguese, so I’m not sure.
Hat tip David Nudelman.
An evening pause: Today is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. As I try to do every year, I honor his memory on this date. As I wrote last year,
it is once again time to remember a man who stands as one of our nation’s — and possible one of the world’s — greatest leaders. Of our Presidents possibly only George Washington is more significant. We must above all not forget the incredible and now all too rare good will he held for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him.
Lincoln stood for freedom for all humans, the central heart of the American experiment. He was willing and did die for that stance. We should all be willing to do no less.
The video below shows probably every photograph ever taken of Lincoln, in chronological order. You can see him age and mature. You can also see a gaunt and serious man who appears to care deeply about whatever he does.
An evening pause: Reminds me of every single commercial I see on television these days. Only smarter.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: I should have scheduled this for January 27. Diane will understand why.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: Performed live 1981, with what I think is one of the strangest background dance line-up ever.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: My brother Jon sent this to me today as a birthday present. I like it so much that I decided to reschedule my pauses to air it tonight.
An evening pause: This story of the discovery of a mastodon site in San Diego strongly challenges all theories about the first human arrival in North America.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: Recently my cousin Ken Kueny, a former software manager at Orbital ATK and now the owner of Karn Custom Woodwork, a major carpentry company in Virginia, made me aware of a new example in the movement to buy dumb (rejecting modern hi-tech for older technology developed in the 20th century), this time related to shaving utensils. Apparently, men appear to be abandoning the modern expensive cartridge multi-blade razors for old-fashioned safety razors and double-edged blades.
I, who hate shaving and have a beard partly so that I only have to do a trimming about twice a week, was astonished. The video below gives a quick lesson on how to shave with a safety razor, for those too young to remember these tools. It also gives a sense of why it is better to do it this way. This video shows just a sampling of the many different types of available safety razors, and the engineering differences for each. Do a search on youtube and you will see numerous similar videos touting the advantages of going retro when shaving. All are quite convincing.
This new trend won’t make me shave my beard, as I also like it very much, but it does illustrate once again that while new designs can certainly improve things, newer is not always better.
An evening pause: Stay with it, it gets better and better, as she triples herself in the second half.
Hat tip Sherman LaViolette.
An evening pause: From the website:
The impetus for “WORLD WAY: The City of LAX” was born in 2013 as I sat on a rooftop in El Segundo, waiting for a shoot to begin and looking out over LA. The incoming planes looked like a highway, evenly spaced and spread across multiple lanes. This led my eye to the end of their path – LAX. I realized I had a fully unobstructed view of the airport, and immediately started capturing timelapses of it. I became fascinated with the many layers of movement that were visible – planes taking off and landing, planes taxiing, ground support equipment moving on the ramp and throughout the airport, passenger vehicles on World Way, passengers on foot outside and inside the airport – all moving at their own unique pace. It made me realize that LAX is a city unto itself, with so many moving pieces and individual people all doing their part to keep it moving.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: Performed by Perspectives Ensemble using the original 1944 orchestration.
Hat tip Diane Wilson, who admits that “it’s long-ish, but this is a superb performance of purely American experience set to music.” I agree. You will be refreshed and enlightened by it.
