Noted author and William F. Buckley foe Gore Vidal. (NYT. LAT. WP. No A/V Club yet: when they post it, I’ll add it here.)
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Obit watch: August 1, 2012.
Wednesday, August 1st, 2012After action report: Las Vegas, NV 2012.
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012I don’t have much new to report as far as equipment, but I do have a couple of notes on existing stuff. DEFCON for the past few years has run a “secure” network using MSCHAPv2 authentication.
- This worked fine on the Kindle Fire. I was able to log in and browse whenever the network was working. However, there seems to be some sort of bug in the Kindle Fire: after a certain amount of time, the wifi setting on the Fire would either stop responding completely (on/off switch wouldn’t do anything) or would immediately crash (with an error message) as soon as I tried to open the setting.
- The default Network Manager on Ubuntu 12.04 would not connect to the “secure” network at all, but just constantly brought up the authentication prompt. Google turned up more than a few reports of Ubuntu issues with Network Manager and MS-CHAPv2 authenticated networks, so it seems this is a known issue. I worked around this by downloading and installing wicd, which was able to connect. However, wicd does not appear to save network settings, so every time I wanted to connect to the network, I had to re-enter the configuration.
(In general, I’m seeing more and more problems with project e and Ubuntu 12.04. I suspect some of these may be issues caused by doing several upgrade installs in succession, so I may try doing a backup of /home, reformatting project e, and doing a scratch install and restore of 12.04.)
Food: I had excellent meals at Lotus of Siam (the sea bass drunken noodles) and at Piero’s Italian Cuisine, which is a very old-school Italian restaurant near the convention center.
That was some swell osso bucco. And I don’t think I paid much more for it than I paid for osso bucco at Ciola’s when they were still open.
I also broke with one of my rules and went back to Shabu Shabu Paradise again. In my defense:
- I really like these people and want them to be enormously successful.
- I haven’t been there since my last trip with Andrew and Mike the Musicologist.
- I kind of have a tiny little crush on the waitress. Who, by the way, recognized me from my previous visits, even though I was clean-shaven last time. (I think she’s married to the chef, so nothing’s going to come of that.)
I also had a good meal at Mint Indian Bistro, and very good breakfasts at Blueberry Hill on Flamingo and The Egg and I on Sahara. (The rule doesn’t apply to breakfast, as it is very very hard to find good breakfast places that aren’t casino buffets, Denny’s, or IHOPs in Vegas. If anybody does have a recommendation for a good breakfast place in Las Vegas, please feel free to drop it into the comments.)
I’ve been driving past Hofbräuhaus Las Vegas for years now, considering giving them a try and then not going after all. This time, thanks to Tam inspiring a German food craving in me, I thought I’d give it a shot. The verdict: meh. It wasn’t a horrible meal. The service was pleasant and efficient. But it seemed like I paid a fair amount of money for pretty average food. Walburg is better and cheaper and really not that bad a drive if I go there from work. (You’d be hard-pressed to spend $50+ at Walburg without either being too full to move or too drunk to drive.)
I drove past Flavor Flav’s House of Flavor several times (it is very close to my preferred ATM in Las Vegas, which, in turn, is far enough away from DEFCON that I’m not any more paranoid than usual about using that ATM), and I regret not getting a photo.
I did get some photos (but they didn’t come out well) of “Lynyrd Skynyrd BBQ & Beer“. BBQ and beer? I can haz both?
(By the way, I was never offered a full can of soda on any of my Southwest flights. But I did get a full can of drinking water between PHX and AUS.)
Thanks to: Everyone at DEFCON 20 (staff, goons, presenters, and attendees), the folks at Shabu Shabu Paradise, Lotus of Siam, the Egg and I, Blueberry Hill, and Mint Indian Bistro, the Mob Museum, Amber Unicorn Books, Greyhound’s Books, Borepatch for linky-love, and anyone else I missed.
Quote of the day.
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012“I am a martini man, myself. Over six weeks we used up forty-six bottles of gin and a little less than half a bottle of vermouth. I like martinis dry.”
—Robert Ruark, Horn of the Hunter
(In case you were wondering, 46 bottles over six weeks works out to seven and 2/3rds bottles a week, or a little over a bottle of gin a day. That’s split three ways, though: Ruark, his wife, and their guide. Figuring 750 ml bottles, that’s close to 9.2 ounces of gin a day each. Ruark mentions at one point that they kill the bottle with three drinks each, so that’s something like three ounces of gin per drink. Plus unknown amounts of beer and brandy.)
