Gregg Easterbrook posted a new Tuesday Morning Quarterback on August 1st. We missed it because we were preparing for our trip.
What does he have to say?
Well, that sounds ominous.
Doing a copy and paste into Word as plain text gets us a word count of 4,210 words. That doesn’t seem too bad by the standards of previous TMQs, but this is a “preview”, not a regular season column.
And here’s the nut graph:
Would you believe I actually got to engage in a little bit of recoil therapy this weekend? Thanks to KR Training for letting us use their range after the class, and thanks to Greg Ellifritz for putting on a great class: “The Explosive Threat: Recognizing, Detecting, and Neutralizing the Terrorist Bomber”.
I didn’t do a lot of shooting because it was hotter than the hinges of Hell, and we didn’t have a lot of time before our dinner engagement. But I did manage to function check a couple of carry guns, and am reasonably satisfied with their performance.
I finished Ammunition, Demystified: The (non) Bubba’s Guide to How Ammo Really Works on my trip. My opinion hasn’t changed. I absolutely do recommend it. But you should be aware that there’s some pretty heavy duty math in the book. I think most folks could probably benefit from it even if times tables give them a headache. My only other issue with the book came when Mr. Siewert discussed some ballistic work he did back in the day with a company that was making air rifle pellets. My issue? “Where were you when I was a teenager, Mr. Siewert?”
And now for some more gun books from the stack…
There’s a story in The Register about the Johannes Willbold “Houston, We Have a Problem: Analyzing the Security of Low Earth Orbit Satellites” presentation at Black Hat.
But I’m not going to link it. Instead, I’m going to link the Hacker News discussion of the story, which I think is more interesting (and contains a link to the story itself).
There was a suspicious package discovered on Saturday night, and DEFCON was evacuated until it was dealt with. There’s a lot of speculation floating around that I don’t want to link to, so I’m only providing the official statement.
Here’s a really detailed and clear write-up of “A Pain in the NAS: Exploiting Cloud Connectivity to PWN Your NAS”.
And here’s more on “All Cops Are Broadcasting: Breaking TETRA After Decades in the Shadows”, including the team’s paper for the USENIX Security Symposium.
I know I pointed folks to the media server the other day for preliminary presentation slides, but I want to call this presentation out specifically: “Private Keys in Public Places”.
Shelley Smith, actress. Other credits include the 1989 “Dragnet” revival, “Magnum P.I.” (the original), and “Cover Up“.
Linda Haynes, actress. Other credits include “Judgment: The Court Martial of Lieutenant William Calley”, “In Like Flint” (uncredited), and “Paper Moon” (the TV series: yes, there was a TV series based on the movie. It lasted 13 episodes.)
One of the guns that is currently high on my want list is a Smith and Wesson Model 53.
The Model 53 is a weird gun. It was designed and chambered to shoot the .22 Jet cartridge, which is a .357 Magnum necked down to take a .222 bullet. This was a relic of the time when people were experimenting with odd .22 caliber wildcat cartridges in revolvers.
I’ll probably write some more about the Jet when I get mine, but for now I’ll just say the .22 Jet and the Model 53 were not a complete success. Fortunately, the Model 53 can also bet set up to fire .22 LR: either by swapping out the .22 Jet cylinder for a .22 LR cylinder (it was fairly common for the guns to ship with both) or by using special inserts in the .22 Jet cylinder.
The 53 shipped with 4″, 6″, and 8 3/8″ barrels. I’m pretty set on getting one with a 8 3/8″ barrel, as that seems ideal for varmint hunting.
I’ve actually just found a really nice Model 53 with an 8 3/8″ barrel and both .22 LR and .22 Jet cylinders…that I won’t be buying.
Why?
Three reasons:
1) The estimated auction price is between $60,000 and $90,000.
2) It is really really really nice. Too nice to shoot.
3) (related to #2 above): it was Elvis’s gun.
“Elvis’ Guns: The Bicentennial Smith & Wesson” from Rock Island Auction.
RIA lot number 1504: Elvis Presley’s Exhibition Quality S&W Model 53 Revolver.
