For the historical record: noted musician Dr. Ralph Stanley. A/V Club.
Obit watch: June 24, 2016.
June 24th, 2016Failure analysis.
June 23rd, 2016I have to note this NYT feature:
Anatomy of a Broadway Flop: What Sank These 4 Shows?
Or, why did “American Psycho”, “Bright Star”, “Disaster!”, and “Tuck Everlasting” all fail? Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like the answer is “they were bad”, or that the “Hamilton” juggernaut crushed everything in its path.
“Bright Star” actually sounds like it could be interesting: Steve Martin and Edie Brickell wrote the score, and I kind of like the “quiet” and “small” description applied to it. I’d go see a touring production.
“Disaster!” on the other hand sounds like…well…you know. But it does give me an idea: “Airplane!: The Musical” The opening number would, of course, be “The White Zone (Is For Loading and Unloading Only)”. Then you’d have the big duet between Ted Striker and Elaine Dickinson, “I’ll Never Get Over Macho Grande”…well, you get the idea. Broadway producers, call me. Either we have a sure-fire hit, or we can sell 10,000% of the show and retire to a life of leisure in some country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.
Obit watch: June 23, 2016.
June 23rd, 2016David Thatcher has passed away at the age of 94.
Mr. Thatcher was the tail gunner in the “Ruptured Duck”, one of the 16 B-25s in the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan.
After the raid, the Duck crash-landed and several of the crew were injured. Mr. Thatcher tended their injuries.
All of the crew evaded capture and eventually made it home, though the pilot (Ted Lawson, who also wrote Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a book I remember reading when I was very young) lost a leg.
As cited in James M. Scott’s book “Target Tokyo” (2015), Colonel Doolittle told Corporal Thatcher’s parents that “all the plane’s crew were saved from either capture or death as a result of his initiative and courage in assuming responsibility and in tending the wounded himself day and night.”
Corporal Thatcher was awarded the Silver Star for valor.
Mr. Thatcher’s death leaves one surviving crew member from the raid, Richard Cole, who was Doolittle’s co-pilot.
My latest million dollar idea…
June 22nd, 2016An all-natural, organic, made from renewable resources, energy drink.
The main ingredients will be the livers of polar bears, walruses, and moose. Possibly in a suspension of cod liver oil, with natural flavorings to make it a little more palatable.
Quote of the day.
June 21st, 2016Apropos of nothing in particular, and certainly not related to anything below:
"What did we learn today, kids?"
"The media is an active participant in promulgating lies to the populace."
"That's right, Timmy."— SecuriTay (@SwiftOnSecurity) June 20, 2016
Random notes, philosophical asides, bookmarks, endorsements, and other things.
June 21st, 2016Some things I think are interesting, some I want to bookmark, some I want to plug, something for everyone, a comedy tonight! I am going to try to put these in some kind of rough topic order…
“Introduction to GPU Password Cracking: Owning the LinkedIn Password Dump”.
I Sea, “a mobile app that claimed to help users locate refugees adrift at sea”, appears to be a complete fraud.
Bonus: the NYT mentions my third favorite security blogger, @SwiftOnSecurity. (Sorry, SecuriTay, but I’ve had my photo taken with the Krebster, and I know Borepatch. Third is still good enough for a medal, if this was the Olympics.)
And it isn’t just that the coding is screwy: PopSci makes a pretty strong argument that what I Sea claims to do is physically and logistically impossible.
And those satellites make one pass a day, so you’re not getting “real-time” imaging, no way, no how.
The Oakland PD mess, summarized. Yes, I’m linking to an anonymous person on Facebook, but much of the information in this summary has already been reported in the media: this is more of a handy round-up if you haven’t been following this mess from the start. (Hattip: Popehat on the Twitter.)
And speaking of Popehat: the guys get shirts! Women, too. I just ordered mine: not only is $23 very reasonable for a shirt these days, and not only do I like Popehat, but I think Cotton Bureau does good stuff. (You may remember them from the BatLabels “Henchman” shirts, which are back in print! Hoorah!)
