The co-founder and rhythm guitarist of the highly influential instrumental surf-rock guitar group known as The Ventures has just died. According to NPR, to this day, The Ventures are the best-selling instrumental group of all time, known for their up-tempo, driving, pulsating beats. Bass player Nokie Edwards died in 2018.
Here are three examples of their music.
Here is their version of the theme from the popular TV show Hawaii Five-O.
(Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14)
This series started by asking a simple question, whether a charged particle and a neutral particle would fall at the same rate when dropped from the same height and reach the ground at the same time. You would think that it would have a simple answer. But no. After a fairly long journey, we arrived at the conclusion that they would. But in the process, the series had to address a whole host of related issues along the way. While many of those were seemingly resolved, there are some fundamental questions that remain murky.
We saw in part #13 that the mass of a point charge like an electron is not a simple thing, because an electric charge has an associated electric field that itself has energy and thus should be thought of as contributing to the mass, except that the field energy density goes to infinity at zero distances, which is of course awkward for point-like charges. By looking at the radiation reaction force created by an accelerating charge, we learned about something called the acceleration energy Q that increases with the speed of a charge, and the energy radiated by a linearly accelerating charge comes from this source.
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I remain intrigued by the so-called ‘Havana Syndrome’, the strange affliction reported by some (mostly) US government and embassy officials when they are in other countries. Starting in 2016, these people reported hearing ringing or chirping sounds and headaches and the like. Since the first reports came from US embassy personnel in Havana, people jumped to the conclusion that the Cubans or Russians were trying out some new kind of weapon using targeted microwaves or ultrasound. But that theory always seemed implausible, both for technical and geopolitical reasons.
The US government has devoted considerable effort to try and identify the cause with little success. Now the CIA has issued yet another report that suggests that the ‘foreign power’ theory is not tenable.
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Shane McInerney, a 29-year-old man from Ireland, was on his way to Miami to start a new job at a football academy but was arrested because of his behavior during the flight there.
McInerney, from Galway, is also accused of repeatedly refusing to wear a face mask and throwing a can which hit another passenger on the eight-hour journey which departed on 7 January.
He is said to have walked from his seat to complain about the food being served before pulling his pants down, exposing his buttocks to an attendant and nearby passengers.
The pilot tried to speak with McInerney who is said to have responded by telling him not to touch him.
He also put his fist close to the pilot’s face, it is alleged.
McInerney is further accused of refusing to stay in his seat as the plane made its descent to JFK – instead choosing to stand in the aisle.
He was taken into custody after the plane landed.
Legal papers filed in New York said: “During the approximately eight-hour flight, the defendant repeatedly refused to wear a face mask despite being asked dozens of times by flight crew personnel.”
He has been charged with interfering with flight crew – a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.
My guess is that he thought that actions that would have passed with little notice during a football game were equally acceptable on an international flight.
No word on whether his job offer is still open.
Over a decade ago ago, I wrote a post titled No more daft women! about one of my pet peeves when watching police procedural shows. While I like the detective and suspense story genre in general, one thing that annoys me is the use of a common trope and that is to have a female character, despite being expressly warned to be careful, do something unbelievably stupid that puts her life and the lives of others in danger. The ‘daft women’ phrase was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock asking “Is the woman daft?” to a screenwriter who was describing just such a development when they were working on The Birds.
But what is worse is when detectives, who should definitely know better, do something similar. I noticed this in two shows that I watched recently. In the first, two detectives investigating multiple missing persons whom they suspect were victims of a serial killer, stumble across a trapdoor covered by earth and leaves in the woods and upon lifting open the heavy lid, discover steps leading down and an awful stench emanating, suggesting the presence of decomposing bodies. So what do they do? Do they call for backup? Does one detective stay on guard outside while the other goes down? After all, the killer might be lurking nearby. No, they both climb down into the hole. If the killer had been around, all they would have had to do was simply close the lid, cover it up, and the two detectives would have joined the list of missing persons. Daft detectives.
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In a recent post, I tried to explain what NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) were. This is another of crazes that arise (and sometimes disappear) so rapidly in the internet age. Reader David sent me a link to this (non) explanation by Julie Nolke that I found pretty funny. I wonder how many people try to bluff their way into looking like they know what they are talking about when it comes to NFTs.
I was impressed with how she played both roles and then spliced the footage. It is not easy to do reaction shots that look genuine. She must be a professional actor that I have not heard of before.
Unless you have some kind of medical condition that makes the risk of vaccination greater than the risk of getting covid-19, you should get vaccinated. But there are people who decide, against the best scientific advice, that they know better alternatives. Not all of them are rabid anti-vaxxers or are opposing it because of some ideological fixation or because they believe in some bizarre conspiracy theory that it is a device for the government to gain control over one’s body. There are those who do not get it because they have folkloric beliefs, such as that healthy people have natural immunity or that the symptoms will not be serious or that certain practices such as wellness or Ayurveda or other folk remedies will stave off the infection.
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For a long time, it has been clear that Donald Trump and his family and associates were going to try and block any and all investigations into their affairs by refusing to cooperate with investigators, forcing them to go to court to get information, and then fighting those legal proceedings every step of the way. Given the way that the US legal system is structured, if you have the money, you can have your lawyers throw roadblock after roadblock to frustrate investigators who may be tempted to give up as the time and money involved mount up.
It is only the government (or an equally deep-pocketed opponent) that can go toe-to-toe against this strategy and two of them (the Attorney General’s office of the state of New York and the Congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021) have been dogged.
Yesterday, the latter scored a major victory when the US Supreme Court by an 8-1 voted denied an emergency request by Trump’s team to block a ruling by the lower Appeals Court that the National Archives must hand over documents to the committee. [Read more…]
(Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13)
The history of analyses of the question “Does a charge falling freely in a gravitational field radiate energy?” is quite fascinating with experts being all over the place, even to this date. The biggest disagreement is over whether the answer to the above question is yes or no. But even among those who agree on the answer, there are disagreements as to the reasons. For example, among those who say that it radiates, some argue that it leads to a loss in kinetic energy and that the Principle of Equivalence may not even hold in the case of a charge falling freely in a uniform gravitational field. Others disagree on what the source of the radiation is.
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I have to admit that hearing Trump supporters say the most clueless things seems to never get old. I am impressed by Jordan Klepper’s ability to find among them people who can be made to say the most absurd things.
Fellow Daily Show correspondent Michael Kosta seems to be developing his chops in this area as well as he asks them what they think of Trump’s Space Force.
(WuMo)