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Random notes: February 26, 2013.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Obit watch: C. Everett Koop. (True story: I used to live a stone’s throw away from the DrKoop.com headquarters. I didn’t move; DrKoop.com did.)

The NYT has discovered NFA trusts.

But because of a loophole in federal regulations

Ever notice how the NYT, LAT, and other media outlets refer to things they don’t like as a “loophole”?

…buying restricted firearms through a trust also exempts the trust’s members from requirements that apply to individual buyers, including being fingerprinted, obtaining the approval of a chief local law enforcement officer and undergoing a background check.
Lawyers who handle the trusts and gun owners who have used them say that a majority of customers who buy restricted firearms through trusts do not do so to avoid such requirements. And most gun dealers continue to require background checks for the representative of the trust who picks up the firearm. But not all do.

Frankly, I don’t believe the NYT‘s claims here. I suspect they’re being dishonest with the readers. However, I haven’t looked into NFA trusts; I’m not at the point in my life where I’m ready to purchase automatic weapons. (However, my brother and I had a discussion last night, prompted by the existence of “The Sliencer Store” near the movie theater I went to. A silencer for some of my .22LR guns is becoming more tempting.) Are there any readers out there who know more about NFA trusts and are willing to comment?

The LAT, meanwhile, is pre-occupied with the non-existant “gun show loophole”.

Speaking of movies, I considered live-blogging the Oscars on Sunday, but I figured my live blog would go something like this:

7:30 PM: Ceremony finally starts.
7.45 PM: First call by a celebrity for “reasonable gun control”. Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to bed.

The one nice thing to come out of the Oscars, in my humble opinion, was that “Argo” started playing at the Alamo Drafthouses again, and at reasonable times. I ended up seeing a matinee showing yesterday.

Yes, it is very much a “Hollywood saves the world” movie, as well as a “heroic Federal employees” movie. Yes, “based on a true story” means that some of the facts have been fudged.

And I don’t care: “Argo” is a good story, well acted, well directed, and just the right length. Of the nominees I’ve seen, I liked it more than “Django Unchained” and (sorry, Mom) “Lincoln”. (I still want to see “Zero Dark Thirty”, but haven’t gotten to it yet. The other movie from last year I was excited about and didn’t get to see is “The Master”, which I think is going to have to wait for DVD.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Guns, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Lenny Bruce is not afraid, and other random notes for February 15, 2013.

Friday, February 15th, 2013

More on the Maureen O’Connor story from the NYT. Highlights:

Her lawyers said that while she had made well over a billion dollars in bets at casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and San Diego, her actual net losses were around $13 million.

…

…to wager a billion dollars over the course of her nine-year gambling spree, Ms. O’Connor would have had to bet the equivalent of more than $300,000 a day, seven days a week.

The Chelyabinsk meteor story is the kind of thing I feel obligated to comment on, but am still sorting out. I know my readers are looking to me for answers to such questions as “is it time to crack open our neighbor’s heads and feast on the tasty goo inside?” While you wait, WSJ coverage. And I’m going to break with one of my rules and point folks at Slate. My justification for this is that I’m pointing you at Phil Plait and “Bad Astronomy”: if anyone is going to be on top of this story, it will be Plait. Plus, he’s got lots of video.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Geek, Law | Comments Closed

Who would have thought it?

Thursday, February 7th, 2013

You can get botulism from prison wine, aka “pruno“, aka “that stuff that’s frequently fermented in a cell block toilet or other places just as disgusting”.

(You know where else you can get alcohol from, with less risk of botulism? Sourdough starter. No, really; the liquid that separates out and rises to the top if you leave it sit is somewhere between 12% and 14% alcohol. I haven’t tried drinking any of it, but I suspect it tastes a little better than pruno.)

Posted in Bread, Clippings, Food, Geek, Mixology | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: February 5, 2013.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

Today’s the last TMQ of the season!
Hurrah, hurrah!
No more “cosmic thoughts”!
Hurrah, hurrah!
The readers will cheer and the blogger will shout!
And we’ll all feel happy after the last TMQ of the year…

(more…)

Posted in Books, Bridges, Clippings, Geek, NFL, Roads, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

2^57,885,161 – 1

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

I think everyone knows I geek out over pi, and the calculation thereof.

