We bring you 3 Awesome Links: learn about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, laugh about parallels for Men & Status, enjoy Coppola’s interview on cinema.
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It is the Sunday before Christmas. Many blogs are slowing down already. My Feedly unread # is growing at a slow pace now. If only this was happening every day haha.
I am going to start something new. The Buzz type posts you usually see here with the previous days Must See blog posts will be posted only on weekdays. Saturdays will be a mini Buzz post and then I will start posting a new weekly feature “3 Awesome Links” on Sundays where we go deeper in some posts that just blew my mind and are great for, well, a Sunday! Always evolving, TBB thrives on change or whatever, sure sounds good!
The Strangest, Most Spectacular Bridge Collapse (and how we got it wrong).
This one blew my mind. Which is appropriate as the cause of it was the crazy high winds and the faulty engineering job! The photos and videos showing the collapse will totally blow you away, I guarantee it. There was something wrong with this bridge. It just moved…a lot! Like this:
It became a cheap thrill for courageous motorists in days of high winds. But in the morning of November 7, 1940 the behavior of the bridge in 40 mile winds became more violent. The bridge was now twisting, like this:
Here is a still photo of the bridge before the collapse…
Professor F. Bert Farquharson, a bridge expert, was hired in the summer to find a way to tame the bridge and save it. He had a solution ready and was also watching the behavior of the bridge that morning. When the winds took a break, he thought the bridge would hold and walked on to it…
and then quickly started running away as all hell broke loose!
You should watch the actual video on the site, it is even better than the short excerpt just above. Then the whole article gets into engineering stuff. I had no idea about this event. Reading it sure caught my attention, it was gripping! And I leave you with this final shot:
Men & Status: Why You Should Care About Your Status
Fascinating article! This has nothing to do with Elite status as we know in the Travel Hacking world. But, oh boy, are there instances where I was shaking my head in disbelief how this and that applies to some status obsessed hobbyists. Just a few of these instances where I was saying “oh yep, I know some people like that” along with my cutting edge commentary in brackets below:
We are hadwired to care about status.
Status is crucial for mental & physical health [When I lose my lifetime Fairmont status soon, I will just check myself into the hospital for therapy as it will be the ultimate low…lol]
Status gains increase feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters like testosterone, serotonin, and dopamine, making us feel on top of the world. [Oh yeah, Hilton HHonors Diamond for free baby!]
Status defeats, on the other hand, elevate one’s stress hormones and suppress cognition, the immune system, and even fertility. [Fertile?? Seriously? Come to think of it, both my kids were conceived when I was a Northwest Platinum elite LOL]
Prolonged periods of feeling like you’re low status can thus lead to illness and depression. If your serotonin remains diminished for a long enough time, you’ll also become angry and may even feel the urge to violently lash out at others [When I decided to become a free agent, this blog helped with my depression and calmed me down. Time heals, I am okay now, thanks for your concern!]
Status = competition, and competition breeds excellence [For a long time as NWA Platinum and always turning left when entering the plane I thought I was superior to the ones turning right. It became…toxic. I got over it after intense therapy. Blogging here helped a lot bwahahahaha]
Status attracts people – [Oh yeah…if you had a chance to meet someone in the middle seat at the back or someone in First Class bitching about the pre departure drink which one would you choose? Ok, maybe that analogy was not perfect…]
And then the article devolves talking about Henry David Thoreau…
Francis Ford Coppola Reflects on the Past, Present and Future of Cinema
I started this three awesome links on Sunday thingie to save me some time. Here I am already spending way too much time on the two previous awesome links. So I am going to shut up now and let you enjoy what this master film director has to say on the subject. It is absolutely awesome stuff if you are into this art form as I am, enjoy!
Check out the master’s press conference for “Apocalypse Now”, one of my all time favorite films! “The horror, the horror”, that Marlon Brando scene is forever into my brain…which may explain my pathetic eccentricities and insane brain cells #jokingaround
And I leave you with this…
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Ah good Sunday morning, watching a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor…
I love the Tacoma Narrows Bridge video. I used to show it to my physics students to demonstrate wave resonance. The winds caused the bridge to vibrate at its “natural frequency.”
The last photo of the scary gift card display is the poster child of what our hobby is becoming.
There was an explanation that this may be because of the holiday season when gift card fraud is at its highest, so hopefully that’s all it is… I saw it at one of my backup locations yesterday.
Fraud is a much bigger issue with gift cards then travel hackers. We are just competing with the fraudsters.
Late reporting to work. We had a nice holiday party at home last night and had to make two trips to unload the wine bottles to the recycling bin 🙂
You all have a good day!
Watched a documentary on drug peddling in LA last week. It seems drug dealers only take prepaid visa/mc cards as payment nowadays, that way when the police catches/inspects/frisks them they dont find wads of cash…
And to think we get our fix just from buying the card alone…
How do they quickly check the balance on the VGC? I doubt there’s an honor system in that line of business?
No idea but Scott above is correct that the scammers doing stuff involving these vastly outnumbers us Hobbyists…
Present.
I will declare this invalid if you keep forgetting to use my Amazon link, come on man! 🙂
I hadn’t made the connection until now. I saw a young boy taking pictures of XBox gift cards one day in Texas in a CVS. I wondered what he was up to, and he ran away when he saw that I was watching him. Could it be that scammers are taking photos of the back of gift cards and somehow getting ahold of the pins?
I would not be shocked…at all!