{"id":84,"date":"2022-02-03T16:27:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T16:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamtoti.com\/?page_id=84"},"modified":"2024-07-20T15:29:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-20T19:29:50","slug":"media","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/williamtoti.com\/media\/","title":{"rendered":"Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Blogs and Published Media<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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You can find Mr. Toti’s most recent blogs and published works displayed on this page.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Discussing the situation in Israel on News Nation<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Success Made to Last Podcast<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Discussing military transition to industry with Rick Tocsingy on Success Made to Last podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Federal Drive Radio Show<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Great discussion I had with Thomas Temin on “The Federal Drive” radio show about the challenges of transitioning from the military to industry. <\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/workforce\/2023\/09\/a-former-submarine-skipper-on-how-to-make-the-transition-to-post-military-success\/?<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Discussing the 9\/11 Pentagon attack on NewsNation Sept 5, 2023<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Discussing the Titanic on NewsNation Sept 1, 2023<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Review of the movie \"Oppenheimer\"<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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So\u2026 saw the movie \u201cOppenheimer\u201d last night on opening night.  Happy to see that against \u201cBarbie,\u201d a movie about history was doing relatively well\u2014theater packed.  But this movie was done in typical Christopher Nolan film, most shots lasting 5 seconds or less resulting in a jumping narrative style, that when combined with the technical jargon and the too loud \u201cHans Zimmer-like\u201d soundtrack made it difficult to understand, even for a physics-degreed guy wearing hearing aids.<\/p>\n

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Warning: spoiler alerts contained below!<\/p>\n

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BLUF: they get the history mostly right, although they attribute certain conversations to the wrong people. Nolan says he did this for clarity in the reduction of number of characters, but in a movie with more than 30 main characters you are expected to track, I can\u2019t see how adding one or two more to correct the history would have hurt.<\/p>\n

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Did I love it?  Well, I liked it a lot.  I loved the presentation of the physics.  Brought me back to my two undergrad courses in quantum theory.  Loved the discussion of whether the bomb would set the atmosphere on fire.  That was one of the conversations attributed to the wrong guy\u2014the actual guy who did those calculations was one of my grad school profs Robert Hamming.  In the movie Oppie asks Einstein in one scene to do the calculation (never happened) and in another scene it was an unnamed character (likely my old prof) who tells Oppie that the probability is \u201cnear zero.\u201d  Fun note: in one of my grad school courses \u201cHamming on Hamming\u201d he went through those equations with us.  <\/p>\n

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And I loved seeing Tom Conti\u2019s portrayal of Albert Einstein.  Having read all of Einstein\u2019s books in my undergrad days, Conti plays him exactly as I have imagined him.<\/p>\n

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Another fun scene is when Oppie starts teaching his first class (Berkely) and tells his one student who is trying to understand quantum, \u201cYou\u2019re looking at it the wrong way.\u201d  I wish I had that prof.  I was looking at it the wrong way in undergrad too, but nobody was ever bold enough to tell me that.<\/p>\n

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But I did not like the gratuitous sex, which added nothing to drive the story forward and seems to have been inserted just because it\u2019s what British filmmakers do.<\/p>\n

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So back to the movie: It ran for 3 hours and didn\u2019t feel like it.  There were slow parts but I never found myself looking at my watch.  The chronology was difficult to follow despite jumping from color (paradoxically, for the sequences happening in the 1940s-1954) and black & white (for the Senate scenes with Admiral Lewis Strauss\u2014played by Robert Downey Jr\u2014 mostly taking place in 1959).  Strauss is the antagonist who never attended college, made enemies of Chester Nimitz, yet gets a Navy reserve \u201cgraveyard promotion\u201d to rear admiral right after WWII and insisted on being called \u201cadmiral\u201d for the rest of his life.  He has a giant chip on his shoulder throughout the movie, which apparently was accurate.<\/p>\n

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Was the movie accurate from a historical sense?  Very much so. Even some of the more contrived and unbelievable scenes (such as the \u201cmore useful than a sandwich\u201d scene which humiliated Strauss) actually happened.  <\/p>\n

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If you put differences in Nolan\u2019s jumpy, distracting narrative style aside, his biggest miss with the movie is his failure to recognize that something can be \u201cregrettable,\u201d yet one still may not regret it.  <\/p>\n

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This is the matter Nolan goes back and forth with Oppenheimer at the end.  Does he regret the Hiroshima bomb?  Oppenheimer does not say.  Yet Oppie clearly feels that the need to drop the bomb was regrettable. Nolan goes back and forth with this as if it is a paradox, but it\u2019s not.  Any sane human being regrets the fact that something substantial had to happen for the war to end.  And as we cover in our episodes of \u201cThe Unauthorized History of the Pacific War\u201d podcast, dropping the bomb was the least bad choice of many really bad options, one which actually minimized the loss of life necessary to end the war.  Anyone who thinks otherwise has to ignore the facts of the conflict and many contemporary statements, most notably from the Japanese leaders themselves.<\/p>\n

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Is \u201cOppenheimer\u201d worth seeing?  Absolutely\u2014if for no other reason than we need serious movies to compete in the box office with comic book and toy movies else they will stop making serious movies. <\/p>\n

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But whatever you do, stay to the end, that final scene with Oppenheimer and Einstein.  The closing line of that movie may be one of the best lines for film ever written.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Discussing the Titan Submersible incident no News Nation, June 23, 2023<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Discussing the Titan Submersible incident on News Nation, June 22, 2023<\/span><\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Discussing the Titan Submersible incident on News Nation, June 21, 2023<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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USS Indianapolis Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony\n\n(my content begins at 32:54)<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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