I saw this gun, up close and personal like, at the 2022 S&WCA Collector’s Association Symposium. it is a beautiful gun, and if any of my readers have a spare $90,000 I encourage you to submit a bid. Better photos than I can take are in the RIA listing.
Slides are up for Thursday’s Black Hat presentations. At least some of them, including:
Here’s a link to the DEFCON 31 presentations on the DEFCON media server.
Thursday’s DEFCON presentations that I was interested in:
As I noted earlier, the current state of Twitter makes it almost impossible for me to keep up with and provide presentation updates. Your best bet (and I feel like a lazy journalist saying this) might be to check out the decks on the media server for any presentations you are interested in, check out those folks Twitter or Mastodon feeds (if you’re on one of those services, and they’ve put that in their deck) and look for updates there.
Tips in comments are welcome.
I don’t want to seem snarky here, though I am going to snark a little bit on a certain media outlet and not the people who died. This is a tragedy, and I think there’s an important lesson here.
Three people and a dog died in Elgin on Wednesday.
The reports say that they were hunting hogs. One of their dogs escaped and fell into a cistern, and one of the hunters went after it. He passed out, and two people went in after him. The fourth one stayed out and called 911.
One major media outlet claims they died from “high levels of hydrogen — a toxic gas“. While it is true that hydrogen is toxic, in the sense that if you just breathe hydrogen instead of air YOU WILL DIE, more literate outlets are reporting it was actually an accumulation of hydrogen sulfide (H2S).
H2S is nasty.
The key point here, though, is: your safety is the priority. If someone goes into a confined space and passes out, I know the desire to help is hard to resist. But: don’t do it, unless you are a trained responder with self-contained breathing equipment. Otherwise, you’re just giving the first responders two victims to rescue instead of one.
It can be told now: I was in the Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia area Thursday of last week through Tuesday of this week. I kept this under my hat for security reasons.
If it seems like an odd place to travel on a vacation, it sort of wasn’t a vacation: my mother and I went up for the funeral of my late uncle Kenneth Eberhart, who lived in Virginia Beach for many years.
I’m not sure I want to talk more about that now, but I probably will when Veterans Day comes around. And I’m a firm believer in putting the “fun” back into “funeral”. So let’s talk about some other stuff.
I only visited one gun store on the trip, because I only had time to visit one. I picked Bob’s Gun Shop because their web site says they’ve been open since 1945, and they buy and sell guns. The folks at Bob’s were very nice, and I’m glad I picked that store. It’s a big store – three floors, with a pistol range on the top floor. But I didn’t buy anything.
I visited two used bookstores. Smith Discount Books was the best of the two, but I only bought one small gun book there. That will be in the roundup at some point.
My one regret is that I ran out of time before I could visit the Military Aviation Museum. If I had been there for just one more day…
We had a lot of really good meals. I had two conditions for this trip:
(Me? Grinding an axe?)
Among the places we dined that are worth writing about:
I’d like to thank the various family members who are handling Ken’s business and were there for the funeral. I’m not going to name them here for privacy reasons, but thank you, various family members.
Also, many thanks to the Gator Volksmarch Club (AVA-13). Ken was an avid volksmarcher, and many of his friends from the Gators were at the funeral. The club is holding a remembrance walk and picnic for him on October 7: details are here.
Robbie Robertson. THR. Pitchfork.
I haven’t seen “The Last Waltz” and kind of want to (it is available on Criterion) but I’ve seen it described as “Martin Scorsese interviews Robbie Robertson. Also, he interviews some of Robbie Robertson’s friends about how great Robbie Robertson is.”
…
I may be being a little unfair to Mr. Robertson, but it seems like everyone in The Band who wasn’t Robbie Robertson didn’t get along with him. When one person has an issue, okay, one person has an issue. But when the entire band has issues…
On a related side note, should I give pigpen51 a guest account here and leave writing the music-related obits up to him?
This is breaking news: Johnny Hardwick, who voiced “Dale Gribble” on “King of the Hill”. IMDB.
Edited to add: THR obit for Johnny Hardwick.
The Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas started today.
DEFCON 31 starts tomorrow, though it seems like Friday is when things pick up.
