Author Archives: laurn larson

Where the Money Was:

23 May 2024 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde notoriety were Texas born bank robbers, bandits, and murderers who were ambushed and killed by the police on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana on 23 May 1934. Six police officers, acting on information provided by a father of one Barrow Gang member, waited along the road for Bonnie and Clyde’s Ford to come along and when it did, they perforated the vehicle with all the ammunition they had, a total of 130 bullets. The coroner’s report stated that Bonnie received 26 bullet wounds and Clyde 17. Others claimed that they were shot more than 50 times each.

Bonnie and Clyde, during the Great Depression, roamed Texas, and its adjoining states, preying upon any establishment that had money on the premises, banks, gas stations, small stores, and for the ultimate in depravity, funeral homes. During prison breaks and robberies, they murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.

Source: All That’s Interesting, FBI. Graphic: Bonnie and Clyde by the Barrow Gang, c. 1932, Library of Congress.

Come Together, Right Now:

22 May 2024 By in Movies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Godzilla vs. Kong.

Theaters: 24 March 2021

Streaming: ~Mid-May 2021

Runtime:  113 minutes

Genre:  Action – Sci-Fi — Thriller

Els:  8.0/10

IMDB:  6.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes Critics:  76/100

Rotten Tomatoes Audience:  91/100

Metacritic Metascore:  59/100

Metacritic User Score:  7.1/10

Awards: — A few minor awards mainly for special or visual effects

Directed by: Adam Wingard

Music by:  Tom Holkenborg

Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Rebecca Hall, Kaylee Hottle

Film Locations:  Hawaii, Australia, Hong Kong

Budget:  $155-200 Million

Worldwide Box Office:  $470.1 Million

The best Godzilla-Kong Monster Mash movie. Better by a King Kong leap than the 2014 and 2024 films.

Godzilla meets Kong on the field of battle, which just so happens to be a major city and, in this case, Hong Kong. Godzilla fights King Kong in Hong Kong. Admittedly that phrase has a certain bouncy cadence to it, akin to the Ali-Frazier 1975 fight, Thrilla in Manila.

This is an action movie with the stars duking it out and tearing down a few buildings in the process. Plot, direction, screenplay, character development, and acting take second fiddle to the teeth chomps and fisticuffs, but those are likable features, not bugs.

Sources. IMDb. Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic. Screen Rant. Wikipedia.

Chateau Dalem 2020

21 May 2024 By in Red Wine Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Bordeaux Red Blends from Fronsac, Bordeaux, France.

90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc.

Purchase Price: $22.97

Ratings: James Suckling 94, Robert Parker 93, Vinous 93, Decanter 92, Jeb Dunnuck 91, Wine Spectator 91, ElsBob 90.

ABV: 14.5%

A deep ruby to black in color, aromas of plums, cherries, and blackberries, dry, medium-to-full-bodied, with a medium finish.

Pairs well with fish, poultry, and vegetables.

An excellent wine at a slightly elevated price.

The House of the Rising Sun

20 May 2024 By in Music Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The Animals, an English rock band, released the traditional folk song: The House of the Rising Sun, 60 years ago to great commercial success. It’s a ballad as a cautionary tale about living a life in New Orleans on the wrong side of right. The song possibly goes back to, in one version or another, England in the 1600s.

Alan Price, founding member and keyboardist of The Animals arranged the folk song with a bluesy rock twist. The band recorded the song in May of 1964 and released it as a single the following month.

The song attained the number 1 position on the English and U.S. charts and has been ranked by the Rolling Stone magazine and RIAA as one of the best songs of the 20th century. Along with The Beatles and Peter & Gordon, The Animals were part of the British Invasion of 64 that controlled the top chart positions in the U.S. for that year.

Source: All Music. Song Facts. Wikipedia. Graphic is the MGM cover.

The Antiquities of the Jews

19 May 2024 By in Biography, History, Religion Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Josephus’s 20 volume history of the Jews titled: The Antiquities of the Jews was written to provide an account of the Jewish people for his Roman patrons and protectors.

Below is a synopsis of the 20 volumes:

  • Biblical creation to the death of Abraham’s son Isaac
  • History of Isaac’s sons to the Exodus of Jews from Biblical Egypt
  • Exodus from Egypt to the first 2 years of the 40 years in the wilderness
  • The remaining 38 years in the wilderness to the death of Moses upon reaching Canaan
  • Joshua’s replacement of Moses as leader to the death of the priest Eli
  • The capture of the Ark by the Philistines to the death of King Saul
  • David’s ascension to the throne of the Kingdom of Israel to the death of King David
  • Solomon’s ascension as King of Israel to the death of King Ahab
  • Reign of King Jehoshaphat to the fall of Samaria
  • Babylonian captivity of the Jews and the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
  • Start of the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great to the death of Alexander the Great
  • Death of Alexander the Great to the Maccabean Revolt
  • Origins of the Hasmonean dynasty to the death of Queen Alexandra
  • The death of Queen Alexandra to the death of Antigonus II Mattathias
  • Herod the Great’s taking of Jerusalem to the completion of King Herod’s temple
  • Completion of King Herod’s temple to the death of Herod’s sons
  • Death of Herod’s sons to the banishment of King Archelaus

Josephus history covers major portions of the Old Testament including Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel 1&2, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, and Prophets. Josephus’s accounts provide for additional material and commentary not found in other texts including the bible.

Source: Josephus: The Complete Works, 2003. Jewish Virtual Library. World History Encyclopedia. Graphic Joseph, Son of Gorian, by Thomas Emmet, 1880, public domain.

