Valéry Giscard d’Estaing est mort.
I’ve seen very little reporting of this elsewhere, but Lawrence has posted a nice obit for economist Walter E. Williams.
Obit watch: December 3, 2020.
December 3rd, 2020When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have…
December 3rd, 2020Three is a magic number.
December 2nd, 2020I really enjoy Rachel By the Bay’s writing, but I specifically wanted to bookmark this: “My list of magic numbers for your turkey day enjoyment“.
A couple of personal additions (hey, if Rachel can add C-64 and VIC-20 magic numbers, I can add these):
POKE 65495,0: On the old Radio Shack Color Computer, this sped up the CPU. Specifically, according to the Intertubes: “POKE 65495,0 would cause the processor to run at double speed ( 1.795 MHz ) when accessing instructions in ROM and Normal Speed ( 0.895 MHz ) when accessing DRAM.” It also messed up the timing for tape input and output, so you had to disable it before saving or loading from tape. POKE 65494,0 would return the system to normal.
POKE 65497,0: This switched the processor fully to double speed for all memory access, including DRAM. It also disabled video: you basically just got snow on your monitor until you reset the system with POKE 65496,0.
Edited to add #1:
Worth keeping in mind. For OPSEC purposes, I set the EXIF location data in many of the photos I take (especially firearms photos around the house) to 0.000000 north and 0.000000 west.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 247
December 2nd, 2020I’m going to be a little self-indulgent today.
I know I’ve said in the past that I don’t want to post a lot of “Forgotten Weapons” stuff, because I figure if folks are interested, they already subscribe. I’m making an exception here because:
a) This is a pretty recent entry.
II) Smith and Wesson.
3) Australia, Australia, we love you, amen.
Specifically, a Smith and Wesson pistol-carbine made for the South Australian Police.
Bonus #1: I actually thought about posting this yesterday, but couldn’t find it in my recommendations. It popped up again today, and this is some real history: “Hannibal’s Elephant Army – The New Evidence”.
Bonus #2: For some reason, I’ve been getting a lot of car repair videos in my feed. Especially ones from “Precision Transmission”. I thought I’d post this one because I shared it with some other folks privately and it seems like they enjoyed it.
“Nitrous doesn’t play well with others! Especially when you have pretty much stock unit.”
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 246
December 1st, 2020I thought today I’d fall back to some real authentic history. These are long, and I apologize for that, but I think this might appeal to some people.
“Afghanistan: the Great Game”. Part 1:
“It’s really easy to get into Afghanistan. It’s just the getting out part is very difficult.”
“Don’t go into Afghanistan and get – whatever you do – involved in a tribal war.”
Part 2:
Obit watch: December 1, 2020.
December 1st, 2020I don’t have a good third party source to link, but Ben Bova, noted SF writer, has passed away.
Edited to add: obit from Lawrence.
Badger Badger Badger Bad…
November 30th, 2020“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 245
November 30th, 2020I thought it might be fun to do a couple more WWII aircraft videos today.
“P-38 Flight Characteristics”, made by Lockheed around 1943. And in color!
Bonus #1, but this is more for the soundtrack than the video itself: “Warbird Engine Starts — Props & Radials”.
Bonus #2: I thought I’d throw this in. “Eclipse aviation cartridge starter and Plessey starter motor”.
Why? We watched “Flight of the Phoenix” (the good one) a while back, that’s why.
Firings watch.
November 30th, 2020Dave Caldwell out as general manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Jacksonville has lost 10 straight games this season, and have gone 39-87 since Caldwell took over in 2013.
Caldwell’s biggest downfall was his inability to draft a franchise quarterback, which included sticking with ineffective Blake Bortles for too long. Bortles was the third overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, going 24-49 in 73 regular-season starts and a 2-1 mark in the playoffs.
During the regular season, Bortles threw 103 touchdowns and 75 interceptions and posted a quarterback rating of 80.6 before he was released by the Jaguars in March 2019. Bortles is now on the Denver Broncos practiced squad.
…
Caldwell failed at his job from talent evaluations to sending away too many veterans in trades in exchange for draft picks instead of equal talent in return. Caldwell traded veteran defensive captain Calais Campbell, cornerback A.J. Bouye, quarterback Nick Foles, safety Ronnie Harrison and disgruntled defensive end Yannick Ngakoue, all for draft picks this offseason.
”We can’t afford a rebuilding year,” Caldwell said in early September. ”Our mindset is to put the best team out there to play, to compete, and to win. We feel like these guys, the guys in this locker room, nobody has seen them play together. Nobody has seen them play a game so, like I said, we’re going to know where we measure up.”
The Jaguars have lost 10 or more in seven of the eight seasons under Caldwell. His lone successful season was in 2017 when the Jaguars fared 10-6 and advanced to the AFC title game. Currently, the Jaguars have lost 16 of their 19 games, which includes 11 by 10 or more points.
Obit watch: November 30, 2020.
November 30th, 2020Dave Prowse, former British heavyweight lifting champion.
He also did a little bit of acting.
