Project Trinity - Complete Film

Years and years ago I saw Project Trinity at tiff. I mentioned this documentary in an earlier post, Nuclear Testing as Art/Astronomy. The above is a complete copy of Project Trinity.

Archives, Computers And The End of Histroy

Solzhenitsyn is one of the last major writers to leave behind a vast archives of handwritten manuscripts. (His successors will bequeath their hard drives if they dare.)

David Remnick,

 In the Archives: the Widow's Peak,

The New Yorker, June 18, 2012

Computers make it easy to duplicate, manipulate, search, relocate information. At the same time it makes it easier lose stuff down the memory hole either by action, inaction, error, or mechanical failure. But any simple filing cabinet has a solidity that makes it hard to chuck out the window. I have came across several different predictions about our future data storage needs from sci-fi witters and/or futurists.  There is the scenario that we must eventually need to go space so we can find new places to store our records. In Raj Whitehall's world everything was in computer databanks, when computers failed. So all records, history, knowledge is lost. I have read other futurists that suggest this is the likely outcome and that future history will note a "dark age" where there are scattered and fragmentary records in proprietary obsolete formats.

Computers are great for ephemera, but there needs to be hard copies for posterity.

Weird Screw Drive Russian Tank

From a link provided by BELFAST 

in the thread United American Flight 817 2.0.

Putin Demotivational Poster

From wophugus on David Wang's Image Thread.

Also check out earlier post

Super Villain Putin

 

Modern Day Russians Build German Panzer

When WWII war movies were made in the immediate decades afterwards there was enough existing materiel to provide for many movies. Catch-22, filmed in the late '60s, found enough working, flyable B-25, to fill a squadron. This was beyond military surplus that dressed their set. Other movies were made with authentic equipment to save money not stress realism. Now such film must be shot as period pieces with nearly everything reproduced at enormous cost and bother. 

A Russian film about the Great Patriotic War/Eastern Front is being made, here is their webpage in Russian. They can find enough T34s to use, 90K were built. But only a little more than 1300 Tigers were built. They had to build their own Tiger I. They built a panzer.

Super Villain Putin

Here is a man who deserves his own Theme Music. He is listed on TV Tropes as a real life Memetic Badass, where there is also a discussion that he is James Bond. This image was posted on AH.com by Alternatehistorybuff5341, with this comment, "I swear no matter how I look at it, Vladimer Putin looks like a criminal mastermind or a 007 Villain." others also commented.

He isn't one?

Iserlohn

If you ask me, he looks more like a modern-day Russian Emperor.

SavoryTruffle

...you're implying he isn't?

Nietzsche

Building churches to spread his word. He is starting a whole new branch of Christianity.

Opunium

Well, he is the reincarnation of St. Paul.

Polish Eagle

Well, he already IS a saint.

Marc Pasquin

I know who that is, it's the infamous Dr. Nyet!

Letterman

Russia, Where the Living is Hard

This image of a dead Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was taken 2006 when he was 34. He was on the front page of a NY Times article about a Russian commission that investigates prison conditions and prison deaths, Documents Raise Questions About Russian Case. I showed his picture about half a dozen people and asked them to estimate his age. Most thought he was in his late 50's. The lowest estimate was 40. When this picture was taken he was 32. I wonder just how hard was life to look like this.

Star Wars in 8Bit

This ad is part of a campaign for a Russian movie theatre chain. The use of 8Bit graphics is supposed to make movie fans of a certain think that every thing is improved and technology makes movies better. I thinks the ads are counterproductive. It will make people nostalgic about the great games and great movies in years past. Today there is real crap that is much more technically sophisticated than the kind of fun stuff that entertained us in the past.

This ad depicts a scene from 8Bit Star Wars. I would watch an 8Bit Star Wars. When George Lucas made the secound trilogy, or first inn the timeline, he focusedn more on the movie technology than the actual movie. What distracts filmmakers with a wealth of new technology is the fixation on The medium is the message but sometiimes the message is the message.

(from Ads of the World) <>

You Really Can See Russia From Alaska

This is picture from the top of Little Diomede, Alaska, looking across to Big Diomede, Siberia. They really are that close. The real quote of Sarah Palin: "They're our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska"? This quote was exaggerated by Tina Fey into "I can see Russia from my house". You can look from the Alaskan Island to the coast of mainland Siberia and from the Siberian island to the coast of mainland Alaska.

You can think dumb Sarah Palin for many reasons but not for this one.

I got to use a new measuring tool on Google Maps.

half finished institute in the former USSR.

Dead Tech

Boingboing had a great link for a Russian site filled with derelict buildings.