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Quote of the day.

Friday, July 26th, 2019

I finished Simon Baatz’s The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century a couple of days ago. I thought For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago was an excellent historical look at that case, and Girl is every bit as good: I commend it to your attention.

My only complaint is: I wish Girl had come out in 2015, not 2018. It would have made my life slightly easier. (Okay, I also kind of wish that Baatz would have given us at least a mini-review of “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing“, like Simon Winchester did for “Krakatoa, East of Java” in his book.)

Anyway, there are two paragraphs in Girl that I found particularly interesting. (I think my use of these as a quote falls under the “fair use” category).

Anthony Comstock applauded such initiatives but continued to urge his acolytes to take independent action to combat such social evils as prostitution and pornography. Nothing in this regard was more infuriating to the Society for the Suppression of Vice than the complicity of newspaper proprietors in promoting prostitution, and no one was more culpable than James Gordon Bennett Jr., the owner and publisher of the New York Herald. Hundreds of paid notices, offering various services, appeared in the Herald every day; these advertisements never explicitly mentioned sex, but their meaning was nevertheless obvious. Such notices promoted prostitution, Comstock asserted, yet Bennett had always denied any responsibility, claiming that it was impossible for the Herald to distinguish between advertisements that offered companionship and those that offered sex.
But the campaign for moral purity would not be denied, and on July 7 [1906 – DB], Charles Wahle, a magistrate in the Seventh District Police Court, issued a summons against the New York Herald for printing obscene and lewd matter. Charles Grubb, a pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, had initiated the complaint, but it was equally a triumph for Comstock and the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

Does this remind you of anything in particular?

(Historical side note: Baatz doesn’t reveal what gun Thaw used, but he does get a little closer to that end: it is described as a blue steel revolver. It also sounds like it might have been a top-break, since Thaw is repeatedly referred to as having “broken” the revolver after shooting White and held it above his head by the barrel. But I apply a press discount to almost all media coverage of firearms, even from the turn of the century.
There’s no discussion of the caliber or maker in the Baatz book. We know from the trial transcripts that it was introduced into evidence and identified by the man who took it from Thaw, but the trial transcripts I’ve been able to find online do not include that part of the testimony.)

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 23, 2019.

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019

Christopher Kraft, NASA flight director and legend.

For 25 years, from the dawn of the space age in the 1950s to the threshold of almost routine launchings in the 1980s, Mr. Kraft played crucial roles in the space program. He devised the protocols for exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, orchestrated early orbital missions and spacewalks, and developed projects that put astronauts on the moon and into the first reusable space shuttles.
Aside from the astronauts who made history — including Alan B. Shepard Jr., with his suborbital flight; John Glenn, in orbiting the Earth; and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first to land on the lunar surface — Mr. Kraft was the most familiar face of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s early years, the steady ground commander who often explained missions to a rapt world at news conferences.
In an era of perilous experiments hastened by the Soviet success of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, Mr. Kraft presided over triumphal breakthroughs in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects. He also stood by helplessly when a fire killed three astronauts on a launchpad in 1967, but he helped devise the ingenious plan that saved the Apollo 13 crew after an explosion crippled their spacecraft en route to the moon in 1970.
At a time when there were no rules or procedures for space travel, Mr. Kraft, a brilliant aeronautical engineer, virtually wrote the book for NASA. He originated the concept of mission control, with authority vested in a ground-based flight director, not in a pilot-astronaut soaring through space at 7 miles a second who might be overwhelmed by pressures, especially during launch or re-entry.

NASA. I think this is a great story:

With the advent of the jet age of the 1950s, he was assigned as project engineer on flight tests of the Navy’s high-priority Vought F8U Crusader, which was exhibiting numerous birthing problems in its earliest versions. The problems uncovered by Langley flight tests included unacceptable g-force control behavior during maneuvers, which was determined to result from unintentional pivoting of the unique movable wing used by the configuration. Working with Langley test pilot Jack Reeder, Kraft identified the structural source of the problem, and took on the unpleasant job of telling the Navy that its new first-line aircraft was potentially dangerous. His warnings were heeded by Navy management, resulting in grounding of the F8U fleet, much to the chagrin of many operators of the new aircraft. He then encountered one of the most contentious members of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, who questioned the Langley results and doubted the conclusions drawn by the NACA. That Marine Major was named John Glenn. Following a detailed examination of the Langley study results with Kraft and Reeder, and interviews with Navy pilots who flew the aircraft, Glenn was convinced and became a believer. The F8U was subsequently redesigned, as recommended by Kraft and his associates at Langley, and served the nation as an outstanding fighter during the Vietnam War.

