We were trying to come up with a clever introduction to the return of Tuesday Morning Quarterback (and, thus, the TMQ Watch) but we couldn’t. On the other hand, we were also suffering from a bad case of 70s nostalgia (brought about by many things, but exacerbated by the death of Bert Lance). So we thought we’d throw some vintage music your way before cracking open this week’s TMQ after the jump. Oddly enough, it turns out to be fitting for reasons we’ll see later on…
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
TMQ Watch: August 13, 2013.
Friday, August 16th, 2013Random notes: August 16, 2013.
Friday, August 16th, 2013Mark Sutton, best known as “that guy dressed as James Bond who parachuted out of a helicopter during the 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies”, died yesterday while piloting a wingsuit in Switzerland.
Also among the dead: Barbara Mertz, noted author, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, and Egyptologist. You may perhaps know her better as “Elizabeth Peters” and “Barbara Michaels”. (Oddly enough, I don’t own any Peters or Michaels books, but I think I have a copy of Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs.)
And Bert Lance. Remember Bert Lance? Remember the Carter administration? Bank of Credit and Commerce International?
That sounds like something out of a Ross Thomas novel.
The punchline: all of those paintings were done by one guy in a garage in Queens.
(Speaking of art, this has already been on FARK, but I do want to note it here for the “Art, damn it! art watch”:
I also want to make note of it because that’s one of the rare FARK headlines that’s pretty much accurate. If you have any doubts, click through to the article and look at the photo.)
(“a dictatorship of art”?)
Noted.
Thursday, August 15th, 2013The 5th edition of Learning Python
Since I am not an idiot, I bought the ebook; doing so is easier both on my wallet and on my back. I started reading it and working through the examples last night.
Quoth Chapter 1, under “Who uses Python today?”:
The IronPort email server product uses more than 1 million lines of Python code to do its job.
I can only smile and say “No. Comment.”
And a few bullet points later:
The NSA uses Python for cryptography and intelligence analysis.
So remember, folks: the NSA is spying on you, but they’re doing it with open source software. Doesn’t that make you feel better?
(Yes, yes, I’m sure the NSA also uses Perl and Java and Visual Basic and FORTH and even internally developed languages that are still classified. I just found it funny, is all.)
Random notes: August 8, 2013.
Thursday, August 8th, 2013I’m not all that interested in the digital Leicas, though. The Leicas I drool over are the vintage film ones. Yes, I shoot digital, but I still have a secret fondness for film and certain film cameras.
Speaking of low-light lenses, I’ve been wanting to link this:
Kubrick used those lenses to shoot scenes lit only by candlelight in Barry Lyndon (which, I have to admit, I haven’t seen yet: I’ve often heard it called “Boring London”, but it is one of those movies I feel obligated to see). Anyway, these lenses still exist, and you can rent them along with a camera modified to take the lenses if you really need to shoot something in very very low light.
The family of Henrietta Lacks has made a deal with the National Institute of Health:
This is kind of a big deal, for reasons outlined in the NYT article. The very short version: Ms. Lacks died of cancer in 1951. Scientists discovered that cells from her cancer were able to survive in lab environments, and those cells have been used in research since her death. However, her family was never compensated for the use of her cells, and didn’t even know her cells were being used until many years later.
The above is a very simplified version of the story. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Random notes: August 1, 2013.
Thursday, August 1st, 2013Look, I don’t like drunk drivers. I don’t like drunk drivers who kill people while driving drunk. If I had my way, they’d be charged with murder.
That said, there’s something wrong with this WP editorial arguing that a bar should bear responsibility for the death of a ten-year-old girl “who liked dogs, horses and dancing”. (Would it have been less tragic if she hated horses?)
So that’s 18 drinks in five hours, or 3.6 drinks an hour on average. The WP doesn’t tell us how much Mr. Eaton weighed, or whether his drinks were evenly distributed over the five hours (as opposed to him being there for 4:30, and then slamming down 17 Coronas and a shot in the last half hour). But assuming he weighed 200 pounds, and the drinks were evenly distributed…according to this chart, he’d be right on the borderline between 0.06 and 0.08. I’m not convinced that’s the sort of visibly drunk that would make the bar responsible for letting him leave.
(It is interesting that none of the articles on this case specify Mr. Eaton’s BAC, but perhaps that has something to do with the fact that he fled the scene and turned himself in 12 hours later. It is also interesting that the WP editorial blaming the bar doesn’t mention Mr. Eaton’s “previous convictions for drunk driving, reckless driving, selling marijuana and speeding “.)
