Space Shuttle Endeavor’s last journey through the streets of Los Angeles 15 October 2012. Cool time-lapse video of the roadtrip here.
[Image found here.]
Category: Contributions to the World
The Crux
[via]
If you’ve never heard of or read Dr. Thomas Sowell, you’re missing out on one of the most brilliant minds since Milton Friedman. REALLY.
P.S. Don’t know why I didn’t do it before, but I’m adding Mr. Ka-Ching to the TR Blogroll. He’s got a lotta good stuff.
Space Shuttle Endeavour Final Flight
Electric Lady Land
Miss Myrtle Reinheart’s design for a lampshade outfit at the Chicago Merchandise Mart Home Furnishing show in 1937.
[Found here.]
Rock on, Neil.
L’Abbé Jean-Baptiste de La Chapelle’s Contribution To The World
Father Jean-Baptiste de La Chapelle, born about 1710 and probably died in 1792 in Paris. Before a large audience, he jumped into the Seine, eating, drinking, snuffing, discharging a pistol and writing while floating on the surface. He tried again, three years later, this demonstration before Louis XV near the royal hunting lodge in the forest of Senart, but his attempt failed when the current swept him away so fast that the king could not identify what happened to him.
His invention was a cork suit for soldiers, a precursor to the modern life vest. [Found here.]
Mr. Twitter
Saturday Matinee – Vietnamese Coffee, One Small Plate For Man, Virtual Choir 3.0 & Buster Keaton
“How To Make Vietnamese Coffee.” (Hint: Step 1. Go to Vietnam.)
Neil Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for man…” could be translated “Un petit pas pour l’homme,” and the title of the film is “Un petit plat pour l’homme” can be translated as “One Small Dish For Man”
3rd year animation project (assigned subject “Kitchen”) from Charron/Onectin via email. Very cool.
Eric Whitacre‘s Virtual Choir 3 is awesome and kinda creepy at the same time.
His call for the Virtual Choir 3.0, which included a purpose-built website to make video collection easier and more uniform, set a new record. It included 3476 videos from 76 different nations, including one from Vanuatu. That is the video you see above.
[Found here.]
Buster Keaton’s 1926 comedy The General is based on a real event. In April 1862 a group of Union volunteers hijacked a Confederate train in Georgia and led the rebels on an 88-mile, six-hour chase through the state, tearing up tracks and cutting telegraph lines as they went and releasing cars behind them to slow their pursuers. The conspirators ran out of fuel just short of Chattanooga, their goal, but the Union awarded a Medal of Honor to most of them for the exploit.
…
“I was more proud of that picture than any I ever made,” Keaton said in 1963. “Because I took an actual happening out of the … history books, and I told the story in detail, too.”
[Found here.]
That’s probably enough stuff to keep you out of trouble for a while. Have a great weekend, folks, and hope tomorrow is cooler.
Freyja & The Skogkatt
From Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda:
Freyja is the most famous of the goddesses. She has in heaven a dwelling which is called Fólkvangr, and when she rides to the battle, one half of the slain belong to her, and the other half to Óðinn… When she goes abroad, she drives in a wagon drawn by two cats.
I’d say those two cats have some nice penmanship, but there’s more to them than that. They were huge, mean and they loved to draw. They were The Skogkatt.
[More here.]
On Milton Friedman’s 100th Birthday
One of Milton Friedman‘s best known examples of Free Market Economics came from Leonard E. Read who wrote a famous article published in 1958 entitled, “I, Pencil.” (Download the .pdf here.)
The basic concept is so full of common sense that it amazes me that it’s not required reading for every student, every civilian and every government politico of every country on the face of the earth. Get government out of the way of the free market, and the free market will take care of everything else.
It’s that simple.
Friedman’s timeless presentation of “I, Pencil” is well worth the 10 minutes it takes to view. Proven throughout history, practical common sense transcends politics, and it always has and always will, except when bureaucratic forces prevent it from doing so.
[Don’ t miss Dr. Thomas Sowell’s tribute here. “I was still a Marxist after taking Professor Friedman’s class. Working as an economist in the government converted me.”]
Update: We’ve posted about Milton Friedman previously. Here’s a link to the archive.
Tacky Raccoons 