Never saw the movie. Read the book, but it was ages ago. I remember the diamonds, which were the crux of the plot. Diamonds were a possible substitute for high-density circuits which were desirable because diamonds have such a high thermal conductivity. Don’t recall lasers being involved in the book.
In any event, I’ve long thought that de Shayzer and Rand’s diamond laser would be interesting precisely because of that high thermal conductivity. I’ve worked with people who tried bonding laser material to diamond plates to take advantage of that conductivity (heat dissipation is the bane of solid state lasers), but without significant success. The diamond laser, however, would be MADE of diamonds, so the thermal conductivity was right there. No bonding required.
The problem is, though, that the lasers were pretty low power. And trying to run them at high power would probably have destroyed the point defects that were doing the lasing, high thermal conductivity or no.
Still, another possible entry to the Optical Scientists in the Movies list. Can’t say that I know of any Optical Engineers whop worked with Signing Gorillas much, though.
Reminds me of when Putin called Trump brilliant (the word the translater used). The more accurate translation of the Russian word Putin used was more like showy and faky and tacky-glitzy.
I remember when Jimmy Carter’s interpreter (an American) told a Polish audience that the President had “a great lust” for the Polish people.
At one conference in the '70s (I don’t remember who the American president was at the time), Brezhnev’s interpreter (a Russian) told his US audience “I shall not say good-bye, but rather good-bye” as they were departing.
To understand the gaffe, you have to know that Russian (like many other languages) has more than one way to say “good bye.” What Brezhnev actually said was “I shall not say proshchayte” (which is what you say to someone you’re probably never going to see again) “but rather do svidaniya” (literally “until we meet again”).
After a confused pause, the Americans laughed politely at the obvious mistranslation. Brezhnev, who already had one foot in the grave, just smiled and nodded. He had absolutely no idea what was going on.
“Yarkii” (яркий), the word Putin used, does indeed mean “brilliant.” But not in an intellectual sense, according to Russian experts.
“The word means someone who’s bright, colorful. It means ‘brilliant’ if you’re thinking about a bright light, but it’s not ‘brilliant’ if you’re thinking about someone’s intelligence,” Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University, told NBC News.
Forgot that one. It inspired me with thoughts of how to take revenge on a hated professor, but I couldn’t figure out how to get multiple bags of popcorn into his house.
And JFK famously told a German audience that he, too, was a jelly donut. But I think that the fact that he was attempting on his own to speak to them in their native language was more than enough for them to forgive him.
His interpreter covered for him pretty well too. Kennedy actually thanked him for translating his German into German, which got a big laugh from the crowd.
Back when I was doing EOD work, the closest fictional work I’d seen was a 1970s BBC series set during the Blitz: Danger UXB. The Hurt Locker was, in my opinion a great cliffhanger with a few notable scenes, but Hollywood took a metric f&ck-ton of liberties with a few scenes. For example, one does not lift a half-dozen lightly-buried 155mm howitzer rounds out of the ground by hand.
For my current job, I would say that The Matrix is a good, accurate portrayal. I’d resemble Mr. Anderson in a cubicle farm, where certain Federal folk’s direct analog are The Agents they dress just like 'em. Some of the working factory floors I’ve been to, do in fact, resemble the tunnels that the Nebuchanezzar floated through.
That’s an urban legend. A berliner is a type of jelly donut, and one could parse the sentence that way, but while I don’t know if a native speaker would typically use precisely that form, “ich bin ein Berliner” is a perfectly correct way to say “I am a Berliner” (as in, “I am someone from Berlin” or “I am a citizen of Berlin”), and in context it was completely clear to his audience exactly what Kennedy meant. The idea that his audience might have thought he was saying “I’m a jelly donut” apparently only arose 20 years later, as a comment by a fictional character in a novel.
Yeah, it’s the equivalent of somebody giving a speech where, as a rhetorical flourish, they say “If New York means freedom, then let me say: I am a New Yorker!” and later having people laugh and go, “he said he was a magazine. The correct way to say it is ‘I am from New York.’”
Certainly his audience knew what he meant, and even if he did say it wrong (I’m not nearly enough of a German-speaker to say), most people do appreciate it when folks attempt to speak to them in their native language. By all accounts, the jelly donuts he was speaking to appreciated the speech.
I saw Danger UXB* on Masterpiece Theatre when I was a kid and found it fascinating. It still stands out as a deep dive about a relatively obscure part of WWII. Can you talk a bit about what they did well in that series?
Maurice Roeves died last year, and I immediately thought of him as the Sergeant in Danger UXB, although modern audiences might remember him best from Last of the Mohicans. And I spotted two of the other actors with prominent roles in Master & Commander alongside Russell Crowe.
I loved the sequence that opened every episode, where they followed the life of a bomb from the foundry where the metal was cast to the time when it was dropped over Britain, all with that haunting theme music playing in the background.
Couldn’t the translator just have used ‘farewell’ and ‘good bye’?
Not faulting the interpreter, must be hard work if you don’t know what is coming up, but it appears as if English does have multiple ways to say goodbye as well.
Of course it does. Many languages do. He could even have mixed English and French: “I shall not say ‘good bye,’ but rather ‘au revoir.’”
The difference between proshchayte and do svidaniya is one of the first things you learn in Russian 101. For an official interpreter not to convey it is really inexcusable
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the series, but I distinctly remember two scenes:
“Junior” finds ‘a contraption’ in the schoolyard, brings it home, and puts it in his dresser–ends up being a German Butterfly Bomb. Mom finds out and calls the Army. Some of their rope, hook, and line techniques looked pretty reasonable, and not farfetched from what I would have expected to be done (remote movements when possible, if kind of a PITA).
The beach’s pier was mined, and it took the Squad a long time to RSP and remove everything. IIRC, in the series it was a weeks-long process. Lemme tell ya that the last thing you want to do on a planned job is to rush anything. Proper disposal, in saving life and property (in that order) takes time and patience. You simply do not go rushing in an start cutting wires like this: https://youtu.be/-wINinKkMdg.
Like I said, it’s been awhile. I should bingewatch it again over the Holidays.
Bluestone 42 gets an honorable mention, but that’s more of a comedy, but has a few important elements worth noting, i.e. pulling security overwatch for your “P1” who’s downrange. I’d watch that too, but I can’t find it anywhere here in the States.