In other news, the Austin PD fired another officer. The twist here is that the fired officer was already on probation and had been suspended for “temporarily ignoring a dispatch and disengaging the tracking system in his patrol car for just over twenty minutes”: even after being placed on probation and suspended, he still turned off the tracking system (and apparently the cameras) in his patrol car another 60 times.
Obit watch: Noted Texas writer John Graves. At some point, I need to read Goodbye to a River
Speaking of Las Vegas, people are coming back. But they aren’t gambling as much, or spending as much money on other things.
And speaking of DEFCON/Black Hat: WP coverage of the NSA director’s speech.
I’m hoping for some good coverage of Black Hat/DEFCON from Brian Krebs, who, by the way, has an interesting tale to tell:
(Also, credit card and PIN skimmers just keep getting better and better.)
Squee!
Thursday, July 25th, 2013Donald Norman, along with a couple of other folks, is teaching a series of courses based on “Design of Everyday Things” through Udacity.
Let me repeat this: Donald freakin’ Norman, one of my personal heroes, is teaching free online courses based on his most famous and influential work. My mind, it is blown.
Seriously, Donald Norman’s work was a huge influence on me when I was younger, and the idea of being able to take design courses from him, online, for free…well, “squee!” is the only word I can find to express my feelings on that subject.
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 8 of a series).
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013Apropos of nothing in particular, there’s a story in Theodore Rockwell’s book, The Rickover Effect
The setup for this is that Rockwell and another member of Rickover’s team have been aboard one of the nuclear subs, doing an inspection and quizzing the crew about what they know and remember from their training. In this particular case, the inspection wasn’t perfect; the chief they’re talking to in this excerpt spent several minutes trying to find the answer for a problem he could have solved with basic math and a slide rule in seconds.
I turned to walk away, but the chief called after me, hesitatingly. “Sir, I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to know something. I was in the Navy for nearly fifteen years before this program came along. I was a typical sailor like in the movies. You know the type. If the average human being uses 10 percent of his brain, I was using 1 percent. Everybody figured sailors were supposed to be stupid, and who were we to argue? Now I’m working my tail off, but I’m alive. Y’know, I’m actually a thinking human being. And I think about how I just threw away fifteen years of my life because nobody kicked my ass. You know what really woke me up? On my old ship we didn’t have toasters, ’cause sailors are too dumb to work toasters, right? So we had cold, hard, dry toast from the galley. Then one day we had toasters on the tables. And I asked around, How come? And you know what I found out? They said Captain Rickover had told the top Navy brass that if sailors were smart enough to run a nuclear power plant, they could damn well run a toaster. [Emphasis added – DB] And I said, There’s a guy I want to work for. And I – well, I wanted you to know that you’ve done that for a lot of guys, ’cause I wasn’t the only one. Thanks.”
He turned away, and I was really touched. But all I could say was, “Thanks, Chief. I really appreciate your telling me that. Good luck to you.”
What do I want you to take away from this? Well, here’s a question for you: those people you ask to work on equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions? Do you think they’re too stupid to run a toaster? Or do you trust that they can make their own toast?
(“Toaster” is not a metaphor here. Except to the extent that it is. But as I said, this is apropos of nothing in particular.)
Also: “I just threw away fifteen years of my life because nobody kicked my ass.” That’s worth thinking about, too; are you letting people throw away their lives, or are you kicking their asses and challenging them to be great? Even if it means they might be great someplace else?
Life and death.
Saturday, July 20th, 2013Today is Cormac McCarthy’s 80th birthday. Reliable sources tell us that his presents include a giant box of punctuation.
(Hey, I loved No Country For Old Men. I can make that joke.)
A different reliable source just informed us of the death of Helen Thomas, which is confirmed by CNN.
Random notes: July 17, 2013.
Wednesday, July 17th, 2013The sport in question is rhythmic gymnastics.
Obit watch: Eugene P. Wilkinson.
(94. Damn, that was a good run. Also: “He received the Silver Star for valor in the Pacific.”)
Congrats to Lawrence on his winning the Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award in the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. Sadly, according to Lawrence, he will not be getting the complete set of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s novels, which is a shame, as I was looking forward to borrowing his copy of Paul Clifford.
You have to go out. You don’t have to come back.
Tuesday, July 16th, 2013Like Robert Ruark, I have a certain sentimental attachment to the Coast Guard. (Unlike Ruark, I didn’t grow up around the water, and nobody ever let me chase a rum-runner on a Coast Guard cutter.)
I have some more pictures of the Cleveland Fallen Firefighters Memorial in the tubes, but not all of them came out as well as I would have liked. I was trying to get some closeups of the memorial that would allow folks to actually read the names on it.
I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone.
