A/V Geeks Lunch 9-10

so so so so so so so so do hello everybody i'm skip alzheimer and welcome to the av geeks lunchtime streaming show uh we just watched a accidentally silent transfer of citizenship at home um i think an intern did that and uh visually it's it's fascinating um because it was emily frith emily bentonfrith i believe a woman filmmaker who uh shot home movie footage using home movie equipment on 16 and then she would edit it and it would be narrated she had a narrator and then she would sell educational films uh in the back of um things like educational screen and other trade periodicals for educational films and have a little business and so i noticed in the comments people are like well this isn't this is kind of amateurish um not as professional and that's kind of why i like it um the idea that somebody could say like you know what i'm gonna make educational films i'm gonna figure out how to do it and um what it does is it kind of captures uh a different view in a different way that um educational films can be and that's why i like collecting 16 is because you you get these um regional filmmakers or these non these uh amateurish i mean you know the fact she sold them and they were distributed um and multiple copies exist means that she did it i mean made money doing it so i would say she's a professional but uh really kind of fascinating uh and it's a different view like coronet and and uh encyclopedia britannica and even centron all these companies just cranked them out but you know she was maybe a little bit more thoughtful but yes definitely a lot of it's just a glorified home movie in many senses so um there's that uh speaking of which here's a coronet film that was cranked out in their studios in the suburb of chicago this is about homework [Music] oh hi there i'm chuck davis these are my friends this is gene nichols hello bob andoski hi how are you i'm stand medinger here hi the four of us are here to talk about homework now we've got some movies we've made to show you some of our problems of homework and some of the ways we've found to handle them get the light for you stan maybe you wonder why you have homework can you remember when you were back in grade school the teacher was there to help you with your work and most of your studying was done in class you probably didn't have much homework then in high school your teacher still helps you in class but also gives you a lot more outside assignments in college most of your studying will be on your own and if you do any studying after you're out of school you'll find that you're almost completely on your own so you see the further you go in your studies the more you have to study on your own that's homework now what about these problems gene well i have a homework problem it's a problem that a lot of you probably have it's the problem where to do your homework we took these movies at my place this is the apartment i live in with my parents it's not a very big one and i don't have my own room to work in that means there are lots of distractions in the evening when dad is home the radio is playing it you can hear it all over the house and mother and dad have a lot to talk about course i want a quiet place for doing homework so i try to get my homework done right after school i really should help mother get dinner ready but we have a bargain she gets dinner ready and i clean up afterwards i can arrange the dining room as i want it plenty of light my study material spread out so i can use them the radio is off and nobody's talking and i can get my work done in the evening if i still have work to do i could ask dad and mother to be quiet and turn off the radio but i really don't want to do that so i usually go to the library [Music] so you see finding a place to do my homework in it is always a problem for me but i managed to solve it by working things out with my family but stan here well he's got a different problem that's right chuck here's where i live yes it's a farm and from the time the school bus gets me home until i can get up to my room after supper i've been kept pretty busy with the chores a lot of you don't have free time in the afternoon either especially you fellows who go out for school sports and those of you who work after school we just don't have as much time for our homework as others do so i do it this way i don't wait till i get home to start my homework i start in school during study periods i plan my homework ahead for some assignments i need books or special references these of course i plan to do in the library at school for other assignments i need only textbooks in my notebook these i plan to do at home then i try to make a rough schedule to divide up the time i have for doing my assignments i give so much time to each subject i found out that schedules help me make the most of the time i have so when i get to work at home i know exactly what i have to do and i have my materials already because i planned it that way another thing i know how much time i have of course there are some things you can't always plan you know how it is so my family has to help me carry out my plan when my sister bothers me while i'm working i count on mom and dad to help and that's good because when i can follow my plan i can get my homework done [Music] so even though i have only a limited time for doing my homework i can get it done by planning well that takes care of me huh well i have plenty of time and i have a room of my own but i still have a problem chuck when you study in school it's usually quiet and others are studying and you're expected to