Archive for September 21st, 2011

Black comedy.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Last night in my “20th Century: Triumph and Tragedy” class, we were talking about World War I and the capping of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the hapless Gavrilo Princip (who used a FN Model 1910 chambered in .32 ACP: yes, another John Moses Browning design).

One thing that I really wasn’t totally conscious of was that Princip was not acting alone; I think I read somewhere previously that someone had thrown a grenade at the archduke’s car, but missed, and filed that away deep in my subconscious.

Anyway, that someone was Nedeljko Čabrinović, who threw the grenade, missed the archduke’s car, hit the third car in the procession, and then…

To avoid capture, Čabrinović swallowed cyanide and jumped into the River Miljacka to make sure he died.

The blackly comic aspect of this is: the cyanide that Čabrinović, Princip, and the rest of the conspirators were carrying had expired, and all the pills did was make them vomit.

The river Čabrinović jumped into? It was 4 inches deep.

And, of course, the only reason Princip was able to shoot Ferdinand in the first place was that the Archduke’s driver turned down the wrong street, directly in front of Princip, and then stalled the car while trying to turn around. If Ferdinand had been in a Mercedes, would World War I have been averted? Or would it have been some other “damn thing in the Balkans“?

Geek update.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Remember when I noted that HP was bringing back the 15C?

Yeah. Well. I’ve been keeping an eye on their website since I posted that; the 15C has been in “coming soon, please keep checking back” status up until yesterday, when the status changed to “out of stock, please check back soon”.

A company called Samson Cables does have them listed on their website; I placed an order yesterday and it has supposedly shipped. (When I ordered mine, Samson Cables was charging a premium. But not a 50% premium. Not that I have anything against folks making a profit.) Updates will come when the package arrives.

TMQ watch: September 20, 2011.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

“Is Cam Newton already a football god?” Without even going past that headline, we’ll suggest that the answer is “No”: rather, Cam Newton is Gandalf the Grey, the NFL is Middle Earth, and the Lombardi Trophy is the One Ring.

Hey, it makes about as much sense as last week’s extended Narnia analogy.

After the jump, “yes” or “no” to TMQ’s question…

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