Archive for May, 2018

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Overthinking it.

Thursday, May 31st, 2018

Headline:

Please Don’t Roast Marshmallows Over the Erupting Hawaii Volcano, USGS Warns

At first, this sounds like a bunch of joyless fun suckers sucking all the fun out of life. But USGS’s argument actually makes sense: the H2S and SO2 present around a volcanic eruption would probably make the marshmallows taste bad.

But the idea of using something other than an open campfire to toast marshmallows has a certain appeal. What you want in the ideal toasted marshmallow is for it to be evenly browned, not burned. You’re looking for that perfect Maillard reaction all over the marshmallow. And that’s really hard to get in a campfire context.

So why not use an indirect heat source? Could you use something like a heat lamp or some sort of radiant heater to toast marshmallows, instead of radiated heat from hot molten rocks? Why not? Even better, what if your marshmallow toasting stick had a motor in it? Just some sort of small battery powered one that, when you pushed a button, rotated the marshmallow at a uniform speed over the indirect heat source until it was evenly browned.

I thought I’d check Amazon and…well…I found this, which instantly turned me off the whole idea. I’m not sure why: maybe the whole idea of a dedicated electric S’mores maker just seems antithetical to the whole idea of S’mores.

Maybe part of the appeal of a toasted marshmallow isn’t just the striving for an even Maillard reaction, but also the added flavors of wood smoke and the great outdoors.

Or, maybe, I’m just overthinking it.

(But I strongly encourage at least one of my readers to purchase this and report back on the contents.)

Posted in Food, Geek | 2 Comments »

Historical note.

Thursday, May 31st, 2018

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Southwest Inn fire in Houston.

Looking back over the blog, I didn’t write much about it at the time because I was running around a lot. I did touch on it a few years later.

The Houston Fire Department responded to a fire at a restaurant that was connected to the hotel. It blew up into a major conflagration, and while HFD was trying to put out the fire, the roof collapsed.

Four firefighters were killed instantly: Engineer Operator Robert Bebee, Firefighter Robert Garner, Captain Mathew Renaud, and Firefighter Anne Sullivan. HFD Captain William Dowling sustained serious injuries, and passed away in 2017.

Summary and lessons learned from FireRescue.

NIOSH report on the fire.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 31, 2018.

Thursday, May 31st, 2018

Josh Greenfeld, writer.

Mr. Greenfeld shared an Oscar nomination with Paul Mazursky for the screenplay of “Harry and Tonto”. (They lost to “Chinatown”. Man, 1974 was a heck of a year.) He also wrote plays, reviews, and features.

But he was most famous for three books about his severely autistic son: A Child Called Noah, A Place for Noah, and A Client Called Noah.

Karl Greenfeld, who continued telling Noah’s story in his own book, “Boy Alone: A Brother’s Memoir” (2009), said his brother, now 51, is in an assisted living home in Lawndale, Calif. “My parents went to see him every weekend until my father’s condition deteriorated over the last three years,” he said.

Philly.com obit for Gardner Dozois. The paper of record has not seen fit to publish an obit yet.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 28, 2018.

Monday, May 28th, 2018

For the historical record: Alan Bean. NYT. NASA.

“At one-sixth gravity in that suit, you have to move in a different way,” he said. “One of the paintings that I did was called ‘Tip Toeing on The Ocean of Storms.’ And it shows that I’m up on my tip toes as I’m moving around. And we did that a lot. On Earth, I weighed 150 pounds; my suit and backpack weighed another 150. 300 pounds. Up there, I weighed only 50. So I could prance around on my toes. It was quite easy to do. And if you remember back to some of the television we saw, Buzz and Neil on the Moon with Apollo 11. Black and white. They were bouncing around a lot. They were really bouncing on their tip toes. Quite fun to do. Someday maybe be a great place for a vacation.”

Gardner Dozois, one of the great figures of science fiction, passed away yesterday. Michael Swanwick. Lawrence.

He was a fantastic writer: “Dinner Party”, “A Special Kind of Morning”, “Chains of the Sea”, “The Peacemaker”, “Flash Point”, “Solace”.