Flaming hyena #32: Democratic congressman Chaka Fattah.
A bunch of other folks took the fall with him, including Herbert Vederman:
(Hattip on this one to Mike the Musicologist.)
Prominent (well, in Chicago, anyway) Chicago journalist Neil Steinberg decides to pull the old “look how easy it is to buy an assault rifle” trick. So he goes to a gun store…
…and they deny his purchase because he’s a drunken wife-beater. (I have seen other versions of this story that state BATF first issued a “delay”, then a “deny” (BATF doesn’t have to give a reason for “deny”), Steinberg threatened to write that they were “denying” his purchase because he was a journalist, and the gun shop then decided to point out that he was a drunken wife-beater. However, this version seems to me to be to be the best sourced, and it doesn’t mention any BATF verdict.)
But at least he had the good taste to go with a Smith and Wesson M&P 15.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#31 in a series)
June 20th, 2016Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the Bill de Blasio scandal continues to grow.
A while back, I wrote about the suspension of three NYPD deputy chiefs and a deputy inspector, apparently because of their links to two of Di Blasio’s fundraisers.
The other shoe dropped today:
The NYPD officers are:
- Deputy Chief Michael J. Harrington
- Deputy Inspector James M. Grant
- and Sgt. David Villanueva
This is a little confusing for me: the NYT consistently refers to “three commanders”, but one of these guys appears to be a sergeant. Is that a commander rank in the NYPD?
Of these three, Harrington and Grant were among the officers suspended in April. Also arrested: Jeremiah Reichberg, one of the “businessmen” who has been a “generous supporter” of the mayor. Jona Rechnitz, also a “businessman”, “generous supporter”, and apparently Reichberg’s partner in the deal, has taken a plea on corruption charges and now appears to be rolling on the others involved.
Hookers. Always with the hookers.
I’m not sure which “official” is being referenced here, but it makes a nice segue anyway: Sgt. Villanueva’s arrest appears to be related to the pistol license scheme.
$18K for a gun license. Come to Texas, guys: here there’s no license required just to own one, and it’s $140 (plus about another $140 for the required training course) for a license to carry either open or concealed. Of course, it is hot as hell here, but the upside to that is never having to shovel snow.
Obit watch: June 20, 2016.
June 20th, 2016Donald Shea passed away last Friday at the age of 90.
Mr. Shea served for 36 years with the NYPD. He was perhaps most famous as one of the two patrol officers who captured Willie Sutton.
…
Mr. Schuster was famously gunned down in the street about a month after the arrest, allegedly on the orders of Albert Anastasia.
Musical interlude.
June 20th, 2016Apropos of nothing in particular, a musical interlude to start your day:
Adult supervision needed. Inquire within.
June 19th, 2016This one got past me earlier in the week: I was sort of avoiding media because Orlando and stupids, and the Oakland/SF papers aren’t part of my usual daily media diet anyway. And as it turns out, Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man beat me to this as well…
So, followup, for the historical record and folks who don’t read BRM: remember the Oakland PD fired their chief, Sean Whent? So of course they appointed an interim chief.
The interim chief lasted five days.
I’m not trying to seem like Judgy McJudgerson here, but this might potentially be relevant to the mayor’s “loss of confidence”: Fairow apparently had “an affair with a consenting adult while married more than a decade ago”, according to the BART chief (who, by the way, has also “welcomed back” Fairow to the BART PD).
The interim chief was previously a deputy chief for BART. So they brought in a new interim chief, who was currently an Oakland PD assistant chief.
He lasted two days.
More from SFGate:
“a national search for a new chief”. Hmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. Gee, is there anyone we can think of that’s from California originally, has experience running a police department that’s even larger than Oakland’s, in a city much larger than Oakland, has been going through some friction with local politicians, and might be interested in a change?
Nope. Can’t think of anyone.
(Sarcasm aside, would Art, dammit, Art even be willing to take over this dumpster fire of a department?)
Obit watch: June 19, 2016.