Despite the recent, and much appreciated, shout-out from Borepatch, I’m feeling kind of ambivalent about trying to keep up with DEFCON this year.
My recent trip (write-up coming in the next few days, promise) blew a pretty big hole in my schedule. I haven’t had any time to do prep work for DEFCON/Black Hat. And I have a whole bunch of things I want to do, and so little time to do them in.
I also rely heavily on Twitter for links to presentations. And the current state of Twitter makes that almost impossible.
It also feels like DEFCON has moved past me. It used to feel like a gathering of one of my tribes. Now it feels like…something else. I note that DEFCON admission is now $460. And you don’t get free admission, or even a discount, if you go to Black Hat.
Still, tradition is tradition. So let’s see how badly I can do this.
One thing you can say about travel: it is good for blog content.
Some things I found while I was on the road. Why don’t we start off with my “You can call me Jimmy Lileks” mode.
My family sort of has a tradition of accumulating matchbooks. There were a lot of matchbooks where I was, many for restaurants that have gone out of business.
The significance of the “Cathedral Buffet” explained here.
I like ships. I like maritime history. I picked this out because I was curious about the history of the SS Mardi Gras.
Turns out, the SS Mardi Gras was the very first Carnival Cruise Lines ship.
Ted Arison bought the ship in 1972, renamed it, and it went out for its first Carnival cruise on March 11, 1972. It sailed for Carnival until 1993, bounced around various other cruise lines, and was finally broken up for scrap in 2003.
I remember Billy Beer, even though I wasn’t of drinking age at the time. But I do not have any recollection of “J.R. Ewing’s Private Stock”. (It should come as no surprise to the Texas contingent among my readers that “Private Stock” was produced at the Pearl Brewery.)
Just for fun.
Also, just for fun, regional variations among snack flavors:
The Old Bay flavored cheese curls (there are also potato chips) are a little weird, but not that surprising to me. I recently bought some Old Bay flavored goldfish for the Saturday Dining Conspiracy’s collection of odd snacks.
“Roast Pork Sandwich” does seem a little odd to me.
Someone asked me what the difference between “tomato pie” and “deep dish pizza with no meat or cheese” was. This led me to look up “tomato pie”, and I wish I had not.
I’m home now. Regular blogging will resume later, including something of a trip report. And some more gun book blogging is coming soon.
In the meantime:
Robert Swan, actor.
Other credits include “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America”, “Somewhere in Time”, and (interestingly) the “Nightcrawlers” episode of the 1985 “Twilight Zone” revival. Lawrence is right: that is one heck of a segment.
Rodriguez, the singer/songwriter who was the subject of “Searching for Sugar Man”. I feel bad whenever I post a music related obit, as I just don’t have the knowledge to be able to do these well. pigpen51, would you like to step in here?
Still on the road, heading home tomorrow (so it will be a travel day, but I expect to get in mid to late afternoon) so this will be quick and short.
William Friedkin. As I told Lawrence when he sent this to me, “Damn.” THR. I have an ambition to see all of his films, even though some of them are hard to get on home video.
And a few years back, I actually saw “Sorcerer” at the Alamo Drafthouse…with William Friedkin in attendance and answering questions from the audience afterwards. The one thing that stood out to me: he had no tolerance for people who Could. Not. Get. To. The. Point.
Want to see that.
Sharon Farrell. As the subhead notes, she was in the good “Hawaii 5-0”. But I use “good” with reservations, as she was a regular in the final season, which is generally considered to be pretty weak.
Other credits include “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” (“Chopper”), “Night of the Comet”. and “Harry O”.
John Gosling, keyboard player for the Kinks.
On the road again. Blogging will be catch as catch can for a few days.
Marc Gilpin, actor. Other credits include “The Legend of the Lone Ranger”, “Fantasy Island”, and “CHiPs”.
Paul Reubens, aka “Pee-wee Herman”. NYT (archived). THR. Tributes.
Angus Cloud, actor on “Euphoria”. He was 25.
Betty Ann Bruno has passed away at 91.
She was a three-time News Emmy winner. But before all that, as a seven-year-old, she was one of the Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz”.
