I was going to cut HBO from our cable subscription as I had not seen anything worth watching in a couple years. This evening I caught the rerun of episode 1 of The Newsroom. I can not applaude it enough. Finally a television program worth our time again.
Jeff Daniels' character Mitt's rant in the opening sequence mailed me to my seat and the following twenty minutes I barely noticed anything but what transpired on the screen in front of me. Arron Sorkin and company had better make room in their schedule and add shelf space for the awards they will surely garner.
I hope the writers can continue to press on with riviting scripts. I salivate for more rants like in this clip:
Just Blowing Stuff Up For Fun With A Thumper
What is a thumper, you ask? During office hours, it’s a high-voltage testing unit most often used to stress test electric cables. In the off hours, however, the electrical engineering geeks over at The Geek Group like to shove anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of volts through unsuspecting objects to see what happens. In this installation they’re shooting high voltage through a variety of soft drink cans with an end result that sounds and looks like a cannon loaded with Mountain Dew.
VIA
VIA
Toothpick Heist
Each case contains 288 packages of 100 toothpicks. That brings the total number of stolen toothpicks to 374,400 with a value of about $2,808.
Two employees told the owner they saw an unknown man selling containers of Armond toothpicks at a flea market last weekend.
VIA
Dumping slag at Bethlehem Steel in 1994
The was a town near Pittsburgh that produced more steel that Pittsburgh mills but never got the publicity for it. If the road/highway network had included that town it would have been more famous than Pittsburgh. One of the mills produced nearly all the pipe used in the world to drill and transport oil and its byproducts.
The sky would glow red at night as the steel poured into ingot molds. The slag from the mills was hauled and poured as in this video to fill in small valleys that later became real estate for shopping malls. Today the mills are gone as well as the malls where many a hard earned dollar was spent.
Here's a view of a slag pour as shown at a Bethlehem Steel site far east of the Pittsburgh area:
In 2001, Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy. In 2003, the company's remnants, including its six massive plants, were acquired by the International Steel Group.
In 2007, the Bethlehem property was sold to Sands BethWorks, and plans to build a casino where the plant once stood were drafted. Construction began in fall 2007; the casino was completed in 2009. Ironically, the casino had difficulty finding structural steel for construction, thanks to a global steel shortage and pressure to build Pennsylvania's tax-generating casinos. 16,000 tons of steel was needed to build the $600 million complex.
The sky would glow red at night as the steel poured into ingot molds. The slag from the mills was hauled and poured as in this video to fill in small valleys that later became real estate for shopping malls. Today the mills are gone as well as the malls where many a hard earned dollar was spent.
Here's a view of a slag pour as shown at a Bethlehem Steel site far east of the Pittsburgh area:
In 2001, Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy. In 2003, the company's remnants, including its six massive plants, were acquired by the International Steel Group.
In 2007, the Bethlehem property was sold to Sands BethWorks, and plans to build a casino where the plant once stood were drafted. Construction began in fall 2007; the casino was completed in 2009. Ironically, the casino had difficulty finding structural steel for construction, thanks to a global steel shortage and pressure to build Pennsylvania's tax-generating casinos. 16,000 tons of steel was needed to build the $600 million complex.
Silence In Marriage
The other day our daughter mentioned how nice it was that we (my wife and I) could just be quiet at times and enjoy the moment/ She then compared it to a couple where the wife irritated her husband by constantly having to say something never letting his eardrums rest.
The next day this strip appeared in the newspaper. Timely.
