Archive for April, 2020

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Obit watch: April 14, 2020.

Tuesday, April 14th, 2020

I’ve been waiting on John Horton Conway: while I’ve seen tributes on Twitter and elsewhere (this one from XKCD is nice), there wasn’t anything I considered reliable until Princeton published their obit this morning.

“John Conway was an amazing mathematician, game wizard, polymath and storyteller who left an indelible mark on everyone he encountered — colleagues, students and beyond — inspiring the popular imagination just as he unraveled some of the deepest mathematical mysteries,” said Igor Rodnianski, professor of mathematics and chair of the Department of Mathematics. “His childlike curiosity was perfectly complemented by his scientific originality and the depth of his thinking. It is a great loss for us and for the entire mathematical world.”
Over his long career, Conway made significant contributions to mathematics in the fields of group theory, number theory, algebra, geometric topology, theoretical physics, combinatorial game theory and geometry.

…

One of Conway’s most well-known accomplishments was the Game of Life, which he conceived in the 1970s to describe how life can evolve from an initial state. The concept builds on ideas that trace back to John von Neumann, a pioneer of early computing, in the 1940s. Conway’s game involves a two-dimensional grid in which each square cell interacts with its neighbors according to a set of rules. Over time, these simple interactions give rise to complexity.
The game was introduced in an October 1970 issue of Scientific American’s mathematical games column, whose creator, the late Martin Gardner, was friends with Conway. Conway continued his interest in “recreational mathematics” by inventing numerous games and puzzles. At Princeton, he often carried in his pockets props such as ropes, pennies, cards, dice, models and sometimes a Slinky to intrigue and entertain students and others.

…

The achievement for which Conway himself was most proud, according to [Simon] Kochen, was his invention of a new system of numbers, the surreal numbers. This continuum of numbers includes not only real numbers such as integers, fractions and irrational numbers such as pi, but also the infinitesimal and infinite numbers.

Hank Steinbrenner, one of the heirs to the New York Yankees.

By way of Lawrence: Keith Ferrell, writer, former editor in chief of Omni, and another one of those people who sounds like a really good guy.

Posted in Geek, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Monday, April 13th, 2020

Things have been kind of slow on the sports firings front. With no real sports being played, who’s firing people?

Answer: the Chicago Bulls, who just fired Gar Forman as their general manager.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 14

Monday, April 13th, 2020

Taking a break from planes today. Let’s go back in history. Way back. To the beginning.

First, the dinosaurs came. Then they died off and turned into oil. Then the Arabs got all the oil and started driving around in Mercedes-Benzes.

Bonus video #1: “Birth of an Oilfield”. Once again, not to be confused with “Birth of a Nation”.

This was produced by George Pal.

Bonus video #2: a promo film for the 1964 World’s Fair, with Lowell Thomas. Thing that pushes my button: he talks with Robert Moses.

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Obit watch: April 13, 2020.

Monday, April 13th, 2020

Both of these are by way of Lawrence, originator of the Clown Unicycle Update.

Tarvaris Jackson, former NFL quarterback.

Anthony Causi, sports photographer for the New York Post. He sounds like a really good guy:

“He was a New Yorker,” said Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ vice president of communications and media relations. “Anthony was passionate, he grinded, he cared and was caring, and he wore his heart on his sleeve. And it was a huge heart. I don’t know how it fit on his sleeve. People gravitated towards him, but he had an edge to him and he never wanted to have the second-best photo of the day.”
Balancing that edge, bolstering that heart, was an innate generosity that Causi expressed most regularly with his work tools. Without prompting or requests, he typically took photos of co-workers and competitors in addition to his work subjects, offering them to folks for their personal collections. Causi’s uncle Joe Causi, an on-air personality for WCBS-FM Radio, said his nephew would often take photos pro bono at area Little League events.
“Anthony was kind, thoughtful and one of the best at what he did,” the Rangers said in a statement.