So sad to hear David Prowse has passed. He was a kind man & much more than Darth Vader. Actor-Husband-Father-Member of the Order of the British Empire-3 time British Weightlifting Champion & Safety Icon the Green Cross Code Man. He loved his fans as much as they loved him. #RIP pic.twitter.com/VbDrGu6iBz
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) November 29, 2020
Lawrence sent over an obit for Jery Hewitt. Mr. Hewitt was a prolific stunt coordinator. Among his work: 14 of the Coen Brothers films, every episode of “Law and Order: Original Recipe”, and 22 seasons of “Law and Order: SVU”.
In 1977, he helped mountain climber George Willig scale the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Two years later, he landed his first feature film role as the leader of the Baseball Furies gang in the 1979 cult classic The Warriors.
Once described as “the thinking man’s stunt coordinator,” his hundreds of other coordinating credits include School of Rock, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Sopranos, Reign Over Me, The Manchurian Candidate, Tower Heist, The Birdcage and Angels in America. He also performed stunts on numerous other films, including Independence Day, Scent of a Woman, Ghostbusters II and Coyote Ugly.
Your loser update: week 12, 2020.
November 29th, 2020NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week: the Raiders.
Firings watch.
November 29th, 2020Derek Mason out as head coach at Vanderbilt.
The team is 0-8 this season, and Mason was 27-55 in approximately six seasons.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 244
November 29th, 2020Science Sunday!
Today, I thought it might be fun to take a tour of MIT’s research reactor.
Longer bonus video: “It’s Rocket Science! with Professor Chris Bishop”. Including burning toast (does Professor Bishop have a flambe license?) and a demo of hypergolic propellants.
No! No, not Detroit!
November 28th, 2020Coach Matt Patricia and GM Bob Quinn out in Detroit.
The two were tasked with elevating the Lions from their perpetual state of mediocrity to a perennial playoff contender, and instead brought more despair to a franchise that has not won a playoff game since 1992.
The Lions went 13-29-1 with Quinn and Patricia in charge and are in the midst of their third consecutive losing season. Patricia’s .314 winning percentage was far below that of the man he replaced. Jim Caldwell, who Quinn fired after going 9-7 in 2017, won 54.5% of his games, best among full-time Lions coaches in the expansion era.
I always say: “It’s not Thanksgiving until Detroit loses.” And the final straw seems to have been Detroit losing to Houston, 41-25.
Not exactly firings, but I don’t have any place else to put these:
1) The Denver Broncos have no quarterbacks for their game tomorrow against the Saints.
Driskel tested as COVID positive on Thursday.
2) Santa Clara County (who you may remember from “iPads for Permits”) has banned all contact sports in the county for the next three weeks, at all levels: San Francisco 49ers hardest hit.
You know, they told me if I looked hard enough, something positive would come out of this. And they were right.
Annals of law (#13 in a series)
November 28th, 2020I have heard stories like this before, but I thought this Twitter thread was worth noting:
In the 1990s the Russian immigrant community in NYC grew by orders of magnitude. One thing the newly imported entrepreneurs quickly figured out is that America is extremely vulnerable to large scale fraud in almost every sphere of life. Story time! 👇 1/11
— Slava Akhmechet (@spakhm) November 28, 2020
I’ve also heard this referred to as “swoop and squat” fraud. It is actually a key plot point in Dan Simmons’s Darwin’s Blade (affiliate link).
Someone in the thread linked to an old Fortune article, which I am re-linking here for your convenience. No need to thank me: full service blog, here.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 243
November 28th, 2020This could, maybe, fall under travel, but I thought I’d use these here today instead.
Great and good FotB RoadRich joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, and we spent some time afterwards sitting around, chatting, and watching a few videos on the ‘Tube. Here’s one that came up: Jimmy Stewart talks about flying planes out of LAX…before it was LAX.
Bonus #1: “The Story of Modern Airline Transportation”, from American Airlines. “Modern”, in this case, being 1933.
Bonus #2: RoadRich mentioned this to me, and I couldn’t pass it up. This is actually what got us started down this path. From 1953, “Flying With Arthur Godfrey”, a vintage Eastern Airlines promo film.
In addition to Godfrey actually flying a Constellation, Eddie Rickenbacker shows up as well.
“I used to sit around up there at 20,000 feet with the sun at my back waiting for the enemy Fokkers to come around.”
Obit watch: November 28, 2020.
November 28th, 2020Tony Hsieh, Zappos guy.
I’ve never bought shoes from Zappos, but as someone who tries to pay a little attention to what’s going on on the Internet, I’d heard about Mr. Hsieh, his leadership of Zappos, and his plans for downtown Las Vegas.
Also, this is shocking: he was only 46. The paper of record says that he died as a result of injuries sustained in a house fire.
If you didn’t check the batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when the time changed, you might go do that now.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 242
November 27th, 2020Great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn sent over a fascinating page from the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum a few days ago.
There’s a whole bunch of great stuff there: much of it I haven’t had a chance to watch fully yet, but it pushes my buttons. The “Heros On Zoom” series is fairly short. I thought I’d single out “The Battle of New Orleans” for this one:
Mostly as a sleezy and transparent excuse to use this:
Bonus: I know this is long, but today is Black Friday. I hope most of you aren’t working, and it isn’t like you’re waiting in line outside Best Buy at 3 AM peeing on each other to keep warm while you wait for a PS5.
