I don’t think he ever reached the level of fame Frank Serpico did, but he was part of the same NYPD anti-corruption movement.
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Obit watch: October 14, 2015.
Wednesday, October 14th, 2015Obit watch and more random notes: September 18, 2015.
Friday, September 18th, 2015Milo Hamilton, sports broadcaster.
NYT.
Warren “Remo Williams” Murphy. I’ve never read any of the Remo Williams books myself, mostly because I don’t know where to begin with the series. I am told by trustworthy individuals that they are fun…
New indoor range coming to South Austin. Well. Well well well. Well. I am looking forward to trying this out.
Obit watch: September 17, 2015.
Thursday, September 17th, 2015I didn’t know Frank James personally, though I wish I had. I did tell him on his blog that I wanted to meet him if he ever made it to Texas: he wrote Project 64: The MP5 Submachine Gun Story
That wasn’t the only thing he wrote. He was a prolific gun writer and blogger. And everything I’ve read about him says he was a really good guy.
A few random things I found interesting.
Monday, September 14th, 2015Some by way of the Hacker News Twitter, others from elsewhere.
Nice appreciation of Elmore Leonard from The New York Review of Books.
Brian Krebs goes to Mexico in search of Bluetooth ATM skimmers, part 1.
Fun with software defined radio, or scanners live in vain.
NFL loser update resumes tomorrow.
Oliver Sacks.
Monday, August 31st, 2015NYT. Michiko Kakutani appreciation. LAT. WP. A/V Club.
“The Oliver Sacks Reading List” from The Atlantic.
I like what Kakutani says, and I don’t think I could say it any better:
Dr. Sacks was a personal hero of mine. Unlike most of my personal heros, I actually did get to meet him once. He probably wouldn’t have remembered it, even if he wasn’t famously “face blind”…
Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#V of a series)
Thursday, August 20th, 2015The question of the day is: will we get to “Z” in the series?
Austin police Chief Art Acevedo is a finalist for the police chief of San Antonio Police Department.
(As a side note, I’ve always wondered what Sue Grafton’s going to do with Kinsey Millhone after she gets to “Z”. Two books to go.)
Obit watch: August 5, 2015.
Wednesday, August 5th, 2015Noted historian and author Robert Conquest has passed away at 98.
The scope of Stalin’s purges was laid out: seven million people arrested in the peak years, 1937 and 1938; one million executed; two million dead in the concentration camps. Mr. Conquest estimated the death toll for the Stalin era at no less than 20 million.
“His historical intuition was astonishing,” said Norman M. Naimark, a professor of Eastern European history at Stanford University. “He saw things clearly without having access to archives or internal information from the Soviet government. We had a whole industry of Soviet historians who were exposed to a lot of the same material but did not come up with the same conclusions. This was groundbreaking, pioneering work.”
I expect Lawrence will have more to say later, but I do want to tell my favorite Conquest story. When his publisher was going to issue a new edition of The Great Terror: A Reassessment
Edited to add: Lawrence’s obit is now up.
Obit watch: July 28, 2015.
Tuesday, July 28th, 2015Noted true crime writer Ann Rule passed away on Sunday. LAT.
(Hattip: Mom.)
The Ann Rule origin story is well known to true crime buffs, but since I’m not sure how many of those read this blog, I’ll recap it here: in the 1970’s, she was working at a suicide hotline and writing under pseudonyms. She became interested in some Seattle area murders and started investigating them; ultimately, it turned out those murders were committed by a close friend who worked with her on the hotline…
…one Mr. Ted Bundy. The Stranger Beside Me
Edited to add: WP article which goes into more detail about Bundy and Rule.
Quickies.
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015E. L. Doctorow. LAT. WP.
Inverted Jenny watch:
More:
Postal officials gave 70 upright panes to post offices to distribute randomly to buyers. The 30 remaining panes were sent to the agency’s stamp fulfillment services office in Kansas City, Mo., to ship to customers who ordered the Jennies by mail.
But in Kansas City, officials “forgot” about their distribution plan for the newly created rare stamps, investigators found. They shipped just one pane between March 2014 and December 2014. As a result, 23 upright panes remain in Kansas City, where management has not decided what to do with the stamps, the report said.