I’m not sure that folks know that I also geek out over prime numbers, primality testing, and the calculation of large prime numbers.

But I do. And we have a new largest known prime.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

More things I did not know.

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

Commenting over at Tam’s place led me to Wikipedia, to refresh my memory of the Rankine scale.

And a footnote there, in turn, led me to something I’d never heard of before: VSMOW. That’s Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water, “a water standard defining the isotopic composition of freshwater”.

Very pure, carefully distilled VSMOW water is important in the manufacture of high-accuracy temperature measurement reference standards.

You see, if your water doesn’t have the exact right isotopic composition, you may see errors in your calibration of up to “several hundred microkelvin”.

I prefer being a time geek, but I have to admit that being a temperature geek does appear to have some thrills.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

Speaking of presidents…

Friday, December 28th, 2012

As seen at Blood Bath and Beyond yesterday:

That’s volume III of the “Presidents of the United States” Pez dispenser collection. They also had volume II, but I did not see volume I.

I note volume III specifically because this is the one that includes Millard Fillmore. Yes: a Millard Fillmore Pez dispenser is a real thing that you can buy and not the punchline of a David Letterman joke.

(You can get the Pez Presidents Collector Set Vol III from Amazon, too, along with Volume 1 and Volume II. But as I recall, BB&B’s price for the two sets they had was $12.99, vs. Amazon’s $22. If I was in a better financial situation, I would get all three for my nephews.)

Posted in Geek, History | 1 Comment »

Some people.

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Some people are obsessive.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single subject.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single movie.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single movie that isn’t f—ing “Star Wars”.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single movie that is currently in legal limbo.

Okay. You’re tired of the joke by now, so let me introduce Sorcerer1977, a blog devoted entirely to the 1977 William Friedkin movie “Sorcerer”.

Friedkin did this right after “The Exorcist”; it wasn’t well received at the time, but it seems that over the years, something of a cult has grown around it. Lawrence and I watched it quite a while back (I think it was so long ago we watched it on VHS). I’m a fan of “The Wages of Fear“, which “Sorcerer” is something of a homage to, and I actually think I prefer Friedkin’s version to Clouzot’s.

I’d love to see it again, but the movie is currently tied up in legal limbo which prevents a proper re-release. Both Paramount and Universal say they don’t own the rights to the movie, and have no idea who does, so Friedkin is suing both studios trying to get the ownership issue cleared up.

Anyway, the guy behind this is seriously obsessive and seems to be trying to cover every aspect of the movie – digging out old interviews with Friedkin and other people involved in the production, discussing the Tangerine Dream soundtrack, etc. etc. etc.

My goal for this is to create a makeshift archive — news, interviews, photos, whatever. Kinda like bonus material waiting for a DVD. Or maybe it’s just a digital valentine for a movie I love dearly.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s an awesome goal.

(Hattip: directly, Coudal Partners. Indirectly, Gruber.)

Posted in Geek, Movies | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: December 4, 2012.

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

We apologize for the lateness of this post. We are dealing with some personal issues that put us a little behind this afternoon.

Let’s just go ahead and jump into this week’s TMQ. Before we get started, though, we’d like to note something that strikes us as unusual: there is no mention of Jovan Belcher or Saturday’s events in this week’s column. We don’t think TMQ is the type of person who would say “Everyone else has said it better, so there’s no point in my saying it”, so his silence strikes us as unusual.

After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Geek, Guns, NFL, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Joey deVilla has a blog?

Friday, November 16th, 2012

I mean, other than “The Adventures of Accordian Guy in the Twenty-First Century“?

Yes, yes he does.

I ran across this on the Y Combinator Twitter yesterday, and thought I’d give FizzBuzz a shot. I’d estimate it took me just under 30 minutes to get the code you see here, which I believe “works”. Part of that time was taken up with assisting one of my cow orkers with a problem, though. An embarrassingly large chunk of that time was taken up by my having to look up the Perl syntax for “for”, “if”, and the modulo operator. I’m a bit rusty; the last time I wrote substantial Perl code was about a year ago (a Perl script that parses CSV data from a file and imports it into a SQL database).

