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Best of YouTube

Did you know that you can hop on YouTube and get a live stream from the International Space Station? The future is NOW!

Matthias Wandel is an engineering wizard and he recently posted a video showing how to make an air engine out of wood. This one got added to my (very long) project list. I’d love to attempt it some day.

And this last one isn’t a specific video but rather a whole series. For the past few months, Matt Cremona has been building his own enormous bandsaw mill in his back yard. He readily admits that he had very little prior experience and just learned it all from the web as he went. I love that all this information is available! I’ll embed a video showing him operating the finished product, but you can checkout this playlist to see the whole process.

Seahawks As High School Prospects

Professional sports teams are looking at younger and younger kids to start recruiting. So how did the current Seahawk players look when they were coming out of high school? The Seahawks released a story showing that info (which comes from a Yahoo site).

After reading through that, it makes me wonder if these things are even worth the effort. There’s only one five star player and that’s Devin Hester. Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner and Doug Baldwin all only managed two stars. So either these ratings are not done very well or people can improve a lot after high school. I’d imagine that both are true.

It would be interesting to look at things the other way around: how are the 5 star high school prospects fairing now? Thankfully BleacherReport.com has already gone very deep on this and has a ton of great statistics. The short answer is that if you are rated 5 stars in high school, you have a better than 50% chance of making it to the NFL and if you go early in the draft, you will probably stick around the NFL for a while.

This stuff is big business, but it must be really frustrating to deal with something so imprecise.

Best of YouTube

Let’s dive right in. Nachos on the grill? Yes please.

I’ve only recently started digging into the back catalog of the crew at Bad Lip Reading. There are so many fantastic videos on that channel, but here’s one of my favorites from The Hunger Games.

This last one isn’t on YouTube, but it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. I rarely laugh out loud when I’m watching something alone, but while I watched this one I was laughing so hard that I was crying. It’s episode 4 of The Grand Tour. This is the new version of Top Gear with Clarkson, May and Hammond. The whole season has been fantastic but this was my favorite episode so far. If you have Amazon Prime, it’s free to watch.

Best Of YouTube

The coolest uncle in the world is back with an incredible project: a giant glow wall. I want to do this! This would make for an epic show-and-tell day at Elijah’s school or a great way for the neighborhood kids to kill a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Bacon. Cupcakes. I’m sold.

And third on the list is not actually a video and it’s not even on YouTube because I’m crazy like that. Go listen to the fish fraud episode of Stuff You Should Know. Did you know that if you’ve ordered fish in a restaurant, there’s a VERY good chance that you were served something other than what you ordered? I’ve listened to hundreds of those episodes and usually I have at least a small idea of what they’re going to say, but in this case, I didn’t even know fish fraud existed. Super interesting!

Best of YouTube

Destin gets some very cool opportunities as part of his job and the Smarter Every Day channel. Thankfully he shares them with us! I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to pull a loop in a jet but I never thought about the feeling of making the inputs into the plane to get that loop to happen.

It’s hard to not use the Modern Rogue channel as all three of my videos this week, but here’s one of their best videos. Don’t try these at home. Especially if I’m around.

Bob Hoover is one of the greatest pilots the world has ever known. Check out this old video of him pouring an ice tea while performing an aileron roll… and oh yeah, the back of the plane was full of Generals.

Best of YouTube

In this first video, Jimmy Diresta makes a custom key for a very old lock. It’s a pretty cool way to resurrect something that would otherwise be garbage or decoration.

Matthias Wandel is not your typical woodworker. He uses wood to build precision tools and instruments. If you have an engineering mind, you’ll probably enjoy his channel. Here’s a recent example where he builds a small engine out of a solenoid.

I’ve followed Brian Brushwood for a long time but I’m a little late to the party on his Modern Rogue YouTube channel. It’s full of great videos and here’s one great example. I really want to try out this method for making a hologram out of some old CD cases and a phone.

Best Of YouTube

The first video is look behind the scenes at some of the special effects in the most recent Star Wars movie. Some might say that this ruins the magic, but it just enhances my appreciation for the movie.

Zane Lamprey is still making great videos on his channel. They aren’t all about traveling or drinking. He made one recently full of cute little animals.

Frank Howarth’s YouTube woodworking videos are well-known for his use of clever time-lapse photography and incredible turnings on the lathe. This video encompasses both of them and while I haven’t been completely enamored with his CNC use, this bowl does turn out beautifully.

Seattle Ice Block

seattleiceblockA 10-ton ice cube was recently placed in Seattle as part of an art festival. It’s an interesting science problem to estimate when it’s going to finish melting. Weather professor Cliff Mass has a couple posts about it:

My guess is November 26, but I’m probably way off.

You might remember an old post about a snowman I created in 1994. That one lived from January 23 through March 22, 1994 (58 days.) What’s your guess?

Scientific Study Validity

We see headlines all the time about two seemingly unrelated things. “Eat bugs and you’ll score 10% higher on SATs.” John Oliver had a great video talking about how the media completely misses the point of scientific studies, but it’s even worse than that. Even if you do your homework and read the scientific study, you still might not have the truth. This video does a good job of explaining why, but it comes down to statistics and false positives. For “real” science, studies need to be repeated by other researchers to replicate the results, but in this current social landscape, nobody cares about those replicated results because they take a long time, cost a lot of money, and they aren’t as interesting as the original attention-grabbing headline. Stick around to the end. He does a good job of wrapping it up and explaining that we’re not as doomed as the previous 10 minutes of the video might imply.

AQHA Ford Discount

AQHA2You can learn a lot online about your upcoming vehicle purchase. I’ve already written about finding the official order guide and invoice price list in a forum. That was a big help when negotiating the price for my truck. I also learned that members of the American Quarter Horse Association get $500 off their new vehicle. Membership is only $40 and you have to be a member for 60 days before you can use the rebate. Have I ever told you how much I LOVE quarter horses? Obviously I became a member of this wonderful organization.

I was all set to use my $500 discount when Ford corporate swooped in and extended the immediate family discount (A-plan) to nephews. My uncle was able to give me one of his awesome discount codes. The AQHA rebate doesn’t apply to A-Plan vehicles so I didn’t get to use it. Oh well, $40 down the drain and we get some horse magazines fore Elijah to look at.

If you’re in the market, check out the AQHA page and be sure to read the fine print to make sure it applies to you: https://aqha.com/partners/ford/