The Last Kingdom - Season 4

The Last Kingdom | Season 4 Trailer
We finished watching Season 4 of The Last Kingdom last night. It's a great show. We started watching back in 2016 and we enjoyed all four seasons. From my previous post on the subject:

It's based on The Saxon Stories, a series of historical novels written by Bernard Cornwell, who also wrote the Sharpe's Rifles series, which I really liked.

In an interview, Cornwell said: "For some reason the history of the Anglo-Saxons isn’t much taught in Britain (where I grew up) and it struck me as weird that the English really had no idea where their country came from." - Wikipedia

Brief summary, with spoilers:
King Alfred has died and his son Edward has become King of Wessex. Our hero, Uhtred, attempts to retake his ancestral home of Bebbanburg, he fails, but the villain gets his comeuppance. Somewhere after the halfway point in the series (episode 7 or 8), we have the battle of Tettenhall where, with the help of the Welsh, the Danes are stopped. But Sygtrigg (a Dane) returns from a disastrous campaign in Irland (Ireland) and upsets King Edward and his sister's plans for the total domination of England.

The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom | Series 1 Full Trailer
The Last Kingdom is a BBC produced TV series. Season 1 is available on Netflix. We watched the first two episodes this evening. It's pretty good. It's based on The Saxon Stories, a series of historical novels written by Bernard Cornwell, who also wrote the Sharpe's Rifles series, which I really liked.

In an interview, Cornwell said: "For some reason the history of the Anglo-Saxons isn’t much taught in Britain (where I grew up) and it struck me as weird that the English really had no idea where their country came from." - Wikipedia

The story is set in the late 9th Century (877, I think the opening screen said). I thought this was like the time of King Arthur, but Arthur is from the late 5th and early 6th centuries AD. We do have some historical characters, like

• Guthrum
• Alfred the Great
• Odda, Ealdorman of Devon
• Æthelwold ætheling
• Edmund the Martyr
• Æthelred of Wessex
• Asser

There is a great deal of brutality, much like Game of Thrones, but we also have a young, attractive and rich couple who are obviously in love, but I'm not sure that word has even been invented yet. And they're on the run. I think this might be Hollywood plot number 867B, but it's well done, and the girl is pretty great. She has a brain and has no compunction about killing bad guys. She also saves our hero at least once an episode. I don't know why she isn't pregnant yet, unless she's using some of those pagan spells.

Update June 2018 replaced missing trailer.

Kingdom - Netflix Series

Kingdom | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix
Netflix

Another series about Korean royalty a thousand years ago, but this time with zombies. We started watching this once before, but the zombie business turned us off. Since then we have watched The Last of Us, which acclimated us to the whole zombie edifice, so now we are more accepting of weird tales.

It all starts when the royal physician attempts to bring the recently deceased king back to life using an acupuncture needle dipped in a potion derived from the 'resurrection plant'. It brings him back to life, but as a crazed monster craving human flesh. The monster king attacks the physician's assistant and kills him. The physician puts his assistant in a coffin and carries him back to his clinic. All the people at the clinic are slowly starving to death due to the general famine. One wise guy gets the idea to cut up the dead body and make soup to feed all the people. The female doctor and her assistant are out in the woods gathering herbs, so they don't get any of the soup. They get back to the compound just in time to see all the people turn into monsters. Evidently the wise guy doesn't eat any of the soup because he doesn't turn into a monster.

So now the disease is spreading, a nearby town is destroyed and the monsters are running loose across the countryside. The only saving grace is that they become comatose during the daylight hours.

The show is full of reminders of how bad things used to be. Besides plague and famine we also have slavery, torture and psychopathic idiots in charge. Okay, that last one is still with us. I imagine there could have been an epidemic of rabies a thousand years ago and it might look a whole lot like a plague of zombies.

The show has several scenes with hordes of zombies running amok and it struck me that it looked just like a modern day riot, which says something about rioters.

