AV Geeks Lunch 11-16-2020

simpson has known that his survival honors upon the rising of the sun for the sun gives him light and warmth it [Music] it grows sustenance too for the domestic animals that nourish it once man worship the sun as a god today through a telescope during a total eclipse he can know the sun for what it is a burning star 93 million miles from earth a raging holocaust of fiery matter almost a million miles in diameter explosions vast beyond imagining roar up from its surface to shoot flaming gas for hundreds of thousands of miles into outer space [Music] but even before the telescope man knew that the sun could be a destroyer as well as a giver of life it has turned whole areas of his planet's surface into arid desert [Music] it can dry up streams and rivers kill crops cause famines it can kill man too overexposure to the sun's rays can cause sun stroke heat prostration and even death the sun can foster life or destroy life in itself it is neither good nor bad it merely exists [Music] the atom bomb has led some men to think of atomic energy as something only destructive but like the sun atomic energy is neither good nor bad it merely exists man's earth and everything on it people chairs tables are made up of atoms and every atom contains atomic energy an atom is held together by electrical force in the center or nucleus there are particles with positive charges called protons around the nucleus revolve particles with negative charges called electrons also in the nucleus there are very important particles with no electrical charge at all these are called neutrons in addition the whole atom is held together by a kind of binding force or cosmic glue atoms of different elements such as gold or oxygen have different numbers of these particles in their nuclei hydrogen for example has a one proton or positive electrical charge and so scientists have given him an atomic number of one oxygen is heavier he has eight protons and so his atomic number is eight gold still heavier is rich with 79 protons and uranium heaviest of all the natural elements has 92. each element or family of atoms can have different members called isotopes each isotope has the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons [Music] some elements like tin have many isotopes others like aluminum have only one they are called stable [Music] still others are called unstable they are busy day and night being what science calls radioactive like radium which throws off powerful rays along with some of its bring a neutron at uranium least the result was nuclear fission but a double miracle happened when the atom split into two the first concerns that binding force or cosmic glue that holds the atom together it has a kind of weight all its own but the two atoms that result from the splitting of one half binding force two and a little less of it is needed to hold them together some is left over what happens to it it explodes as energy proving einstein's theory that mass and energy are really the same now for the second miracle when a single particle starts the reaction splitting the uranium atom energy is released as heat and blast while powerful rays similar to x-rays are given off but something else important happens free neutrons are driven out with tremendous speed neutrons those little particles that split the atom to begin with if enough uranium 235 happens to be present those neutrons in turn bombard other uranium atoms causing them to split and to split still others the result a chain reaction over a million billion billion atoms exploding in two seconds but in an atomic pile this chain reaction can be slowed down here at oak ridge atom splitting is taking place but it is and completely under man's control and man can make an atomic pile also called a nuclear reactor work for peace not war he can expose many kinds of chemicals to the neutron activity of an atomic pile and make them radioactive these substances are called radioisotopes and they are opening new horizons in research for man's benefit in agriculture industry and in medicine in a hospital where radioisotopes are already being used a doctor explains to some student nurses just what a radioisotope is a substance which has become radioactive through exposure to the neutrons of an atomic pile the doctor has two bottles of iodine one is radioactive the other is not they both look the same and have the same medical properties but the radioactive iodine has begun to give off invisible rays similar to x-rays invisible though they are they can be detected by a sensitive instrument called a geiger counter as the rays hit the counter they register with a clicking noise [Music] the rays also register on the counter dial swinging it to the right if radiation is present first the doctor places the counter over the ordinary iodine there are no clicks and no reaction but when the counter is placed over the radioactive iodine called radioiodine the clicks begin showing that rays are present the amount of radiation is registered by the needle of the dial these rays like the sun's rays can be dangerous if the human body is over exposed to them some like the gamma ray can penetrate cardboard very easily and also human flesh here the rays penetrate the cardboard and register one of nature's elements ordinary lead has the ability to stop most of the rays here they are not able to reach the geiger counter and no radiation is registered for this reason all radioactive