Houston Chronicle.

In an interview in February with the Houston Chronicle, Kraft said he never wanted to be an astronaut.
“I liked my job better than theirs,” he said. “I got to go on every flight, and besides that, I got to tell them what to do.”

Edited to add: I don’t like linking to Ars Technica, but I’m making an exception in this case: Eric Berger, the author of their Chris Kraft obit, was also a personal friend of Mr. Kraft.

Every few months, I would make a pilgrimage to Kraft’s home, and we fell into a routine. We’d be seated upstairs in reclining leather chairs. Kraft would ask what I had been hearing about the space program. Then it was open season: I could ask anything I wanted, from his experiences at Virginia Tech and his early years of NASA, about which astronauts he had liked—and which he hadn’t—to his thoughts on current affairs at NASA. Somewhere along the way, Betty Anne would bring us glasses of Coca-Cola with ice.

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 22, 2019.

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

Paul Krassner, Yippee.

…so naturally irreverent was Mr. Krassner that when People magazine labeled him the “father of the underground press,” he demanded a paternity test.

…

Mr. Krassner was writing freelance pieces for Mad magazine in 1958 when he realized that there was no equivalent satirical publication for adults; Mad, he could see, was largely targeted at teenagers. So he started The Realist out of the Mad offices, and it began regular monthly publication. By 1967 its circulation had peaked at 100,000.
“I had no role models and no competition, just an open field mined with taboos waiting to be exploded,” Mr. Krassner wrote in his autobiography.
The magazine’s most famous cartoon was one, drawn in 1967 by the Mad artist Wally Wood, of an orgy featuring Snow White, Donald Duck and a bevy of Disney characters enjoying a variety of sexual positions. (Mickey Mouse is shown shooting heroin.) Later, digitally colored by a former Disney artist, it became a hot-selling poster that supplied Mr. Krassner with modest royalties into old age.

Robert M. Morgenthau, former Manhattan DA and federal prosecutor.

Noted:

Mr. Morgenthau had been in the Naval Reserve in college, and after graduation he went on active duty as an ensign. He passed his physical exam by concealing the near-deafness in his right ear from a boyhood mastoid infection. An officer aboard three destroyers and a minesweeper during World War II, he survived enemy attacks and won decorations for bravery under fire.
His destroyer, the U.S.S. Lansdale, was attacked by Nazi torpedo bombers in the Mediterranean off Algiers on April 20, 1944. Cut by explosions, the ship went down with a heavy loss of life. Lieutenant Morgenthau, the executive officer, saved several shipmates, leapt into the water and swam for three hours in the darkness until he and others were picked up by an American warship. In 1945 his ship, the U.S.S. Harry F. Bauer, was hit by a Japanese kamikaze plane off Iwo Jima, but its 550-pound bomb did not explode.

Posted in History, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 20, 2019.

Saturday, July 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Dr. Mitchell Feigenbaum. (Previously.)

L. Bruce Laingen. He was the senior diplomat in Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis, and was taken hostage.

Mr. Laingen and two aides who had been with him at the ministry remained separated from the other hostages during the long ordeal, Mr. Laingen having the odd role of continuing to act as a diplomat while being a hostage. He was a point of contact to the outside world, sometimes meeting with diplomats from other countries and even occasionally being allowed a phone call with the West.
But if he had a somewhat easier time than the hostages at the embassy, he in no way soft-pedaled his experience. In 2001, when a conservative faction in Iran set up an anti-American exhibition on the grounds of the former embassy, Mr. Laingen, in a letter to the editor printed in The Times, suggested that the site needed a plaque. He proposed this wording:
“Here is the former American Embassy in Tehran, where occurred the most egregious violation in recorded history of all standards and precepts of diplomacy: the seizure of an embassy and its staff by student terrorists, an act endorsed by their government, the hostages used as pawns for 444 days to further the political purposes of the Islamic Republic.”

…

“We are there to find out how people are thinking and why they are thinking that way and behaving that way,” he said in the oral history. “And if we get too comfortable in believing something that sort of fits our purposes, well, we are in hellish trouble.”

Posted in History, Obits, Physics | Comments Closed

Non historical note, not suitable for use in schools.

Saturday, July 20th, 2019

I bow to nobody as far as my interest in the space program goes.

But I don’t have a darn thing to say about Apollo 11, or the 50th anniversary of same. This just feels like one of those big round number anniversaries where everybody is on top of it, everything that can be said has already been said, and there’s nothing left.

If you want something, go over to Lawrence’s.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

Sorry.

Monday, July 15th, 2019

I totally missed Bastille Day. But Borepatch put up a nice post.

