Archive for March, 2025

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Drink!

Friday, March 21st, 2025

Shot:

A scientist at an isolated Antarctica base allegedly assaulted and sexually harassed colleagues while the team is confined together at the edge of the Earth for a year, according to a shocking new report.
The researcher’s “deeply disturbing” behavior was shared in an email by a fellow team member who was cooped up with him in the SANAE IV base, home to a South African research team.
Inhospitable weather has made it too difficult to evacuate anyone from SANAE IV, meaning everyone is stuck together for the foreseeable future, according to authorities.

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle | Comments Closed

Packin’ (random gun crankery)

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

It would not be entirely unfair to say that I am a sucker for concepts. At least when it comes to guns. But a concept has to make sense to me.

I’ve bought into Cooper’s Scout Rifle concept in a big way.

One concept that ended up not making sense to me, was the “car gun” or “truck gun”. I actually did buy into this, and bought a relatively cheap (at the time) Marlin lever action in .30-30 (the poor man’s assault rifle) to use as a “car gun” when Texas instituted legal protection for guns in cars.

But the more I thought about it, the odds of being able to fight my way out to my car, grab my rifle, and go back in to confront the big bad seemed slim. If I’m already at my car, why am I not getting out of there? And it also seemed like a recipe for a rusty or stolen gun. I’m not the only person who feels that way. (I still have that Marlin, now outfitted with XS ghost ring sights.)

Another concept that makes sense to me is the late (and I feel a pang when I say that) John Taffin’s “Perfect Packin’ Pistol”.

To quote Taffin, “Basically, a Perfect Packin’ Pistol is a handgun, either sixgun or semi-auto with an easy-handling barrel length between 4 to 5 1⁄2 inches chambered in a cartridge capable of handling anything you may run into. It’s packable, portable and potent. It may be chambered in anything from 22 LR up to 500 Wyoming Express. While the former may work well in several parts of the country, the latter would certainly be most desirable in Alaska, where you’d encounter something able to bite, claw or stomp.”

That’s a pretty expansive definition, but I understand where he’s coming from. My old Smith and Wesson Kit Gun is, to me, a perfect packin’ pistol for things like casual walks in the woods, plinking at cans, and maybe shooting a vicious squirrel should the occasion arise. It fits easily in a pocket. And if I had to…the mere presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, often serves as a deterrent. Or something like that, as the “Armed Citizen” column puts it.

As the linked article notes, Lipsey’s and Ruger are introducing a special John Taffin Tribute Perfect Packin’ Pistol. (I hope you can read the article: I am a Handloader subscriber, but it comes up okay for me even though I’m not signed in. I’m using a link I got in a Wolfe Publishing email.)

When I saw that, I kind of wanted one. I still kind of do. But I walked into my gun shop one Saturday, and…

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Posted in Guns, Ruger, Smith and Wesson | 4 Comments »

Firings watch.

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

Keith Urgo out as men’s basketball coach of Fordham.

50-49 over three seasons. He was also suspended by the university for four games due to “recruiting violations”.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Very quick legal update.

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

Carl Erik Rinsch has been charged federally with fraud.

The director allegedly “orchestrated a scheme to steal millions by soliciting a large investment from a video streaming service, claiming that money would be used to finance a television show that he was creating,” said Matthew Podolsky, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a statement. “But that was fiction. Rinsch instead allegedly used the funds on personal expenses and investments, including highly speculative options and cryptocurrency trading.”

Previously on WCD. You may also remember him as “the guy who invested a bunch of the money NetFlix gave him in Dogecoin”.

Posted in Law, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2025.

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

George Bell, actor, Harlem Globetrotter, and the tallest man in America.

He was 7’8″, and passed away at 67. He also served honorably with the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office for close to 14 years.

Nadia Cassini, Italian actress. Lawrence emailed this obit and added the observation that she was “the woman in ‘Starcrash’ who wasn’t Caroline Munroe”. IMDB.

Mark Dobies, actor. Other credits include “Nash Bridges”, “CSI: Miami”, and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”.

Posted in Cops, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Gonzaga!

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

Not that I care about basketball, but I love saying “Gonzaga!”

So Lawrence and I have, once again (after a few years layoff) bet on the NCAA tournament. I’m taking Gonzaga, Lawrence is taking the field.

I have a pretty good feeling about Gonzaga. I think this just might be their year…

Posted in Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Wednesday, March 19th, 2025

This could also be an “Art, damn it! Art!” watch, but I decided to go this way.

Jackson Arn was the art critic for the New Yorker.

Arn’s last work for the magazine was a highbrow essay entitled: “Should We View Tatlin As A Russian Constructivist Or A Ukrainian,” which was published on March 10.