(I enjoy reading Ruark. I wish more of his work were still in print; I found Horn at one of those used bookstores in Vegas, and spent downtime during the trip reading it.
But I get a funny feeling whenever Ruark talks about drinking, like in the last two chapters of The Old Man and the Boy, or as he does a few paragraphs later in Horn: “I can drink two bottles of wine at lunch in Rome or Paris or Madrid, top it off with three brandies, and feel marvelous all day. A glass of wine at lunch, two glasses at dinner, in New York, would keep me in bed with the miseries for half a week.”)
(This is, of course, a man who would die at 49 of “complications of cirrhosis of the liver”.)
What the frack is wrong with you people?
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012Not “you people” as in my regular readers. I’m sure you’re all tall, strong, above average in IQ, and every one of your bodily functions smells like a vanilla Glade plug-in.
No, I’m talking about the rest of the Internet who doesn’t read my blog and seems to be overrun with a massive sense of entitlement.
Item 1: The existence of the GR Bullies site. “GR Bullies” is apparently a website devoted to combating “bullying” on the GoodReads website (for values of “bullying” that seem to include posting negative reviews) by…acting like misogynistic bullies themselves. Good plan, guys; I’m sure Big Fred Nietzsche would approve. Or maybe not. I commend to your attention the take of John Scalzi, an actual professional writer who gets bad reviews from time to time, on this subject. (I also recommend reading the other three writers Scalzi links.)
Item 2: The existence of ChickLitGirls, a site that takes money for reviews, only posts positive reviews, and, when it is politely suggested that their pay-for-review policy may not be 100% clear, issues bumptious lawsuit threats.
(“bumptious”. Such a great word. I need to work that into my vocabulary, along with “gargantuan“.)
Item 3: “How dare you think Dark Knight Rises isn’t the greatest thing since the invention of fire?”
Item 4: “…those like my son who have disabilities have the right to live life with access to everything people who aren’t handicapped do.” So, therefore, Netflix is obligated to closed-caption streaming video. And, no, providing closed-captioned DVDs isn’t good enough. I am so sick and tired of hearing people like Ellen Seidman talk about “rights” without making a distinction between liberty rights and claim rights.
There are some things that should require accommodation; for example, access to governmental services. And it may be good business for Netflix to make this kind of accommodation. Right now, Netflix feels that it isn’t. (As other people have pointed out, Netflix gets the material it uses for streaming from studios, that material probably does not have closed captions, and the studios would be rightfully upset if Netflix started altering their property.) If you want to prove to Netflix that they’re wrong, don’t use the service, or start your own competing service with closed captions. If Netflix looses enough business, they’ll change their mind. But you don’t have a right to closed captioned streaming video, or, for that matter, to “access to everything people who aren’t handicapped do”. Down this path lies madness: should we build a wheelchair ramp to the top of Half Dome?
[Edited to add: Hattip on item 4 to Walter Olson at Overlawyered.]
Guns, guns, guns!
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012(This is also partially an Olympic watch.)
We’re the only ones professional enough…to shoot ourselves while cleaning our weapons.
The HouChron has a nice profile of Sergeant Glenn Eller, of the Army Marksmanship Unit. Sgt. Eller is competing in the shotgun double trap competition in the London Olympics. This is his fourth time at the rodeo; he won a gold medal in double trap in 2008. And he’s had an interesting time of it:
- In 2000, he got food poisoning from “an Australian ham salad sandwich” and finished 12th.
- In 2004, he finished 17th “after being informed before the competition of what proved to be a false positive drug test”.
- He won the gold medal in 2008, but the shotgun he used was stolen in 2011 while he was on his way to another competition. It took him a while to get used to the replacement gun, and he “…lost the automatic U.S. slot in double trap to his Army teammate, Staff Sgt. Josh Richmond, but won a place on the team when a second berth for the London Games opened up this spring.”
Worth noting:
You know, I like these AMU guys. It’d be fun to meet some of them and hang out. I wonder if the AMU will have a presence at next year’s NRA meeting?
(Joy! Also speaking of the AMU, Amazon says my copy of US Military Match and Marksmanship Automatic Pistols
Obit watch: July 17, 2012.
