The street finds its own uses for things.
New Jersey business owner arrested for using a drone to drop dye packets into local swimming pools.
Oddly, it seems like his business was not a pool service business, but a heating and cooling service company. If it was a pool service company, that’d at least be understandable to me.
Somebody out there is listening to me.
NYT obit for Marilyn Lovell (archived).
On Christmas Day 1968, while Mr. Lovell was on the Apollo 8 mission, the first manned spaceflight to orbit the moon, Ms. Lovell answered her door to find a representative from Neiman Marcus carrying a large box with moon-themed décor. In it was a mink coat and a note The New York Times would later describe as “the most romantic card in the universe”: “To Marilyn from the Man in the Moon.” Ms. Lovell did her household chores that day in pajamas and her new mink.
On that mission, Mr. Lovell named a triangle-shaped mountain on the lunar surface Mount Marilyn. It would later serve as a landmark for astronauts, and in 2017, after campaigning by Mr. Lovell, the name was officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union.
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When Ms. Lovell’s 12-year-old daughter, Susan, became hysterical on seeing a priest at their door, Ms. Lovell found a way to soothe her. “Do you really think the best astronaut either one of us knows is going to forget something as simple as how to turn his spaceship around and fly it home?” she asked her daughter, according to Mr. Lovell’s memoir.
Reporters with notebooks, microphones and television cameras filled up the Lovell family lawn and driveway. She fielded a call from President Richard M. Nixon: “I just wanted you to know, Marilyn, that your president and the entire nation are watching your husband’s progress with concern,” he said. “Everything is being done to bring Jim home.”
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When parachutes were seen on TV billowing out from the spaceship, guiding it safely to the ocean surface, a couple of famous astronauts in Ms. Lovell’s living room, Mr. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, opened champagne. President Nixon called with a new message: “I wanted to know if you’d care to accompany me to Hawaii to pick up your husband.”
She replied, “Mr. President, I’d love to.”
NYT obit for Douglas Lenat (archived).
Running across dozens of computers, Eurisko could discover possibilities that Dr. Lenat — and other humans — had not. But it needed help from human judgment. Machines could not be truly intelligent, he realized, unless they too had common sense.
The project was called Cyc. He set out to define the fundamental but largely unspoken laws that outline how the world works, including everything from “you can’t be in two places at the same time” to “when drinking a cup of coffee, you hold the open end up.” He knew it could take decades — perhaps centuries — to complete the project. But he was determined to try.
In recent years, the Cyc project — and the rule-based approach to A.I. research it represented — has fallen out of favor among leading A.I. researchers. Rather than defining intelligence rule by rule, line of code by line of code, the giants of the tech industry are now focused on systems that learn skills by analyzing massive amounts of digital data. This is how they build popular chatbots like ChatGPT.
Many leading researchers now believe that this kind of sweeping data analysis will eventually reproduce common sense and reasoning. But as today’s computers struggle with even simple tasks and play fast and loose with the truth, others believe that the industry can learn from Dr. Lenat and his never-ending struggle to build common sense by hand.
My favorite Dr. Lenat story is partially in the article: the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron story.
In brief: Game Designers Workshop used to (still may) run a contest where you had a trillion “credits” to design the best possible fleet, according to the rulebook. The contestants were pitted against each other until one fleet won. Dr. Lenet fed the rules into Eurisko and iterated until it came up with what seemed to him to be an optimal strategy. He entered the 1981 tournament with his Eurisko designed fleet…and won.
The next year, GDW changed the rules. Dr. Lenet fed the revised rules into Eurisko, entered the tournament again…and won.
What the NYT obit doesn’t say: The third year, GDW told Dr. Lenet that if he entered the tournament with one of his weird computer designed fleets, they’d just cancel it completely. According to the Traveller wiki, he agreed to accept “the title ‘Grand Admiral’ as consolation.
Steve Harwell, former lead singer of Smashmouth. THR. Pitchfork.
Not much to say about this, really. 56 is awfully young, but all the stories go out of the way to mention his issues. And I was never a big fan of the band, with the possible exception of “Walkin’ on the Sun”.