“Leadership Lessons from Fredericksburg”. I have complicated feelings about the Civil War, but (as you know, Bob) I’m a student of leadership, and Civil War leadership is one of the aspects of the war that does intrigue me. I’d really like to find good copies of Douglas Southall Freeman’s books in unabridged editions. (I have his collection of essays on leadership, but nothing else by him.)
Obit watch: November 27, 2020.
November 27th, 2020Geoffrey Palmer. He did a lot of film and TV work: his most famous role may have been Lionel Hardcastle in “As Time Goes By”, which shows up on PBS a lot.
Daria Nicolodi, Italian horror actress and co-author of the screenplay for the 1977 “Suspiria”. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
This is a noteworthy Twitter thread:
Short threead on Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde, who died this week. He was a doctor in Michoacan, MX, when the Caballeros Templarios cartel controlled the state. pic.twitter.com/ZHwIcg0duB
— NS (@elaphos_) November 26, 2020
Now that we are in the Christmas season…
November 26th, 2020…I can post this.
There’s a new Lame Excuse Books catalog out. Books from Lame Excuse Books make fine presents for the SF and/or fantasy fan in your circle of family and friends.
I feel like I got an early Christmas present this year. Maybe. I haven’t decided if I’m going to go see this in a theater, or wait for the home video release.
David Fincher has a new movie coming out. Apparently it will be released to Netflix on December 4th, but there is a theatrical run already at the Alamo Drafthouses in Austin.
I think Fincher is an interesting director. But: he has scientifically designed this movie to get me to put money on the table for it.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 241
November 26th, 2020Travel Thursday! And happy Thanksgiving!
I was hoping that Pan Am would have done “Wings to Turkey”, or something similar. But, alas, no. So how about a tour of a turkey farm with Temple Grandin, from the National Turkey Federation?
Bonus #1: “To Mount Lowe With Love”, a documentary about the Mount Lowe Railway. Because I feel like putting the “fun” back into “funicular”.
Bonus #2: Stretching the definition of “travel” a bit here, but I wanted to do something appropriate for Spaghetti Carbonara Day.
There are an awful lot of spaghetti carbonara videos on YouTube, many of which seem to be responses or complaints about Gordon Ramsey’s version. I thought I’d use this one, since I believe Lidia Bastianich is pretty trustworthy when it comes to Italian food. If you’re cooking for my mother, though, please leave the onions out. (She loves Lidia, but she hates onions. I actually don’t think onions are part of a traditional carbonara, but I welcome being proved wrong.)
Obit watch: November 26, 2020.
November 26th, 2020She had a strong TV career, and an interesting theater one:
What would have been her Broadway debut — “The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake” (1967), a generation-gap comedy — closed in previews, reportedly because its Hollywood star, Jean Arthur, was ill. Ms. Dietrich’s first official Broadway appearance was also brief: “Here’s Where I Belong,” a musical based on John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” opened and closed on March 3, 1968.
Then her luck changed. Ms. Dietrich played a sensible older sister in Mike Nichols’s Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1971). The play, starring Peter Falk and Lee Grant as Manhattanites struggling through a bad economy, ran for almost two years and won two Tony Awards.
She was most famous, though, as “Mother Nature” in those 1970s commercials for a margarine company. (“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”)
Ian Finkel, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest xylophonist”.
Mr. Finkel’s path took him from the borscht belt resorts in the Catskills to playing with the New York Philharmonic. He also worked as a composer and musical arranger for stars like Sid Caesar, Tito Puente and Ginger Rogers, his brother, Elliot Finkel, said.
As a percussionist, he worked in orchestras that accompanied the likes of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross and Tony Bennett.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 240
November 25th, 2020Today, music.
To start with, something short-ish. I think this dates to 2011, and was produced by the Oklahoma History Center as part of an exhibit: “Pickin’ and Grinnin’: Roy Clark, ‘Hee Haw’ & Country Humor”.
And a longer bonus that I think is really cool: a 1969 documentary for Granada Television, “Johnny Cash In San Quentin”.
Obit watch: November 25, 2020.
November 25th, 2020For the historical record: Diego Maradona. ESPN.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 239
November 24th, 2020Techmoan is kind of a fun channel, but one that I try to avoid overusing. I’m using it today because this video popped up, and it answers a question that’s been in the back of my mind.
Whatever happened to portable televisions? Remember the Sony Watchman?
Obviously, the digital transition killed off the old analog portables. But why don’t we have portable digital televisions?
Short answer: we do, but not from any major manufacturers, and they’re pretty much crap as televisions. (Some of them may be decent portable media players, but do they do anything you can’t do with a small laptop or tablet?)
When I’m out shopping in thrift stores and other odd places, and see one of those cool looking old portable devices with a TV built in, I think about picking it up and hooking up a converter box, just for the lulz.
Bonus: “Prison Tech”. Not really the kind of thing people in prison improvise, but rather what kind of tech you’re allowed to have (and can purchase) for prison use.