Tuesday, July 17th, 2012Some of these have been noted on FARK or elsewhere, but I want to round them up here for completeness:
Kitty Wells, noted country singer. (“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”) (A/V Club.)
John Lord, keyboard player for Deep Purple.
I also wanted to say a few words about Donald J. Sobol. (NYT. WP. A/V Club. Patrick @ Balko.) I got a great deal of enjoyment out of Mr. Sobol’s work when I was young, and I am saddened by his death (though 87 is a good run).
As regular readers know, I generally do not solicit donations here. But I would like to note that in lieu of flowers, the family has asked for donations to the New York Public Library to support services for kids. You can donate here, if you’d like.
“History can be well written only in a free country.”
Monday, July 16th, 2012(Quote attributed to Voltaire.)
A while back, there was a meme going around the gun blogs, asking “Why do you carry?” Answers to that generally fell into a couple of categories: “to protect myself/my family”, “because I can”, “because f–k you, that’s why”.
A kind of related question that I haven’t seen talked about is “why do you own guns in the first place?” Many of the answers are the same: self defense, because we don’t like people telling us what we can and can’t do, and so on. But one answer I haven’t really seen people talk much about is “history”.
Since I got back from the S&W Collector’s Association convention in Boise, I’ve been thinking about history and guns, both together and separate. There were a lot of intersections in Boise with areas of my own personal history, and there are some other things are just simply curious or interesting.
I believe an argument can be made that weapons are actually one of the cheapest ways to establish a connection to history for the common man. You can collect cars, for example, but it takes a millionaire’s pocket to collect anything historically significant. If you’re lucky, you might see a vintage warbird at an air show two or three times a year, but good luck touching one, let alone sitting in the cockpit. And flying one, again, requires a millionaire’s budget.
But I think there’s more going on than just the money element.
Kindle notes.
Sunday, July 8th, 2012Thursday and Friday were kind of slow days at work. For various reasons (including a series of discussions with several co-workers) I ended up downloading the Shooter app
Since the Kindle Fire lacks GPS and Bluetooth, you do miss out on a few features, such as interfacing with the Kestrel and GPS-based weather station input. On the other hand, I think the interface on a Kindle Fire may be slightly more pleasant; since you can apparently do cloud-based syncing, what I suspect will work out well is to do data entry on the Kindle Fire, sync with Shooter on your smart phone, and use the phone at the range.
This, in turn, led to me consider .22 LR ballistics. In turn, my consideration of same led me to start poking around on Amazon for some things I’d seen previously, such as The Complete Book of the .22: A Guide to the World’s Most Popular Guns
One of the books I found while poking around is a quaint and curious volume called The Art of Rimfire Accuracy
My understanding is that the book is mostly a collection of Mr. Calfee’s writings for Precision Shooting magazine: the book is 700+ pages long.
Mr. Calfee’s book is published by Authorhouse, a POD publisher and one that seems popular in the gun community. (Authorhouse also publishes The Rifleman’s Rifle: Winchester’s Model 70, 1936-1963
Anyway, here’s my point: Mr. Calfee’s book in paperback is $42.63 with Prime shipping. Interestingly, it is also available on the Kindle…
…and the Kindle edition
(I can even see a version of the Litz book that runs as an application, and allows you not only to read the text, but also to do ballistic calculations based on Litz’s equations interactively within the book itself, instead of using the supplied CD. Hey, a fellow can dream, can’t he?)
Noted.
Friday, July 6th, 2012Mr. Roberson has previously been mentioned in this space, but I was not aware of his dispute with DC Comics. Then again, I really haven’t been keeping up with the comics world…
Random notes: June 27, 2012.
Wednesday, June 27th, 2012Obit watch: Nora Ephron.
Oh, gee: “business leaders” are threatening to move their firms out of the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon, claiming the cost of business has become too high. Vernon has raised taxes and electricity rates, due to “the recession and a series of ill-fated investments that have cost the city millions”.
Among other bright ideas:
- The city spent $431 million on a hedge for a long-term supply of natural gas. Under the terms of the hedge, the city locked in supply at $7.50 per unit. Last year, natural gas sold for $4 per unit; currently, it is at “just over” $2.50 per unit.