…

There are some people in our lives whose impact is so immediate, and so permanent, it’s all but impossible to remember a time when they weren’t a part of us. That was Anthony. If you worked at The Post, you were family. If you didn’t? That was just a detail. You were family, too.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 13

Sunday, April 12th, 2020

I wanted something a little bit lighter than cop stuff and military aircraft for Easter. Then this popped up in my YouTube suggestions. I’ve wanted to see this ever since I read about the event in Tex Johnston’s biography.

Bonus: original Boeing promotional video for the Dash 80.

Posted in Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 12, 2020.

Sunday, April 12th, 2020

Stirling Moss died “quietly on Sunday at his home in London”. He was 90. McThag beat me on the tribute watch.

“To race a car through a turn at maximum possible speed when there is a great lawn to all sides is difficult,” he said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1961, “but to race a car at maximum speed through a turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other — ah, that’s an achievement!”
He raced for 14 years, won 212 of his 529 races in events that included Grand Prix, sports cars and long-distance rallying, in 107 different types of car.
He set the world land speed record on the salt flats of Utah in 1957. He won more than 40 percent of the races he entered, including 16 Grand Prix. For four consecutive years, 1955-58, he finished second in the world Grand Prix championship. And in each of the next three years, he placed third.

The man was a class act. And I don’t mean in terms of style (although he apparently was rather stylish):

He came closest in 1958, but testified on behalf of another driver, Mike Hawthorn, who was accused of an infraction in the Portugal Grand Prix. Hawthorn, as a result, was not disqualified. When the season ended, Hawthorn had 42 points, which are given for factors like fastest lap as well as finishing position. Moss — though he had four Grand Prix wins to Hawthorn’s one — finished second with 41 points.

…

In 1962 at the Goodwood Circuit racetrack in England’s West Sussex County, a plume of fire shot from his Lotus 18/21 car. The crowd gasped. As Moss tried to pass Graham Hill, his car veered and slammed into an eight-foot-high earthen bank.
It took more than a half-hour to free Moss from the wreckage. His left eye and cheekbone were shattered, his left arm broken and his left leg broken in two places.
An X-ray revealed a far worse injury. The right side of his brain was detached from his skull. He was in a coma for 38 days, and paralyzed on one side of his body for six months. He remembered nothing of the disaster. He considered hypnosis to recover the memory, but a psychiatrist said that might cause the paralysis to return.
When he left the hospital, he took all 11 nurses who had treated him to dinner, followed by a trip to the theater. A year later, he returned to Goodwood and pushed a Lotus to 145 m.p.h. on a wet track. He realized he was no longer unconsciously making the right moves. He said he felt like he had lost his page in a book.
Though he believed he remained a better driver than all but 10 or 12 in the world, that was not good enough. He retired at 33.
Moss was more than his talent. He was a beautiful name, one that still connotes high style a half-century after his crash, evoking an era of blazers and cravats, of dance bands and cigarette holders. One legend had him driving hundreds of miles in a vain effort to introduce himself to Miss Italy the night before a big race. His 16 books cemented his legend.

…

Stirling grew up excelling at horsemanship, but said he gave it up because horses were hard to steer.

…

…for a couple of generations, British traffic cops sneeringly asked speeding motorists, “Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?” (Moss, who had been knighted, was once asked that question, and answered, “Sir Stirling, please.”)

Lawrence emailed an obit for Tim Brooke-Taylor, British comedian:

Brooke-Taylor was reunited with Cleese and Chapman on ITV’s At Last The 1948 Show, another collection of sketches and quick-fire repartee.
The first episode featured The Four Yorkshiremen sketch, co-written by Brooke-Taylor, which would later be revived by the Monty Python team.

I apologize for the quality. But: this is (according to YouTube) actually from “At Last the 1948 Show”.

Posted in Cars, Obits | Comments Closed

Trivia.

Sunday, April 12th, 2020

I discovered this last night: it’s an odd bit of trivia that I didn’t know previously, and I thought it was worth sharing.

The last resident of 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles was Trent Reznor. Not only that, but he set up a recording studio in the house called “Pig”.