Gayle Hunnicutt. Other credits include “Mister Roberts” (the TV series), “Get Smart”, and “Marlowe” (the 1969 movie with James Garner). (Hattip: Lawrence.)
I have seen a bunch of reports, but none I feel comfortable linking to, that Doug Lenet, artificial intelligence pioneer and good Austin guy, has passed away. When I find a good obit, I’ll post it on the blog.
Bill Richardson, former Congressperson, former governor of New Mexico, and negotiator.
His separate humanitarian missions on behalf of some 80 families won the release of hostages and American servicemen in countries hostile to the United States, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and Colombia.
“I plead guilty to photo ops and getting human beings rescued and improving the lives of human beings,” he once said.
Marilyn Lovell, wife of astronaut Jim Lovell. I will probably post an update here when I find a better obit.
I know I’ve said “I’ll post a better obit” twice in one post, but it seems like, with the holiday weekend, we’re sort of in a dry spot for reporting about most things.
Jimmy Buffett. THR. Pitchfork.
Thing I did not know: Mr. Buffett and Jerry Jeff Walker were buddies.
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The Margaritaville Store on Amazon, just in case you want your own frozen concoction maker. Frankly, $350 seems steep.
It looks like the nearest Margaritaville restaurant to me is in San Antonio. But there is one in Tulsa, Mike.
IMDB. That was the bad “Hawaii Five-0”. He was also in “Repo Man” (!!!!).
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Mr. Buffett was also an accomplished author; he was one of only six writers, along with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and William Styron, to top both The Times’s fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. By the time he wrote “Tales From Margaritaville” (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he once embraced.
“I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy,” he told The Washington Post in 1989. “I’m not old, but I’m getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.”
“I still have a very happy life,” he went on. “I just don’t do the things I used to do.”
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An avid pilot, Mr. Buffett owned several aircraft and often flew himself to his shows. In 1994, he crashed one of his airplanes in waters near Nantucket, Mass., while taking off. He survived the accident, swimming to safety with only minor injuries.
In 1996, another of his planes, Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by the Jamaican police, who suspected the craft was being used to smuggle marijuana. Onboard the airplane, which sustained little damage, were Bono of U2; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; and Mr. Buffett’s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later admitted that the incident was a case of mistaken identity, inspiring Mr. Buffett to write the song “Jamaica Mistaica,” a droll sendup of the affair.
I’ve never been a Parrot Head, but I did own a copy of “Margaritaville” on a 45 RPM single. (Kids, ask your parents, etc.) I may have a rare (for me) margarita tonight in his honor.
Gil Brandt, one of the men who built the Dallas Cowboys.
Mr. Brandt joined the Cowboys in 1960, before their first season, and worked beside Tom Landry, the taciturn head coach, and Tex Schramm, the innovative president and general manager, to make them a perennial winner and a two-time Super Bowl champion. In time, the Cowboys became known as “America’s Team.”
As the team’s vice president of player personnel, Mr. Brandt was known for expanding his scouting beyond major-conference schools. He drafted future stars like the wide receiver Bob Hayes, the defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, the offensive lineman Rayfield Wright and the linebacker Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson, who all played at historically Black colleges and universities.
Mr. Hayes, Mr. Wright, and the quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman are among the nine players whose drafting Mr. Brandt oversaw who were later elected to the Hall of Fame.
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At Mr. Schramm’s suggestion, Mr. Brandt began using a massive IBM computer in 1962 to meticulously evaluate prospects. He assigned numerical values to many personality traits, including character and competitiveness, and to many physical qualities like quickness and strength; stored them on punch cards; and loaded them into the computer.
The result was a database that enabled the Cowboys to sift through information quickly and comprehensively, weigh the talents of prospects and make recommendations to Mr. Landry and Mr. Schramm. This gave the team a competitive edge.
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Mohamed al-Fayed. I’m not sure how many people remember that name.
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He’s probably better remembered as the father of Emad “Dodi” al-Fayed, who was killed with Princess Dianna and Henri Paul.