Note the past tense. Mr. Arn has been canned by the magazine. And not because the New Yorker has money troubles.

The New Yorker had a big 100th birthday celebration in February at some trendy place in NoHo.

Jackson Arn was accused of making “inappropriate overtures” at some of the party guests and appeared to be drunk at the shindig, whose attendees included star editor Tina Brown and author Zadie Smith, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources with knowledge.

…

Writers including Smith, Jennifer Egan and Jeffrey Eugenides rubbed shoulders with former New Yorker editrix Brown, longtime art editor Françoise Mouly, staff writers Calvin Trillin and Adam Gopnik.

I almost wish I had been there, just so I could walk up to Calvin Trillin and ask him, “Do you want to blow this Popsicle stand and go get some dumplings in Chinatown?”

Here’s the NYT article, but it doesn’t add much detail.

Posted in Art, Firings, Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 18, 2025.

Tuesday, March 18th, 2025

Group Captain John A. Hemingway (RAF- ret.) died on Monday. He was 105. NYT. BBC.

Gp Capt Hemmingway was the last known survivor of the Battle of Britain. He flew Hurricanes.

Flying over France, Britain and Italy in World War II, Mr. Hemingway was shot down four times between 1940 and 1945. He received Britain’s Distinguished Flying Cross in July 1941 for downing and damaging German planes.

…

He first saw combat in the spring of 1940 when he flew in support of the British Expeditionary Force’s ultimately futile quest to turn back the German invasion of France. He shot down a German bomber in May, but the next day he had to make a forced landing when his plane was hit by antiaircraft fire.

…

Flying afterward in defense of Britain, Mr. Hemingway was intercepting German bombers over the English Channel on Aug. 18 when his Hurricane was shot up.
“Somebody clobbered me,” he told The Daily Mirror in 2018. “They hit me in the engine. It covered the inside of the cockpit with oil, and things got very smelly and hot. I had no hope of getting to England, so I bailed out and landed in the sea.
“There were jellyfish everywhere,” he continued. “I started swimming. Two hours later, a rowboat from a lightship bumped into me.”
He climbed aboard, grabbed an oar and helped the crew return with him to England.
Later in August, Mr. Hemingway survived a third close call, this time while pursuing a German bomber over southeastern England. As he told The Daily Mirror: “I got a Dornier in my sight and started to pull around and have a second go. That was it — ‘bang, bang’. There was smoke everywhere.” He bailed out. “I landed in the Pitsea marshes, where I faced the local Home Guard,” he said.
He added wryly, “I could speak reasonable English, so they didn’t shoot me.”
Mr. Hemingway was an Allied flight controller during the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The next year, in April, he was a squadron commander in Italy when his Spitfire fighter was downed by the Germans. He bailed out again and was rescued by farm workers, who disguised him in peasant clothing and smuggled him to the British lines.

…

In its statement, the R.A.F. said of Mr. Hemingway, “He never saw his role in the Battle of Britain as anything other than doing the job he was trained to do.”

(Hattip: Borepatch, who actually beat me to an obit for once.)

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 17, 2025.

Monday, March 17th, 2025

Guns magazine and American Handgunner are reporting the passing of John Taffin last week. Podcast.

I was fortunate enough to meet him in 2012, shake his hand, and say “thank you”. And I’ve written about some of his books, too.

I’m hoping at some point this week (or by next Sunday) I can get a special gun crankery post up in memory of the late Mr. Taffin. He struck me as a swell guy, and he knew his Smith and Wessons.

Gene Winfield, custom car builder. He did a considerable amount of work in Hollywood.

The Reactor was then used on three more series: “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Batman,” on which Catwoman (Eartha Kitt) used it as the Catmobile.

(Also “Bewitched”.)

He also designed cars for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, “Get Smart”, “Sleeper”, and “Blade Runner”. And he designed the famous shuttle craft from a minor 1960s SF TV series.

Posted in Books, Cars, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Obits, Smith and Wesson, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 15, 2025.

Saturday, March 15th, 2025

I lost pretty much the entire day yesterday to various things. I didn’t even get any pie.

One of the things that went by the wayside was obits, so here’s a quick and lazy roundup from the past few days. I have to rush off in a little bit to a wedding shower, and I’m not sure when I’m going to be back.

John Feinstein, sports writer and author. The only one of his books I’ve read is The Punch, which I wrote about a while back and thought was pretty good.

Chris Moore, artist. He illustrated quite a few SF books, and also did album covers for Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart.

Carl Lundstrom, who was one of the people behind the Pirate Bay website, died in a plane crash on Monday.

Ron Nessen, Gerald Ford’s press secretary, and one of the 892 Saturday Night Live hosts who have not committed murder. (I think that count is right, but it may be a little out of date.)