…was the site of recording sessions for most of the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral (1994)

Okay, so what, who cares? Well, 10050 Cielo Drive had a history…

On August 8-9, 1969, the home became the scene of the murders of Tate, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent at the hands of the Manson “Family”.

…

Manson had told the women to “leave a sign—something witchy”, so Atkins wrote “pig” on the front door in Tate’s blood.

I’ll be honest: I’ve never liked Nine Inch Nails, or Trent Reznor’s music, very much. However, the part of the Rolling Stone interview quoted in the Wikipedia entry is actually kind of thought provoking, and softens my attitude towards the man a bit:

It’s one thing to go around with your dick swinging in the wind, acting like it doesn’t matter. But when you understand the repercussions that are felt … that’s what sobered me up: realizing that what balances out the appeal of the lawlessness and the lack of morality and that whole thing is the other end of it, the victims who don’t deserve that.

Reznor moved out in December of 1993, and the house was demolished in 1994. The owner built a new house on the property, and had the address changed to 10066 Cielo Drive.

Posted in California Über Alles, History, Law, Music | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 12

Saturday, April 11th, 2020

More planes!

I did briefly consider doing some more police stuff, but I thought I wanted a thematic break after the previous post.

First up, once again for RoadRich and the 1940 Air Terminal Museum folks: “6 1/2 Magic Hours”. That six and a half hours is how long it takes to reach Europe on Pan Am’s 707 Clipper.

Bonus: “Champion of Champions”, a documentary about the Convair B-58 Hustler. Yes, that is Jimmy Stewart: or, properly, Brigadier General James M. Stewart (United States Air Force – Reserve). I don’t think he gets enough credit for his military career, but that’s probably because he was very modest about it. Andy Rooney commented in one of his books that Stewart earned every promotion he got. (He enlisted as a private in March of 1941, and retired in May of 1968.)

(There’s a story about Stewart’s appearance in “The World At War” documentary series: he agreed to appear, but required that he be identified as simply “Jimmy Stewart, pilot.”)

Bonus video #2: “Escape and Survive”, about the development of the B-58’s ejection capsule.

Okay, one more: vintage video of the B-58 flying really low and really fast.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Historical Post-It note.

Saturday, April 11th, 2020

Today is the 34th anniversary of the FBI Miami shootout, perhaps the most studied (and most influential) gunfight in history. Very brief summary: eight FBI agents confronted two men who had been robbing banks and armoured cars. The confrontation ended in a firefight, in which two FBI agents (Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan) were killed and five more were injured (three of them seriously). The two suspects were shot and killed by Agent Ed Mireles, who was one of the agents seriously injured. (Agent Dove inflicted what would have been an eventually fatal wound on one of the suspects, but it was not an immediate stopper: the man Agent Dove shot kept fighting until Agent Mireles got in a finishing shot at close range.)

This is the second of the three events I mentioned in an earlier post. I went back and forth about doing a longer post on this event, and ended up deciding to do a short one instead. This isn’t a round number anniversary, and I’d really like to do more prep work before doing a longer post: next year is the 35th anniversary, and that seems like a good target. On the other hand, I didn’t want to let this anniversary pass without notice.

In the meantime, if you want to dig beyond the Wikipedia entry, I’d start with Ed Mireles’s book: I’m still in the process of reading it, but this has the “Hell, I was there!” factor going for it. Here’s a review of it (with bonus material) from great and good FOTB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn.

Massad Ayoob has written about this event multiple times in the “Ayoob Files”. His first article is in Ayoob Files: The Book (as a matter of fact, the cover illustration is a crime scene photo from the shootout). As I’ve noted before, you’ll get more value out of purchasing the 1985-2011 “Ayoob Files” PDF from American Handgunner, which contains the original article from 1989, “FBI Miami Shootout: An Update” from 1992, and “25 Years After the FBI Firefight: The Late-Emerging” (also online). There’s at least one more (I may have lost count) “Ayoob Files, “The FBI Dadeland Shootout: Hero Agent Ed Mireles Speaks“, tied to the Mireles book.