As rumors and conspiracy theories swirled, Mr. Fayed declared that the two had been murdered by “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together.” He said they had been engaged to marry and maintained that they had called him an hour before the crash to tell him that she was pregnant. Buckingham Palace and the princess’s family denounced his remarks as malicious fantasy.
The deaths inspired waves of books, articles and investigations of conspiracy theories, as well as a period of soul-searching among Britons, who resented the royal family’s standoffish behavior and were caught up in displays of mass grief. In 2006, the British police ruled the crash an accident.
And in 2008, a British coroner’s jury rejected all conspiracy theories involving the royal family, British intelligence services and others. It attributed the deaths to “gross negligence” by the driver and the pursuing paparazzi. It also said a French pathologist had found that Diana was not pregnant.
Mr. Fayed called the verdict biased, but he and his lawyers did not pursue the matter further. “I’ve had enough,” he told Britain’s ITV News. “I’m leaving this to God to get my revenge.”
The Elvis gun went for $199,750. I don’t know if that’s inclusive of the bidder’s premium. (Previously.)
I wrote a while back about the criminal charges against Thomas Moyer, Apple’s security head and the somewhat related (I think) case against former Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith.
I missed, however, that the case against Moyer was dismissed in 2021.
But: a California appellate court reinstated the charges last week.
Appellate decision here. Interesting quote:
During the relevant time frame, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office rarely issued CCW licenses. Indeed, the office’s practice was to not even process an application for a CCW license absent a special instruction to do so. Only Sheriff Laurie Smith and a small number of others in the Sheriff’s Office had the authority to give such instructions. One of those individuals was Rick Sung, who appears to have run Sheriff Smith’s 2018 re-election campaign and after the election became the undersheriff, second in command to the sheriff. Undersheriff Sung also had authority to place license applications on hold even after licenses were signed by the sheriff.
He was one of the children profiled in the original “7 Up” movie and the followup films through “63 Up” in 2019. He worked at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Professor Hitchon pursued research on nuclear fusion, then switched to computational plasma physics. Once in a while, Mr. Apted would ask him about his work.
“When I try to explain,” Professor Hitchon told Physics Today in 2000, “his eyes glaze over.”
He published more than 100 journal articles and three books, the university’s posting said. He retired in 2022.
As best as I can tell, he was only the second member of the group to pass. (Lynn Johnson died in 2013.)
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. He was 49. Pancreatic cancer got him.
Mr. Wurzelbacher was better known as “Joe the Plumber”.
Wurzelbacher, the owner of a plumbing business at the time, rose to national acclaim when he confronted Obama at a 2008 campaign event in Toledo, Ohio, accusing the Democratic presidential candidate’s tax plan of conflicting with the American dream.
Obama countered that the plan would help small businesses grow more quickly.
Bob Barker. THR. Tributes. Variety.
Claude Ruiz-Picasso, son of Pablo and administrator of his estate (through July of this year).
Alexandra Paul, Olympic figure skater from Canada. She was 31.
David LaFlamme, of It’s a Beautiful Day. As usual, I feel guilty not saying more about this, but the band was…not exactly before my time, but I was terribly young then.
Arleen Sorkin, actress. Other credits include “Perry Mason: The Case of the Killer Kiss” (which was the last Perry Mason movie with Raymond Burr), “Frasier”, and “The New Mike Hammer”.
…Bob Barker tomorrow, so things have time to settle and obits have time to be corrected.
Two things that popped up in my reading that I thought were worth sharing.
1. CrimeReads has a fairly good piece by Keith Roysdon (generally one of their less pretentious writers): “To Film and Thrive in L.A.: Three Lesser-Praised Friedkin Films Are Classics“.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen “To Live and Die in L.A.” and I’d kind of like to see it again. My feelings about “Sorcerer” are well known. I’ve never seen “Cruising” but I do want to as part of my “watch all of Friedkin’s films” project.
2. “Facts of Life: For Outdoorsmen and Ordinary Gentlemen” by Richard (The Scout Rifle Study) Mann.
I think there’s some pretty sound advice here. You should interpret that as “it agrees with my prejudices”. For example:
And:
Bray Wyatt, pro wrestler. He was 36.
