Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - October 20th

There is a group of people, in cooperation with Purdue University, looking for Amelia's Earhardt's plane.  They've poured over the transmissions, satellite images, maps, and other available data and they thought they had a lead.

Among the reasons were a satellite image that looked like maybe it was a plane, and a transmission fragment where Earhardt appears to say "New York" ... and a shipwreck for the SS Norwich was found nearby. So maybe she was giving a location in a way?

The researchers went in cautiously optimistic, but same up empty.  The "plane" turned out to be fallen trees. And there was no evidence to support her having been on the island.

The researchers were disappointed, but took it in stride, and will examine what they did find to try and learn something about our oceans and how things flow through them. And they will continue to look for the plane.

Maybe they came up empty, but they are still learning something, and attempting to solve a nearly 100 year old mystery.

====


When Mariner 4 sent back the first close-up of Mars in 1965, the printer was too slow for the engineers waiting on it, so they pinned the raw numbers to a wall and coloured them in with pastels bought from an art shop down the road

The thing I love about this story is how the engineers came up with a solution to a seemingly trivial problem: how do you keep up with data being sent back from space in a low tech way?

The answer was to simply write down things and pin them onto the wall and color them. 

Sometimes a simple problem requires a simple solution. 




How did Roman aqueducts get water to go uphill? | Live Science

I love reading about how to engineer things. This is an example where the Romans used siphons to get water to flow uphill 

It’s cool and worth a read.  



McKenzie Scott donated $19.2 billion to charity, and that was 1/3 of all megadonors.



The article is behind a paywall, but even the headline is worth noting. McKenzie Scott gave away 19.2 billion (and yet remained a billionaire!) and that was 1/3 of the total that billionaires gave to charities. 

C’mon über wealthy! You can do better. And remain a billionaire. 

Stop hoarding the money and wasting it on stupid shit.  How about helping to build something better?
 


Canadian YouTuber builds 'Flock-like' camera to exclusively track police vehicles, gets a visit from police — officers visit his home to express privacy concerns | Tom's Hardware

Funny how when cameras are turned on the police, rather than the public at large, the police take exception and feel “at risk”…

Turnabout, as they say, is fair play. 

But they have the supposed authority, and therefore control the conversation.  



Disney Springs Enforces Dress Code Ban And Then Apologizes After Telling Guests To Turn Their Logos Inside Out

There was this weird - and poorly written! - story last week about a dress code enforcement issue at Disney springs. 

Apparently, there was some kind of meeting of police officers from around the state at a local hotel. And some wandered over to Disney Springs wearing polos with their police department name on it. 

And Disney police told them they couldn’t enter, unless they took off their polos, or turned them so that the logo couldn’t be seen.  

Their rationale was that a group of officers might cause some kind of panic among the guests. 

Cue the stupidity. Dumb rhetoric and idiots scoring imaginary points for their cause. 

Then the Lieutenant governor for Florida steps in, meets with Disney (and tells them they are just wrong)..

And Disney apologizes and tells the police they are welcome. 

Sheesh. What a strange world we live in. 




Vikings Reached North America 500 Years Before Columbus, Archaeology Confirms - GreekReporter.com

Would you look at that? We can prove that Vikings were in North America almost 500 years before Columbus sailed west as a means to get to Asia … and wound up in the West Indies (not the content we call North America).  
 







Bitchin' Dave's newsletter is published weekly.  Please feel free to forward it around. If you want to subscribe or unsubscribe, send an email to geezergamer92@gmail.com

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