Affiliate link to The Munchkin Diary: My Personal Yellow Brick Road on Amazon.
As I write this, I am seeing reports from two sources that Paul Reubens, aka “Pee-Wee Herman”, has passed at 70. Here’s THR‘s very short preliminary story: expect an obit watch tomorrow.
Inga Swenson, actress.
Other credits include “Barnaby Jones”, “The Rookies”, “Earth II”, and “Vega$”.
Magnus White, cyclist.
He was 17, and died after being struck by a car on a training ride.
Devyn Reiley and Zach Colliemoreno were killed over the weekend in a plane crash at Oshkosh’s AirVenture 2023. Ms. Reiley was 30, Mr. Colliemoreno was 20. She was co-founder of the Texas Warbird Museum, and the daughter of former NFL player Bruce Collie.
Two other people, Mark Peterson and Thomas Volz, were killed in a second accident at AirVenture: their passing is also noted in the AVWeb article above.
Randy Meisner, formerly of the Eagles. (The NYT obit is still labeled as “A full obituary will appear shortly.”) THR.
Edited to add 7/29: full NYT obit (archived).
He left the band around the time “Hotel California” was released. Mr. Meisner also played with Poco, and later played “with the likes of Joe Walsh, Dan Fogelberg, Richard Marx, Bob Welch and James Taylor.”
“I was always kind of shy,” he said in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, noting that his bandmates had wanted him to stand center stage to sing “Take It to the Limit,” but that he preferred to be “out of the spotlight.” Then, one night in Knoxville, he said, he caught the flu. “We did two or three encores, and Glenn wanted another one,” he said, referring to his bandmate, the singer-songwriter who died in 2016.
“I told them I couldn’t do it, and we got into a spat,” Mr. Meisner told the magazine. “That was the end.”
Bo Goldman, screenwriter.
IMDB.
Jerome Coopersmith, theater and television writer.
“Retire In Sunny Hawaii…Forever” from “The Hawaii Five-O Home Page”. My memory is that this was a pretty solid episode, and I’m glad Mike Quigley agrees.
IMDB.
Lelia Goldoni, actress. Other credits include “Theatre of Death”, “The Lloyd Bridges Show”, and “Johnny Staccato”.
Sinéad O’Connor. NYT (archive). THR. Tributes. Pitchfork. Tributes.
Scott Cobb will be paroled in August after 34 years in prison.
Johnny Lujack, one of Notre Dame’s greats. He was 98.
Lujack was an outstanding passer and a fine runner at quarterback, as well as a brilliant defensive halfback, a place-kicker and occasionally a punter. He was a two-time all-American and played in only one losing football game at Notre Dame. He also played baseball and basketball and ran track.
He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1960 and had been the oldest living winner of the Heisman, the prize awarded annually to college football’s leading player.
“He’s probably the greatest all-around athlete I’ve ever seen in college football,” Frank Tripucka, the backup to Lujack at Notre Dame and a longtime pro quarterback, told Steve Delsohn for the oral history “Talking Irish” (1998.) “He was six foot and maybe 180, but he was just a very tough guy from western Pennsylvania.”
…
Lujack took over as Notre Dame’s quarterback in November 1943 when Angelo Bertelli left for military service. He took the Irish to a 9-1 record and their first No. 1 national ranking.
He left Notre Dame for the Navy during World War II and served aboard a vessel chasing German submarines in the English Channel. He returned in 1946, when the Irish fielded an overpowering team composed largely of war veterans.
When Notre Dame played Army in November 1946 in a matchup of unbeaten teams, Lujack was hobbled by a sprained ankle, but he played nevertheless, on both offense and defense. He threw three interceptions, but in the third quarter, playing at defensive halfback, he saved the day for Notre Dame.
Coming across the field, he pulled down Army fullback Doc Blanchard, the 1945 Heisman winner, on the Irish 36-yard line, making a low tackle as Blanchard raced down the left sideline.
“I was the last guy between him and a touchdown,” Lujack told The New York Times in 1981. “I read afterward where I was the only guy ever to have made a one-on-one tackle on him. If I’d known that during the game, I’d probably have missed the tackle.”