P. S. The setting is more like 500 years ago, not 1,000. Besides the usual Samurai swords, bows, arrows and spears, some of the soldiers had matchlock rifles.

The whole point of reviving the King was to keep him alive until the Queen gave birth to what she hoped would be a boy. If she could also dispose of the Crown Prince (her step son), she would be the acting ruler of the kingdom until her son came of age. Actually, she would be a puppet for her father.

But the Queen has a miscarriage. She conceals the miscarriage and collects half a dozen pregnant women and sequesters them in some spare room in her personal palace. Her plan is to wait until the women give birth and collect a boy baby (surely with that many women at least one will give birth to a boy) and claim him as her own. Once that happened, all the other women and babies were executed. Seems unbelievable that someone could be so vile, but if history has taught us anything it's that there is no limit to human depravity.

The Quick and the Dead

Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead

This is a little jumbled. I've had some thoughts rattling around in my head the last few days and they haven't quite jelled, but I thought I'd dump them out anyway.
    When I hear the phrase "the quick and the dead" I tend to think of gun fighters from the old West where survival depended on fast you were with a gun. You were either quick with your gun, or you were very likely going to end up dead, or at least that was the way it was in TV land.
    It wasn't until much later that I discovered that the phrase originated in the Bible and that the "quick" was simply referring to the living. So "the quick and the dead" refers to all souls, dead or alive. Seems I have heard "quickening" used in reference to something coming alive, probably in an old time horror movie.
    Just for grins I checked a King James Bible for this phrase and found three instances:

1. The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy 4: I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
2. The First Epistle General of Peter 4: who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
3. The Acts of the Apostles 10: And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.

I got onto this subject because of Memorial Day. Memorial Day never set right with me. Seems like a lot churchy clap-trap without any real substance. Why bother remembering the dead? It's not going to do them any good. They're dead. Nothing on Earth can touch them anymore. Shoot, you might consider them the lucky ones compared to the people that were maimed, crippled or disfigured by war. And the speeches. All that talk about the "solemn occasion" and "the ultimate sacrifice" and those who "gave their lives" for our freedom. What a load of hooey. They didn't give their lives, they had their lives taken from them by all those who conspired to put them in harms way.

    I suppose I might feel differently if I had know anyone who was killed in a war, but I don't. I know a few people who have children in the military, but they are all (cross my fingers) still alive and well. One did get shot during some kind of interdiction on the high seas, but he has recovered and has returned to duty.

    A few years ago there was a movie called Proof of Life about a kidnapping in South America and the subsequent negotiations. Russel Crowe and David Caruso played soldiers of fortune. They get called in to take over the negotiations from a gang of locals and they evict the former negotiators at gunpoint. Nobody gets shot, the local guys depart and our heroes are now in business. Russell turns to his partner and says "That was fun." like it really was fun and David concurs. (It's like the last 6 seconds of this clip.)
    Hell yes it was fun. For a brief moment there we were alive! That's one of the things we hear from soldiers coming home is that they never felt so alive as they did when they were in combat. The other thing I hear from soldiers in Afghanistan is that when they are over there, they only want to be back home, but when they get home, all they want is to go back over there. Life here is just so deadly dull. Life in Afghanistan might be terrifying, but it isn't dull.
    Once you've had your fill of stressful situations, deadly dull can be nice, but do we really need to drain the life out of everything? No wonder people do the crazy shit they do. They want to feel alive. Our modern society can provide everything we need except it's all dead, dead, dead.

Cold War Redux

Building the Berlin Wall

Older son went to see Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks last night. He tells me the movie was okay, except for the heavy handed propaganda aspect. The movie is set back in the '60's, back when the the cold war was at it's coldest, and you would expect the American's in the movie to have a dim view of the Soviets, especially those who were in the government or the military, which is essentially everyone in the movie. If you weren't in the military or the government, you had no role to play here. The problem comes with the way the Soviets are portrayed in this movie, which was made last year. It was like nothing had changed, we are still fighting the cold war and the Soviets are still our bitter enemy. No behind the scenes of what was going on with the Soviets, not even any subtitles under the Russian dialog.