Larry Buendorf, retired Secret Service agent. He’s the guy who wrestled the gun away from Squeaky Fromme.

“Squeaky was back in the crowd, maybe one person back, and she had an ankle holster on with a .45,” he said, referring to a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. “That’s a big gun to have on your ankle. So, when it came up, it came up low, and I happened to be looking in that direction, I see it coming, and I step in front of him, not sure what it was other than that it was coming up pretty fast, and yelled out ‘Gun!’ When I yelled out ‘Gun!’ I popped that .45 out of her hand.”
He added: “I got a hold of her fingers, and she’s screaming — the crowd is screaming — and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t have a vest on, I don’t know where the next shot is coming from,’ and that I don’t think she’s alone. All of this is going on while I’m trying to control her.”
“She turns around, and I pulled her arm back and dropped her to the ground, and agents and police come from the back of the crowd” as Ms. Fromme shrieked in disbelief, he said.
“She’s screaming, ‘It didn’t go off!’” he continued. “I had it in my hand. I knew what she was doing, she was pulling back on the slide, and I hit the slide before she could chamber a round. If she’d had a round chambered, I couldn’t have been there in time. It would’ve gone through me and the president.”

If the Times account is to be trusted, she had four rounds in the magazine and the hammer cocked, but she hadn’t chambered a round.

Kevin Drum, leftist political blogger.

He also invented Friday cat blogging.

Alan K. Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming.

He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of frostbite to his left foot about five years ago that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.

Raul M. Grijalva, current Democratic House rep from Arizona.

Mr. Grijalva (pronounced gree-HAHL-vah) disclosed last year that he had lung cancer and would not run for a 13th term in 2026. He died of complications of his treatment, his office said. He was absent from Washington for nearly a year, missing hundreds of votes in the narrowly divided House.

Posted in 1911, Art, Books, Guns, Heroism, Obits, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

Happy Pi Day!

Friday, March 14th, 2025

I’m sorry that today’s post is short and perfunctory. A confluence of events (Lent, eye doctor appointment, getting both eyes dialated) has left me unable to celebrate the day in the way I would like.

For those of you who are celebrating, please celebrate responsibly. Don’t contact your local math department saying you’ve squared the circle.

Posted in Geek | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 12, 2025.

Wednesday, March 12th, 2025

Junior Bridgeman, former NBA player and businessman.

Bridgeman played 12 seasons in the NBA, 10 of them with the Bucks and two with the LA Clippers. He averaged 13.6 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 25 minutes per game over his career, during which he established himself as one of the game’s best sixth men. He also served as president of the National Basketball Players Association from 1985 to 1988.

He played at a time when NBA salaries were not what they are now:

Famously, Bridgeman made about $2.95 million in his NBA career and never more than $350,000 in a season. But after his career, he built a fast-food empire that, at its peak, totaled more than 450 restaurants nationwide. He became a Coca-Cola bottling distributor with territory across three states and into Canada. He bought Ebony and Jet magazines. He invested in NBA Africa.

ESPN ran a profile of Mr. Bridgeman back in September of last year, which I commend to your attention.

Bridgeman remained close with Fitzgerald and Neviaser. One of the main principles they emphasized: Whatever business you’re involved in, learn it from the ground up. Another: Make sure the right people are in the right positions — people you can trust. Bridgeman viewed those lessons through the lens of basketball. To have success in the game, he knew, you had to study it, you needed the right set of teammates. You needed chemistry. You needed a good culture.

…

“He’d be working in the restaurant like he was an hourly worker,” Moncrief said. “I witnessed that. I was thinking, what the heck is he doing in there flipping burgers, washing dishes, and he had those work pants on. But he understood the value of learning thoroughly what you’re investing in — very, very hands on.” Moncrief watched how Bridgeman would write out checks, a small task that could have easily been delegated. “He wanted to know where every check was going,” Moncrief said. “When money went out, he wanted to feel that.”

…

For several years, beginning in in the late 1990s, Bridgeman stood before nearly 60 rookies in a hotel conference room as part of the league’s Rookie Transition Program, which the league founded in 1986 as part of its first efforts to help teach basics about financial literacy: budgeting, saving, taxes.
Bridgeman shared what he’d heard from former Bucks head coach Don Nelson: Their job was to play as hard as they can and make as much money as they can. He offered guardrails: Know the business well and put someone in charge who you trust, who is qualified. “More guys have lost money investing in deals with their second cousin on their mother’s side running it than anything else,” Bridgeman said. Doing something like that, he said, was a “blueprint for failure.”
He said that during a player’s career, doors would open, phone calls would be returned. So if a player were on the road in Detroit and wanted to become involved in the automobile industry, they would have the chance to reach out to the head of one of the automotive giants. Opportunities were everywhere. All they had to do was ask.

