Tehran - Apple TV Series - Season 1 of 4

Tehran — Official Trailer | Apple TV
Apple TV

Israel-Iran conflict up close and personal. Our girl is a computer hacker in the employ of Mossad. By exchanging clothes with a flight attendant, she gets into Iran and the flight attendant gets a flight out. Mossad's goal is to get her into the same room as a secure computer system so she can turn off the power to the anti-aircraft radar that is protecting an Iranian nuclear installation so the Israeli jets can come in and bomb it into smithereens.

Unlike James Bond, the operation does not go smoothly. When the op collapses, our girl has an opportunity to leave (extraction in military parlance), but she refuses. She is determined to fulfill her mission. Her bosses are totally willing to let her go ahead with her hairbrained scheme, not like there is much they can about it, other than sending in a hit team to execute her, which they are totally capable of doing. This is real hot-war espionage shit.

Our girl is talented, but she isn't James Bond. The show basically rocks from one coincidence to another, sometimes in favor of our girl, and sometimes in favor of the Iranian secret police. Numerous people get sacrificed on the altar of operational security.

I am beginning to understand the problem with dictatorships - they are stupid and brutal - but they work in that the people in charge stay in charge.

Early on we have an old man lamenting that they didn't realize how powerful Khomeini had become until it was too late. The way I see it is that the upper class were so impressed with themselves and their great success is that they didn't realize how much resentment was growing in the lower classes. If you are in the upper class, you need to insure that the lower classes are getting what they need, and what they need is:

1. a share of the benefits that the upper class is creating,
2. something to do (a job for instance), and
3. something to believe in (a religion).

Failure to address these three issues is how you get your revolutions.

Photo-shoot

Photo-shoot - painting by Graham Turner

From Studio 88:

A BE2e flies over the Western Front on a photo-reconnaissance mission, the pilot operating the lever that would change the glass negative plates in externally mounted C-type camera, while the observer struggles to aim his Lewis gun.

The BE2 was designed as a stable observation platform before the role of the aeroplane in warfare had been properly understood, so was originally completely unarmed. Various rather ‘Heath-Robinson’ gun-mounting brackets were adopted to try to remedy this, but the basic problem of the observer’s very restricted position among the struts and wires can clearly be seen. (Note the alternative gun mounting attached to one of the forward struts. Countless BE2 crews were shot down and killed whilst bravely flying over enemy lines to bring back vital photographs of troop movements, trenches, artillery positions, and other crucial information.

First Catch of the Season

Nephew Nick delivering his first catch to Cordova, Alaska

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6144

10 Short Videos #6144

Cessna 172 taking off on short runwayS.S. Badger Boiler Lighting!

1953 movie Small Town Girl, Bobby Van, Hopping Dance

Honda’s Reusable Rocket Sticks the Landing with Pinpoint Precision!

Swordfish | Battle of Britain Airshow

Another shower, another lead pan

Traditional Horse-Drawn Shaving Process To Craft Wooden Roof Shingles

Long-Range Drone Attack with a Balloon

Chill porch bees

Farm kids just built different

When a Delivery Driver Outsmarts a Porch Pirate…

Quote of the Day

Idoru by William Gibson. On page 28 Laney is interviewing for a job with Slitscan, some kind mass media operation akin to People magazine or Facebook:

"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, Laney, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week old boiled potato that lives by itself in the dark, in a double wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly the sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."

 I think he nailed it.

Boeing PT-17 Kaydet

Boeing PT-17 Kaydet

YKTV: History of the Boeing PT-17 Biplane
Patriots Point

PT-17 was also known as the Stearman. Previous Stearman posts.