Archive for June, 2020

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Obit watch: June 22, 2020.

Monday, June 22nd, 2020

Joel Schumacher, director. Variety. THR.

Batman & Robin, however, was a critical disaster, and Schumacher admitted years later that he had made a mistake by listening to studio marketing executives, who wanted to target the film to kids.
“I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that,” he said in a 2017 interview with Vice.
“A lot of it was my choice. No one is responsible for my mistakes but me. I think one curveball we got was at the eleventh hour; Val Kilmer quit due to a role he got in The Island of Dr. Moreau. There had been talks about it, but none of us were involved, not with Warner Bros. and certainly not with me. I talked to Val, and all he kept saying was, ‘But man, it’s Marlon Brando.’ It’s not like he was on a hook and chain here, so Val went. So it was [then Warners co-CEO] Bob Daly’s idea to acquire George Clooney. He was an obvious choice because he was a rising star on ER. I had a talk with him and he was like, ‘All right, if you do it, I’ll do it.’

Wait, wait: Kilmer skipped out on Batman because he wanted to do “The Island of Dr. Moreau“? I haven’t laughed this hard since the hogs ate my kid brother.

Jim Kiick, Miami Dolphins running back in the early 1970s.

Running behind a fearsome offensive line, Kiick, fullback Larry Csonka and halfback Mercury Morris propelled the Dolphins to three Super Bowls and back-to-back titles in the 1972 and 1973 seasons.
Kiick scored six touchdowns during those playoff runs, including one in Super Bowl VII, a 14-7 win over the Washington Redskins, that helped the team complete the N.F.L.’s only perfect season. Kiick scored another touchdown and Csonka added two more in Super Bowl VIII, a 24-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I had not heard of him, either, but he wrote The Shadow of the Wind, which is “…the second-most-successful Spanish novel after Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece “Don Quixote,” according to Planeta.”

A visit to a book warehouse in Los Angeles, where he moved in the 1990s, inspired Mr. Ruiz Zafón to write “The Shadow of the Wind,” but he set the action in his birthplace, Barcelona. Written as a story within a story, the novel crisscrosses the tumultuous decades before, during and after the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
It starts in 1945, when a boy named Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to a mysterious place known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where Daniel selects a book called “The Shadow of the Wind.” Fascinated by its obscure author, Julián Carax, Daniel enlists the help of friends to investigate the writer’s past, which also brings up the disturbing story of a character who has been burning all the copies of the book he can find.

That sounds like something that’s in my wheelhouse.

Posted in Boats, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 84

Monday, June 22nd, 2020

The theme for today is: “Things That I Found Oddly Compelling”.

Techmoan fixes an old dual cassette deck. But it’s not just any cassette deck: it was taken off a decommissioned British warship. And this one isn’t designed for disco parties: this is a highly specialized cassette deck designed for the aftermath of disco parties, when someone is interrogating you about how that dead body ended up in your bed surrounded by enough cocaine to fuel a sequel to “Popeye”.

Bonus video: by way of the Northwest New Jersey Beekeepers Association, a beekeeper shows how he investigates a very aggressive hive, makes the decision to destroy it, and then carries out that decision.

I don’t much like any insect that is capable of stinging me, including bees (though I acknowledge the need for bees, which is more than I’m willing to say about wasps, yellow jackets, or hornets – murder or otherwise). But when this guy – someone who knows about bees – says “This is an aggressive and dangerous hive” and “I can’t just take it out into a field somewhere and leave it”, and then backs that up with video of hot bee action…well.

Posted in Geek | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 83

Sunday, June 21st, 2020

Science Sunday!

No grand unifying theme today, just some things that popped up in my recommendations that I thought were interesting.

“The Penetrating Eye”. From 1970, a documentary about the scanning electron microscope produced by Eli Lilly.

Bonus: “Nuclear Propulsion In Space”, a 1968 joint production of NASA and the old Atomic Energy Commission about experimental nuclear reactors for space propulsion.

There’s a lot of “The Future We Could Have Had” in this video, including discussion of how a manned Mars mission would work. It also includes some nifty reactor test footage.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 21, 2020.

Sunday, June 21st, 2020

Michael Drosnin, “Bible Code” guy.

