How did you like that movie / TV show / book?

Old news really Ike, I recall that only days maybe a few weeks after if that, this specific failure potential was reported here in Australia, with those in charge estimating the failure rated at about a thousand to one chance, thus it must be all systems go!

Sorry to be fatalistic though...really, honestly just think about it, a once in a life time opportunity, that was assured. If happen chance it all went well the gains exceeded the risks and the risks where already there was this a new design feature that deviated from past shuttle launches?

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch2.htm
 
i'm not sure i follow you there, steve, but this guy in particular seemed to know that the odds of failure were in fact alarmingly high.

this may be 'old news', but the guy in question was working in this very program and was essentially begging the administrators to hold off on the launch. if he had succeeded, all seven lives would have been spared and history would have been significantly different. because as i understand it, the aerospace industry was going through something of a boom around this time, but after the challenger disaster, that changed a lot.

this may even have contributed to the eventual cancellation of the space shuttle program and various policy-making that's going on today.


btw, i found something the other day that looks pretty cool. it's freeware that simulates a space craft able to fly around the known universe. it also allows you to go back in time. the screenshots look pretty impressive to me, and i'll update if / when i install this sucker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceEngine
 
This About That

Prior to flight NASA engineers stated there was a 1 in 25 chance the Space Transport System would suffer catastrophic failure. The first 25 STS missions had heat sensors placed all over the exterior of the vehicle. Those sensors would have detected the flame impinging on the flight 51 fuel tank and triggered an abort. Man, I always wanted to see that. Considering the flight was only 73 seconds into it's planed 520,440 the abort and return would have been spectacular and incredibly dangerous. The Shuttle seems to have done far better than the predicted failure rate. Yes it had two two failures out of like 137 missions but the second shuttle was (apparently ? ) SHOT DOWN BY ALIENS ... ?

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="
" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
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1-in-25 for such a high profile venture sounds pretty insane. sheeit...

...

EDIT: another cool project i just discovered... a visual database of the results from all those mythbusters experiments.
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/


for example, i discovered just now that rolling down the windows is apparently more efficient than running AC.
 
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I used to drive my Sonoma pickup with the tailgate down. The gas mileage was always bit lower compared to driving with the tailgate up. I never wanted to believe my numbers. Years later Mythbusters proved them right. I wish those guys practiced better scientific method. They sure tried. I am haunted by their electro -gravitic lifter test. They showed the lifter levitating. They put it in a vacuum chamber, pumped out the air and it failed to lift. Thing is they never did the control test of turning it on while it was in the chamber full of air. I always thought slamming those tiny wires it the vacuum chambers thick steel door shorted out the 30,000 Volts flowing through them. So no lift...? The world will never know. The controversy about those lifters is, is it antigravity or just accelerating air between the electrodes ? That vacuum test would have ended the debate if done correctly. Were they covering up the electro-gravetic effect? We have known about electro-gravitcs since 1957. A charged saucer shaped capacitor has been shown to loose weight. Why did those guys loose Grant, Tory and the two chicks ? The show imploded with just Adam and Jamie, those guys ... Clearly Not Friends.
 
i'm reading the summary right now and trying to wrap my head around it. i'm guessing that the 2nd of three proposals is the one you are talking about:

A triangular device that supposedly establishes a new gravitational field based on the theory of the Biefeld-Brown effect. The theory maintains that 30,000 volts of electricity forced through a wire ionizes the air around it and elevates the device. However, the MythBusters found that the lift happens because ionization actually creates a thrust by shifting the flow of air around the gadget.

To ensure that they weren't simply being overly skeptical, the MythBusters even brought in physicists with a super-sensitive gravity detector to test each device. Although the Biefeld-Brown effect has received some attention from folks at NASA, even it failed to register a decrease in gravitational pull on the gravity-o-meter.
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so i'm guessing that the tests were more scientifically sound than the episode portrayed, and the control was in fact established. (hell if i know; i didn't see that ep)

IIRC, the show chopped tory, grant and kari because the concept of the 2nd team was 'bogging the show down,' or something like that. actually i thought they helped make the show more interesting by cutting back and forth between projects. *shrug*

i didn't realise until after the show ended how much adam and jamie didn't care for each other. it's probably a minor miracle the show lasted as long as it did...
 
well i'd say this is pretty fluffing cool. apparently a book was published which features an early script of monty python and the holy grail. it also includes scene-blocking, added notes, various modern goodies and lots of photos.

it seems that a guy on reddit owns a copy and has decided to start scanning it in to share the goodness with others. here's what he's got so far:
https://imgur.com/a/XHOTL

...

also seen on reddit today-- a huge thread talking about the movies that made people laugh the hardest. a lot of these i haven't really heard about, but i'm looking forward to sampling. here's four on my potential playlist:

death at a funeral (2007)
what we do in the shadows (2015)
kiss kiss bang bang (2005)
the man who knew too little (1987)
 
Person A: Trying to decipher the page enumeration in that Python book was rather like negotiating a room full of Ouija boards blindfolded...