       KSA (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) beheaded a dissident cleric this month and some Iranians responded by burning the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. With this kind of hostility and since the USA (the United States of America) is backing KSA and Putin (Vladimir Putin, President of Russia) is backing Iran, we have a proxy war fomenting in the Middle East.

    So with Russia and the USA pushing and shoving, I suppose it's not surprising that the movie echoed that sentiment. Since KSA signed a peace treaty with Israel they are now friends, and since Jewish people have an outsized influence in Hollywood, I shouldn't be surprised that the movie portrays the supporter (Russia) of the enemy (Iran) of their 'friend' (KSA) in a negative light. But I still think it's a little stinky.

    I have to admit the burning of the Saudi Embassy made me very happy. I don't think there is anyone I like less than the rulers of Saudi Arabia.
   
    KSA produces more oil than anyone else. They are also sitting on the world's second largest (known) oil reserves. Have you noticed how the price of oil has plummeted recently? I wonder what kind of game KSA is playing, or if they are even aware of what their policies are, or what effect they are having. I suspect their main goal is to have someone to bitch about. Since they can't bitch about Israel anymore, they are picking on someone in their own league. They already have instigated chaos in Iraq and Syria, so who better to pick a fight with than Iran?

Redbad

REDBAD - TRAILER #1 (2018)
Modern Dutch movie about an old time Dutch dude.

Redbad was the king (or duke) of Frisia from c. 680 until his death in 719. He is often considered the last independent ruler of Frisia before Frankish domination. He defeated Charles Martel at Cologne. Eventually, however, Charles prevailed and compelled the Frisians to submit. Redbad died in 719, but for some years his successors struggled against the Frankish power. - Redbad, King of the Frisians

Mostly it's a movie of guys fighting with swords and people being violently horrible to each other, as is traditional. So, lot's of action. Plus we have definite good guys (the pagans) and definite bad guys (Charles Martel and his Christian soldiers). The movie marries off Redbad's sister to the evil Martel. They lay it on a bit thick. In real life, it was Redbad's daughter who gets married off to Martel's brother.

The marriage was political. I suppose such a marriage could be a hostile relationship, but I would think you would try to make the best of it, being as you are kind of stuck. But people don't always do what they should, sometimes inbred animosity overwhelms any rational control and you get shit like you see here, or on Jerry Springer.

There is one pointless and inexplicable little adventure. Redbad takes his wife and their baby to reconnoiter the castle where his sister is being held. He sees his sister being baptized, but he is surprised by some guards, whom he kills with his mighty sword. He, his wife and child barely escape with their lives. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

This scene was in the movie, and the logic is pretty wonderful:

It is said that Redbad was nearly baptised, but refused when he was told that he would not be able to find any of his ancestors in Heaven after his death, since he preferred spending eternity in Hell with his pagan ancestors than in Heaven with his enemies, especially the Franks. - Redbad, King of the Frisians

The movie was supposed to be a great film about a great Dutch hero, like Admiral, but it fails to deliver any more than generic sword fighting entertainment. Okay, it did prompt me to do a little reading.

All the places mentioned are in relatively small portion of Europe.

Redbad Locations

From top to bottom the locations on the map are:

• Heligoland, Redbad retreated here in 697
• Frisia, Redbad's home territory
• Utrecht, area containing Dorestad
• Dorestad, Redbad was defeated by Pepin in 689
• Cologne, Redbad defeated Martel in 714
• Reims, mentioned in the movie.

Redbad lived about a century before King Alfred ruled in Wessex, England (The Last Kingdom).

P-61 Black Widow

The Most Chilling Plane of WW2
Only Planes

This night fighter airplane was developed almost entirely during WW2. It only came into service in the last year of the war. It was the first American aircraft to carry its own intercept radar. Only 700 were built, unlike the 10,000 or so of each of the models of conventional fighters built by both all countries.