study and that helps me study but at home well there's just up to me and there are always a lot of things i can think of to do besides studying even horsing around with my kid brothers and even when i know it's time to start my homework i can think of a lot of things i could do first i could wait just a few minutes until dad finished the paper or i could call up sally and talk to her just for a few minutes or sharpen a few pencils first seems like i could do anything except study and take such a big effort for me to get started so i just grip my teeth and start right in that's the only way for me to solve my problem i start with the hardest subject if i don't i keep thinking about it and i don't do a very good job in my other work if i get it done at all another thing i found when i come to a heart problem and i start thinking about it sometimes i let my mind wander and i just sort of daydream and off i go into the wild blue yender but i don't get my homework done that way it's just keeping at it that gets it done well i found that homework is really just studying on your own and that means being able to make yourself study and get the job done that's all yeah well then i i guess you've heard our story homework is important and we've shown you some of the problems you can run up against but it isn't too hard to solve them it's just a matter of planning and organizing your work getting some done at school scheduling your work at home having a good place to study working problems out with your parents and getting used to studying on your own that's all if you really want to get something out of homework and i think you do well we've shown you what we've found it's up to you to take it from here [Music] i've shown you what i've found so it's up to you to take it from here um i man i love when they watch a film in a film i love you know them sitting around saying like well we filled these things so it's this kind of self-referential meta thing of films watching a film um the uh i just read somebody said that the film was made in 53 and it has sync sound which was rare that's not true with coronet cornet was doing sync sound almost from the beginning um and that was something that was uh kind of separated it put it apart from other other uh companies because encyclopedia britannica which was the big educational film company before coronet cornet really got going in the late 40s like 4849 um encyclopedia britannica had a lot of narration and very little sync sound um and cornet i think that's what initially why you could engage with it better is because it was people talking and you could see them talking and specifically uh kids and teens talking um which helps a lot of educators think that having peers tell you things you re you resonate um with it more uh when it's someone that's your age or that you identify with versus the voice of god narration uh which also i love too um all right speaking of voice of god uh here's an educational film about warm and cold-blooded animals enjoy [Music] fish are cold-blooded and live in water [Music] porpoises are warm-blooded and live in water too what do these words warm-blooded and cold-blooded mean well we can go to a laboratory and find out let's set up an experiment we're going to deal with the temperature of water in a flask the water in this flask has a temperature it's about 74 degrees fahrenheit which is about 23 degrees centigrade or celsius we can measure the temperature of the air around the flask with this thermometer it's also about 23 degrees centigrade now let's see what happens when we measure both air and water temperature in a refrigerator the air temperature in the refrigerator is about two degrees centigrade as you'd expect the water temperature will drop after a few hours the temperature is three degrees centigrade in the water almost the same as the air temperature we heat the flask of water and its temperature changes again this heat comes from a flame heat might also come in the form of radiant energy from the sun it might come from air that's been indirectly warmed by the sun it might come from water that's been warm by the sun but always the source of heat is outside the flask eventually the water in the flask takes on the temperature of its environment now living things are different many produce heat of their own but in one way cold-blooded animals like this fish are a little like the flask of water we've attached a special thermometer device to this fish that tells us its body temperature without hurting it right now its temperature is 25 degrees centigrade that's about the same as the temperature of the water that surrounds the fish you know what will happen when we add ice to the water the water gets cooler but not only does the water temperature change the fish's temperature changes almost as much and that's probably as good a description of cold-bloodedness as we can get a body temperature that changes with temperature outside the body this lower body temperature the fish has trouble moving in this aquarium there's nothing this fish can do to change its temperature in a larger body of water where temperatures vary the fish can move to a region of the water where the temperature is best suited to it the temperature of water doesn't usually vary much in nature however air temperature is much more changeable think for example about cold-blooded animals that live in the desert the temperature of the desert air can change very much and the surface of the sand can get very hot its temperature can go higher than 120 degrees fahrenheit a temperature that can kill living