Kepler’s Second Law:

17 May 2024 By in Physics Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Kepler’s Second Law, first published between 1609 and 1619, describes how a planet’s orbital speed varies along its elliptical orbit around the Sun. As the planet approaches the Sun, the gravitational pull from the Sun is stronger causing the planet to move faster. As a planet moves away from the Sun it slows down.

Kepler’s Second Law in geometric jargon: A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.

Source: Smithsonian, How Things Fly. Graphic of the Planets and the Sun by CactiStaccingCrane 2022.

Jewish, Roman, Historian

12 May 2024 By in Biography, Books Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Flavius Josephus, a first century Jewish scholar and historian wrote four extant works:

  1. The Jewish War. (Jewish Revolt) 75 AD – The first revolt against the Romans from 66-73 AD
  2. The Antiquities of the Jews. 95 AD – From Adam to the death of Herod’s sons
  3. Against Apion. 97 AD – A defense of Judaism
  4. Vita or The Life of Flavius. 99 AD – Biography

These works provide significant source material and insight into first-century Judaism and Christianity.

Josephus was born into the Jewish priesthood on his father’s side and of Hasmonean royal descent maternally. He served in the Jewish military during the Jewish War but surrendered to the Romans and he was considered a traitor to Jews ever after. While waiting to be executed by the Romans he predicted that Vespasian would eventually be crowned emperor of Rome. Vespasian, because of the prophecy, spared his life and made him a consultant, but still a slave, to the Roman army. Josephus gained his freedom when Vespasian became emperor in 69 AD, at which time he changed his name to Flavius Josephus. Flavius was the family name of the emperor Vespasian.

Source: Josephus: The Complete Works, 2003. Jewish Virtual Library. World History Encyclopedia.

Journalism –Jeff Diamond, David Rummel, Robert Read, Michele Gillen

11 May 2024 By in History, Journalism Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

During a November 1992 broadcast, NBC Dateline, at the time an American news weekly show, producers Jeff Diamond, David Rummel, and Robert Read along with reporter Michele Gillen showed a Chevy truck exploding into flames after a vehicle crashed into the side of the truck.

There was just a small problem with their reporting. NBC Dateline rigged the truck to start on fire, collision or no collision resulting in their video proving nothing. Dateline did this to save money. Chevy trucks built from 1973 to 1987 had side wall gas tanks placed outside of the frame rails and they really did start on fire during a side impact with another vehicle or another object. Just not every time. There was no way to tell how many trucks NBC would have to smash before they got one to explode into flames, so they took a short cut and put an incendiary device into the gas cap area of the truck to ensure a fire.

At the time General Motors was defending itself against thousands of lawsuits over its gas tanks starting on fire during collisions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, found that 19% of all side impacts involving these trucks leaked fuel which led to excessive number of explosions and fires. The NHTSA ordered GM to recall six million trucks to fix the problem. GM refused but they did sue NBC for defamation.

Due to the journalistic malpractice Dateline’s ratings sank, executive producer Jeff Diamond, senior producer David Rummel, segment producer Robert Read, and reporter Michele Gillen were all fired and Michael Gartner, president of NBC News at the time resigned. Adding further insult to injury, NBC anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips broadcast a three-minute apology as part of its settlement with GM.

Source: Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, The New York Times, MotorBiscuit. Graphic: Dateline Video.

GOAT Gas

11 May 2024 By in Physics, Science, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Water vapor is the most abundant and the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and is responsible for about half of the Earth’s greenhouse effect. The amount of water vapor in the lower atmosphere is largely controlled by temperature, such that warmer air holds more moisture. Water vapor returns to the Earth’s surface usually within two weeks but only if the vapor is in the troposphere, the atmospheric layer closest to the Earth.

Water vapor in the stratosphere, the layer above the troposphere, on the other hand, can stay there for a long time due to the lack of physical mechanisms to bring it back to the surface of the Earth. MIT has estimated that a water molecule, or any atmospheric molecule, can stay in the troposphere for about 1.5 years, possibly longer, before circulating back to the troposphere or Earth’s surface.

On 15 January 2022 the South Pacific volcano, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, erupted sending a huge jet of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere, estimated to have been around 40 billion gallons in volume.  This is estimated to have increased the water vapor in the stratosphere by 10% in a matter of hours or days.

For reference, the greenhouse effect for selected gases by its 20-year GWP (Greenhouse Warming Potential) value:

  1. Water Vapor = A very large value but difficult to find in print.
  2. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) = 460-9100 GWP
  3. Bromides = 7140 (varies)
  4. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) = 4400-6200 GWP
  5. Nitrous oxide = 280 GWP
  6. Methane = 56 GWP
  7. Carbon dioxide = 1 GWP

Source: NASA. MIT. Graphic by AGeremia, 2020, Creative Commons.

It Rhymes

9 May 2024 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The adage, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, or less succinctly, historical, and current events may not unfold in the same manner, but they often follow similar patterns or themes. As an example, the rise of authoritarianism usually follows, and rhymes, with the erosion of democratic norms, intolerance of dissent, animosity towards religious or ethnic minorities, economic instability, isolation of true democratic countries, and war.

This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain but no collaborating evidence for him saying exactly this has ever been found. He did say something similar, in a novel he wrote with Charles Warner, the 1874 The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day that “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” The quote in its entirety is sentence that Twain could never write, it had to have come from his co-author.

Austrian American psychoanalyst Theodor Reik, a student of Freud, published an essay in 1965, “The Unreachables” where he wrote: It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes. There are recurring cycles, ups and downs, but the course of events is essentially the same, with small variations. It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.

Regardless of whomever said, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes were astute observers of history and life.

Source: Quote Investigator, 2014. Graphic: Publicity photo of Reik, 1920s, public domain.