He didn’t write as much as I would have liked, because he became an editor. Well, not just an editor, but one of the greatest editors science fiction ever saw. He edited Asimov’s Science Fiction for 20 years, “… winning the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor 15 times in 17 years from 1988 to his retirement from Asimov’s in 2004.” He also edited thirty four volumes of the massive Year’s Best Science Fiction collection: “Stories selected by Gardner Dozois for the annual best-of-year volumes have won, as of December 2015, 44 Hugos, 41 Nebulas, 32 Locus, 10 World Fantasy and 18 Sturgeon Awards.”

He was also a personal friend of mine. I wrote about this a little, a long time ago, and I’m still more than a little raw over Gardner’s death. During the 90s, we spent a lot of time online in the old Delphi system. There was a regular Wednesday night book-ish SF chat. And then Gardner and his life partner Susan Casper and some other folks (not named here for their privacy) and I had a smaller, private chat at 11:59 on Friday night, where we commiserated over each other’s struggles and celebrated our successes. We were all a lot younger then, and could stay up until 2 or 3 AM solving the problems of the world.

Gardner was also a veteran, though he didn’t see combat. I would retell the safety column story here, but I can’t do it justice: maybe someone else can. I will say that one of my enduring memories of Gardner is “…OR YOU WILL DIE!”

The ending of “A Special Kind of Morning” has always resonated with me, ever since I first read it.

So, empathy’s the thing that binds life together, it’s the flame we share against fear. Warmth’s the only answer to the old cold questions.
So I went through life, boy; made mistakes, did a lot of things, got kicked around a lot more, loved a little, and ended up on Kos, waiting for evening.
But night’s a relative thing. It always ends. It does; because even if you’re not around to watch it, the sun always comes up, and someone’ll be there to see.
It’s a fine, beautiful morning.
It’s always a beautiful morning somewhere, even on the day you die.
You’re young—that doesn’t comfort you yet.
But you’ll learn.

It was a beautiful morning yesterday, Gardner.

This is not quite an obit, but seems fitting: in memory of PFC Joshua Fleming.

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

Obit watch: May 23, 2018.

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018

Philip Roth, noted American novelist.

I wish I had more to say about this, but: I just found out about his death, I’ve never read a Roth novel, and I don’t much like liver.

Clint Walker, actor. He was the star of “Cheyenne”, and appeared in “The Dirty Dozen” (among other credits).

As shooting of the show’s first season began, Mr. Walker confessed to the crew that he did not have a great deal of experience on horseback. He later recalled the response: “You’ll either be a good rider, or a dead one.”

Robert Indiana, visual artist, passed away on Saturday. He was most famous for his rendering of “L-O-V-E”:

I’m not sure I ordinarily would have noted this, but:

Mr. Indiana believed the piracy of the image harmed his reputation in the New York art world, and he retreated to Maine in 1978.

More:

Mr. Indiana, whose career was made, and nearly consumed, by his creation of the sculpture “LOVE,” had sought refuge here four decades ago, an exile from a New York art world he had come to resent, and settled into a rambling Victorian lodge hall overlooking Penobscot Bay, where he was, more or less, left alone to create his art.

He had become increasingly reclusive over the years, and his friends and associates wondered why. Turns out that, on Friday, the day before Mr. Indiana died:

…a company that says it has long held the rights to several of Mr. Indiana’s best-known works proposed an answer, arguing in court papers that the caretaker and a New York art publisher had tucked the artist away while they churned out unauthorized or adulterated versions of his work.

“They have isolated Indiana from his friends and supporters, forged some of Indiana’s most recognizable works, exhibited the fraudulent works in museums, and sold the fraudulent works to unsuspecting collectors,” said the lawsuit filed last week by Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

They filed the lawsuit on Friday. Mr. Indiana’s death was announced on Saturday. Very interesting.

Posted in Art, Books, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 22, 2018.

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018

Murray Newman, over at Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, has a nice tribute up to Judge Frank Price, who passed away on Sunday.

Judge Price was not someone I knew, but I wish I had known him: he sounds like a good and genuinely fun guy.