things on the surface of the sand a cold-blooded animal on the surface of the sand must move away from such heat here a snake burrows deep into the cooler sand below the hot surface at night the temperature of the desert air on the surface sand may be near freezing a drop of some 100 degrees at this temperature some cold-blooded animals can no longer function if the temperature drops below freezing the animal may escape death by moving away from the cold it could dig down below the cold surface into the warmer sand underneath so the cold-blooded animals that live in air control their body temperature in about the same way as the cold-blooded animals that live in water to raise their body temperature they move towards sources of heat to lower it they move away from the heat perhaps into the shade but for long periods of time in some places there may not be enough heat above the ground to keep a particular cold-blooded animal active in this case it waits for the return of warmer weather in a condition something like hibernation but there are some animals whose muscles work as well in cold weather as in warm their body temperature doesn't change each time the outside temperature changes these are the animals we call warm blood mammals are warm blooded so are birds their body temperature tends to remain about the same and perhaps that's as good a description of warm bloodedness as we can get a body temperature that is more constant regardless of the temperature outside the body for example warm blooded animals may have special coverings on their bodies that help them retain their body heat let's see how animal body coverings work these three flasks are filled with a liquid at room temperature first we'll wrap one flask with the outside covering of one kind of warm blooded animal the fur of a mammal and we'll put the flask on ice the second flask is wrapped with the outside covering of the other kind of warm blooded animal the feathers of a bird that will go on ice too we leave the third flask uncovered and place it on ice now all three flasks are on ice the temperature in the uncovered flask is dropping rapidly what's happening to the temperature of the liquid in the other flasks the temperature is holding fairly steady the liquid is losing heat very slowly both feathers and fur help slow down the escape of heat to the surrounding ice they insulate the flasks why what is there about them that makes them such good insulators the closer we look at the hairs that make up the fur and the barbs that form the feathers the more alike the two animal coverings seem their many tiny parts trap air spaces between them and these air spaces slow down the escape of heat feathers or fur are common coverings for warm blooded animals are coverings all that affect heat loss in an animal does the size of the animal make a difference let's insulate two flasks of liquid of different size with the same type of fur and put them on ice we'll see if the rate of heat loss of the liquid in them is different the temperature of the liquid in the large flask is dropping but the temperature in the small one is dropping faster the same is true of animals a smaller animal loses heat faster than a larger one to keep up its body temperature the smaller animal has to eat relatively more food for its weight than the larger one but both the larger and smaller warm-blooded animals need more food than cold-blooded animals of the same size warm blooded animals that have adapted to life and water like porpoises have developed another kind of insulation special layers of fat under the skin help slow down the escape of heat even more penguins are so well insulated that they can keep their eggs warm with the outside temperature 50 degrees below zero fahrenheit but keeping body heat up is only half the problem for too much heat will kill them as quickly as it will kill a cold-blooded animal how can warm-blooded animals get rid of extra heat moisture evaporates from the skin of some animals and from the tongue of others this evaporation helps warm blooded animals cool off in hot weather birds may molt they lose some feathers which reduces their insulation but warm or cold blooded all creatures of the earth have some system for dealing with heat for the most part the cold-blooded animals are the most directly affected by the temperature around them their body temperatures are changeable to cool themselves they move to a cool place warm-blooded animals on the other hand are less affected by outside temperatures their body temperatures tend to be more constant [Music] to achieve this steady temperature much food is required because of this importance of food many warm-blooded animals spend more of their time eating than many cold-blooded animals do [Music] some of both kinds of animals cold-blooded and warm-blooded managed to live in almost every part of our earth in water and in air [Music] some of both kinds live on the ground both kinds live in warm climates [Music] both kinds live in cold climates the living creatures of our earth have evolved different solutions to a common need the need to keep their bodies at temperatures at which life is possible [Music] the webcam is acting weird so now i'm brighter than it was i wasn't as contrasty um yeah so i you know i dig films like that you know they uh kind of give you a sense of the concepts in a real way and how they behave and using thermometers um plus some beautiful b-roll of some animals um i love it uh let's see i got a couple of films i could show um what time is it yeah all right um i don't think i've shown this one but