Karol Bobko, astronaut. He was the first pilot of the Challenger. He flew two more shuttle missions (on Atlantis and Discovery).
Hersha Parady, actress. Other credits include “The Waltons”, “Bearcats!”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Cry Silence”, season 6, episode 2, credited as “Receptionist”.)
Sliman Bensmaia. He wasn’t somebody I’d heard of before his obit was published, but he sounds like a person whose passing leaves a hole in the world.
Dr. Bensmaia was a neuroscientist. His specialty was the sense of touch, and how it worked.
Dr. Bensmaia was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in the 2000s when the Defense Department, faced with a mounting number of wounded veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, committed $100 million to prosthetics research.
Scientists were making enormous strides in the field of brain-controlled prosthetics, but giving users of such devices a sense of touch was still largely uncharted territory. Patients could not actually feel what they were doing: whether a material was rough or smooth, if it was moving or stable, even where their limb was in space.
Dr. Bensmaia (pronounced bens-MAY-ah) saw his task as taking the next step: understanding how the brain receives and processes information through touch, which in turn could allow prosthetics to perform more akin to an organic limb.
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He and his team would connect electrodes to areas of the monkeys’ brains, poke spots on their hands and then analyze where the brains received that sensory information, as well as how the animals reacted. They then used electrodes to simulate those pokes, in an attempt to mimic the experience.
“When you imagine moving your arm, that part of the brain is still active, but nothing happens due to the lost connection,” he told the magazine Wireless Design and Development in 2014. “The idea behind the project was to stick electrodes in the brain and stimulate it directly to produce some percepts of touch to better control the modular limb.”
Most scientists focus their labs on either pure or applied research. Dr. Bensmaia’s group — some two dozen undergraduates, grad students, postdocs and technicians — managed to do both. He employed neuroscientists, but also teams of engineers and computer programmers.
“He ran his lab like a small company,” David Freedman, a neurobiologist at Chicago, said in a phone interview.
Such coordination was necessary for the complicated work Dr. Bensmaia engaged in. The sense of touch involves a wide array of finely measured inputs — pressure, heat, movement, hardness — all of which are communicated to the brain through some 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections.
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Dr. Bensmaia was 49.
Terry Funk, noted professional wrestler.
He also did some acting, including “Road House”: IMDB.
Nancy Frangione, actress. Other credits include “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”, “In the Line of Duty: A Cop for the Killing”, and “Matlock”.
This isn’t quite an obit, but Stephen Wolfram wrote a really long (35,000+ words) remembrance of his friend Edward Fredkin. (Previously.)
I have several favorite bookstores.
One of those is Chartwell Booksellers in New York, which I have never visited but have done business with by mail. Chartwell is a bookshop specializing in Winston Churchill books and related items.
They turned 40 on April 11th of this year, and have been celebrating by doing a series of readings. The first one was John Lithgow reading from William Manchester’s The Last Lion.
I thought some folks might get a kick out of the most recent reading: Bryan Cranston reads from Churchill: A Biography by Roy Jenkins.
They are less than halfway through the series (the Cranston video is #19 out of a planned 40), so it might be worth subscribing to their YouTube channel so you can see what comes next.
Here’s something else I thought was interesting. I was tipped off to it by the second edition of Holstory, R.E.D. Nichols and John Witty’s book about the history of holsters in the 20th Century. I’ve written about that book previously (in both editions) so I won’t repeat myself here.
This is legendary holster designer Chic Gaylord’s appearance on “What’s My Line?” on May 1, 1960.
I’ve set the video to start with Mr. Gaylord’s appearance, but it won’t hurt you to watch the whole thing. The guest before him was Gloria Bale, a very cute trapeze artist. (If she was 17 at the time, she’d be 80 today, so there’s a chance she’s still alive. Miss Bale, if you’re out there somewhere, I hope you had a wonderful life.) And the mystery guest is Laurence Harvey.
This is a nice flashback to a time when guns were less demonized then they are today (well, NYC possibly excepted). I really like Dorothy Kilgallen’s “Ooooo, I’d like one of those.” My only complaint is that they don’t show Mr. Gaylord with any of his products, but I’m sure there were practical and legal reasons why they couldn’t do that.