Person B; You can't do that!

A: Do what?

B: Blindfold a Ouija board...it'll never know which way to point...

A: No, DOLT! the blindfold goes on a PERSON, not a Ouija board! (Swirling Mist appears from nowhere, sees nothing familiar, and disappears)
As I was say___

B: What was THAT?

A: What was WHAT?

B: That swirling stuff...looked kind of like mist, but a bit more, uh...

A: Oh, plug it! Now, where was I...

B: That's my point---you WEREN'T!

A: I weren't---er, wasn't what?

B: How should I know---You're the one who WEREN'T!

A: (Feeling the beginnings of an ulcer, although never having any reference to one, so appearing to all who cared---or did not---to be oblivious) You walking, talking, breathing...conTAMINANT! You're ruining the entire exercise!

B: Leave it to someone like YOU to turn Ouija into an exercise!

A: Enough of this bull----! Where are my coconuts?

END (Due to carpal tunnel syndrome and time constraints.)

Publicist's note: The Swirling Mist is no relation, and bears almost no resemblance, to any person, living, dead, or anywhere in between.
 
i wonder if sleepy ever saw this "old gold" commercial at the 5min, 57sec mark.

i'm thinking that after dozens of botched dancing routines, they finally got a take where the two boxes didn't crash in to each other. good enough!

Vintage 50s And 60sTv Commercials - YouTube
 
In nine minutes I saw more cigarette commercials than I have in the last 40 years, but less "boner pill" commercials than I have in the last 15 years. Unless you count Fluffo. I'm calling it a draw.


 
haha, fluffo. is that the shortening that keeps you standing at attention, ready to do your job?


...


well this was a pretty cool tribute pic of all the people who passed this year. seems that even father jack (from father ted) left us in 2016. :(


funny_pictures_2.jpg


and... even admiral akbar passed??
 
This guy's been gone somewhat longer than the last bunch.....

Noah's Ark - The Real Story--- a BBC/Discovery documentary from 2003, updated 2016-3-01. How about Noah as a Sumerian businessman-king (?) making his living brewing beer and selling animals up and down the Euphrates---with his BOAT?

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/...=ea19eda77098e155933489ec50038d0c&action=view

Not bad when there's nothing else worth ignoring.

Why not?
 
i watched pixar's "inside out" the other day... one of the best films of last year, apparently. it was a really clever concept about the inner workings of personality and the way the brain works, expressed through the angst of a preteen girl. what made it a lot more boring to me than it had to be was the standard disney treatment of nonstop frenetic action and reactions. a euro-type film treatment would have really helped it IMO.

"man in the high castle" season two just came out.

"sherlock" season four is coming out january first.

tis the season.
 
Ike Savage said:
i watched pixar's "inside out" the other day... one of the best films of last year, apparently. it was a really clever concept about the inner workings of personality and the way the brain works, expressed through the angst of a preteen girl. what made it a lot more boring to me than it had to be was the standard disney treatment of nonstop frenetic action and reactions. a euro-type film treatment would have really helped it IMO.

"man in the high castle" season two just came out.

"sherlock" season four is coming out january first.

tis the season.
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I had serious concerns with "Inside Out". That movie was promoted heavily to kids. I thought it was wrong to expose adolescent and younger kids to the turmoil, conflict and confusion behind human thought, motivation and psychology. I would rather let kids just be kids. Innocence is way underrated these days. Kids are self conscious enough already. Why direct their attention to and worry them by turning them "Inside Out" ?
 
Coil_Smoke said:
I had serious concerns with "Inside Out". That movie was promoted heavily to kids. I thought it was wrong to expose adolescent and younger kids to the turmoil, conflict and confusion behind human thought, motivation and psychology. I would rather let kids just be kids. Innocence is way underrated these days. Kids are self conscious enough already. Why direct their attention to and worry them by turning them "Inside Out" ?
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interesting thoughts. i certainly agree that innocence is underrated, and in fact tends to get hijacked by society's influence pretty early.