“The Bible Code” opens with a stunning moment: The author, having discovered a biblical passage suggesting that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel would be assassinated, hops on a plane in 1994 to deliver a letter of warning. The message doesn’t alter the course of events — Mr. Rabin was shot and killed a year later — but, as Mr. Drosnin writes, it was “dramatic confirmation” of the Bible code.
That may sound like an Indiana Jones plot, but “The Bible Code” had its roots in science. In the early 1990s, the Israeli mathematician Eliyahu Rips and his colleagues performed an experiment in which they laid out the 304,805 letters of the Torah like a giant crossword puzzle and then performed a “skip-code” computer search. They discovered uncanny combinations. “Kennedy” appeared near the word “Dallas.” Hitler’s name, written upside down, appeared 20 rows from “Nazi,” written backward. And so on.
The findings were published in 1994 in the journal Statistical Science. Mr. Drosnin based his book on that research, adding discoveries of his own.
Many critics found the book unscientific, arbitrary and curiously weighted toward people and events relevant to an American living in the 20th century. Skeptics demonstrated that “Moby-Dick,” or a phone book for that matter, would reveal intriguing word groupings if one went looking for them. Mr. Rips himself denounced Mr. Drosnin’s interpretation of his work.

…

Mr. Drosnin offered more revelations in “The Bible Code II” (2002), another best seller, in which he claimed the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center had been predicted and warned that the world might have only three years left to avoid Armageddon. Then came “The Bible Code III” (2010), but by that time the novelty had worn off; it did not make the best-seller list.
Still, Mr. Drosnin had a high batting average as an author. Of his four books, three were best sellers, including the first, “Citizen Hughes” (1985), a portrait of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes as revealed through stolen office memos.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Stupid | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 82

Saturday, June 20th, 2020

You know, the history of aviation wasn’t all Pan Am and Boeing. There were other companies involved.

Like Delta. And Convair, a division of General Dynamics (as of 1953).

“Introduction to a Champion”, a Delta/Convair promotional film for the then-new Convair 880 jet. The 880, in theory, was supposed to be a competitor to the 707 and DC-8 by being smaller and faster.

The film certainly makes the 880 look comfortable, in that sort of idealized vintage 1960s air travel kind of way. They even manage to make airline food look almost appetizing. It also places great emphasis on the alleged speed of the 880.

Unfortunately, it was not entirely successful. Convair made 65 of them from 1959 to 1962. Delta ran 17 of them between 1960 and 1974. As far as I can tell, there are no currently operational 880s, though there is one in storage somewhere in California. Most of the others have been chopped up and parts put on display (or, in one case, used in a lodge in South Africa).

There is one surviving intact (but not airworthy) example that I know of that is on display. You may even have seen it, which leads me to…

Bonus video: this is a little below my usual standards of quality, but short. “Lisa Marie: The History Tour 1960 – 2015”. You see, Elvis bought one of Delta’s retired Convair 880s in 1975 for $250,000. He then spent a truckload of money having it extensively customized:

…with plush sleeping quarters, a penthouse bedroom with a custom-made queen size bed, an executive bathroom with gold faucets and a gold washbasin, a videotape system linked to four TVs and a stereo system with fifty-two speakers, and a conference room finished in teak.

That source claims the total cost, after refurbishing, was over $600,000. In 1975 money. That’s almost $2.9 million today, according to the US Inflation Calculator, which actually seems kind of cheap for a business jet.

(Probably true story, at least according to a couple of sources: Elvis originally wanted to buy a 707, and had even put down a deposit on one. He probably would have been happier long term with that plane – or at least it would have been easier to find parts, I suspect – but the 707 he put money down on was Robert Vesco‘s, and when the fecal matter of Vesco’s empire impacted the rotating blades of the Federal impeller, that deal fell apart. I don’t know if Elvis got his money back or not: I suspect the IRS or the SEC immediately confiscated it from Vesco’s people, and they didn’t have it to give back. But I digress.)

There’s some good shots in here of the “Lisa Marie”‘s interior, which I guess is pretty much what you’d expect from a plane owned by Elvis.

Posted in History, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 20, 2020.

Saturday, June 20th, 2020

Ian Holm.

A character actor who eventually played leading roles, Mr. Holm had a kind of magical malleability, with a range that went from the sweet-tempered to the psychotic. In the theater he ran the gamut of Shakespeare, from the high-spirited Prince Hal to the tormented King Lear, and he left his imprint on two roles in Mr. Pinter’s “The Homecoming”: the sleek, entrepreneurial Lenny and his autocratic father, Max.
In films, Mr. Holm incarnated characters of diverse geographic origin and nature, including a tough New York cop in “Night Falls on Manhattan” (1996), a big-city negligence lawyer in Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” (1997) and a bohemian genius manqué in the title role in Stanley Tucci’s “Joe Gould’s Secret” (2000).
Exploring the world of fantasy, he was a malfunctioning robot in Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979) and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins in “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) and “The Return of the King” (2003), from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Mr. Jackson’s subsequent “Hobbit” films.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 81

Friday, June 19th, 2020

The Tank Museum has a YouTube channel.