Black Widow Radar Origins

In August 1940, sixteen months before the United States entered the war, the U.S. Air Officer in London, Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons, was briefed on British research in radar ("Radio Detection And Ranging" as it was then known), which had been underway since 1935, and had played an important role in the nation's defense against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. General Emmons was informed of the new Airborne Intercept radar (AI for short), a self-contained unit that could be installed in aircraft, and operated independently of ground stations. In September 1940, the Tizard Mission traded British research, including the cavity magnetron that would make self-contained interception radar installations practicable, for American production.

Anode Block of Original Cavity Magnetron
About 10 centimeters in diameter

The Tizard Mission

The Tizard Mission, officially the British Technical and Scientific Mission, was a delegation from the United Kingdom that visited the United States during World War II to share secret research and development (R&D) work that had military applications. It received its popular name from the programme's instigator, Henry Tizard, a British scientist and chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee, which had orchestrated the development of radar.

The mission travelled to the U.S. in September 1940 during the Battle of Britain. They conveyed a number of British technical and scientific secrets with the objective of securing U.S. assistance in sustaining the war effort and obtaining the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of these technologies, which Britain itself could not fully use, due to the immediate demands of other war-related production.

Referring to one such British secret, a device known as a resonant cavity magnetron, American historian James Phinney Baxter III later wrote, "When the members of the Tizard Mission brought one to America in 1940, they carried the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores." The mission also opened up channels of communication for jet engine and atomic bomb development, leading to the British contribution to the Manhattan Project, and catalyzed Allied technological cooperation during World War II.

Vikings: Valhalla

Vikings: Valhalla | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Historical drama set in England with a bunch of historical characters including Leif Erikson and Æthelred the Unready. It starts with:

The St. Brice's Day massacre was the killing of Danes on the 13th of November 1002, ordered by King Æthelred the Unready of England in response to frequent Danish raids. - Wikipedia

I remember hearing about Leif Erikson when I was in school about a zillion years ago, and Æthelred the Unready, that's a name that sticks in the memory. 

His epithet does not derive from the modern word "unready", but rather from the Old English unræd meaning "poorly advised"; it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised". - Wikipedia

Danes had been living in England for a long time. The English noblemen advised the King to exterminate them. Not everyone thought this was a good idea as they suspected this would enrage the Vikings and they would want revenge and that's just what happened. That's my quick guess as to the origin of his nickname.

This show is like a follow on to The Last Kingdom which starts in 877, and we've still got Normans, Saxons and Danes hacking on each other with swords and axes.

The production values are pretty good, meaning the clothing, weapons, boats and buildings all seem reasonable for the period. They do slip in a number of women and brown people into roles where you might not expect them, but who knows? This is hundreds of years after the Romans left and slavery is still a thing. Some people seem to get bent out of shape over this kind of thing, but it doesn't bother me. Sometimes having a black person in a drama really throws some light on the situation, like when we had a black person playing Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton.

Real historical characters from the show:

We even have some dates for some of them. The names in blue are links to Wikipedia which prove (prove) that they really, truly existed.  

Google spreadsheet here

What's happening

Took the boys to see the latest Star Wars movie last night. We all enjoyed it thoroughly.

Mutual Materials (what kind of name is that?) is delivering 6 pallets of concrete bricks to the house today. Landscaper is finishing the base (4 inches of gravel) today and laying bricks tomorrow.

Owner where I work is scurrying aroung trying to get ready for a trip to HIF next week. HIF: Hydrological Instrumentation Facility, government operation in Mississippi. They have a working scale model of the Mississippi river basin.

Manufacturing is trying to find a printer that will print labels with individual ID numbers for some BlueTooth radios we build. Tried to find one once before, but couldn't get a printer vendor interested in talking to us. Owner said he was going to take care of it, but it's been three months, and he hasn't done diddly, and now the situation is getting critical. I expect we will have an explosion here before the end of the day.

