Archive for March 20th, 2024

Obit watch: March 20, 2024.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2024

Alexander Keewatin Dewdney, also known as “A. K. Dewdney”.

He took over what was known as the “Mathematical Games” column from Douglas Hofstadter (who followed Martin Gardner, and renamed it ” Metamagical Themas”) and, in turn, renamed it “Computer Recreations”. He’s also credited as being one of the inventors of the “Core War” game. Wikipedia.

It isn’t the Christmas season, but I’ll tell this story anyway: one year I was asked what I wanted for Christmas. I said I wanted one of Dewdney’s books.

Every year, my brother retells the story of how my family went all over town hunting for that book, until, at their very last stop (a Bookstop) a particularly clever clerk figured out that the book they were looking for was not The Touring Omnibus but, rather, The TURING Omnibus.

This is one of the reasons I like Amazon so much: while it does somewhat hurt indie bookstores, you don’t have to worry, you can just add it to your wish list. (And Bookstop was never an “indie” anyway.)

(Kids, ask your parents about Bookstop.)

NYT obit for David Breashears.

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#115 in a series)

Wednesday, March 20th, 2024

Well, this is certainly an odd one.

Our good friends at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted a raid on a house in Little Rock, Arkansas yesterday.

Someone inside the house fired shots. BATFE agents shot back.

An ATF agent, whose identity was not released, was also shot in the exchange of gunfire but suffered a non-life-threatening wound, officials said. The agent, too, was taken to an area hospital for treatment.

The apparent shooter was also injured, and is apparently in the hospital.

The weird part? The injured apparent shooter (and, I think, the homeowner, but this is not explicitly stated) is…

…the executive director for the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

I’ll pause for a moment here so you can insert your own “I have evidence that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton” meme.

There’s something strange about BATFE raiding the home of an airport executive. But not completely implausible: they could have been looking for something like a Glock switch or other illegal machine guns. Or perhaps “fuel filters” from China.

I’ll be curious to see if there’s any follow-up on this, or if the story just gets quietly buried.

(Hattip: Miguel at Gun Free Zone.)