“Will this parade of Samworth books ever end?” cries my loyal reader.
Actually, yes. I think this is the final Samworth I have to catalog…so far. I’m still short of a complete set.
Missed this previously, but Mike the Musicologist pinged it over to me.
Patrick Wojahn, the former mayor of College Park, Maryland, took a guilty plea.
Sentencing is scheduled for November 20th, per the article.
NYT obit for Inga Swenson, for the record. (Previously.)
John Devitt, Australian swimmer who won two gold medals in the 1960 Olympics…and there’s a story behind that.
...beyond Australia he may be best remembered for his part in the finish of the 100-meter freestyle final in Rome, one of the more freakish moments in sports history. It led to an overhaul of the way the placings and times for swimming races were decided, with electronic timers and photos replacing judgment calls.
Devitt, at 23 and a lean 6-foot-1 in 1960, was captain of the Australian men’s swimming team for the second consecutive Olympics and the race favorite. One opponent was Lance Larson of Monterey Park, Calif., a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Southern California.
In the eight-man final, Devitt was clearly ahead until the last 20 meters, when Larson, in an adjoining lane, caught up to him. They touched the finish wall almost together, with Larson seemingly slightly ahead. Each congratulated the other, and they then both waited for the official results. The wait was excruciating — almost 10 minutes.
In that era, the rules called for three judges to choose first place, three other judges to choose second, and three others to choose third. Each lane had three timekeepers, but their timing, by hand, was almost incidental in determining who finished where. There was no starting beep or automatic touch pads or accepted electronic timing or replays, as there are in major swimming competitions today.
When the judges were polled after the race, the results were unusual. Two of the three first-place judges had picked Devitt as the winner, and one had picked Larson. Two of the second-place judges had picked Devitt for second, and one had picked Larson. The three timekeepers for Devitt’s lane had all timed him in 55.2 seconds. The three in Larson’s lane had timed the American in 55.0, 55.1 and 55.1.
And a newly introduced automatic timing machine — which was started electronically but stopped manually, and which was to be consulted only when judges were tied, as they were in Rome — had Larson in 55.10 seconds and Devitt in 55.16.
It seemed obvious that Larson had won — until the chief judge, Hans Runstromer of Germany, interceded and voted for Devitt.
American officials protested the decision to the jury of appeals, saying the rules did not give the chief judge a vote. Runstromer disagreed. Besides, he said, he had been standing on the finish line and had seen the whole thing. A Sports Illustrated photograph, however, showed that he was 25 yards away at the time and had viewed the finish at an angle.
The appeal failed. The Americans appealed three times more in the next four years and lost every time. As Larson said, “It was a bad deal.”
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In 2009, a paper in the journal Physical Culture and Sport: Studies and Research concluded that “Runstromer’s decision undoubtedly sanctioned untruth.”
In other words, the study said, Larson had won.
Since the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, all international swim races have been timed electronically.
John Warnock, co-creator of Postscript and co-founder of Adobe.
Maxie Baughan, linebacker.
He came in second in the league’s United Press International rookie of the year balloting and was named to his first of five Pro Bowl selections with the Eagles.
After a trade to the Los Angeles Rams in 1966, Baughan picked up where he had left off. The Rams’ coach George Allen named him the team’s defensive captain and signal caller. Behind the quarterback Roman Gabriel, the Rams reached the divisional round of the playoffs twice over the next five years, with Baughan cleaning up on defense behind the team’s heralded defensive line, known as the Fearsome Foursome, starring Deacon Jones, Lamar Lundy, Rosey Greer and Merlin Olsen.
He would notch four more Pro Bowl appearances during his Rams tenure, adding to an N.F.L. résumé that also included five years as a second-team All-Pro and one as a first-teamer.
Reggie Chaney, former forward for the University of Houston basketball team. He was 23.
Austin Police chief Joseph Chacon is stepping down and retiring from APD after two years as chief.