- The city has issued over $1 billion in bonds “to pursue new projects and refinance existing debts”. Vernon has lost more than $130 million in net assets in the past six years, and county auditors say the city has consistently run $20 to $25 million in debt.
- “During the same period, Vernon increased its spending on employee compensation. Between 2006 and 2010, four officials took home annual pay of more than $750,000, including Eric T. Fresch, who made as much as $1.6 million in 2008.” Those same four officials were responsible for the natural gas deal.
- And, in a nice rich irony, many of the “business leaders” who are unhappy now were responsible for torpedoing last year’s legislative effort to disincorporate Vernon.
In other news, Stockton, California plans to file for municipal bankruptcy.
Hmmm.
- The ability to make lemonade is genetically inherited, rather than learned? This might explain why my lemonade isn’t very good. (Then again, it could be that I make mine with bottled lemon juice. Yeah, I know, but I mostly make lemonade so I can mix it with iced tea and make Arnold Palmers; why use fresh lemon juice for that?)
- Lemonade isn’t sweet until you add something like sugar to it. What does Rev. Williams propose to add to the lemonade of bankruptcy?
More details on the Jovita’s heroin bust from the Statesman.
One of the great barbecue related stories of the past quarter century was the Kreuz Market feud. In brief, when the family patriarch died, he left the Kreuz Market building to his daughter; he’d previously sold the business itself to two of his sons. This led to a family fight, and ultimately Kreuz Market moved into a new building on the highway, while the old building became Smitty’s.
What’s news? Well, the owner of Kreuz and the pitmaster at Smitty’s, along with another family member, are opening a new barbecue place: Schmidt Family Barbecue in Bee Cave. I am morally certain we will be going out there for an SDC, as soon as they’ve had time to shake out.
After action report: Boise, ID.
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012This is going to be more like a collection of random notes towards an AA report than an actual report. I do plan on a longer more thoughtful blog post later; probably this weekend, if everything works out the way I want it to. (I’m waiting for something to come in, and I need to go out to my mother’s place to take some pictures.)
- You can do blog posts from the Kindle Fire. I wouldn’t recommend it, and there are some issues with the WordPress interface on the Kindle, but in a pinch it can be done. And it is better than trying to post from a smart phone.
- On the other hand, I was at dinner one night with some friends. One of them was talking about a new gun he’d bought, but wasn’t sure what variant it was. He (and several other people at the table) were very impressed when I whipped out the Kindle Fire open to the appropriate section of the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson 3rd Edition
. At least one person said, “That’s it. I’ve got to get one.” Yeah, I like having the Kindle Fire.
- Speaking of books, I started and finished The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
on the way up. Tam has written about this book previously, and anything I could add except “go read it” would be superfluous.
- Supposedly, according to the TSA, you no longer have to take out your laptop if it is under 12″. At least, that’s what I was told by a TSA agent in Austin (too late to do me any good) and the first TSA agent I spoke with in Boise. The second TSA agent in Boise apparently either didn’t get the memo, or the other two were wrong. Good old government ineptitude.
- I feel obligated to link to this Oatmeal comic.
- I had a lot of good food in Boise. Other than Bar Gernika and the Moxie Java on Chinden, I had a fantastic breakfast (as in, one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had) at a small place called Goldy’s in downtown Boise, and a very nice meal off the prix fixe menu at Chandlers Steakhouse.
- Speaking of Chandlers, some folks have been talking about martinis, so I thought I’d post this:
Chandlers calls this “The ’33 Plymouth”; it is, of course, made with Plymouth gin and Nolly Prat vermouth. They do warn you that it takes 10 minutes to make one; I consider it worth the wait. - There was a restaurant near the hotel that I (sadly) did not make it to, but was notable for the carved wooden sign out front stating “Famous Prawns”. I am sufficiently geeky that whenever I saw that sign, all I could think of was “No prawns at this altitude!”
- I find that what gets under my skin about travel these days is mostly the minor annoyances. The $3 bottled water in the room. (A buck or $1.50, maybe. That’s gas station price. And what do you suppose the gas station’s markup on bottled water is?) The lack of notepaper and envelopes. (Remember when hotels used to supply those? I know, everyone emails now, but an envelope is still useful to hold receipts and other bits of important loose paper.) Annoying WiFi networks. Etc.
- Minor annoyances aside, I did like the staff and the facility at the Riverside Boise. (And at least the WiFi was free.) The cookie and milk/coffee break provided by the hotel on Friday was a particularly nice touch.