substances are kept in containers made of lead or other impenetrable material a nurse asks whether radio isotopes stay radioactive permanently the doctor explains that each one has a different length of life from a millionth of a second to one and a half billion years [Music] now let us go back to the atomic pilot oak ridge and see how these radio isotopes are made this technician is preparing ordinary baking soda for irradiation in the pile it will become radioactive and give off invisible rays in this form it can become immensely valuable for research this is the isotope face of the atomic pile here substances are exposed to neutron activity and are made radioactive the process is continuous materials already irradiated are removed from the graphite stringers and new materials to be irradiated are inserted the newly produced radioisotopes are now giving off rays and are stored temporarily in a lead safe a geiger counter measures the radiation present so that the health of the operators is not endangered by over exposure [Music] later the radio isotopes are stored in a special building called the atomic apothecary apparatus for the handling and storing of radioactive materials has been specially designed so that operators are subject to a minimum of exposure one direct exposure to these substances would probably not be dangerous but frequent exposure is radiation effects are cumulative that is successive exposures build up within the body therefore people who work daily with radioactive substances must be protected many thousands of shipments of radioisotopes have been made from this building to many kinds of organizations to hospitals and medical research laboratories to centers for agricultural experimentation and to industry not only in the united states but in 53 other nations let us look now at some specific ways in which radio isotopes have already been used for mankind's benefit [Music] foremost is their use in medical research and diagnosis for example in diagnosing diseases of the thyroid gland doctors have found radioiodine to be highly effective before examination the patient drinks a solution of radioiodine which like ordinary iodine is quickly absorbed from the bloodstream into the thyroid gland by using a type of geiger counter to measure the radiation coming from the region near the throat where the gland is located the doctor can determine whether it is functioning normally [Music] radioisotopes offer almost limitless possibilities for medical research on a wide variety of diseases at oak ridge cancer hospital research is concentrated on the most mysterious and dreaded disease of our times scientists have called radioisotopes the greatest aid to medical research since the microscope and so the atom which helped create the most terrible weapon in the history of warfare may tomorrow help eliminate one of man's most terrible peacetime killings next to disease our world's greatest problem is the production of sufficient food for all people everywhere [Music] more than one billion of our earth's people do not have enough food to maintain health poor crops and undernourished livestock bring illness and famine in their wake [Music] radioisotopes are opening a whole new field for the study of plant and livestock nutrition in agricultural research laboratories it is now possible to learn exactly what elements are needed for the growth of a specific crop how much of each and at what stages of growth certain elements should be supplied in sealed greenhouses plants can be grown with complete control over temperature moisture sunlight and nutrients [Music] in this experiment soybeans will be grown in an atmosphere of radioactive carbon dioxide pumped into the chamber when the soybean plants have grown the scientist harvests his radioactive crop such agricultural research helps man to learn more about the effects of radiation on his living environment more about the basic nature of the food plants so vital to his agricultural economy experiments have been done with many of the elements used by plants for food the important discovery has been that fertilizers used by farmers have often been wasted because their ingredients were useless to the plants of a particular crop knowledge like this will enable farmers to produce more food per acre of arable land more wheat more food a healthier and happier world and atomic energy can help to bring it closer in industry two the atom has already gone to work for peace [Music] in the oil industry the ability of the radio isotope to serve as a tracer is saving money and time oil producers for example have the problem of identifying each different batch of oil pumped from an oil field a small amount of a radioisotope is added to the head of each new batch of crude oil as it leaves the field pumps force the oil through pipes to the refinery where a counter detects the rays from the radio isotope as soon as the new batch arrives [Music] automatically a light flashes at refinery headquarters this takes the place of former tip that were both costly and time consuming although it is not expected that radioactive materials will revolutionize industry the ability of a radio isotope to act as a tracer makes it invaluable in techniques of testing products for higher levels of quality in the field of industrial and chemical research particularly with synthetics its contribution is already important but perhaps the greatest promise of atomic energy is power itself power for