…
Lujack took Notre Dame to a 9-0 record and a third national championship in 1947, his Heisman Trophy year, when he passed for nine touchdowns and 777 yards and ran for 139, averaging more than 11 yards per carry. The Associated Press named him America’s male athlete of the year.
In January 1948, the Bears signed Lujack to a four-year contract and a bonus, for a total of about $80,000. (A little more than $1 million in today’s money).
Lujack led the N.F.L. in pass completions (162), yards passing (2,658) and touchdown passes (23) in 1949, when he threw for six touchdowns and passed for a league-record 468 yards in a game against the Chicago Cardinals. He was a two-time Pro Bowl player and was named a first-team all-N.F.L. player in 1950. He retired after four pro seasons to become a backfield coach at Notre Dame.
Not Howdy Doody time.
I promised I wasn’t going to do any more gun books until “Day of the .45, part 2.” went up. Now that I have posted it, I have a large stack to go through, including more than one Samworth, so I’m going to start trying to knock some of those off.
First, some ground rules:
I’m going be posting some newer books, ones that are readily available on Amazon or from the usual suspects. For those, I will be posting Amazon affiliate links, and I will be posting commentary if I’ve read the book, but I won’t be posting cover photos or a lot of bibliographic detail. The Amazon links should give you enough information to order the book, or to find it from some other vendor, if you’re really interested, and photos of readily available contemporary books will just make these posts longer.
One of my side projects that I won’t be documenting in a lot of detail here: I’ve decided that I want to try to accumulate a complete set of Gun Digest. I’ve found that GD frequently has interesting articles on either gun or gun book history, and I think it would be useful to have them around for reference. I probably won’t be documenting those here, though I may mention them in passing.
My self-imposed limits for this project are: I’m buying them used, in very good to excellent condition, and I’m trying not to pay more than $10 for each one. So far, I have the 1998 edition (which has a very good article on the Winchester Model 52) and the 2005 edition (nice article on the guns of Roy Chapman Andrews). The 2010 edition (with the profile of E.C. Crossman) is on the way, as is another Samworth book by Crossman.
With those ground rules set:
Pamela Blair, actress. Other credits include John Huston’s film of “Annie”, “The Cosby Mysteries”, and “Law and Order”.
Reeves Callaway. He made cars go fast.
…
“They came to us,” he told the Truck Show Podcast in 2021, “and they said, ‘Look, could you, within one year’s time, develop an Alfa twin-turbo system for us that we could use to compete against the Maserati?’”
He did, making about three dozen modified vehicles, but then Alfa Romeo lost interest in the project. Yet somehow one of those modified Alfas found its way to General Motors’ Black Lake testing ground in Michigan, and soon GM was asking if Mr. Callaway could do the same thing to its Chevrolet Corvette.
“This was a huge opportunity, to become associated with Corvette,” he said. “So we saluted and said, ‘Yes, sir; immediately, sir; may I have another, sir?’”
…
In late 1988, he and his engineers tweaked the Corvette some more, taking aim at 250 miles per hour with a version of the car that they called the Sledgehammer.
“We basically decided that 250 m.p.h. was a reachable goal,” Mr. Callaway told the McClatchy News Service. “But if it was to have any meaning, the car had to be docile at low speeds as well. It had to retain all the things that make a car usable on the street, such as air-conditioning.”
To prove the point, his team drove the car from Connecticut to a seven-and-a-half-mile oval track in Ohio. (It got 16 miles per gallon, they said.) At the track, it hit 210 m.p.h. on its first run, 223 on its second. After more tweaking, it reached 254.76 on its third attempt, a record for a car made for normal driving. Mr. Callaway’s company, in its announcement of his death, said the record stood for more than 20 years.
…
Ron Sexton, comedian and regular on ‘The Bob & Tom Show’.
I did not know there was a Yogi Berra stamp.
I guess these were issued in 2021, which would explain why I can’t find first day covers on the USPS web site. But my local post office still had sheets of them.
Also, postage is 66 cents now. Good thing the Yogi stamps are forever stamps. After all, as someone once said, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”