And they appear to update with some regularity.

This actually came up in my recommendations, and isn’t something I went searching for – but it is how I found out about the Tank Museum’s YouTube channel.

“Tiger 131: A Twist in the Tale”, a recent short documentary about some new evidence dealing with Tiger 131.

For those of you who are not professional WWII tank historians, Tiger 131 is the only operating Tiger I tank in the world.

This is of particular interest to me because, as Lawrence noted a while back, we recently watched “Fury”. Tiger 131 has a fairly large part in that movie.

I’m not including a bonus video today: instead, why don’t you just pick a random one from the Tank Museum channel and watch it? I’m kind of interested in Curator Q&A #9 myself, and might watch that before I turn in for the night. What’s not to like about armor and gin?

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 80

Thursday, June 18th, 2020

Time to relax and have a refreshing smoke.

“Tobacco Valley”, a promotional film from “The Shade Tobacco Growers Agricultural Association, Inc.” about tobacco growing in the Connecticut River Valley.

Why am I posting this? I think it’d be hard to find something more politically incorrect on YouTube. If you think otherwise, surprise me.

Bonus video: “Call Us Penn Central”, a promotional film for the Penn Central Transportation Company.

Why this one? The film was made in 1968: Penn Central filed for bankruptcy on June 21, 1970.

The Penn Central bankruptcy was a cataclysmic event, both to the railroad industry and the nation’s business community. The PC and its problems have been the subject of more words than almost anything else in the railroad industry, everything from diatribes on the passenger business to analyses of the reason for its collapse. Of the failed merger, Saunders commented “Because of the many years it took to consummate the merger, the morale of both railroads was badly disrupted and they were faced with unmanageable problems which were insurmountable. In addition to overcoming obstacles, the principal problem was too much governmental regulation and a passenger deficit which amounted to more than $100 million a year.”

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 18, 2020.

Thursday, June 18th, 2020

Vera Lynn, singer and rallying point for the troops in WWII.

Long after the war ended, the melodies lingered on: “We’ll Meet Again,” “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”
In those wartime years, she became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart,” and to the end of her life the veterans were her “boys,” still misty-eyed when she sang, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.”

…

At 22, in 1939, she won The Daily Express newspaper’s “Forces’ Sweetheart” poll in a landslide. In 1940, she began her own BBC radio show, “Sincerely Yours,” which was beamed to troops around the world on Sunday nights right after the news.
“Winston Churchill was my opening act,” Ms. Lynn once said.
She read letters from the girlfriends, wives and mothers the troops left behind. She sang her sentimental songs, “We’ll Meet Again” being the most popular. In the blitz that sent the Luftwaffe on nightly raids over London in 1940, she sometimes slept in the theater until the all-clear sounded, then drove home through the rubble left by the bombings.
“The shows didn’t stop if a raid started,” she said. “We just used to carry on.”
Often, it seemed, Luftwaffe bombers droned over London just as Ms. Lynn sang “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” which became the theme song of the blitz.

…

In 1944, Ms. Lynn toured Burma (now Myanmar) for three months, earning the enduring affection of the so-called Forgotten Army, which battled the Japanese Army in jungle combat there. She started her journey with chiffon ball gowns, and when they fell apart, she finished in shorts that wound up as an exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London.

…

Ms. Lynn’s popularity endured well into the 21st century. In August 2009, she became the oldest living artist to reach the British Top 20 album chart when her collection “We’ll Meet Again” was reissued to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. A month later, the album reached No. 1.

…

Though the decades passed and she drifted out of the entertainment mainstream, she remained the Forces’ Sweetheart, evoking nostalgia with her old hits, appearing at reunions of veterans’ organizations, rallying support for soldiers’ widows and charities that helped Britain’s wartime generation. (Oddly enough, one of her greatest hits, “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” was written by Americans: Walter Kent, who admitted he had never seen the cliffs, and Nat Burton.)

She was 103.

From the legal beat: Ronald Tackmann, artist. And by “artist” I mean in both the visual sense and the escape sense.

