Category Archives: Miscellaneous

A taste of things to come

We will all go together when we go. All suffused with an incandescent glow. — Tom Lehrer

I’m quite impressed by the leadership shown by the Executive Branch to the reprehensible situation in Ukraine.  Regrettably when dealing with psychopaths, sanctions and embargoes only go so far.  Without fusion in the sun, we wouldn’t live.  But, fusion on earth seems inevitable now.  We won’t live through that, either.

So, let us enjoy sunsets while we can.  Even the ones that look like mushroom clouds.

Nick on ‘brick: Another look at 2001

/tap /tap

Is this thing still on?

Apparently.

I’ve posted previously of CinemaTyler’s excellent but breathless exploration of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  ParallaxNick takes a more leisurely and historical look at the same film. It is less about the filmmaking process and more on its origins, development, context, and implications.  Nick’s videos about astronomy are well worth the watch.

Youtube Channel: ParallaxNick

No good deed: Youtube deletes Jeff Quitney’s channel

At one time there were several Youtube channels that found, cleaned-up, and uploaded public domain training films and other documentary-style educational videos for a grateful audience.  wdtvlive42 and Historia-Bel99TV were summarily deleted a couple of years ago.  This week the hammer fell on Jeff Quitney who had presented over five thousand films that he had spruced up.  Youtube does not seem to have an appeals process.  They first demonetized him based on (most likely spurious) copyright claims against music that was part of a few of the soundtracks.  Now, his channel has just disappeared.  Fortunately he has at least partial backups at Bit.Tube and Vimeo.  His goal is to ultimately have everything restored but that will take considerable time.  I’ve linked to him many times and have found at least temporary replacements from the Internet Archive as well as from other Youtubers.  Still, it is a shame what happened to him.

Periscope Film of Los Angeles still exists, providing watermarked films from their commercial library.  Let’s hope they remain and grow.

Addendum 7 April 2019: Looks like he’s making Vimeo his go-to site for old and new videos.  Click the image to go to his Vimeo page.

Click the image to go to Jeff Quitney’s Vimeo Channel

Addendum 10 June 2023: Jeff’s Vimeo site is down, as well.

Nonstandard deviations: Donald Bradman’s staggering average

The 1950 British Council love-letter to cricket gave glimpses of the 1948 Ashes matches between Australia and England where Sir Donald Bradman concluded his storied test career.   The crowd at Lords and possibly even the English team wanted to see Bradman leave on a high note but he was dismissed quickly for no runs.   In a sweet coincidence,  Australian science journalist Brady Haran has just released a Numberphile video putting that match in context of Bradman’s body of work.

Youtube Channel: Numberphile

Doppelgaenger: GE on Management

Management and Leadership are booming cargo-cult businesses.  Certifications in both can be had for a fee regardless of aptitude or ability.    Universities have created valuable profit-centers in this ‘market’ around their  charitable cocoons, touting their programs in airports, magazines, billboards, and online advertising.  Just about everyone in the modern workplace will either have to take a course in some aspect of this or be talked at by someone who has.  The material, to be charitable, is dumbed down to  irrelevance.  The examples are always shiftless or cantankerous employees not fully committed to the bottom line.   Orwell had it right

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them.
— George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

The old General Electric company recognized that developing managers means more than a handbook of HR-approved cliches.   This Capraesque short film does not solve but at least acknowledges the crushing bidirectional pressure aspiring and reluctant managers have faced and continue to face.   The protagonist is literally beside himself with stress and gets some medical help.  The ending is refreshingly ambiguous.  Sports fans of a certain age will recognize a young Heywood Hale Broun, long before his coat-of-many-colors phase.

Channel: Jeff Quitney at Vimeo
(New link added 2/2/20 following Jeff Quitney’s remastered upload to his Vimeo pages)

https://vimeo.com/388593822

Channel: Pathescope Productions at The Internet Archive
(Link updated 3/22/19 following Youtube’s deletion of Jeff Quitney’s channel)

 

Industrial Chic: From when copying was new

There’s a category of Youtube channel dedicated to fixing up old mostly public-domain videos from Prelinger and similar archives and making them available to broad audiences.  Jeff Quitney is one of the best at this along with Bel99TV and PeriscopeFilm.

Here’s a little bit of 1965 techno-cool courtesy of Xerox Corporation.

Via The Handy(Jam) channel at the Internet Archive.
(Link updated 3/22/19 after the deletion of Jeff Quitney’s Youtube Channel)