I really don’t have anything much to say about this: Chief Chacon didn’t do anything in his time to really rise to my attention, either positively or negatively. There are things to be said about poor police response time, ongoing issues with the homeless, and other things going on within the department. But I feel like many of those issues are the results of poor decision making by our city government, and were out of Chief Chacon’s control.
I wish him well in his next endeavors, and I think a Fist Rockbone Brian Manley for mayor/Joseph Chacon for city council ticket would be a fantastic idea.
Ron Cephas Jones, actor. THR. Other credits include “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, “Law & Order: Organized Crime”, and “NYPD Blue”.
Chris Peluso, theater actor.
Randy Minniear, former running back for the New York Football Giants.
After playing fullback at Purdue, he was selected by the Giants in the 20th round of the 1966 NFL Draft and would first play in 1967, when Earl Morrall was the quarterback.
“They rate him as the greatest backup quarterback of all time,” Minniear told the Thursday Night Tailgate podcast in 2021. “And that’s one of the things they say about me. I was the greatest benchwarmer of all time. I will tell you this, while I was down there on the end of the bench by the water bucket not one was stolen in five years.”
“The Peripheral” and “A League Of Their Own” at Amazon Prime. Both of these shows had been renewed for a second season (though “ALOTO” had only been given a four-episode run) but Amazon is apparently re-evaluating their plans in light of the strike.
I don’t care much about the baseball show. I was slightly interested in “The Peripheral” because Big Bill Gibson. But I haven’t watched any of the episodes, and am kind of thinking maybe I should read the book first.
Remember that movie from back in March? The one that I won’t even name, because the trailer sent me into a state of apoplectic rage?
It opened this weekend…
…and finished fifth at the box office, having been beaten by “Blue Beetle” (a movie about a minor tier DC superhero), “Barbie”, “Oppenheimer”, and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
Wikipedia cites the estimated budget for this pile of crap at $46 million, which means it needs to gross $92 to $138 million to break even. With an opening in fifth place, I’m thinking this is going to turn out to be one of this year’s biggest dogs, and I remain hopeful this will destroy the careers of everyone involved.
I haven’t done any obits for the past few days, for reasons I don’t want to go into here.
But a few people have sent me some, and it would be rude not to acknowledge them.
Sir Michael Parkinson, British talk show host. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Darren Kent, actor. IMDB. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Les Misérables” (the TV series), and “C.O.O.L.I.O Time Travel Gangster”. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Paul Brodeur, longtime New Yorker writer.
Mr. Brodeur also reported on the possible dangers of radiation from microwave ovens, computer terminals and electromagnetic power lines. But this reporting was not as widely accepted as his work on asbestos and CFCs.
In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences found little to no evidence of any risk from power-line radiation. Other studies have been far from conclusive. (Mr. Brodeur noted, however, that the World Health Organization classified microwave radiation from cellphones to be a possible carcinogen.)
James L. Buckley, former Senator from New York (and brother of William F. Buckley Jr.).
I wanted to quickly bookmark this article from the American Handgunner website, even though it is basically an advertisement for an upcoming Rock Island Auctions event.
It provides a useful introduction to a couple of this blog’s ongoing obsessions:
One of last year’s big flaming hyena stories was about Harry Sidhu, the mayor of Anaheim, who resigned over land deals with the Los Angeles Angels (and his “illegal registration of a helicopter“).
I kind of lost track of this story because California newspapers. But thanks to the Field of Schemes blog, I found out: former mayor Sidhu is taking a guilty plea.
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Really, seriously, just shut the f**k up.
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Remember, my people: the coverup is almost always worse than the actual crime.
First, a preview of something that I hope to post very soon.
You may remember a while back – April of 2022, as a matter of fact – I said I was special ordering a gun from my local gun shop for Buy a Gun Day.
It came in…on August 3rd. Yes, this year. I actually waited longer for this than Someone Who Isn’t Me expects to wait for their Form 4 item. (Don’t ask. I will not be taking questions at this time.) Not that I blame my local gun shop for this. As I understand it, there are reasons for the delay related to the manufacturer. All will be revealed soon, I hope.
In the meantime, let no man say that I am not PC.
After the jump, some more gun books for my loyal reader…