I’ve never been a big basketball fan, but Mr. Bridgeman sounds like a heck of a guy.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 11, 2025.

Tuesday, March 11th, 2025

Jessie Mahaffey (Boatswain’s Mate Second Class, United States Navy – ret.) passed away on March 1st. He was 102.

Mr. Mahaffey served on the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

In December, Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS-TV of Shreveport, La., that Dec. 7, 1941, had started as a quiet Sunday.
He and five other sailors were chatting as they scrubbed the deck of the Oklahoma when they “heard a siren, saw planes and smoke,” he said, adding, “It must have only gone on for 45 minutes, but it was crazy.”
The Oklahoma was struck by as many as nine torpedoes. Within minutes, the battleship capsized, trapping hundreds of men below deck. “It didn’t take that long to come back to the other side,” he said. “It turned upside down and we had to slide over the bottom of the ship into the water.”
He managed to swim to the U.S.S. Maryland, another battleship that was moored at Pearl Harbor.
In total, 429 crew members from the Oklahoma were killed in the attack, which left more than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians dead and nearly 1,800 wounded.

He went on to serve on the U.S.S. Northampton, which was sunk by the Japanese on November 30, 1942.

“The ship was sunk at midnight, and we had to stay on rafts the whole night,” Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS.

…

When he turned 100, in 2022, Mr. Mahaffey told KPLC-TV of Lake Charles, La., about the day he married Joyce Inez Mahaffey. “My best day would be marrying that little gal that just turned 18 years old,” he said. “Me, her and her brother went to that church.”
Ms. Mahaffey died in 2003. His survivors include his sons George and Clarence; several grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.
After he was discharged from the Navy, Mr. Mahaffey returned to Louisiana, where he worked for Southwestern Bell, the regional phone company, for at least 30 years, his grandson said. Mr. Mahaffey, who was 5-foot-3, was a pole climber who refused to accept jobs that would require him to work indoors, John Mahaffey said.“They kept trying to give him promotions, to come inside, to take a desk job or to run the crews or to be a supervisor, and he would never take it,” he said.

…

In an interview on Sunday, John Mahaffey, his grandson, said that Mr. Mahaffey would talk about his time in the Navy only when his relatives would ask him about it, which they did often.

According to the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, there are 14 remaining Pearl Harbor survivors.

John Mahaffey said his family had been told that his grandfather was one of just two or three remaining survivors from the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 10, 2025.

Monday, March 10th, 2025

It has been a rough few days for baseball.

Frank Saucier, outfielder for the St. Louis Browns. He had a limited career due to injuries and the Korean War. Baseball Reference.

He is perhaps most famous as a historical footnote.

He was the only major league player removed from a game by his manager in favor of a 3-foot-7 circus performer.

Yes, he was the player who got benched in favor of Eddie Gaedel.

Art Schallock, pitcher for the Yankees and Orioles. He was, at the time of his death, the oldest living major league player. Baseball Reference.

Athol Fugard, South African playwright. He’s another one of those folks I’ve heard a lot about, but have no personal experience with his work.

It also hasn’t been a good time for music. D’Wayne Wiggins, of Tony! Toni! Tone!.

Joey Molland, the last surviving member of Badfinger. I feel like this is one of those areas where pigpen51 is better equipped to comment than I am.

Geoff Nicholson, author. I’ve never read any of his books, but the NYT obit makes him sound interesting.

His death, in a hospital, was from chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, his partner, Caroline Gannon, said. It is a rare bone marrow cancer, though, as Mr. Nicholson mordantly observed, “not rare enough, obviously.”

…

Mr. Nicholson was married for a time to Dian Hanson, a former model who edited a fetishist magazine, Leg Show. After living together in New York, the couple moved to Los Angeles when Ms. Hanson became the editor of sex-themed books for the luxury art publisher Taschen. Mr. Nicholson reveled in the 1960s kitsch of his home in a geodesic dome in the Hollywood Hills.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits, Sports, Theatre | 1 Comment »

All gun books, all the time!

Friday, March 7th, 2025

This time on “What’s Been Added to my Library of Gun Books” recently, a special all gun books edition! No diversions into subjects such as absinthe or old bibles. Just some new and new old gun books. But I am going to include a gun crankery photo.

Since this is going to be gun book heavy, I’m following my usual policy of inserting a jump so the non-book, non-gun, and non-book non-gun people can skip easily to the next post…

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Posted in Books, Guns, History, Hoplobibilophilia, Sarcasm, Smith and Wesson | Comments Closed

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