peace and productivity nuclear physicists are at work in the united states and in many countries seeking practical ways of harnessing the energy within the atom to work peacefully for men the atom unlike power from water and fuels can bring its energy to those areas of the world which until now have been starved for electricity and fuel developed in the united states the world's first atomic power plant produced usable electricity from a nuclear reactor in 1951 it still operates today in the western state of idaho a forerunner of full-scale atomic power stations [Music] there are still adequate stores of natural fuels like coal but how long will they last with the expanding needs of modern civilization it is estimated that by 1975 the world need for all fuels will be twice that of 1950. scientists realize that at this rate fuel needs may outrun nature's supply of oil and coal in the not too distant future there is two million times more energy in a lump of uranium than in a lump of coal but so far scientists have unlocked only a very small portion of the energy inside when the uranium atom is split only a tiny fraction of its atomic energy is released the energy is there the problem is to get it out more efficiently and to use it for the betterment not of one nation but of all nations everywhere president eisenhower in his address to the united nations on december 8 1953 said the united states knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future that capability already proved is here now today entire body of the world scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fictional material with which to test and develop their ideas that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal efficient and economic usage the president proposed the founding of an international atomic agency to which all the nations of our world would belong six months later in june 1954 at the university of michigan in the united states an international conference of nuclear physicists was held scientists from 17 nations gathered together their purpose was to exchange ideas and information about their work they talked a language that knew no boundaries of nation nor of color they had a common interest in the atom and its peaceful power and in the future and survival of a race called simply man on december 4th 1954 a resolution endorsing president eisenhower's proposal for the setting up of an international atomic energy agency received the unanimous approval of the united nations general assembly this resolution included plans for the holding of an international conference of nuclear physicists on the development of the peacetime uses of atomic energy and so men everywhere have moved to join president eisenhower in the pledge he made to the united nations on that december day in 1953. native states pledges before you and therefore before the world its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death but consecrated to his life hi everybody i'm skip alzheimer welcome to the av geeks lunchtime streaming show um hope everybody had a good weekend and uh enjoyed friday's screening of rock it's your decision uh a wonderful well let's see wonderful uh film about the evils of rock and roll and the dilemmas that teenagers face in the late 70s early 80s when it comes to rock music um so we just watched uh atoms for peace in introducing the atom and it has some animation that shows up in another film i have called a is for adam which i have in color and i love those big adam you know headed little people that dance like in in radium 88 they're just like this dancing around and just hopping and bouncing around it's it's really quite a wonderful explanation there's a better one i found in um our friendly atom which is a disney film which basically talks about a chain reaction where they there's a room full of set uh mouse traps and a ping pong ball they drop ping pong balls and they set off a mousetrap and they bounce to another mouse trap and boom boom boom boom boom boom it's wonderful i'd love to show it to you but disney disney disney disney um they would bring the uh mouse trap down on me quite literally the mousetrap um coincidentally that film that we just saw talked about oak ridge tennessee and i am wearing an oak ridge laboratory uh wait um national laboratory shirt that a friend of mine gave me he worked there a couple years ago because they also besides having a breeder reactor and other types of atomic test facilities they have a giant supercomputer that he was using for forestry purposes and so i said i mean i'd love to get a shirt from oak ridge and i like that it looks like uh like a a national park it's like oh it's oak ridge there's these crazy reactors that are there um anyways uh so many films to watch so many films um this next one is a wonderful film from the 70s made by encyclopedia britannica well this could be late 60s i have to we'll have to look for the copyright notice and see so here's who needs rules [Music] rules what are rules most of what we do is directed by rules [Music] rules help us get along better and safer together [Music] what would happen if there were no rules forgiving there are rules for just about everything including games could you imagine playing softball if there were no rules none at all could you even play softball if there were no rules rules are necessary in order to tell you what to do and tell others what to expect from you there are rules for young people