(And he’s right. I think that is one of the best scenes from “Casablanca”.)

In my defense, it was a hectic weekend. I was at an event most of the day on Saturday (from early in the morning to late in the afternoon), went from there to Half-Price Books, from there straight to the dining conspiracy, from there to Lawrence‘s for movies, and from there home around 2 AM.

Sunday afternoon, Mom and I went out for lunch: after that, I went to the gun show in Dripping Springs, came home, picked up Mom, and we went over to the big Half-Price on North Lamar.

The thing is, I noticed on the way over to Half-Price that I was really tired: I found myself starting to doze off in the car, which worried me. I got a bottle of water while we were there, which helped some, but when I came home, I went upstairs to lay down and slept from about 5 PM to 5 AM this morning.

Either I’m getting old, or something’s wrong.

Anyway, in case you haven’t guessed what with all the trips to Half-Price, this week was another coupon sale. Unfortunately, the pickings were really slim:

Especially when it came to gun books. The only really worthwhile thing I found was a copy of Helmer’s The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar for $12 (after 40% off coupon) plus tax.

Other than that: a blu-ray of “The Revenant”, which I missed in theaters and kind of wanted to see, for roughly $8 with a 20% off coupon, a copy of Boessenecker’s biography of Frank Hamer (which I’d been trying to find for a while, and got for $6), and Ben Macintyre’s book about Kim Philby. (I believe that was also about $6.)

Maybe next weekend I can catch up on sleep. And I have some gun porn I want to post, but I have to take the photos first.

Posted in Admin, Books, Guns, History, Movies | 2 Comments »

Historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Friday, July 12th, 2019

In keeping with our baseball theme, some lazy stupid blogging.

Actually, I wanted to pull together a longer post, but I’m all out of energy this week, plus I’ve posted on this subject before, so:

Ladies and Germans, today is the 40th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.

“I thought these fans in Chicago were the best because they’re saying `Let’s go Sox! Let’s go Sox!’ ” Petry recalled last weekend at Comerica Park. “They were really chanting `Disco sucks! Disco sucks! Disco sucks!’”

There’s a book (co-written by Steve Dahl).

And the Sox commemorated the occasion before last night’s game, with Steve Dahl throwing out the first pitch.

Enough time has passed for the Sox to come to terms with Disco Demolition’s place in the team’s annals. They showed highlights of that night on the video board, including video of fans storming the field and damaging it so much the Sox had to forfeit the second game of that day’s doubleheader against the Tigers.
“It’s absolutely cool that it’s just part of the history, and not a shameful part of the history,” Dahl said. ‘It’s just something that happened, and honestly, it was just about the music.”

Posted in History, Hysteria, Music, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 9, 2019.

Tuesday, July 9th, 2019

Ross Perot. (Edited to add: Lawrence. Dallas Morning News.)

He was no quitter: an Eagle Scout, a Navy officer out of Annapolis, a top I.B.M. salesman, the founder of wildly successful data processing enterprises, a crusader for education and against drugs, a billionaire philanthropist. In 1969, he became a kind of folk hero with a quixotic attempt to fly medicine and food to American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. In 1979 he staged a commando raid that freed two of his employees, and thousands of criminals and political prisoners, from captivity in revolutionary Iran.
And in 1992 he became one of the most unlikely candidates ever to run for president. He had never held public office, and he seemed all wrong, like a cartoon character sprung to life: an elfin 5 feet 6 inches and 144 pounds, with a 1950s crew cut; a squeaky, nasal country-boy twang; and ears that stuck out like Alfred E. Neuman’s on a Mad magazine cover. Stiff-necked, cantankerous, impetuous, often sentimental, he was given to homespun epigrams: “If you see a snake, just kill it. Don’t appoint a committee on snakes.”

…

He joined the Boy Scouts at 12 and in little more than a year was an Eagle Scout, an extraordinary achievement that became part of his striver’s legend.

…

His folk-patriot reputation stemmed from two adventures. In 1969, after months of speaking on the plight of 1,400 American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, he chartered two jetliners, filled them with 30 tons of food, medicines and gifts and flew to Southeast Asia. Hanoi rejected the mission, but it was hardly a failure. The spotlight on prisoners’ hardships embarrassed Hanoi and led to better treatment for some.
In 1979, as an Islamic revolution swept Iran, Mr. Perot mounted a commando raid on a prison in Tehran to free two employees being held for ransom. A riot was orchestrated at the gates, and in the chaos of an ensuing breakout 11,800 inmates escaped, including both employees. The episode was chronicled in Ken Follett’s best-selling book “On Wings of Eagles” and in a 1986 mini-series on NBC.