Monday, July 15th, 2013Well, not really “gone”. I hadn’t been back to Ohio for nine years, and it amazed me somewhat both how much and how little has changed.
For example, there’s an entire grocery chain that I don’t remember from my last trip…that takes the Discover card and cash. No Visa/AmEx/MasterCard/Diner’s Club, not even debt cards with a PIN, just cash and Discover. Who came up with this idea?
On the other hand, the tractor tire store that was a landmark on the way to Grandma’s place is still there, after 40 something years. And Grandma’s place still feels remote from everything, even though there’s major strip centers at the end of her road, and even though much of the land was sold off over the past few years (and now has houses sitting on it).
And the old NASA hanger is still visible from the airport. That was another landmark for us kids. (My dad worked there, back when it was still the Lewis Research Center, before it was renamed “NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field“. Which is a mouthful. Not that I’m bitter or anything over the renaming; by gosh, if anyone deserved to have a NASA facility named after him, it was John Glenn.)
This is shaping up to be a long post, and sort of “stream of consciousness”, so I’m going to put the rest of it behind a jump. Before I do, here’s Grandma’s obituary, just for the record.
Random notes: July 15, 2013.
Monday, July 15th, 2013And King continued to publish books as Bachman long past the “early” point of his career, including The Regulators and Blaze. Sorry, something about the NYT‘s phrasing here annoys me. As does this:
Nice bit of casual snobbery there, pal.
(This is actually the first Rowling book I want to read, though I don’t intend to pay an inflated price for a first.)
My heart goes out to any of my readers who are in LA:
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This is one of the best things I’ve read in the past few days.
And this is another of the best things I’ve read in the past few days: “A Statistical Analysis of Nerf Blasters and Darts” by Shawn O’Neil and Kate Drueen.
Quote of the day.
Monday, July 1st, 2013They were still so young they hadn’t learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy.
–Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire
(Why.)
Typecasting?
Sunday, June 30th, 2013Last night after the SDC, we went over to the home of our anonymous friends to watch movies. (Hi, anonymous friends! Thanks for hosting! Especially since you were a bit tired! Hope you enjoy the Shaq Soda!)
We wanted to honor the late great Richard Matheson, and ended up watching “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Little Girl Lost“. (Speaking of “Nightmare”, yeah Shatner, yeah Matheson, but how many of you realize that was directed by Richard “Superman” Donner?)
Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say about these episodes: they are classics, and I was kind of distracted (for reasons I’ll probably talk about in the near future). But I bring this up because Lawrence’s original desire was to watch “Trilogy of Terror“. I don’t remember seeing this, or even hearing much about it, when it first aired, but apparently it is one of those things – like those TZ episodes – that people really really remember from their childhood. Especially the last segment, with Karen Black fighting off the evil doll: I get the impression that was nightmare fuel for a lot of kids in the 1970s.
It is odd what sticks with you. As I said, I don’t recall “Trilogy”, and my parents weren’t big on letting me watch “scary” stuff (though I do remember watching part of the first “Godfather” on TV with my dad, and that had big violence warnings all over it). There’s one episode of what I think was “Night Gallery” that sticks out for me: I only remember part of it, but it also involved an evil doll that killed the kindly (?) grandfather by setting the house on fire.
(I wonder what would have happened if my parents had let me watch this crap when I was a kid. Would I have grown up to be a rich and famous science fiction writer with groupies and a cocaine habit? Maybe my parents had the right idea.)
Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is that “Trilogy” isn’t on NetFlix. But you can watch the entire movie for free on YouTube.
You can also get a “special edition” DVD of “Trilogy of Terror”
(Already ordered it, Lawrence.)
(Obligatory reference to The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black here.)
(Did you know Karen Black blames this movie for “forcing her to accept many roles in B-grade horror films”? Yeah, neither did I.)
(You can also watch “Trilogy of Terror II” on YouTube, but I don’t have a strong opinion about whether you should. One the one hand, it has the same creepy Zuni fetish doll from the first movie, plus rats. On the other hand, it lacks Karen Black and Richard Matheson. You make the call.)
Random notes: June 26, 2013.
Wednesday, June 26th, 2013Richard Matheson obits: NYT. Lawrence. LAT.
Please refrain from tasting the knob.
(Note that the musical in question, “Somewhere in Time” is based on the movie, which in turn was based on a novel, “Bid Time Return”, by Richard Matheson. I’m not linking to Amazon, but you should be able to find the novel easily: the cheaper editions are listed under “Somewhere in Time”, and the editions carrying the original title are pricy.)
You know what NYC needs? Strict pen control. And perhaps strict costume control, too.
More:
(Hotlinked: click on the photo to read the Daily News article.)