Running in your sleep

Did you ever wake up suddenly because while you were having a dream because your body actually moved a bit? This poor dog was apparently having a running dream when his body kicked in . . . such a rude awakening! What protects us from physically acting out our dreams and hurting ourselves? The body functions to paralyze itself during REM sleep to protect us from self-damage that would occur if we acted out scenes from our dreams. [Via hahahaimontheinternet]

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MrTitanium with a Lead Pipe on the Patio

If the title didn't give you a Clue, then I just have to tell you that I like metals. I like melting metals. And I finally did a video of metal melting. Why? People are always asking me about how light titanium metal is. I was inspired by Theodore Gray and his Periodic Table Table to collect a set of samples of representative metal bars so as to show people. To let them feel for themselves. I started with Tungsten, because it is as heavy as gold and the hardest one to shape. I then collected and shaped matching bars of aluminum, titanium, bronze (95% copper), steel (97% iron), and magnesium (lighter than carbon). But absent the lead, I can't illustrate how much heavier tungsten (gold and platinum) are than lead. Pity I don't dare use silver, gold, or platinum bars. They would be funexemplars, but I fear short lived. But lead (Pb from the Latin Plumbum, as in plumbing, plumb-bob, etc) is now harder to get. This useful material has been in household use for almost 6,000 years. Children who likely drank from lead vessels gave us every advance in our civilization. But about a generation ago, it was declared toxic. So now it is getting hard to find outside of radiation labs, and expensive there. So, I decided to cast my own piece of fresh lead plate from some crusty and oxidized 19th century lead pipe. To feel the pipe is to understand its utility as a weapon; heavy and rigid, yet soft. Unfortunately, I didn't set up my camera to show me chopping up the lead pipe. I used a hammer and chisel to get through the crustiest parts (hundred year old drain pipe, eww). But tin snips work well on 1/4" thick lead. It cuts like cold butter. But shiny. And the piece I ended up with evoked a geological feature I'd visited: Shiprock in New Mexico. Magma oozed up through a crack in the Earth's crust forming a vane much like you see on my cast plate. An accidental demonstration in practical geology.

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What’s it like to go to prison school?

Have you ever wondered what it is like to learn how to run a prison, you should check out this video: This Bureau of Prisons video has become public in an unusual way. It was part of a huge grab of "free" public records that was obtained then made much more accessible by two activists. The story is told here, and is close to my heart because it involves criticism of the enormously clunky PACER system, which contains all federal case filings. The activists decided to download all of the recent cases on PACER in order to make them more accessible. They were in the process of doing that when the federal courts shut them down. Fascinating stuff. They also obtained government videos that they've collected into "FedFlix,"

a growing archive of many films originally produced by the federal government, which he’s been uploading to the Internet Archive and a YouTube channel.

The 524 films in the FedFlix catalogue so far include such gems as “Sludge Management,” “Welcome to the Bureau of Prisons!” “Foreign Lottery Scams,” “(Motorola Presents) Atomic Attack,” battle footage and training films from World War II and Vietnam, and the Cold War classic “Duck and Cover” [starring "Bert the Turtle"].

Does the word "propaganda" come to mind when you're viewing any of these? For a lot more information, visit the activists' website, Public Resource.

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