i maybe i have i just couldn't find it in uh the list of films that i showed and let me say um i have had someone uh this uh guy jeremy who's been going through the youtube posts of each of the shows and has been writing which films show up in the post and then also offering links to them well he discovered something and that is that i have misnumbered my episodes and uh looking at the notes and trying to figure out uh what i did um when i started counting the episodes i accidentally was counting uh weekend days which is not correct so i'm about 40 so episodes off um so i'm trying to figure out a way to reconcile that um and i apologize for that uh misleading you about how many shows that we've done uh we you know the film count is very accurate still uh we have shown about uh 1945 films but the episode numbers are skewed so i'm going to try to figure out a way to do that so those celebrations of like it's our 400th episode it was bogus and i apologize um we will be eventually getting to 400 um actually given that i i'm labeling this episode 441 means that probably next week we'll have we'll have shown episode 400 but i'm not going to celebrate it again because the numbers are i'm still kind of trying to reconcile them but um anyway so there's that i'm owning up to it oops sorry um clerical air but hopefully that will not detract from you watching this wonderful film a promotional film for lionel model railroads iron ponies [Music] it's the night before christmas the families at the fireside and for the children the hour is one minute before bedtime [Music] of all nights of all bedtimes this is the most difficult for tomorrow is christmas and sleep is not for youngsters who wait for surprises who conjure up fantasies of a giant tree glittering with lights and tinsel planted in an acre of bright new toys [Music] and so later when the children are in bed sleeping fitfully to be sure the scene is set the big surprise unfolded this year johnny will get his electric train his iron pony and mom and dad can't help but think of other christmases other surprises other childhoods it seems only yesterday to dad that he was bounding downstairs on a cold christmas morning to find a toy train of his own nothing as slick as this of course but indelible in boyhood memory [Music] and now the staccato clicks on the rails and the gentle purr of the locomotive remind him of those early crude but wonderful model junior casey jones jr himself [Music] the old trains dad remembers have come a long way the stem winders the battery-powered models and the first plug-ins with transformers that got so hot you could scramble an egg on them are gone the toy trains of today have moved along with their bigger real-life brothers on the main line of american railroad progress real trains have a romance all their own with names that are legendary and what youngster hasn't dreamed of high balling down the right-of-way at 90 miles an hour signal going full blast [Music] [Music] most folks never get to run a locomotive but with models they can run a whole railroad millions of americans like william gargan and grover whalen are toy trained fans here they see a remarkable innovation a real railroad type coupler which is operated by remote control it permits coupling and uncoupling of cars switching and operation of all gadgets while the trains are in motion the boss of this railroad takes inventory right from his remote control panel board here are some of the things he operates a conveyor type lumber loader [Music] [Applause] a milk car with delivery right to the platform a cattle car livestock has to be exercised our route and this takes them out of the car into the corral and back into the car again [Music] a freight station with very busy and efficient baggage men a cracked steam liner complete with vista dome observation car an automatic crossing watchman who keeps motorists clear of the tracks [Music] then two there's a coal loader another operation with complete remote control [Music] a searchlight car the big eye for wrecking and repair crews if you should strike oil on your right-of-way you're covered by this derrick and pump [Music] so and when you get to those big rivers just wait for the drawbridge working on this railroad is strictly a push-button job [Music] designing this equipment requires considerable ingenuity and planning by model train executives and engineers they maintain close contact with the railroads are quick to adapt new developments to the toy train field railroads encourage toy companies to adapt their designs readily furnish blueprints and photos designers carefully study pictures of real trains and adapt them with fidelity to have plant specifications [Music] locomotives are particularly studied and whether it be a modern diesel or a rugged steam job the model will follow the design of the real thing [Music] building locomotives and cars for full-size trains is a mighty productive enterprise involving a highly skilled workforce massive machinery huge parts and great plants [Music] toy train building is a different story the plant is large so is the production but everything else is in miniature this factory turns out 80 000 pieces of track a day here are some more production figures 25 000 cars roll off its assembly lines every 24 hours and every hour 250 diesel locomotives come off the line under their own power every conceivable gadget and accessory is produced in great quantity and in small size [Music] finished trains are subjected to wear tests run continuously until they break down check durability this railroad carries no