You know, I need to read that book. (Also The Pillars of the Earth.)

Also among the dead: Jack Renner, co-founder of Telarc and a good Cleveland boy.

In 1978 the company made what Mr. Renner said was the first commercially released digital recording of symphonic music in the United States, featuring Frederick Fennell and the Cleveland Symphonic Winds.
“It created a lot of stir among audiophiles,” he said. “It had a bass drum that blew up speakers. Everybody accused us of hyping the bass drum. We didn’t.”

Back in the day, I had a fair number of Telarc CDs (including some of their P.D.Q. Bach).

Posted in History, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 27, 2019.

Thursday, June 27th, 2019

Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Friend (USAF – ret.), one of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was the wingman for Col. Benjamin Davis Jr., the commanding officer of the 322nd Fighter Group.

He also had a distinguished post-war career, highlighted by running Project Blue Book from 1958 to 1963.

“Do I believe that we have been visited? No, I don’t believe that,” he said. “And the reason I don’t believe it is because I can’t conceive of any of the ways in which we could overcome some of these things: How much food would you have to take with you on a trip for 22 years through space? How much fuel would you need? How much oxygen or other things to sustain life do you have to have?”
But unlike many of his colleagues, he favored further research.
“I, for one, also believe that the probability of there being life elsewhere in this big cosmos is just absolutely out of this world — I think the probability is there,” he said.

According to the paper of record, there are 11 surviving Tuskegee Airmen. LTC Friend was 99.

Beth Chapman, wife of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Edited to add: NYT obit for Beth Chapman.

Also, NYT on Etika.

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Not a historical note.

Thursday, June 6th, 2019

I really don’t have anything to say about the 75th anniversary of D-Day that I haven’t already said.

Borepatch has a couple of good posts up. Also worth noting: “D-Day + 75: Arms of the Airborne“. (Edited to add: Also, Lawrence.)

(When I win the $520 million in the MegaMillions drawing this coming Friday, I think the second full-auto gun I’m going to buy (after the Thompson) will be a vintage BAR. Or a Colt Monitor.)

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

Historical note.

Tuesday, June 4th, 2019

I’ve written about this before, but I couldn’t let today pass without noting:

It is the 45th anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night.

Semi-oddly (I guess because it isn’t a big anniversary) there’s nothing about it on Cleveland.com today. Not seeing anything on MLB.com either, and DuckDuckGo doesn’t turn up a whole lot.

I did find this amusing (but old) article from ESPN.

Let us pause to remember. Cheap nasty beer is optional.

Posted in History, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 30, 2019.

Thursday, May 30th, 2019

I haven’t found a print obituary to point to yet, but Lawrence tipped me off to a Facebook post: multiple award winning horror writer Dennis Etchison has passed on.

Also by way of Lawrence: Louis Levi Oakes, last of the Mohawk code talkers.

The veteran was one of 17 Mohawks from Akwesasne, which straddles the Quebec, Ontario and New York state borders, who received code-talker training while stationed in Louisiana.
Kanien’kéha, the Mohawk language, was one of 33 Indigenous languages used during the war to send encoded messages between Allied forces so enemies could not understand what was being said.

…

“I only knew Levi for a very short period of time, but he meant a tremendous amount to me,” said Marc Miller, parliamentary secretary to Canada’s minister of Crown-Indigenous relations. “I can only imagine what he meant to his family and his people who had the privilege of knowing him for far longer.
“Due to the secrecy of his mission in WW II, the extent of his contributions as a Mohawk code talker have only recently been known and honoured. My hope is that we continue to honour his memory and contributions in death much longer than we did in life.”

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Historical note, semi-suitable for use in schools…

Thursday, May 23rd, 2019

…at least, if you want to teach kids that crime does not pay.

85 years ago today, Bonnie and Clyde got turned into chunky salsa by Frank Hamer and his posse.

FBI page: “At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries.” Those 13 murders include several police officers: these were not nice people.

I haven’t been able to get a copy of Boessenecker’s book yet, or watch “The Highwaymen”, but both are on my list.

Posted in History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 14, 2019.

Tuesday, May 14th, 2019

Robert Maxwell, the kind of badass that’s rare these days.

September 7, 1944:

Technician Fifth Grade Maxwell and a few other G.I.s were on observation duty outside their battalion headquarters near the city of Besançon in eastern France when German soldiers got within yards of their outpost and opened fire.
The Germans blasted away with automatic weapons and even antiaircraft guns, seeking to destroy the stone house where the battalion commanders were stationed. The G.I.s on sentry duty were armed only with .45-caliber automatic pistols, but they fired back.
And then a grenade was hurled over the fence in front of the house’s courtyard and landed beside Technician Maxwell. Using an Army blanket for protection, he fell on the grenade.