…he was among the greatest practitioners of sleight of hand and close-up magic, performing routinely as a professional magician at Magic Island and many other venues. Training his hands to betray the closest scrutiny took the kind of discipline that was his forte. He took immense pride in the craft of magic and considered it a noble art, his “other” profession.

(Oddly enough, I was just refreshing my memory of the “Blood and Money” story Sunday night: I had no idea that Judge Price had died until I saw Mr. Newman’s post yesterday.)

Posted in Law, Magic, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 21, 2018.

Monday, May 21st, 2018

NYT obit for Joseph Campanella.

Billy Cannon, running back for the Houston Oilers. Noted here for “compare and contrast” reasons:

HouChron obit by John McClain. Note that this obit discusses his legal troubles in one two sentence paragraph, and that close to the bottom of the article.

NYT obit. Note that this obit basically headlines and leads off with his legal troubles, and devotes the better part of six paragraphs to them and the fallout from his conviction.

Posted in 1970s, Media, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 17, 2018.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

Joseph Campanella, noted actor. He was in everything: most notably, he was Joe Mannix’s boss at Intertect during the first season of “Mannix”. He was also one of the lawyers in “The Lawyers” portion of “The Bold Ones”, appeared several times on “Mama’s Family”, and…well, if you’ve heard of it, he was on it at some point.

Glenn Branca, avant-garde composer.

Mr. Branca’s compositions often used massed amplified guitars of various kinds — soprano, alto, tenor and bass — to give his sound the same breadth as that of an orchestra.
Many of his works are meant to be performed at high volumes, partly so that the overtones of his amplified guitars would linger and pile up, creating a phantom layer of harmony beyond what the musicians were playing, and partly as a purely tactile element, meant to both envelop and physically shake his listeners.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Smart people writing smart stuff.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

This isn’t me being lazy, hand to God: this is me pointing out some things other people wrote that deserve wider attention.

1. There’s a good (and by “good”, I mean “reflects my biases”) op-end in the Statesman that’s a response to the complaints about the academy (previously discussed here):

While our police should be both guardians and warriors, they should eschew militarization, in which a preference for use of force is the answer to all problems. As guardians, our officers must be willing and able to use appropriate force as a warrior but understand it is not the preferred course of action.

…

Skill level is part of what determines the justification for force; therefore, highly skilled officers are desired. Officers should prefer de-escalation — an important part of their training — but also be capable of escalation, and not just to the final option of a firearm that less capable officers are limited to. Unfit or less capable officers are a liability to themselves and to the public. Weeding them out is properly done in the academy.

2. Pat Cadigan (who, as we all know, is two orders of magnitude smarter than I am) takes apart a misguided recommendation from the Macmillan Cancer Support folks: avoid using the “fighting” metaphor.

Macmillan, honey, it’s not the fighting metaphor that makes patients feel guilty about admitting fear and preventing them from planning properly for their death––it’s the fact that they have frickin’ terminal cancer––literally, not metaphorically!

3. South Texas Pistolero on two recent books about Pearl Harbor and Curtis LeMay.

Also, both Kimmel and Short knew they were woefully undergunned; they repeatedly begged for more weapons from Washington and were refused every time. And we haven’t even gotten into the monumental amount of intercepted communications between Japanese forces in the months leading up to the attack that were kept from them.

The Summers and Swan book looks interesting: I plan to keep an eye out for it. I have heard the Kimmel and Short theory before, though: when we rewatched “Tora! Tora! Tora!” recently, one of the themes that stood out for me was that Kimmel and Short got the shaft because of stupid decisions above them.

You know that an invasion of Japan would have brought about more of that if they had managed to somehow gain the upper hand. And even if they had not, they were all still going to fight to the death. It was going to be brutal either way. The bombings sucked, but in the end, I think it’s safe to say they saved lives on both sides.

See also: “Thank God For the Atom Bomb” by Paul Fussel.

Posted in Austin, Books, Cops, History, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Sometimes there’s nothing you can say.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

At least, not without looking like a jerk.

A pack of wild small dogs believed to be “standard dachshund and terrier mix” canines — yes, the little dogs with short legs and long bodies — mauled to death an Oklahoma woman in a surreal and brutal onslaught that can only be described as a nightmare.