Went by Aaron Brothers art supplies last weekend and picked up a do it yourself metal frame for a poster of "Middle Earth" a vendor dropped off at work. It's a cool poster, 160 degree panoramic view of New Zealand farms and mountains. Picture measures 36" by 8". Had to go back to the store and exchange the rails because I got the wrong size the first time.

Anne & Ross & I saw "Kingdom of Heaven" last weekend (two weeks ago?). Tremendous movie.

Reading "Blood of Victory", spy novel about trying to disrupt the supply of Romanian oil to Germany in 1940.

War, war and more war. If you have too much peace, make up a war, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on education.

Subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. Interesting reading.

Still don't have a real good idea just how the world works, but I'm working on it.

Ross is rehearsing a play.

Daughter has rehearsal today and performances tomorrow (dance).

King Alfred's Tower

King Alfred's Tower

Came across this on The Feral Irishman and my first reaction was that it is some AI* fantasy, but it's not, it's a real place, though it doesn't seem to be much of a building. The tower is hollow with a spiral staircase in one of the corner protrusions.  Wikipedia calls it a 'folly', which I surmise just means it has no practical purpose. Also from Wikipedia:

Henry Hoare II planned the tower in the 1760s to commemorate the end of the Seven Years' War against France and the accession of King George III, and it was erected near the site of Egbert's Stone, where it is believed that Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, rallied the Anglo-Saxons in 878 before the Battle of Edington.

Alfred of Wessex? Where have I heard that before? Oh, that's right: The Last Kingdom.

The tower is about 100 miles west of London and 20 miles south of Bath.

*Artificial Intelligence

Reputation is All

Villa Jovis Capri Italy

How to destroy a reputation by Andrew Doyle starts out by talking about Tiberius, a first century Roman Emperor. Tiberius built a villa on the easternmost extremity of Capri. Cool, fancy house on an island in the sunny Mediterranean. What they don't tell you is the eastern end of Capri ends with some giant cliffs and the house is perched right on the brink. Those are the ruins of the villa in the center of the picture above.

Anyway, Andrew talks about how easily reputations are destroyed and how people (you, me and everyone else) have an innate tendency to believe the worst.

P. S. I think my mind came up with the title because I heard Uhtred of Bebbanburg say 'Destiny is All' about a zillion times in The Last Kingdom.

Neutrinos, Shmutrinos

I don't like neutrinos. I just finished reading The Periodic Kingdom, a fine book about the sub-atomic structure of the elements and the periodic table. It was a nice refresher on the structure of atoms and how it relates to chemical reactions, and it made no mention of neutrinos. I may have even learned a couple of things. So I think I have a pretty good handle on regular old sub-atomic whatsits like protons, neutrons and electrons.

And then we go and watch 2012 and suddenly I am confronted with neutrinos. Bah.

So what do we know about neutrinos? Not much. Some guy came up with the idea as a way to explain some phenomena that didn't gibe with their current theory. Then they came up with some experiments to "prove" their existence, except all their proof is indirect. It all depends on whether their story is correct or not. So far, it all hangs together, the theory, the experimental evidence, what have you. But we have never seen a neutrino and we probably never will.

It could be that we have the story all wrong, and there aren't any such things as neutrinos. Someone rooting around in a lab somewhere may discover something that doesn't fit, and our house of cards will collapse and have to be rebuilt in a new way to accommodate the new findings. Who knows? The future is cloudy, I cannot see.

In the movie they start with a neutrino detector deep underground in India. That part is at least sort of valid. There was one until the adjacent mine was shut down, and they are planning a new one, but it isn't in operation yet. And the underground tank of water that is a mile deep? Well, there is a neutrino detector in Japan that uses a huge volume of water, though I don't think it is a mile in any direction.

Reading about these facilities reminds me of the Big Science Map Project I was working on. They are building more and more scientific installations and they are getting bigger and bigger. You don't hear much about them except when they are originally built. After that things are pretty quiet unless someone makes some kind of sensational discovery. But these things last for years, and they keep adding on to them. You start looking around and you find them durn near everywhere. That was basically the downfall of my project: there didn't seem to be any end to it.