At the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Sept. 30, 2009, Mr. Tackmann, a neophyte artist and professional prisoner, put on a light-gray three-piece suit and covered his orange inmates’ slippers with black socks to try to pass as his own lawyer. (At the time, inmates were allowed to change into court clothes before facing a judge.) Briefly uncuffed and unchained and momentarily out of the view of guards, he fled down a back staircase, sauntered outside and vanished into the streets.
It wasn’t his first escape attempt. Twice before he had tried to hijack Correction Department vans that were transporting him and other convicts to court or to prisons upstate, using fake guns he had fashioned out of bars of soap and remnants of eyeglasses and aluminum cans.

…

His escape attempts made him an obvious security risk, and he was confined in solitary for about 20 years. There, improvising where he had to, art became his life.He substituted food coloring for paint, used his own hair to create brushes, and molded papier mâche out of white bread and toilet paper. Among his Dalí-like drawings, he depicted a child gleefully clinging to a supermarket-ride rocket, a jet outracing an eagle, and a skeletal inmate serving a 210-year sentence. A carving of a buffalo, made out of prison soap, shows an intricate touch.

There’s a picture of that buffalo carving in the obit, and I have to give the man credit: it’s well done. I wanted to post this obit so I could work this in:

During his last robbery spree, in Manhattan a little more than a decade ago, he netted $100 or so from a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Upper East Side; a similar amount, along with a cup of pistachio ice cream, from a Sedutto’s store; and a beating at a World of Nuts & Ice Cream outlet.

Delbert Africa, one of the MOVE members. He wasn’t present at the 1985 MOVE headquarters bombing: he was serving time in prison after being convicted of third-degree murder (along with eight other MOVE members) for killing police officer James Ramp in 1978.

Posted in Art, History, Law, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 79

Wednesday, June 17th, 2020

I’m thinking it is time for some more travel video.

From those wonderful folks at Pan Am, “Wings To Ireland”.

Oddly, my major associations with Ireland are Ken Bruen and “all the bright young things were throwing up their Guinness in the gutters…”

You don’t recognize the latter? Let’s fix that.

That wasn’t a bonus video, this is a bonus video. And it isn’t from Pan Am this time.

“Time Flies”. Yes, yes, like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. But seriously, this is a 1960s promo film for Lufthansa.

Posted in History, Planes, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 78

Tuesday, June 16th, 2020

I might be the only one, but I’m interested in torpedoes and torpedo history. For example, the famous Mark 14 torpedo.

Here’s some insight into how they work: “Otto Fuel II”, a Navy technical documentary on the Navy’s torpedo mono-propellant.

Bonus: You will believe…Northrop made a rocket sled gag reel.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

I heartily endorse this event or product. (#20 and #21 in a series)

Tuesday, June 16th, 2020

I’ve backed the Kickstarter for Escape the City: a How-To Homesteading Guide by Travis J I Corcoran.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Corcoran, he’s won two Prometheus awards (back to back) for his SF books, The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation.

Unlike those books, this is not fiction: this is a how-to/things I wish I had known/lessons learned book from someone who abandoned suburban life, moved to a farm in the country, and maintains an active coding career while raising his own food and living as close to a self-sustained lifestyle as he can get.

I have personal reasons for backing this book. But even if you don’t plan on moving to a farm, there’s almost certainly something in it that will justify the $20 you spend on the e-book: stuff about meat and meat processing, recipes, workshops and workshop tools…well, there’s a table of contents on the Kickstarter page.

Mr. Corcoran probably doesn’t need my help, though I’m happy to provide it: we’ve had friendly correspondence in the past. The Kickstarter is already at $25,000+ out of an initial $2,000 goal. But I’d like to make sure that everyone who can get any sort of benefit from it has a chance to kick in and get early access.

====

Noted: The National African American Gun Association. I didn’t know about this (though it’s been around for five years) until SayUncle mentioned it. Now that I do know about it, I’m delighted and fully support the organization, just like I support the Pink Pistols/Operation Blazing Sword.

Posted in Books, Endorsements, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 16, 2020.

Tuesday, June 16th, 2020

Sushant Singh Rajput. He was a major Bollywood star:

Mr. Rajput started his acting career on television, where he was best known for his role as a car mechanic, Manav Deshmukh, in “Pavitra Rishta,” a soap opera that debuted in 2009.
After leaving the show in 2011, he made his Bollywood debut in 2013 as a gifted but troubled cricket player in “Kai Po Che,” a film based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat. For his performance he was nominated for a Filmfare Award, a coveted honor in the Hindi-language film industry of India. The critic Taran Adarsh said Mr. Rajput was “blessed with wonderful screen presence.”