rules for adults [Music] even rules for people who make the rules sometimes rules conflict with what we want and what we believe let's see you get this one [Music] great now you've lost [Music] well i threw it in this area it should be around here some place boys we don't find this i wonder whose dog like he's starving know what i bet he doesn't have a home no he must belong to somebody i bet not nobody bring him to the park without a collar in this it's against the rules so what maybe he ran away no look how skinny he is i bet he hasn't had any footing days have you fella you know what it'll be neat if we could take them home and keep them are you kidding you know they don't allow pets in our building well i know but still yeah well come on mama have lunch ready princess [Music] okay steve that's it he really has to go home now but how can he he hasn't got any home well he can't come with us that's for sure we'd all get in trouble hey listen what if we put them in that old storage room nobody ever goes in there it's still the building it'd be the same as if we kept him in our apartment i don't mean for always just for this afternoon then we could at least give him something before we let him go gee i don't know steve on connie look how hungry here lunchtime food [Applause] wow look at me i wonder how long this has been since he's eight how long since he had bruce his name's not pooch it's frisky how do you know because that's what i decided to name him now wait a second steve i like him too but we just can't keep him and that's that you know the rules against keeping pets in our building as well as i do i've been thinking connie what if we hide frisky's box way behind those little trunks and then bring him food and stuff then nobody never find out about him not even mom and dad it's not mom and dad i'm worried about sister manager what if the dog starts barking in the middle of the night and wakes everybody up how people like that we could train him not to bother oh sure we could look steve we just can't you know how much trouble dad had to find an apartment that didn't cost a fortune yeah so do you want to get dad in trouble with the manager get everybody mad at us maybe even get us kicked out of here no but do you want the dog catcher to catch frisky and take him to the pound because you know what they do stray dogs in the pound is that what you want no but i know i can't take care of them all by myself but if you felt we can do it at least for the summer come on connie do we try it or not what should steve and connie do why does the apartment have a rule against pets do steve and connie have a right to break that rule [Music] [Music] uh yeah cut that out craig you made me miss tough go on peter i'm practicing i got just as much right to be here as you have well could bother me craig i told you to leave me alone oh come on man i just want to play a little basketball great why don't you okay give me the ball oh no if you want to play get your own ball this one's checked out to me but i like this one yeah give me that back try and make me think you're so tough huh cut that out i'm warning you [Applause] [Applause] hey quit that okay let's break it up come on get up come on let's go get up oh i was doing a playing a little basketball over here and he had to come by and kick all the bro i just wanted to play basketball but he was hogging the ball and so i never got a chance so i went out i don't care if craig did started billy you were fighting too and you know you're not supposed to i had to defend myself didn't i no you could have reported him to me or one of the teachers oh sure have everybody call me a chicken then qrik and the guys he hangs around if they'd be picking on me all the time look billy we have a rule against fighting and you're just going to have to obey that rule period maybe that's your rule but it's not my dance he always told me don't ever take anything from anyone he says the more you let people push around the worse everything will be for you do you know why we have our rule billy so people won't get hurt well yes that's a great part of it but that rule's there to protect the smaller kids and the weaker kids from bullets now maybe you can handle craig but what about the kids who aren't able to if we don't help them huh so when you're in school billy you obey our rules and you let us handle situations like this but what if craig jumps me someplace else if he thinks i'm a chicken here he'll think i'm a chicken everywhere look mr zepeda if i don't take care of myself right here right now i'm in big trouble what should billy have done when craig took the ball away does the school have a right to tell billy not to fight back if someone picks on him whose rule should billy obey the schools or his fathers i love the uh stop the projector films um because they don't have necessarily an answer and they propose these questions and we're as students we're supposed to sit and talk about it but that whole thing about yeah well we're sure that you could beat up that other kid but what about the smaller kids it's like no it's more about like no we don't want kids fighting on our property and that's the rule we don't want to be liable for somebody gets hurt and that is not a way that we solve problems i don't know anyways uh so i wanted to mention a couple of things one thank you for buying coffee coffee is always a great way uh at av geeks for us to uh wake up and do the things that we need