Fleet Week 80 odd years ago in Portland, Oregon

Aerial view of US Navy ships arriving for the Rose Festival in downtown Portland. Click to embiggenate.

We are looking north, sometime in the 1930's. The website claims 1935, but several commentators dispute that. The bridges in view are, from front to back, the second Morrison Bridge, the Burnside Bridge, and the Steel Bridge. All the buildings along the waterfront on the West side, where the Navy is moored, were torn down to make way for the Tom McCall Waterfront Park in the 1970's. Via Post Hip Scott. Map here.

P.S. 'Commenter' is not a real word, so all the people who commented on the original site have been upgraded to 'commentators'.

Revolutions of 1848

Battle at Soufflot barricades at Rue Soufflot Street, Paris, France, on 24 June 1848, Horace Vernet.

"The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples^[3] or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history, but within a year, reactionary forces had regained control, and the revolutions collapsed." - Wikipedia

Sounds a little like what's going on in the Middle East and North Africa. Inspired by a post by Comrade Misfit that mentioned an apocryphal quote by Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin.

A Wing and a Prayer

Looks real, well, except for the when the wing comes off. I have heard of some sport plane crashes caused by structural failure and they seemed to occur because the airframe was subjected to forces greater than it was designed for. This can happen in high stress situations, like pulling up out a dive. That does not appear to be the situation when the airplane in this video loses its wing. Also, I saw a similar video once before, so I checked.



Snopes verified that it is a fake. Well done, almost believable, but still a fake. Via Post Hip Scott. 

Screws

Sometimes it seems like our whole world is held together with screws. Screws can be very handy, and since the advent of the power screwdriver, they have found even more applications. Drywall used to be put up with nails, but nowadays it is more likely to be installed using screws.
    Screws come in all shapes and sizes and they are cheaper than dirt. The larger the quantity you buy, the lower the unit price. If you want a railroad-car's worth they might be free.
    Oftentimes when doing repairs around the house I will need a few screws. Generally my requirements are not too specific. They need to be long enough and strong enough to do the job, so I will go rummaging through my collections to see if I can find something that will work. About half the time I do, which is great because it means I can get on with the job with having to interrupt my project for a trip to the store where I will have to spend (gasp!) money.
    I was cleaning up in the basement this weekend, gathering tools and old computer parts from all the odd places where they had been squirreled away, and I came across a box of small computer screws that my youngest had abandoned. I'm looking at it and it's a jumbled mess. I hate looking for stuff. If I need something that I have I want to be able to lay my hands on it, so a box of screws like this is worse than useless - it's a time trap, just waiting for the unwary to get sucked into pawing through it looking for the one screw they need, the one screw that isn't there.
    I decide I will sort these screws out. I spend some time at it and I get them sorted into a dozen or so different categories, or maybe two dozen. And then I look at what I've got, and what I've got isn't pretty. Half of them are the screws that are used to secure add-in cards in the computer. Anyone who has every done any work on a computer undoubtedly has a pile of these. Another bunch are not screws per se, but special little widgets used on one specific brand of computer. Another bunch are too small for me to ever want to use. If you need them, you need them, but they are so small that working with them is a real pain. We're talking tweezers and spit on the end of your finger.
    On occasion I have bought screw assortments where there are a number of specific screws, all selected for being useful for home repairs, sorted into separate compartments. These have proven to be very useful, even unto the very last piece that I forced into an application never intended by the inventor.
    What I am wondering is how many of these screws are worth hanging onto? I have a bunch of old wood screws that require a a straight bladed screwdriver that I doubt I will ever use. They generally seem to be the wrong length, and I always prefer Philips head screws because I can use my drill with them. You can use a power screwdriver with straight blade screw heads, but it is not as convenient.

WWII RAF Ammo belt assembly

    I liken this business of sorting screws to assembling ammunition into belts for use in a machine gun. Tedious work, especially in peacetime. But if you ever need to use that machine gun, you will be glad you spent the time to assemble those belts.

Emotional Learning

"In her book The Woman's Second Guide To Adulthood, former Ms. editor Suzanne Braun Levine writes about the brain changes that occur in people past fifty. Post-fifty brains undergo a growth spurt in the medial temporal lobe, the area associated with emotional learning. This growth, present at no other time apart from during adolescence, was discovered entirely by accident.

"Dr Francine Bene was researching schizophrenia at Harvard Medical School, when she discovered two significant increases in myelin growth (the fatty nerve fibre coating that speeds up connection between nerve cells); the first 100% leap happens during teenagehood, with the second 50% ("a huge leap") increase occurs during middle age. Experience becomes wisdom."

Via Dustbury.

I went looking for picture to accompany this post, but I didn't have much luck. Google "emotional learning" and you get a tsunami of educational posters for children. Google "myelin" and you get icky biological images. So we fall back and punt.


Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion (Official HD Video)
Aerosmith
Can you believe that this song came out in 1975?

Update August 2022 replaced missing video.

First Class Accommodations

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry en route to Iraq, Sept. 10, 2014. AP Photo/Brendan Smialowski.

. . . one pallet of baggage, one pallet of high ranking diplomat . . . we're ready to go. I'm thinking this must be a C-17, you wouldn't use a Hercules to fly across the Atlantic, and if it's a jet you are probably flying at altitude, which means you either need oxygen or the aircraft must be pressurized. The latch and seal mechanism on the rear ramp on this aircraft must be a real mechanical wonder. I'm not even gonna think about the noise.

Dream

Monocoque Aircraft Construction. This one is a Russian Tu-22M3.

    I was at a friend's house and I had just heard that someone was going to build a fully enclosed monocoque motorcycle. They were using plans for a machine that had been in production, but lapsed, kind of like Saab automobiles. I was really excited about this because it meant that the three wheeled machine of my dreams was now a possibility. I leave and I am walking, heading home, when I realize that someone at the house might be able to give me a ride. Since it's an eight mile walk to my house I decide it might be worthwhile to go back and see if I can catch that ride. I'm walking back the three or four blocks and somewhere along the way it changes to a bike ride in traffic. I'm pedaling like mad and not doing a bad job of keeping up with traffic, but it's not enough for the drivers in their cars. They are in full rush hour mode and are bobbing and weaving to get past me so they can rush up behind the next car and start tail-gating them. I'm not sure, but I may have been going through the motions of pedaling and pedaling so furiously that I woke myself up. You don't suppose those fake margarita's I had last night had anything to do with it, do you?


Gyro-X Test Drive
Music City Metalcraft
    The fully enclosed motorcycle was one of my dream ideas. A guy in Portland actually builds (built?) them. I don't think he uses monocoque construction though. Secretly I think three wheeled motorcycles are for people who can't keep their balance. They do have the advantage that they don't fall over when the roads get slick. The fully enclosed bike uses a gyroscope to keep its balance.
    I had been to this city before, at least in my head. It is not a real place, but it was very familiar. My planned route home involved navigating through a downtown area, constricted by a river, railroad tracks and one way streets. There were multiple routes that were all about the same distance and would have taken about the same amount of time, but none of them were what you would call a 'straight shot'.


Gyro-stabilized Electric Motorcycle Hits Road

Some Californians seem to have revived the idea of the gyro-balanced motorcycle.

Update July 2019 replaced missing first video. Don't remember what it was, so this one is probably different.

Update May 2023 repaired broken video link.