Anyway, code:


#!/usr/bin/perl
for ($index = 1; $index < 101; $index++)
{
$div_by_3 = 0;
$div_by_5 = 0;
if ($index % 3 == 0) {
$div_by_3 = 1;
}
if ($index % 5 == 0) {
$div_by_5 = 1;
}
if ($div_by_3 == 1 && $div_by_5 == 1 ) {
printf "FizzBuzz\n";
} else {
if ($div_by_3 == 1) {
printf "Fizz\n";
} else {
if ($div_by_5 ==1){
printf "Buzz\n";
} else {
printf "$index\n";
}
}
}
}

As always, when I put stuff like this up, I welcome criticism or comment on how I could have done it better (or, in this case, “right” if I did it wrong). The way I see it, I can’t get any better if I don’t solicit and accept criticism.

(Followup from deVilla here.)

Edited to add: I was going to upload a Python version that I wrote in (about) 20 minutes (I think). I keep planning to sit down and learn Python, but then somebody calls and wants to go riding bikes or whatever…anyway, I couldn’t paste that here and have it come out the way I wanted to, so I’ve uploaded it here. (I had to change the extension from “.py” to “.txt” because WordPress didn’t like “.py”.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Python | 3 Comments »

More things that tickle my funny bone, for no apparent reason.

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Wikipedia’s “List of stoffs“.

Because the two substances were so visibly similar, a complex testing system was developed to make sure that each propellant was put into the correct tanks of the Messerschmitt Me 163.

I wonder if it would have been easier to have different sized openings (and different sized nozzles) for the T-Stoff and C-Stoff tanks, instead of a “complex testing system”. But maybe I’m missing something.

(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter.)

Posted in Geek | Comments Closed

Sunday morning link roundup.

Sunday, October 14th, 2012

Some of these are things I promised other people I’d send them a link to, some of these are things I wanted to note in passing.

Here’s the Merlin Mann “Flocked Up” video from the “Worst Website Ever” panel at SXSW 2008. This is where “your (x) is one of the three to fifteen most important things to us” comes from.

HouChron article about women in the brewing profession, complete with photos of the Saint Arnold Brewing Company’s female brewer. The photos in the slide show aren’t quite as good as the one they ran on the front page – the one that made me click through to the article – but they do make me want to try more of the fine products of the company.

I haven’t linked this previously, since many of the people in my circle had already seen it. It turns out that a few haven’t, so: the Ars Technica “I am calling you from Windows” story about Indian “technical support” scammers.

The first set of verdicts came down late Friday in the Austin nightclub trial. (Previously.) I’d also commented that I didn’t think the trial was going all that well for the prosecution: as a matter of fact, the defense rested without presenting any evidence or calling any witnesses, which you have to figure is a sign of confidence that the prosecution does not have a case.

Two of the three Yassine brothers were found guilty of money laundering: Hussain Ali, known as “Mike”, and Hadi. Mohammed Ali Yassine, aka “Steve” was acquitted on the money laundering charges; however, the Statesman says he’s going to be tried on drug charges later.

Basically the only evidence the prosecution had was the word of one of the Yassine cousins, who was a paid federal informer, and who confessed to drug use and theft under oath. My record so far in predicting trial results is mediocre at best, but I would not be shocked to see the convictions overturned on appeal.

And I didn’t actually bring this up, but it came up, and would be useful to link, so: the Wired article about “Cow Clicker”.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Law, Mixology | 2 Comments »

Quote of the day.

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

The problem is that Think Progress, Huffington Post, and BoingBoing are full of shit.

—Ken @ Popehat

I commend this post to your attention, as not only does it masterfully dissect the idea that the law should be what we feel it should be, rather than what it actually is, but it also points out gross misconduct by Antinous, a Boing Boing moderator.

More from Ken:

I’m outraged that the prosecution made a lousy and seemingly inexplicable call. I’m outraged that someone who sexually assaulted a profoundly handicapped woman goes free because of incompetence. But I’m not outraged that the state has to prove that you’re guilty of the specific crime you’re charged with to put you in prison.