June 19th, 2016Anton Yelchin, Chekov in the new Star Trek movies. LAT. A/V Club. He was only 27.
Lois Duncan. YA author, perhaps most famous for I Know What You Did Last Summer. A/V Club.
I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the reasons I like linking to A/V Club obits is that they’re very good at putting people’s lives in context – explaining who this person was, and why they mattered – without snark or meanness. They’re also quicker and better about acknowledging popular culture figures than, say, the NYT.
This obit for Ron Lester is a good example of what I’m talking about. Mr. Lester was Billy Bob in “Varsity Blues” and had roles on “Freaks and Geeks” and “Popular”.
…for a time, he became the go-to actor for casting directors looking to cast large, funny young men.
But his weight was killing him, so he had gastric bypass surgery. The problem was, after he lost a whole bunch of weight, he was no longer distinctive as a large funny guy, and was just one of many interchangeable normal sized funny guys in Hollywood.
The A/V Club links to this Grantland profile of Mr. Lester from 2014, which I commend to your attention. Mr. Lester was 45.
Followups.
June 17th, 2016Lawrence’s backlink for my DNA lab post reminded me that I intended to link to this Grits For Breakfast post on the same subject.
More on MP Jo Cox: NYT. The Guardian (current live blog, historical live blog). Express.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mr. Mair sent about $620 to the National Alliance for items from its publishing imprint, National Vanguard Books, including works that instructed readers on the chemistry of powder and explosives. Also purchased was a copy of “Ich Kampfe,” a book published by the Nazi Party in the early 1940s.
Heidi Beirich, the director of the center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks and produces reports on extremist groups, said in an interview that it had found the invoices in a database of records it maintains.
When Mr. Mair’s name surfaced on Thursday, Ms. Beirich said, the Intelligence Project matched it with invoices in its possession. She said those records were authentic because they had been leaked by members of the National Alliance. Further, she said, she was confident the records were linked to Mr. Mair because the address on the invoices matched his home address.
You know, I dislike Nazis as much as the next guy or gal, but: does this bother anyone else? The SLPC apparently has a database of people’s book orders that was “leaked” to them? And they, in turn, are providing those records to the press?
Setting aside our individual lack of love for the Nazis, isn’t it possible that there are people on that list – students of modern day extremism, university libraries with collections of extremist literature for reference purposes, etc. – that would object to having their purchases revealed to unrelated third parties?
And where does this stop? Anyone remember the Tattered Cover case?
You know what Travis County needs?
June 16th, 2016Strict dog control.
More:
I come from a family of dog owners. My mother currently owns a Corgi, and my sister owns a German Short-haired Pointer. But nobody except maybe the police and military needs these large deadly high capacity assault dogs that are capable of maiming or killing dozens of people with one bite of their jaws. No private citizen needs 20 dogs.
And do you realize that just anyone can walk into a pet store and purchase one of these deadly assault dogs with no background check?
Sensible dog control now!
Quote of the day 2.
June 16th, 2016Because it is my blog, dammit, and I can have more than one if I want. Especially if the second one is from a new Ken White post:
You know what Great Britain needs?
June 16th, 2016Oh, yeah. That’s right. Never mind.
Edited to add: more from The Express by way of Popehat on the Twitter.
“…The man pulled a gun – it was a makeshift gun, not like something you see on television.”
Edited to add: The Express is now reporting that MP Cox has succumbed to her injuries. Sincere condolences to her family and friends.
He added the weapon “was probably an old gun, a sawn-off shotgun.
Edited to add: I’m now seeing reports on Twitter that the whole “Britain first” thing is wrong. It is worth keeping in mind that this story, like so many other recent stories, is emerging, and early details may be mistaken.
Edited to add: I was trying to find something very similar to this on Popehat’s Twitter feed earlier today, but I couldn’t. Fortunately, he retweeted almost exactly what I was looking for:
@Popehat Time for a #refresher ? pic.twitter.com/EAdCFpsOni
— Stephen Kiskamp (@skiskamp) June 16, 2016