passengers or freight but keeps a lot of grown men busy they're another brand of hobbyist perhaps the most rabbit of all the train builders of the model club most of them were bitten by the railroad bug at an early age and never got over it the men who in daily life maybe doctors lawyers businessmen or teachers play in a kid's idea of fairyland everything trains track bridges tunnels landscapes scenery and buildings is handmade there are engineers roundhouse men painters dispatchers and conductors [Music] schedules are scrupulously maintained and efficient operation keeps the line a model in every sense of the word [Music] and so on christmas morning when johnny and his sister come bouncing into the living room to behold the eighth wonder of the world it'd be nice if they knew the story behind electric trains but of course it's christmas and johnny's too excited to be bothered with stories today it's an old old story johnny and that goes for the part where pop starts telling you how to run her don't let him you'll never get him away from her if you do [Music] well you've got your train young fella you can drive her anywhere you want to california south setauket or timbuktu so take her away johnny you're casey jones iii [Music] i'm just going to say i'm not going to tolerate any grateful dead references in the comments um yeah lionel trains man oh oh scale i was an ho scale kid had some tyco trains and recently when i went on the long road trip to the midwest we stayed at an airbnb where the host had a little n-scale um train set that he was working on so it was fascinating and suddenly the hairs in the back of my head stood up and it was it was something that was like in me uh from a kid got very excited by it i'm like and i'm always joking with my wife that you know we'll convert the basement which i was broadcasting from earlier in the pandemic i'll convert that into a giant model railroad set we actually went to a model railroad museum in san diego uh in balboa park on our honeymoon that's how i know my wife loves me she indulges me on those ludicrous absolutely ludicrous things that like let's go to a bottle trade museum all right um got a film on the uh telecini back here we're gonna show um because we like showing films live um so we're here we go this is story of the book when i was a boy i used to love to read books i wanted to be a writer when i grew up and i am someday you may have the good feeling of writing a book as much fun as i had writing this book pagoo people often ask me what it's like to be a writer well let's find out the story behind pagoo began one summer while we were on vacation my wife lucille and i saw something that looked like a snail but it moved too fast for a snail it was a hermit crab a hermit crab lives in some other animal he has a pair of armored claws but his tail is soft and delicate so he protects his tail with a shell which he drags along wherever he goes right then we took the first step in writing a book we got an idea the idea of writing about a hermit crab the next step was research we needed to learn about a whole new world and one way was to find out what others had learned the hermit crab scientific name is pagurus which we shortened to pagoo when first hatched he has big eyes a small body a long tail places on his body that become legs and points that become antennae research from books could take us only so far there's nothing like seeing for yourself and that sent us back to the tide pools along the rocky seashore where we first found pagoo a tide pool is a world of its own we had to learn about the various creatures in this world because there would have to be other characters in the story we watched the shore crabs we saw the rich purple of the sea urchin and watched its sharp spines waving slowly we started to collect some of the creatures so we could continue research at home ah and there is it or isn't it it is he uses a claw as well as his legs when he scurries it was moving day for pagoo and a number of his neighbors back at home we made a tide pool of our own where we could study how pagoo behaved how he lived and ate and fought we soon found out that life wasn't going to be completely peaceful research may take hours or weeks or months depending on what you want to write it actually took us months but finally i knew enough to begin the third stage the writing by now i had a good idea about some of the adventures that pagoo could have for instance because he keeps outgrowing his old shells he constantly looks for new ones there's a fact now for some imagination to make that fact exciting suppose he looks for a shell in a cave where an octopus lives good exciting ideas make stories interesting i always try to use exciting words too then something swam through the water suppose we made that streaked through the water that's more descriptive than swam and instead of saying the sharp jaws bit let's say uh the sharp jaws clipped the tentacle exciting words and exciting ideas make exciting stories writing and rewriting working and reworking gradually the story took shape and then one day it was finished at last the manuscript was ready to send to the publishers we hoped they would like it then came anxious weeks of waiting while the manuscript was in the east being considered by the publishers would they like it they did and soon the story of pagoo came back to us printed on these long pages called galley sheets the publisher sends galley sheets so we can make sure that the words are all printed correctly the galley sheets also help us to plan how the finished book will look we