(It is probably worth pointing out that this has some relevance to the Mirkarimi situation. Yes, he thumped his woman. Yes, he was convicted of a crime. But the arguments of the people who opposed his firings are that the mayor doesn’t have the authority to fire Mirkarimi, and that his crime took place before he was in office, so it shouldn’t count. I don’t much like these arguments, but I’m having trouble sorting out whether I don’t like them because that’s the way I feel the law should be, rather than the way it actually is, even if “the way it is” is stupid in my opinion.)

Posted in Geek, Law | Comments Closed

The map is not the territory.

Monday, October 1st, 2012

I was going to the destination for Saturday’s Saturday Dining Conspiracy. So, of course, I put the address into the new IOS6 mapping application on my shiny new iPhone 5.

The phone routed me to a shopping center across a major highway and, I’d estimate, about .3 miles from where the restaurant actually was.

Oh, wait. Did I say “IOS6 maps” and “shiny new iPhone 5”? I’m sorry. I meant to say “Google Navigation” and “my two-year-old HTC EVO running Android”.

Point being: Apple’s new Maps may not be up-to-spec, but I’ve personally run into problems with Google Maps/Google Navigation on my phone as well. Apple gets all the attention now, probably because new! shiny! but the claimed perfection of Google does not exist.

(As I said above, I use an HTC Evo on Sprint. Now that I’m off contract, I am considering an iPhone 5, mostly because I’m not totally happy with Android as an environment and as an ecosystem, as well as not very much liking the Sprint add-ons. As I’ve said elsewhere before, I work professionally with Windows and UNIX based operating systems, my main home computers are Macs, and my laptop is a netbook running Ubuntu. I don’t have a dog in the platform wars, and I don’t really give a damn what you use, or what you think of other people who use a different platform.)

Posted in Android, Apple, Geek | Comments Closed

Maybe they should have done “Gaslight” (and more random notes for September 25, 2012)

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Ben Sprecher is a theatrical producer. Most of his work has been off-Broadway, but he’s trying to put on a Broadway musical version of “Rebecca”. (I know what you’re thinking, but according to the NYT, this was done in Vienna in 2006, and played well.)

Anyway, Mr. Sprecher estimates that he needs $12 million for this. Mr. Sprecher had an investor – a man named Paul Abrams – who was putting up $4.5 million. That’s a lot of money for one person to invest in a Broadway show. But wait, it gets better!

Reports in August of his sudden death in Britain of malaria — yet no obituaries, no death notices. A representative for the Abrams estate surfaces, a person identifying himself only as “Wexler” who refuses to speak by phone and uses an e-mail address created just last month.

But wait, it gets even better: Mr. Sprecher never met or spoke to Mr. Abrams at all. There are questions as to whether Mr. Abrams ever even existed.

“I’ve never heard of a situation where you didn’t at least meet the person raising 30 percent of your show budget,” said Robert E. Wankel, president of the Shubert Organization, one of the big three Broadway landlords and a six-figure investor in “Rebecca” as well as the owner of its intended theater, the Broadhurst.

Mr. Sprecher is trying to raise money to fill the gap. But if he fails and the musical doesn’t open, he’s on the hook to his other investors.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, bat cave!

Obit watch: Edwin Wilson. Remember Edwin Wilson? Former CIA guy? Convicted of shipping plastic explosives to Libya? Spent 20 years in prison?

A federal judge threw out his conviction in 2003, ruling that prosecutors knowingly used false testimony to undermine his defense.

Yeah. That guy.

Debacle? That seems strong. But I didn’t watch the game. “Debacle” may not be strong enough.

Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do? Well, they can register domains. But Donuts, Inc. has close ties to Demand Media…

Industry watchdogs have long criticized Demand Media as a leading provider of services to spammers and a host to sites that commit “cybersquatting.”…
Garth Bruen of the industry watchdog group KnujOn said Demand Media has not replied to any of the many spam complaints he has submitted to the company.
“They are looking the other way,” he said. “I’ve sent them tons of information. They never respond. They have this one address, legal@enom.com, and you never get a person.”

The current theory on convicted sex offender and fugitive from justice Prakashanand Saraswati seems to be that he’s in India now, having been spirited out of the country by his followers. And the US Marshals don’t have an office in India.

Maybe they could send some BATF guys from Reno to India.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Guns, Law, NFL, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

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