Some Russian Bear

Wait till you see what he does with the chair. I can't believe it didn't collapse. Of course I've got one that looks just like it, and it doesn't collapse from my weight. 

Safe with Jason Statham

British actor Jason Statham, left and Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren visit members of the Royal Navy at HMS President Royal Navy Reserve headquarters, in London, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012. In the background is Tower Bridge. The two are promoting the film 'Expendables 2'

This picture has nothing to do with the movie, I just thought it was interesting to see how small Jason is, or how big Dolph is, depending on your point of view. We watched Safe (warning: site auto plays) this evening and it was everything we've come to expect from one of Jason's movies. Lot's of people getting beaten up, a few gratuitous killings, and whole slew of bad guys getting shot. There's a plot, or sorts, but mostly it's just an excuse to run around NYC punching and shooting people. I did notice a couple of things. The Russians spoke Russian and the Chinese spoke Chinese. Were there any subtitles? I'm not sure, there may have been some, when it was important, but if you didn't speak the language you were often in the dark, though it was usually pretty obvious what was going on. There was one girl who picked up a gun in the gambling den and promptly got mowed down. Equal opportunity on ethnic and gender basis. Oh, yes, there was one little girl at the focus of the plot. She had a tough role to play. Traumatized, and then alternately pampered and terrorized. And can anyone really tell when someone else is lying?
    There was one clever little bit. Mary Mnemonic (the little girl) has to memorize a really long number. We see that it covers an entire sheet of notebook paper, written in large block letters, but still well over 100 digits long. I'm thinking it's an encryption key, but the little girl notices that there are an unusually large number of 7's and 3's in the number and Jason instantly deduces that it is not just one big number, but a whole series of numbers strung together, and they are in fact the combination to a safe, the 3's and 7's being markers to turn left or right. I don't think I've ever seen a safe that required more than four numbers in the combination, so I'm thinking they padded the number just to muddy the waters. And how do you tell a direction marker 3 or 7 from a digit in the combination? I'm sure it will be explained in the sequel.
    You know, the characters in this story all had names, but I can't recall a single one.

Peanut Butter

When I was a kid I was captivated by an ad on TV for peanut butter that showed someone (I think it was a man's hand) spreading peanut butter on a slice of bread. But they weren't doing it the way you or I or any normal human would do it, that is mashing it around, going this way and that. They did it with one smooth stroke, much like in the video here. I thought that was so cool and I wanted my folks to buy some of this mystical peanut butter, but they said no.
    The ad in my mind's eye is perfectly clear. There are no extraneous elements in the scene, just the bread, the knife, the hand, and a perfectly shaped blob of peanut butter on the knife. It's also in color, and I don't think my parents bought a color TV until I was out of high school, which would have been in the 1970's.
    I always wondered how they got that shot. Even back then I suspected it could be trick photography, but I never figured out how you could fake it. After 50 years of internal debate, I am convinced that they sat down with a case of peanut butter, a truck load of bread, and just shot the same scene over and over again until it came out perfect. No wonder those Madison Avenue guys drank.

Shooting

by Marcel

I'm not really a gun guy. As a boy I shot a .22 rifle whenever I could, at cans and stuff, and I had a target model .22 air pistol that was really something, and a bb gun. In the army I qualified with the usual weapons, but small arms were not central to my job. After getting out I didn't shoot anything for twenty years, except a black-powder pistol at a fair once.

The other day I went trap shooting, and I look forward to going again. Say what you want about Barack Obama, but he has done more than any president in living memory to encourage gun ownership.

Trap shooting seems to be one of those activities that tempt a man to buy stuff. Having shot exactly once (and poorly), I thought "Well that was good, but if I had a shell pouch like that one, and some of those glasses, and one of those things, and a couple of those, and a re-loading setup, and another shotgun, and yet another shotgun..."

That's folly. Really, there's only one thing I need: to show up regularly for a couple of seasons, do some hunting, and then maybe think about new gear.

Oh, and I do need a shell pouch. And maybe some shooting glasses. I'll just see what they have at the store.

Stolen entire from Monday Evening.

The Current Job Market

California Bob reports:

So I was at my new job for about 5 weeks when my boss suddenly resigned.  Bit of a shocker.
Of course you never know the internal dynamics until you start, and even then it takes a while to interpret things.  But the situation here is, they are running out of cash, my boss doesn't like dealing with the marginally competent people, the apathetic people, or the rather mercurial owners.
A short while after I started, when he got comfortable with me, he began complaining bitterly about everything.  As do many people there.  He only gave 2 weeks notice.
In his view, the owners have no business sense, they burn through cash and then ask "where's the cash?", the operational people similarly are incompetent, etc., etc.
My views are somewhat more nuanced: the owners are focused on developing a brand and market presence, growth, and valuation rather than profitability.  They are top-heavy on highly-paid pompous executives, and various highly paid specialists, who do little to improve the business.  They have completely ignored some very basic administrative stuff that is hurting their cash flow: inventory control, reconciling credit cards receipts, etc., opting instead to focus on expensive packaging and marketing initiatives......
Anyway we have about 2 months cash left.  All it takes is 1 investor to keep us in business, but it would have to be a very risk-tolerant investor.
I understand you need to be employed at least 3 months before collecting unemployment, so that could be just about right!  Wish me luck.

Another person I know got an interview at some high-tech company and they want the applicant to prepare and deliver a power point presentation from a technical document. The request sounded a bit unusual, and so a query reached my desk, so to speak. In due course I offered up these pearls of wisdom:

Normal? There is no normal, at least not in these trying times.
On one hand it's like asking someone to do some work for free. On the other hand it is a pretty good test of whether they can do the work.
My neighbor got a Phd in some kind hi-tech optics. He spent the last few years flying all over the world giving presentations at conferences.
It's one thing to be able read and understand that document. I can see that it is fairly technical. It's another thing to be able to communicate the essence to other people.
The power point aspect is good in that it gives you two ways to present your message: orally and visually. So even if your presentation is weak in one area, you can compensate in the other. Best would obviously be to shine in both.
Some people (like my wife) do better with the spoken word. Other people, like me, do better with pictures.
To really top it, you need to be aware of how nuances of presentation can present certain aspects in a more or less favorable light. ("Yes, I've heard that the XYZ process works well, but I haven't actually seen any of their results. I have seen the results of the ABC process and I am impressed.")
Another aspect of power point is you can direct your audience's attention either towards or away from yourself. By speaking, you are drawing attention to yourself. By directing their attention to a slide, or a particular detail on a slide, you can draw attention away from yourself. It's essentially sales, but you have to understand your subject, and not everyone can do that.

Tempest in a Teapot

 "I'm a little Nazi, short and stout."

Via Tam.

Silbatone Acoustics

Introduced in 1929, the Western Electric 16A horn is a product of the early days of talking motion pictures. The 16A was intended as a compact solution for a horn speaker system to be mounted behind the movie screen hanging on chains. At 400 pounds and almost 3m. wide, the idea "compact" is relative.

Sound systems for movie theaters, that's what we're talking about here. Silbatone Acoustics makes high end audio gear for "serious music listeners". They draw their inspiration from the Western Electric sound systems installed in movie theaters, back before the accountants got into the act. Most of the pictures on their website give no sense of scale. The speaker in the picture above is ten feet wide (including the weird "ears" sticking out on either side). That's a bookcase on the right side of the picture.
    To drive big speakers you need big amplifiers. Here's a stack of Western Electric Model 46 Amplifiers:

Via Scott. Who else?