began to work on the next step in the making of our book the illustrating not all writers do their own illustrations of course but we do and not every illustrator has to use a microscope to see what he's trying to draw but lucille did for some of the smallest creatures lucille's job was to make hundreds of drawings that would be used around the margins of the pages while lucille did that i worked on the watercolors we were going to have 20 full page paintings to illustrate the most exciting parts of the story here is the one showing the adventure with the octopus when pagoon nearly became a tasty meal sometimes it helped to pretend that i was a terrifying octopus or a poor little pagoo we worked hard to make each illustration as perfect as we could and now instead of words alone pagoo's world had form and shape and color there was the adventure with the octopus and the fight and the cave and the adventure with the seagull and with the crabs and the time pagoo got caught without a shell finally every illustration was finished they too were ready to send to the publishers again we had to wait at last the publisher sent back the proofs of the illustrations both the drawings and the paintings we were ready for the next step making the dummy making the dummy was like solving a complicated jigsaw puzzle we matched each proof to the sketch that we had already planned and piece by piece the puzzle fitted together a goo was almost ready almost a book the last step was printing but that was the publisher's job the huge presses ran day after day many thousands of copies were printed after the books were bound and wrapped they were sent to bookstores and libraries all over the world sent where they could be read by boys and girls and that's the story of our book getting the idea doing the research at the library in the tide pool writing and rewriting making the illustrations making the dummy and printing writing pagoo took a long time but we enjoyed it and now that it's finished it gives us a good feeling to know that many girls and boys will learn about an exciting new world through a book that we have written um what may i ask is a dear little cupcake like you doing with nasty old school books dear child we haven't had school or books and ages no school really why don't you get rid of that schoolbook you can drop them in here it'll get all burned up in there well of course it will dear child and so it should books tamper with man's basic natural ignorance now what could be worse than that but i can't burn this book at school property nonsense apple sugar you just need to get into the [Music] i know you'd rather play so why don't you throw all your books away [Music] books to make burning the fire is already yearning [Music] is [Music] books will not make you wise and reading's bad for your eyes i am sure you agree so why don't you give all your books to me [Music] see the flames growing higher [Music] books [Music] you should listen to me burning your books will set your mind free [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so take something that's mildly amusing and just run it into the ground that's what we do here at navy geeks [Laughter] that song just resonates with me for so many reasons and anytime i show a film about books i gotta gotta show that it's a point counterpoint um thank you for indulging me i mean this is all about indulging skip at av gigs and i appreciate you guys getting at least appreciate a little bit about about um what i show and why i show it and you know a lot of things i show were grown groan worthy but um hopefully not to the point where you're like all right i'm done i can't do this anymore but thank you so much for lending me your eyeballs and typing comments and enjoying and watching and going down these weird comment paths it's really hilarious through your comments sometimes and so thank you for doing that don't forget to hit like you know there's a i'm pointing at this thing that says hit like um tell the world that you enjoy av geeks you can also go to our website and see all uh most of all of the shows that we've done um since mid-march of last year which is not 441 but 300 and uh so 390 something um and also if you uh like it uh you can buy me some coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash av geeks that caffeine causes interesting neuron things happening in my brain so that i can show you interesting things and do more open up more cans and put them on the telecini and have you watch them etc i was just thinking as i was watching the story of the book i was like what if i was instead of av geeks if i was obsessed with encyclopedias and so instead of watching like a a film on a subject i would read an article about a subject and then like compare like world books as this exactly peter britannica says this childcraft says this because that was something i was doing i was collecting some encyclopedias uh at one point just as i started collecting films and so i had to abandon that um hobby and that's good for you i guess um anyways anyways everybody have a really great weekend um it's always wonderful to show stuff to you and i'll be back on monday um we look inside the film can and it tells us to please rewind and love each other and um so thank you and we will see you again next week and maybe i'll know exactly what show number we're on all right take care eight seven six five four three eight seven six five four three eight seven six five four three eight seven six five four three eight seven six five four three eight seven six five four three eight seven six five four three