He was 34 years old. The family did not specify a cause of death, but the paper of record reports that the Mumbai police were investigating it as a suicide.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources. Suicide.org has a list of numbers and organizations in India.

Edén “Commander Zero” Pastora.

Mr. Pastora, in a life of danger and adventure that stretched from the jungles of the Miskito Coast to the halls of Congress in Washington, was instrumental in toppling the military dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last of the line in a repressive family dynasty that had ruled their Central American country for nearly a half century.
But deprived of a major role in the revolutionary government he had helped to install, and increasingly disillusioned by its Marxist-Leninist tendencies, Mr. Pastora went into exile and for years challenged the regime, led by Daniel Ortega, first with an international campaign of political pressures and later with hit-and-run guerrilla attacks inside Nicaragua.
Along the way he courted sympathizers and bankrollers in the United States, Europe and Latin America; took money and air support secretly from the Central Intelligence Agency; attacked cities in Nicaragua; was denounced by Managua as a traitor and tried in absentia; was seriously wounded by an assassin’s bomb that killed eight people; and once ran for the presidency of Nicaragua. He lost — and two years later, in 2008, announced that he had reconciled with the Ortega government.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 77

Monday, June 15th, 2020

This is a little outside of my usual, but it’s short and I have a reason: “The Last Will And Testament Of Tom Smith”.

“Tom Smith, an American pilot, is shot down and captured by the Japanese. While imprisoned and awaiting execution, he recalls his life at home in the USA.”

My reason here is: look at that cast! George “Superman” Reeves, Walter Brennan, and Lionel Barrymore! They don’t make them like that any more.

And today’s bonus, from 1944: “Personal Health in the Jungle”. You never know when this might come in handy.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Today’s bulletin from Bizarro World.

Monday, June 15th, 2020

I feel like I’m coming to this story a little late. It seems like it just broke today, but I was busy at work all day and only just found out about it.

There is a couple in Natick, Massachusetts that publishes an online e-commerce newsletter. I don’t know the name of the newsletter or where to find it, but some of their articles were critical of eBay.

eBay was not happy with their coverage.

In response, one company executive wrote to another saying the newsletter editor was “out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to text messages included in the complaint. The other executive responded: “Let me ask you this. Do we need to shut her entire site down?”

And so, eBay employees – apparently at the direction of upper management – started harassing the couple. Some of their tactics:

  • sending fly larvae and live spiders
  • sending a box of live cockroaches
  • sending “a bloody pig mask” (picture in article)
  • sending “a book of advice on how to survive the death of a spouse”
  • sending a funeral wreath
  • sending porn to the couple’s neighbors, but making it appear to have come from the couple
  • they apparently tried to send a fetal pig, but for some reason that wasn’t delivered
  • and, of course, the ever popular “place a Craigslist ad saying they’re swingers, and folks should come over any night after 10 PM if they want sex”

The employees also sent a series of increasingly aggressive direct messages on Twitter, asking the newsletter editor what her problem was with eBay, the complaint said. The court filing said they followed up with threatening messages, culminating with publishing the couple’s home address.
As an excuse to covertly surveil the couple in the home, the complaint said, two employees also registered for a software conference in Boston in August, and, lest they were stopped by the police, went to the couple’s house carrying false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the publishers for threatening eBay executives.

Six “former” employees have been indicted on federal charges. (eBay says they were all fired in September of last year.) I won’t name them here (they are entitled to a presumption of innocence), but their titles were:

  • “director of safety and security”
  • “director of global resiliency”
  • “senior manager of global intelligence”
  • “manager of global intelligence center (GIC)”
  • a contractor “who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC”
  • “senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team”. (This individual was, according to the articles, a former police captain.)

Two unnamed executives are included in the complaint that had roles above [the “director of safety and security”].

I wasn’t following this closely at the time, but eBay’s CEO, Devin Wenig, left the company last year “weeks after the government began investigating“.

“The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband,” the statement said. It added: “However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure” from eBay.

Edited to add 6/16: the main Hacker News thread on this story adds some additional details, including links to the supposed newsletter and to the FBI’s affidavit requesting charges against two of the employees. I have not had a chance to read the affidavit yet.

Also: Lawrence.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

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