The other book I often see cited, and which has been recommended to me, is “Forensic Analysis Of The April 11, 1986, FBI Firefight” by W. French Anderson, which is violently expensive. Then again, this is kind of a specialized publication: I don’t know what it went for when it came out in 2006. (Plus, it was published by the now-defunct Paladin Press.)

“Dark Day in Suniland” was put together by Bob Gilmartin, a local TV reporter who also wrote the forward to Agent Mireles’s book. This documentary came out a year after the event.

Over at Karl’s site, he has another video that combines the FBI reconstruction video, “Firefight” and another video with personal reflections from the agents.

There is a made for TV movie, “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” based on this event, but Agent Mireles states in his book that “dramatic effect apparently took precedence over some of the facts”.

The other agents involved were:

SA Richard Manauzzi.
Supervisor Gordon McNeill (seriously injured).
SA Gilbert Orrantia.
SA John Hanlon (seriously injured).
SA Ronald Risner.

Posted in Books, Cops, FBI, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 11, 2020.

Saturday, April 11th, 2020

Colby Cave, forward for the Edmonton Oilers. He was 25. According to the reports, he had emergency surgery on Monday and was placed in a medically induced coma.

I am seeing unconfirmed reports that John Horton Conway, noted mathematician, has passed on, but I don’t have any links or anything that I’d consider confirmation yet.

Posted in Geek, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Happy BAG Day!

Friday, April 10th, 2020

National Buy a Gun day is April 15th, which actually falls on Wednesday this year.

This is kind of a weird year for BAG Day, for obvious reasons. At least in Texas, gun stores are considered “essential businesses”. There are two near me that are open, but taking the standard precautions (limiting the number of customers, sanitizing surfaces, enforcing social distancing, etc.) Cabela’s website says they’re open and doing the same thing, but I haven’t had a chance to run down there recently.

If gun stores in your area aren’t essential businesses, you can still order online, but you’ll need to find someone with a Federal Firearms License that’s open, willing to accept your shipment, and willing to do the transfer. Good luck with that, though Gunbroker does offer a “Find an FFL” service.

The other problem is that everyone is stocking up on guns while they can. I visited the shop nearest me last weekend: they still had some handguns and long guns in stock, but the handgun case was noticeably emptier than it had been. They were also pretty much cleaned out of the most popular ammo, though they were taking signups for 250 round boxes of 9mm FMJ, which they expected to come in this week.

I haven’t really found anything I want at the moment, to be honest. That same shop still has a nice S&W 38/44 HD, but they’re asking $1,300 for it. That’s probably reasonable, but I don’t know that I want to put out that much money for that S&W yet. I haven’t found a 4″ N-frame in a caliber starting with .4 at a price I want to pay, or a Beretta in .25 ACP or .32 at a good price. Don’t get me started on that S&W 1076 of my dreams…

This may be another one of those years where instead of buying a gun, I cross some more accessories off my list. I’d like to put some ghost ring sights and slings on both my social shotgun and my social lever gun. There’s some other smaller stuff I’d like to pick up as well, if I can. So unless I make it to Cabela’s and find something compelling and affordable, that’s probably the way I’m going to go.

I did pick up something in the past month. While it technically doesn’t qualify as a BAG Day purchase, I may post photos of it on BAG Day just for the heck of it. Look for that on Wednesday, if the weather is nice and I can get some pictures taken.

Posted in Guns | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 11

Friday, April 10th, 2020

Everybody likes planes, right? Especially great and good FOTB RoadRich!

Here’s some more vintage video targeted directly at his interests.

First up, “Birth of a Jet”. This should not be confused with “Birth of a Nation”: this one is about the DC-8, and dates from 1958.

Bonus video #1. This is a throwback video: “Tomorrow’s Airplane Today: The Story of the Stratocruiser”, from 1946. The 377 Stratocruiser was a Boeing airliner, based on the C-97 Stratofreighter transport (which, in turn, was based on the B-29). Apparently, the airliner was not entirely successful.