…

The grenade exploded, knocking him unconscious, tearing away part of one foot and peppering his head and left arm with shrapnel. World War II was over for Technician Maxwell, but he received the Medal of Honor. It cited him for inspiring his fellow G.I.s to join with him in a firefight that delayed the German onslaught and then, having “unhesitatingly hurled himself squarely upon’’ the grenade, “using his blanket and his unprotected body to absorb the full force of the explosion.”
The citation called it an “act of instantaneous heroism” that “permanently maimed” him but “saved the lives of his comrades.”

Mr. Maxwell was 98 when he passed away Saturday. According to the NYT obit, there are three Medal of Honor recipients from WWII that are still alive.

Fleming Begaye Sr., one of the Navajo code talkers.

Mr. Begaye survived the Battle of Tarawa, a costly offensive on a Japanese-held Pacific atoll that took place in 1943. Out of 18,000 Marines who landed on Betio, more than 1,000 died.
“His landing craft was blown up and he literally had to swim to the beach to survive,” Mr. [Peter] MacDonald [also a code talker – DB] said of Mr. Begaye at the White House ceremony.
Mr. Begaye landed on Tinian, one of the Mariana Islands, in 1944 and was “shot up real badly,” Mr. MacDonald said. He spent a year in a naval hospital.

…

“He was proud to serve his country,” Ms. [Theodosia] Ott [his granddaughter – DB] said. “He said, ‘It was already our country anyway; we were just helping to make sure it stayed our country.’”

César González Barrón, aka “Silver King“, died last Saturday. Silver King was a lucha libre wrestler, who also played “Ramses” in “Nacho Libre”. He died during a match in London against “Youth Warrior” (Juventud Guerrera).

Mr. González Barrón was a star in Mexican wrestling, known as lucha libre, in which combatants wear elaborate masks and take on outlandish personas.
At the event in London, called the Greatest Show of Lucha Libre, Mr. González Barrón had reprised his role as the evil Ramses.
He was the son of a famous wrestler known as Dr. Wagner, and he had been wrestling professionally since 1985, according to his profile on the film website IMDB. During his career, he was a CMLL World Heavyweight champion, an AAA World Tag Team champion and had won many other championships.

Goro Shimura, mathematician, passed away about a week ago.

In 1955, Yutaka Taniyama, a colleague and friend of Dr. Shimura’s, posed some questions about mathematical objects called elliptic curves. Dr. Shimura helped refine Dr. Taniyama’s speculations into an assertion now known as the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

Elliptic curves are pretty important to modern cryptography, and Mr. Shimura’s work is foundational in that area. But there’s more to the story:

In 1986, Kenneth Ribet of the University of California, Berkeley, proved an intriguing connection: If Fermat’s Last Theorem were wrong, and there indeed existed a set of integers that fit the equation, that would generate an elliptic curve that violated the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

So basically, this reduced the problem of proving Fermat’s Last Theorem to proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

In the 1990s, Andrew Wiles, then also at Princeton, figured out how to do just that, and Fermat’s Last Theorem had finally been proved true.

The story I’ve heard (I wasn’t there) is that Wiles spent the better part of two days going through his proof of the conjecture, finally finished it…and then added, “Oh, by the way, by Ribert’s result, this means that Fermat’s Last Theorem is also true. Q.E.D.”

Posted in Geek, Heroism, History, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 20, 2019.

Saturday, April 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Gene Wolfe.

Warren Adler, novelist. He is perhaps most famous as the author of The War of the Roses, which was adapted into the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner film.

James W. McCord Jr., leader of the Watergate burglars.

On June 17, 1972, four expatriate Cubans and Mr. McCord, chief of security for the Nixon re-election campaign and a leader of the White House “plumbers” unit assigned to plug information leaks, broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington to fix problematic listening devices that they had planted weeks earlier.
But a night watchman alerted the police, and they were caught, odd burglars in business suits carrying cameras and walkie-talkies. E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, and G. Gordon Liddy, the re-election committee’s general counsel, who ran the break-in from a nearby hotel room, fled but were soon arrested. Mr. McCord revealed at an arraignment that he had once worked for the C.I.A., and the unraveling began.

Interesting thing about this obit: Mr. McCord apparently passed away in June of 2017, but his death was not widely reported until recently.

Lorraine Warren, “psychic” fraud.

This was noted elsewhere earlier in the week, but for the historical record: Geraldyn M. “Jerri” Cobb, noted pilot and an early recruit for the astronaut program.

Posted in Books, History, Law, Movies, Nixon, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

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