Random notes: July 16, 2015.
Thursday, July 16th, 2015(I love the “Citations for public urination” graphic that goes along with this article.)
I’m a little surprised this one hasn’t made FARK yet: local police find an unresponsive man in a car. He had bite marks on his wrist, and there was a non-venomous snake (and other animals) in the car. Man dies.
And it seems like his venomous cobra snake may be on the loose. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
(Huh. I didn’t realize that Frederick Forsyth won an Edgar for “There Are No Snakes in Ireland”. That’s not a bad story, but I like “The Emperor” from the same collection a little better.)
Edited to add:
You know what this means, folks. If Animal Services isn’t actively searching for it, it’s up to the rest of us to be on the lookout. Get that Taurus Judge out of the gun safe and load it up with snake shot! Fun for the whole family! At least, until someone gets bitten…
Edited to add 2:
Crews with the city will begin an organized search for the @Austin_Cobra Friday morning at 8. http://t.co/OlH5cl1IvZ pic.twitter.com/OMwvVBXCrh
— KXAN News (@KXAN_News) July 16, 2015
Oh, thank God. They’re going to start an organized search. I was afraid they’d be engaging in a disorganized search.
(Hattp: the Austin Cobra Twitter. Hattip on the Austin Cobra Twitter to the great and good Joe D. in the comments.)
The Beams of New College, Oxford.
Thursday, July 9th, 2015You know this story, right? At least you do if you’re weird like me and used to read Whole Earth Review (I think they used to sell this on a poster) or if you’ve read How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built
If you don’t know the story, the canonical version (minus Brand’s “That’s the way to run a culture”) is here. I always thought that was a nice story.
Turns out that story isn’t exactly 100% true. And the true version of the story is arguably even better, if you’re looking for tips on how to run a culture.
(I think I got this from TJIC on the Twitter.)
Obit watch: July 8, 2015.
Wednesday, July 8th, 2015Author John Maxtone-Graham.
Safe Return Doubtful: The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration
Noted:
And:
After action report: Spokane, WA.
Saturday, June 27th, 2015The Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association annual symposium was in Spokane this year.
Quote of the day.
Wednesday, June 24th, 2015I was proud of that first Sharps of mine…At first it used a 320-grain bullet, but I experimented with one a hundred grains heavier, and thereafter used the 420-grain projectile. It killed quicker. In making this change I didn’t sacrifice anything in velocity, because by then I had begun to use the English powder…and it added 10 to 30 percent efficiency to my shooting. After a year or two, having plenty of buffalo dollars in my jeans, I talked myself into believing I needed an extra rifle in reserve–so I bought two. [Emphasis added – DB] One was a .40-70-320–a light little gun for deer and antelope but too impotent for buff. The other was another .40-90-420. Both used bottle-necked cartridges; don’t ask me how I fell for that sort of thing after vowing I was off bottle-necks for life.
—buffalo hunter Frank Mayer, quoted in David Dary’s The Buffalo Book
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Seriously, it just tickles me to see the “well, I had some money, and I thought I needed a second one” justification being used as far back as the 1870s. Also, I love that throwaway line, “So I bought two,” and the “don’t ask me how I fell for that sort of thing”. I’m pretty sure anyone and everyone who’s a serious gun person and been around for a while is familiar with all of those.
(Heck, you’re welcome to name your favorite “don’t ask me how I fell for that”, “so I bought two”, or “well, I had some money…” justification in the comments.)
Incidentally, I was curious about the reference to “the English powder”. A quick Google search turned up what looks like an interesting ebook, though I haven’t had time to go through all of it yet: “A memoir on gunpowder” by John Braddock, published in 1832. This looks to be one of the earliest extant books on methods for making and testing gunpowder, and falls squarely into “quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore” territory.
Obit watch: June 24, 2015.
Wednesday, June 24th, 2015For the record: Don Featherstone.
Frances Kroll Ring has died at the age of 99. The significance of this is that she was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal secretary at the end of his life, while he was working on “The Last Tycoon”.