Bonus video #2: In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m partial to the F-4 Phantom. “F-4 Flight Characteristics”.

As the YouTube notes point out, there’s some really amazing footage of an F-4 in a spin about 24 minutes in.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 10, 2020.

Friday, April 10th, 2020

Mort Drucker, one of the great Mad Magazine artists.

Tribute from Mad.

A self-taught freelance cartoonist who had worked on war, western, science fiction and romance comic books as well as personality-driven titles like The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and The Adventures of Bob Hope, Mr. Drucker came to Mad in late 1956, soon after Al Feldstein succeeded Harvey Kurtzman, the magazine’s founder, as editor. Mad had run only occasional TV and movie satires, but Mr. Drucker’s arrival “changed everything,” the pop-culture critic Grady Hendrix wrote in a 2013 Film Comment appreciation of Mad’s movie parodies.
“No one saw Drucker’s talent,” Mr. Hendrix wrote, until he illustrated “The Night That Perry Masonmint Lost a Case,” a takeoff on the television courtroom drama “Perry Mason,” in 1959. It was then, Mr. Hendrix maintained, that “the basic movie parody format for the next 44 years was born.”
From the early 1960s on, nearly every issue of Mad included a movie parody, and before Mr. Ducker retired he had illustrated 238, more than half of them. The last one, “The Chronic-Ills of Yawnia: Prince Thespian,” appeared in 2008.

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Today’s bulletin from Bizarro World.

Thursday, April 9th, 2020

Hattip on this one to Morlock Publishing, who is finally out of Twitter jail. I believe this link will let you bypass the LAT paywall and read the story, but I’m not 100% sure. (As I’ve noted in the past, the paper is really obnoxious about paywalls, ad blockers, and incognito mode.)

The meat of the story:

The manager of a gun store at the Los Angeles Police Academy has been arrested for allegedly stealing firearms and selling them to several officers and an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy, according to records and sources.

Yes. Not only was he stealing guns (which is a Federal crime) but he was selling them…to cops!

According to sources, the police officers and sheriff’s deputy purchased the guns without legally required federal paperwork and probably at steep discounts, which could expose them to criminal charges.
“They knew what they were doing,” said a person familiar with the investigation. “You know when you’re buying illegally and well below market value.”

…

Duenas came under suspicion last month after an audit of the store’s inventory revealed missing weapons and sales that had been transacted without proper paperwork, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. LAPRAAC officials also discovered empty boxes that should have contained firearms.

This does not seem like a well thought out plan. “Let me just get that gun for you…hey, why is this box empty?” (This may be a faulty assumption on my part, but given that they say he was the manager, I’m assuming there were people other than him working there.)

LAPRAAC is the “Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club”:

The club derives its revenues from the gun store, a gift and uniform shop, a cafe that is open to the public and rentals of its facilities on the storied Elysian Park academy campus, as well as membership dues from active and retired LAPD officers.
The gun store has been closed since Mayor Eric Garcetti’s March 23 stay-at-home order classified it as a nonessential business. The swimming pool, weight room, basketball court and other facilities used by LAPRAAC members are also closed, and the cafe is open only for takeout orders.

And, of course…

As the coronavirus pandemic worsened in L.A. last month, police officers lined up at the LAPRAAC store to stock up, mirroring a run on gun purchases among the public during that time.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 10

Thursday, April 9th, 2020

Since I was a little selfish yesterday, today’s videos go out to great and good FOTB RoadRich, and to the good folks at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum in Houston. May they re-open soon.

First up: “The 707 Astrojet”, a 1961 co-production of American Airlines and Pratt & Whitney Aircraft.

Bonus video #1: “The F-4 Phantom Joins the Fleet”, from 1962. From the YouTube description, for all you military aviation buffs: “The film features Fighter Squadron SEVEN FOUR (VF-74) aka Bedevilers flying from the nearly-new aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CVA-59) along with the rest of Carrier Air Wing EIGHT (CVW-8).”

Bonus video #2: “Grumman at War”, from 1944.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

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