OTOH, systems of self observation such as cognitive therapy, transactional analysis and meditation have all been observed to have a positive impact on mental health and self awareness. kids have been reliably introduced to such systems for ages without any particular negative effects i'm aware of. it's the children of shrinks that i'd be more worried about.

personally i'm more concerned about the impact of all the chronic violence and ADHD, video game quality of movies today... even kids' movies. those seem just as hard on innocence as anything else. those movies are conditioning young people to a situation that doesn't exist in reality, and also, not exposing them to anything worth knowing. but i thought the pixar film had at least one super-useful message that most kids could benefit from-- the idea that sadness can be appropriate sometimes, even useful.
 
i saw "lion" in theatre the other day. it's the (true) story of a young indian boy who gets separated from his family and then adopted by australians, then becomes obsessed with finding his original family. good film and quite the tearjerker, but probably not a great film. the lead figure (as an adult) was a little on the vanilla side and the search kind of dragged on.

note: wow, movie popcorn sure tastes like plastic the next day. :/

...

lee van cleef, if you still read this site-- there's been some M*A*S*H news, of course. the actors who played trapper john and father mulcahey both passed in the last year or so. but what was completely unbeknownst to me were some things i read about gary burghoff on reddit, recently.

apparently he was highly disliked on set, even if some acknowledged him as a top-notch actor. this seems to be confirmed by multiple sources. what a contrast. :s
 
I've been watching the 2nd season of "Man in the High Castle" on Amazon. They changed a lot from the book and even more in this season, but I really like where they're going with it. It gets a bit long-winded at times, but a very conceptually cool show. I can't really compare it to anything else, it has it's own vibe and tone.

For the uninitiated, it's based on an alternate timeline where the US has lost WWII and the Japanese are in control of half the country and Hitler in control of the other half, and there are these underground movies being passed around that show scenes from our correct timeline where the US wins. Season 2 gets more into where these films originate from and people learning more about the "reality" they live in and their role.

It's a really good show. But not as good as Westworld. That shit was the bomb.
 
Westworld was the bomb? Really .... so bored with that. Repeat, repeat, slow, repeat ... gave up after 6 episodes :(

Promised much, delivered nowt! :)
 
elton said:
Westworld was the bomb? Really .... so bored with that. Repeat, repeat, slow, repeat ... gave up after 6 episodes :(

Promised much, delivered nowt! :)
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Really? I was up in the air until episode 4 which sold me, and the last 2 episodes blew me away and made me go back and watch them all again. It was even better the 2nd time around because everything made a lot more sense in the whole of the series. Delores's transformation was really well thought out. Granted, I'm a sucker when it comes to the topic of consciousness/self-awareness, what makes us conscious, and the potentials of artificial intelligence. I felt it grasped the subject in a way that hasn't been done before, kind of like the movie "Ex Machina" which I also love.
 
interesting. thanks for those reviews, shooby doo. reading the WP summary of westworld in particular, it sounds like quite a wild and wooly concept.

meanwhile i'm just finishing up re-watching father ted for the umpteenth time. i guess i'll move on to those other two shows.

i was looking forward to this new season of sherlock, but it seems to have degenerated in to a parody of itself. shame. :/
 
Hey, Ike;

Have you seen the CBS show, Elementary, with John Watson become Joan? If so, what do you think?
 
not yet, but i plan to. i only just heard about it the other day.

what do you think of it? are you a holmes fan? (i am)
 
Elementary started off okay ... but like so many series, ended up pretty stale rather too quickly. Same old, same old.

Gave up after about 8 episodes on that one. Longer than Westworld anyways.

A series I've grown rather addictive to is Banshee. Mentally sexy, violent, Amish etc, etc and the old shit from China plots .... but it's drawn me in. The current season that I'm watching [4] has gone a little OTT but I'm still glued to it :)
 
Ike Savage said:
what do you think of it (CBS's Elementary)? are you a holmes fan? (i am)
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This stirs up some deja vu:
GSGregg said:
(from post #619) I grew up saturated by the Basil-Nigel movies, and subsequently don't get excited about more Holmes work, but CBS TV is nice and convenient, so I've caught all of Jonny Lee Miller's current show, and may have stumbled onto Benedict's once or twice
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One thing that bugs the hell out of me is that Miller spends so much time talking barely above a whisper that I wind up jacking the volume and then getting blown back when anyone or anything else contributes to the audio---who the hell is responsible for EQ-ing?

elton said:
and the "old shit from China" plots ....
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I get an image of Hong Kong Phooey fight scenes, with horrible sound effects..... I don't have Cable and haven't seen the show, but I read the Wikipedia article on it, and how the first episode's post-production was extended by digital removal of the star's split lip, due to a botched fight, from pre-fight scenes. Shouldn't pre-fight be shot...pre...fight, just in case? :bash:
 
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