to do uh including pulling films and showing them to you also liking and subscribing but i have an event coming up on saturday in conjunction with the houston's 1940 air terminal museum it's a really awesome place if you live in the houston area to visit when there's not a pandemic and even it's a cool place to visit when you're flying through the southwest terminal in houston um because it's right on the other side of the the landing strips uh i've done a couple of shows there where they flew me in and we showed old films about uh air travel commercial air travel and people who go to the museum are often people who work in that industry uh and so we're gonna do a virtual screening event it's i think it's 15 bucks but the money goes towards keeping the museum going which is an awesome space because it's in a 1940 air terminal so you get to see what it looked like and how small it was and the whole thing about driving on to the landing strip and all that stuff is stuff that was happening back then um they have a lot of memorabilia things like that so i'm putting in the comments a link so you can buy tickets and it'll be like a zoom thing and i'm trying to figure out a way to do make it into a game too so we'll figure that out too we might have bingo air terminal bingo um but here so here's the link um anyways i'll be advertising that every day because ticket sales are low um and i said that i would try to promote it to other people but uh man i love uh other people's property is i'm sorry uh who needs rules is a great film uh this next film is a uh made by a filmmaker who made a film that scared the hell out of me as a kid uh he was one of the directors on late great planet earth and uh i uh was i saw that film halfway through and ran out in tears i think it was like 12. and basically it was a documentary about the world was coming to an end in my lifetime and how we were all going to die in a uh a nuclear holocaust um and so i was freaked out pretty bad uh anyways years later i met the director of ralph forsberg and i've shown a couple of his films i've shown stopped and i feel like i showed the parable this is another film that he did that um it's called arc and it's not religious but it is talks about environmental issues of the day and um he made this film and then a year or two later the film silent running came out which was very similar and uh ralph actually i think sued them uh universal uh and i don't know if he got money or not but it was there was some similarities here so anyways this is arc enjoy wow [Music] why when i was a child did the old folks shake their heads inside things are different today the summers were longer once with fragrant winds and evening there were chimneys then and crickets [Music] why did they tell me things are different now once the smallmouth bass would leap from under the lotus snapping at dragonflies once there were green mosses on the river stones why did they tell me yes i understand goodbye hello yes i'll be there right away hello yes i have two of everything i can handle at the pond no of course i don't have whales they're simply in room well i'm sorry too yes the quails and pheasants ground squirrels and a pair of skunks the soil aeration is perfect so far plenty of earthworms oh and i have a pair of salamanders too tortoises and tadpoles have to rely on nutrition for that yes i'll do the best i can how they'd map it out for me as far they'd say as the eye could see was wilderness all around there was a lake here then where beavers toiled and deer would drink there were lakes they say and bobcats too and wild poppies blooming why did they map it out that way [Music] i am not one for calling creatures by pet pains for sugaring the wild blood for housebreaking the sturdy beast into an erratic shadow of myself i like a falcon's talents to stay sharp the sulfur dioxide content of the air at 3 42 pm today is 0.42 parts per million the lead content of the air is six micrograms per cubic meter the carbon monoxide content is 28 parts per million in the downtown area 328 in 40 seconds the noise pollution at the corner of maine and high street was recorded at 90. we are of the same stuff these creatures and i of the same wild elements combined in a chemistry of spit and sperm and the spirit to survive and whether microbe or man our relation to nature approximates that of a fish to water until i sealed it off in glass this pond was dying like a water hole in drought but i nursed it back to health from my junkyard of pumps and paraphernalia revived it in an iron lung of filtered air trust and braced it in the coils of a water distillery each earthworm nurtured each lifestyle support yet it is more much more than a puddle within a ramshackle whitewashed glass in this one shallow pond i know the depths of all the salted seeds and my small pond vibrates a billion years of the birth of our vast planet [Music] when our earth was merely a molten lump cooling after too much fire [Applause] so [Music] [Applause] until the waters rose [Music] in shallows in puddles in warm ponds of seawater from a holy silence life wriggled into being and whenever winds blew sea sprays over a cindery planet living organisms rode on pseudopods and pogo sticks trumpeting here will i grow here will i grow [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and wherever mists drew their rainbows the life rays multiplied by millions at times bizarre but never [Music] useless [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and all these waters of life all the rivers run back into the sea yet the sea is not full into the place from where the rivers come they return again [Music] in this shallow pond in this small waters wet is an echo here will i grow here will i grow within this ramshackle of whitewashed [Music] glass [Music] [Laughter] food [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign so i don't know where they came from where they breed i know only that they're destroying the life of my pond and with it i myself am dying in proportion how like human beings they are in their senseless destructiveness in their greed only man is more ruthless that cloud of foul air hanging over us is the breadth of human greed and we can blame nothing else for our predicament not even the rat go for a hungry hawk or a wise old barn owl i'd prepared for another collecting trip to the world outside but at the last moment i lost nerve somehow i'd been here too long i'd become a kind of hothouse human in staying i know that i'll remain here as long as as humanly possible using all the skills i have and rebuilding the life family of this pond if that can be done perhaps the nature of the life family is too complex to control much less synthesize [Music] [Music] despite many setbacks the pond is beginning to thrive again [Music] 9 15 a.m the noise pollution at the corner of maine and high streets was recorded at monoxide 100.000 [Music] if through this deluge there emerges a last man a noah to carry on that noah must be all of us even then the outcome is uncertain all we know for sure is that the 40 days and 40 nights of this deluge of pollution and erosion and destruction began centuries ago now we are living through and dying through its last hours on this arc called earth uh so i was going to um rewind it a little bit kind of talk a little bit about somebody comment comment on the colors were all muted and uh um they're muted mostly because i was trying to color correct on the fly so this is the color corrected version and then this is the version pre color correction um so boom boom so the colors had faded pretty significantly to uh red um so the magenta cyan so magenta was still there but the cyan and the green and the blue that was all gone faded and so i can adjust the camera a little bit and the leds excuse me a little bit to bring the red down and try to boost the other ones um i can do this in software to where it gets pretty close to where it was the thing is i don't know like that he did forsberg when he shot this did he intentionally mute the colors to try to create this sense of this apocalyptic thing like with filters and things like that so that's the one thing that when you're talking about restoration ideally you're going back to the film negatives which haven't been run through a projector and you're also talking to the cinematographer or the director to talk about what the tones of what it was supposed to look like um so that's one of the things that's kind of interesting sorry i had to geek out there a little bit uh talk about and so this uh this telecity that i have is pretty great in that regard you can do a lot of that tweaking but there's certain things that i try to do even more where i can actually try to pull do secondary color corrections and things so i use a davinci resolve which allows me to do more fine color restoration work um somebody in the comments mentioned 12 monkeys uh so i have the film that that was based on uh which is called legetti by chris marker which is another really phenomenal film maybe i'll try to show that one day i don't think that's gonna bring down a copyright hammer it's a pretty great film um because of the way it shot and 12 i was watching 12 monkeys when it came out i was like wait a minute i know this film this is this is legit so uh yeah it's a pretty good great film um thanks everybody for tuning in today it was great to see everybody i'll be back again tomorrow um this is uh for those of you that are film archivists or collectors this is um the week that of a mia the association of moving image archivists that they have their conference and if it wasn't for the pandemic i'd be in el paso texas right now where it was supposed to take place but thankfully i'm not because coven numbers are really crazy there right now um unfortunately a lot of parts of texas are really suffering all over the united states actually so do me a favor wear a mask i mean it's the simplest thing you can do i got a haircut wearing a mask it was fine it's totally fine um but if you like what you saw you again you can buy us coffee or better yet you can pay for a ticket uh and see the show that we're doing on this saturday 6 30 i should say that 6 30 p.m central standard time because that's in houston so that's um i should add that um but and also today is not the 13th it is the 16th um little tiny things that i'm all the little details i'm missing but um thanks again for tuning in always like your comments always like please uh what you say what you point out it puts me in these divergent paths which are really kind of fun um you can like and subscribe and click a little icon to get notifications depending on how you're watching this buy me coffee and you can go to avgeeks.com and see previous shows that we've done in the past uh everybody have a great rest of your monday and as always please rewind and love each other we will see you again soon take care you