- Anyone ever read Lawrence Block’s short story about Keller the hitman, “Answers to Soldier”? I understand how Keller felt about Roseburg; I feel much the same way about Boise. It reminds me a lot of Austin twenty years ago. (And, much like Keller, I have fantasies about moving almost every place I travel to. And then I end up going back to Austin…)
- I was reliably informed that on Thursday (the first full day I was there, when we spent much of the afternoon tramping around the Old Idaho Penitentiary) the high was 92 degrees. Balmy by Austin standards, but the humidity was 6%. That would explain why I was drinking water like it was going out of style the whole time I was there…
- As small town as Boise feels, it is big enough to have at least three gun stores. (There may be more, but the show host recommended three specifically.) I was able to visit two: the folks at Boise Gun Company were really nice, and have a huge selection. Cliff’s Guns, Safes, and Reloading seems to be a great place for reloading supplies; they didn’t have quite the new or used selection of Boise Gun Company, but did have a couple of interesting used guns. (On the other hand, $2,000 for a Model 16-4 strikes me as high. But I didn’t try to talk them down, what with being an out-of-state resident and all.) And the staff at Cliffs was perfectly pleasant to me, thankyouverymuch.
- Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to search for used bookstores in Boise. I did look for bookstores in Ketchum and along the route between Boise and Ketchum, but didn’t see any. Oddly enough, I also didn’t see any gun stores along the route. (They probably would have been closed on Sunday, but I was specifically looking for both gun stores and book stores, just to satisfy my curiosity.)
- Speaking of Ketchum and the general area around it, can you say “yuppie heaven”? I suspect if you planted magnets on old Ernie’s body and placed him inside a coil of copper wire, you could provide enough power to light all of downtown Ketchum at night.
- On the other hand, the stretch of 51/20 between I-84 and 75 is an amazing drive. This is basically 82 miles of…well, nothing, except high desert country, farms and ranches, mountains, and lots of curvy mountain road. I have a track of the route I took, and may post it later so folks can get a feel for what the country looks like.
- I haven’t been a big KIA fan, but the rental company gave me a KIA Forte, and it turned out to be a pretty swell car. It handled well on the road, got close to 30 MPG, and felt pretty stable at 85 MPH. Plus, it had two 12V sockets, an aux input, and a USB plug up front. I haven’t checked the Consumer Reports repair records, but the Forte might be worth looking at if you’re in the market for a 4-door sedan.
- Boise seems to have nearly as many thrift stores as Austin, Mom. I didn’t see any Goodwill stores, though; the majority of thrift stores seemed to be affiliated with the “Idaho Youth Ranch“.
Still here.
Sunday, June 24th, 2012Just running around and doing some thinking for a forthcoming blog post. In the meantime, here’s something we hope you’ll really like.
Ernest Hemmingway Memorial, near Sun Valley Resort, Ketchum, Idaho.
Grave of Ernest Hemmingway, Ketchum Cemetary, Ketchum, Idaho.
Anything so he can measure up to men…
Monday, June 11th, 2012By way of Balko: sexual perversity among the penguins.
This gives me an excuse to note that Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World is available from Project Gutenberg.
(Hattip.)
Random: June 7, 2012.
Thursday, June 7th, 2012Kwame Brown, chairman of the Washington DC City Council, resigned his position yesterday.
Innocent until proven guilty, yadda yadda, but according to the WP‘s reporting, Brown and the prosecution have already made a plea deal.
Ray Bradbury obits: WP. LAT. NYT. NYT appreciation by Michiko Kakutani. Lawrence. A/V Club. Scalzi.
Recall.
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012Sorry, folks. I’m getting a slow start today; I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. (Nothing serious, just the 7,500 mile oil and filter change/lube/check the fluid levels.)
How about that successful recall election yesterday? No, not that one. It seems that the good people of Fullerton, California, voted overwhelmingly to throw out three city council members. What makes this interesting is that the recall started as a reaction to the council’s perceived indifference to the beating death of Kelly Thomas. (Warning: that last link contains a graphic and disturbing image.)
This is the first time I can recall that voter anger over police misconduct has become that much of a hot button issue. Let us hope it is not the last time.
I will probably wait until tomorrow to post a roundup of Bradbury obits.