Posted in Mammals | Comments Closed

Historical note, fun for use in schools.

Wednesday, May 16th, 2018

I missed it, but I hope not by too much.

May 5th was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Herb Parsons. I, of course, was on the road at the time: even if I hadn’t been, I was unaware of this until yesterday, when a copy of Showman Shooter: The Life and Times of Herb Parsons came into my hands.

Who was Herb Parsons? He was a famous exhibition shooter: he worked for Winchester from 1929 until his untimely death in 1959 (with, of course, a break during WWII, where he served as a gunnery instructor). Quoting from the Showman Shooter website:

He would toss seven clay pigeons into the sky and shatter the last while pieces from the first were hitting the ground. He would “center” a handful of eggs between his legs, wheel around with a shotgun and scramble ’em, one at a time. He would suspend a can of gasoline over a candle inside a 55-gallon barrel, then render the whole works to a towering inferno from a safe distance. Using a mirror and two rifles, he would break two targets at the same instant—one in front, the other directly behind him.

His sons, Lynn and Jerry, are working to keep Herb’s legacy alive. The Showman Shooter website offers copies of the book, and videos of Herb, Ad and Plinky Toepperwein, John Satterwhite, and the excellent compilation, “Fast and Fancy Shooters”, along with some more background about Herb. I commend the site to your attention, and will be sending off a check for the DVD soon.

Here are a couple of videos that aren’t on the website, but that I think are interesting:

Posted in Books, Guns | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 16, 2018.

Wednesday, May 16th, 2018

Tom Wolfe roundup: NYT.

Young Tom was educated at a private boys’ school in Richmond. He graduated cum laude from Washington and Lee University in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in English and enough skill as a pitcher to earn a tryout with the New York Giants. He did not make the cut.

Quoted for the benefit of the Washington and Lee graduates in my audience. Wolfe was apparently quite the mover and shaker at W&L:

Upon graduation in 1947, he turned down admission to Princeton University to attend Washington and Lee University. At Washington and Lee, Wolfe was a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity. He majored in English, was sports editor of the college newspaper, and helped found a literary magazine, Shenandoah, giving him opportunities to practice his writing both inside and outside the classroom.

He enrolled at Yale University in the American studies program and received his Ph.D. in 1957.

As for his remarkable attire, he called it “a harmless form of aggression.”
“I found early in the game that for me there’s no use trying to blend in,” he told The Paris Review. “I might as well be the village information-gatherer, the man from Mars who simply wants to know. Fortunately the world is full of people with information-compulsion who want to tell you their stories. They want to tell you things that you don’t know.”

NYT appreciation. NYT appreciation of his style:

Whether thrift or canniness inspired Mr. Wolfe to persist in wearing the suit into the following season, the effect was instantaneous, as he once said, “annoying people enormously.’’ Just by wearing white after Labor Day, he became the talk of any room he entered, and getting dressed each morning evolved for him into “a harmless form of assault.’’

WP.

He entered the world of stock-car driver Junior Johnson — the title figure of a 20,000-word Esquire article, “The Last American Hero” — so completely that he described the chickens walking across Johnson’s yard in Ingle Hollow, N.C.

Lawrence is a huge fan of this essay, especially for Wolfe’s observation that in Johnson’s part of the country, they grew courage like it was a natural resource. I’d happily link to it, but Esquire wants you to pay a subscription fee to access their archive, and I refuse to give those sumitches any money.

LAT:

“He had this kind of cynicism about liberalism,” said writer and friend Ann Louise Bardach. “If you look at what upset Tom, it was the card-carrying, raving, bring-down-the-barricade liberalism, but more than that, he was contrarian and a cynic in the sense that every great reporter is.”
He would later attend a state dinner at the White House during the Reagan administration, support President George W. Bush and complain against having to pay too much income tax. Walking the crowded streets of New York, Wolfe would wear a American flag lapel pin that he likened to “holding up a cross to werewolves.”

Borepatch sent over a nice note, and made a similar observation:

…my thoughts are that Wolfe and Reagan are inextricably linked. Political Correctness would not have allowed Bonfires to be published post-Reagan.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

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