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Seen, Heard, Said

Things I’ve seen, heard, or was told by someone. Item in this category usually originate from the Internet.

Flight of the Puke

…with a Hat Tip to Adam for the find1.

Update: Video wasn’t mine, nor hosted on my account. I’ve found another copy of the video and linked to it above.

  1. Archived here, in case it ever disappears from YouTube. ↩

Quinn’s Movie List

Quinn sent me his list of great movies a while ago (many years ago). It has resided as a page, but I’m now moving to a post.

This is Quinn’s Movie List:

I’ve made a list of great movies (some of them are just great comedies, not really great movies). If you haven’t seen all of these, make sure you do. This is a rough list so far, and I will certainly revise it in the future. These are in no particular order:

  • The Usual Suspects
  • The Godfather
  • The Godfather Part 2
  • The Godfather Part 3
  • The Matrix
  • The Matrix: Reloaded
  • The Matrix: Revolutions
  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • Kill Bill Vol. 1
  • Kill Bill Vol. 2
  • Pulp Fiction
  • American History X
  • American Beauty
  • Braveheart
  • Gladiator
  • The Passion of the Christ
  • Vertigo
  • Rear Window
  • North by Northwest
  • Kramer v. Kramer
  • Taxi Driver
  • Apocalypse Now
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Full Metal Jacket
  • The Deer Hunter
  • The Exorcist
  • Scent of a Woman
  • Goodfellas
  • The Italian Job (new)
  • Ocean’s Eleven (new)
  • Fight Club
  • Forrest Gump
  • Top Gun
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  • Dumb and Dumber
  • Supertroopers
  • Gangs of New York
  • Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  • Primal Fear
  • As Good As it Gets
  • Casino
  • Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to
  • stop worrying and love the bomb
  • Spartacus
  • Paths of Glory
  • The Shining
  • Amadeus
  • The Silence of the Lambs
  • Red Dragon
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  • Barber Shop
  • White Men Can’t Jump

Six Years Later

Patrick Smith is a commercial airline pilot and writes a section for the New York Times Blog called Jet Lagged: Navigating the Unfriendly Skies.
Here’s an excerpt from his latest article, The Airport Security Follies.

From jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com:

Conventional wisdom says the [9/11] terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset – a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

For several reasons – particularly the awareness of passengers and crew – just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.

The entire article is a great read. The TSA is easily one of the greatest failures of America in the 21st Century, perhaps even greater than the war in Iraq. I suppose it’s fitting then that the TSA is now tied with the IRS for least popular government agency in America.

via Photo Matt and BoingBoing

Iraq or Crap?

Jeff sent this to me. Its appears to be originally written by a fellow named Kevin Griffith:

Iraq-War Cliches or New Euphemisms for Taking a Crap?

Giving the surge time to work
Pursuing an exit strategy
Setting a timetable for withdrawal
To cut and run
Spreading democracy

We report, you decide.

Best First Dance Ever

I went to quite a few weddings this past summer (some might even call the number absurd). However, none of the first dances were as awesome as this one. Sorry guys; I love you all, but this takes the cake (pun?). Better luck next time:

Other Properties of Prussian Blue

As told by Wikipedia:
From en.wikipedia.org:

  • It is electrochromic-changing from blue to colorless upon reduction. This change is caused by reduction of the Fe(III) to Fe(II) eliminating the intervalence charge transfer that causes PB’s blue color.
  • It undergoes spin-crossover behavior. Upon exposure to visible light the Fe(III) centers change from low spin to high spin. This spin transition also changes the magnetic coupling between the Fe atoms, making PB one of the few known classes of material that has a magnetic response to light.

Despite the presence of the cyanide ion, PB is not especially toxic because the cyanide groups are tightly bound.

As a note, the chemical formula of Prussian Blue is Fe7(CN)18(H2O)x where 14 ≤ x ≤ 16. Cyanide is the CN part.

I was able to find out this relatively useless, albeit interesting, information due to a flaw in Wikipedia that allows one to wonder through the system aimlessly.

I had watched and then was reading up on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Thine Own Self” on Memory-Alpha which links to the Goiânia accident which links to Prussian Blue.