So anyway, there are several projects looking for these fabulous, undetectable whatsits. Which got me to thinking. A while back I read a Science Fiction/Fantasy novel about a newly discovered world which had a previously unknown natural force running around loose. Kind of like electricity, before we knew what electricity was. It had a rather large and troublesome effect on people's day-to-day lives. It was treated like magic. Makes me wonder if we don't have a similar situation with our own current understanding of how the world works.

As for the movie? The special effects were awesome. Waves breaking over the mountains, aircraft carrier capsized, I mean, we were there. And it was cool to see the Russian cargo jet in action, but why was John Cusack still wearing his tie at the end of the movie? Some things are destined to remain a mystery.

World War Z

 

ZOMBIE TSUNAMI

I watched part of World War Z this weekend. I gave up about half way through because it was it was getting dumb. Hyperactive zombies are able to sneak up and successfully attack heavily armed men standing on a wide open airfield? If we were talking about two different strains of zombies it might have made sense, but this is just another one of those stupid scenes were the villains sneaks up behind our hapless victim who can't see their stalker because they are not in view of the camera! Bah, double bah, and humbug to boot.
    There was one scene that struck me as especially effective and that was the zombies piling on top of each other to scale the wall surrounding Israel, or maybe it was just Jerusalem (a word I know well but never learned to spell). I saw that and it made me think of nothing so much as the rabid Muslim jihadists who are overrunning the Middle East. It also made me think of lemmings on their quadrennial rush to the sea. 
    Meanwhile, back in the real world, we've got the Sunnis and Shiites and Shais (two of these might be the same, but I really don't care which ones they are) stirring up shit. Iran is sending weapons to Baghdad and the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is sending weapons to ISIS. (excerpt here).
    Didn't we just spend a trillion dollars to free the oppressed majority in Iraq? And didn't KSA aid and abet this venture? And now they are trying to undo it? Doesn't make much sense, unless they wanted the USA to

1. topple Saddam, which would have been too much work for the Saudi's slave army,
2. invest heavily in Iraq's oil producing infrastructure,
3. put a feeble 'democratic' government in charge, and then
4. leave.

Now Iraq looks like a real plum, and all Saudi Arabia has to do is reach out and pluck it. Of course Iran sees the same thing, and it's their brothers-in-faith who are nominally in charge in Iraq, or were last time I checked, which was a couple of days ago, so it's on, dude.

KSA ranks right down there with Kissinger, that is, near the bottom. Came across a video that purports to show that there might be a little turmoil brewing in the KSA. I only watched the first few minutes of it, it wasn't that entertaining. I have already formed my opinion of Saudi Arabia, I don't really need any more evidence.

Why is Saudi Arabia still counted as our 'friend'? For that matter, how did that slimeball Henry the K. get to be Secretary of State? Could it be that freedom has a price, but being the cheapskates we are, cheap gasoline is more important? Besides,  we don't really care about any of those people on the other side of the ocean.

Saudis & The Bomb

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L)  and Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud (R)  in Riyadh in 2007. Don't look like two guys who want to kill each other, do they?

I am pretty sure the Koran forbids the wearing of eyeglasses.

The BBC has a story about how Pakistan might supply Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons. I hadn't heard this before, but I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense. Saudi Arabia certainly has enough money, and what better way to impress your friends and enemies than by waving around a really big, nuclear powered club? Then there was this very telling comment on Military Photos dot com by Astaran:

I'd be more concerned about Sunnis and Shias nuking it out...KSA and Iran are already waging a massive proxy war in Syria and have been fighting one another via proxies over last decades.

This is the first explanation of what's going on in the Mideast that has made any sense. (KSA - Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)

Chinese Dong Feng-3 (DF-3A) Medium Range Ballistic Missile in some place that looks like it could be Saudi Arabia.

Al Watah Missile Base, Saudi Arabia.  View using Google Maps

Update November 2020 replaced missing map.