The NYT is reporting the death of Toni Morrison, Nobel prize winning writer.
Preliminary NYT obit here, which will probably be replaced by a full obit later.
Obit watch: August 6, 2019.
August 6th, 2019Here’s an odd clipping for you…
August 5th, 2019Odd because:
1) I don’t like talking about religion.
II) I don’t like linking to ESPN.
c) I don’t like basketball.
With those stipulations: Shelly Pennefather was one of the great women’s basketball players.
She scored 2,408 points, breaking Villanova’s all-time record for women and men. She did it without the benefit of the 3-point shot, and the record still stands today.
After college, she played in Japan for a while. But she felt a calling, so in 1991…
The Poor Clares are one of the strictest religious orders in the world. They sleep on straw mattresses, in full habit, and wake up every night at 12:30 a.m. to pray, never resting more than four hours at a time. They are barefoot 23 hours of the day, except for the one hour in which they walk around the courtyard in sandals.
They are cut off from society. Sister Rose Marie will never leave the monastery, unless there’s a medical emergency. She’ll never call or email or text anyone, either. The rules seem so arbitrarily harsh. She gets two family visits per year, but converses through a see-through screen. She can write letters to her friends, but only if they write to her first. And once every 25 years, she can hug her family.
Don’t really have much more I want to say about this, other than I recommend you read the linked story.
Obit watch: August 5, 2019.
August 5th, 2019D. A. Pennebaker, noted mostly as a documentary filmmaker. (“Don’t Look Back”, “Primary”, “The War Room”.)
Nuon Chea is burning in Hell.
“Who?”
Known as Brother No. 2 — he was second in command to the movement’s founder, Pol Pot, who died in 1998 — Mr. Nuon Chea was convicted of, among other crimes, directing the forced evacuation of perhaps two million people from the capital, Phnom Penh, and overseeing the torture and killing of more than 14,000 people in a notorious prison, Tuol Sleng.
Often described as the movement’s chief ideologist, he was accused of laying out a “master plan” for the transformation of society that included the abolition of money and religion, the extermination of the educated class and the killing and expulsion of ethnic Vietnamese.
In the words of the court’s formal detention order, he planned or directed crimes including murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer and enslavement.
Mr. Chea and Khieu Samphan were the only leading members of the Khmer Rouge who were convicted of any crimes. A third man, Kaing Guek Eav, who ran a prison (and reported to Mr. Chea), was also convicted: two other Khmer Rouge leaders died during the trial.
Mr. Nuon Chea denied involvement in the widespread killings. But in video recordings played to the court, he was heard acknowledging the purges, saying, “If we had shown mercy to these people, our nation would have been lost.”
He added: “We didn’t kill many. We only killed the bad people, not the good.”
DEFCON 27/Black Hat 2019 preliminary notes.
August 1st, 2019DEFCON 27 starts a little later than I’m used to this year (August 8th, so a week from today.) Black Hat 2019 starts August 7th. Black Hat schedule is here. DEFCON schedule is here.
Again this year, I’m not going. While I feel like I’m moving closer to the point where I’m ready to return (expenses paid or expenses unpaid) I’m not quite where I want to be yet to go on my own dime. And as far as the company paying for me to go…not this year, for reasons I won’t go into. (Nothing bad. At least I don’t think so. Just don’t want to run my mouth about internal stuff.)
So, as usual: what would I go to, if I were going?
Let’s look at the DEFCON schedule first.
Obit watch: August 1, 2019.
August 1st, 2019The paper of record has updated their Hal Prince, “Giant of Broadway and Reaper of Tonys” obit in place.
They’ve also added three corrections. So far.
I do like this a lot:
As both a producer and a director, Mr. Prince was a nurturer of unproved talent. Tom Bosley, for instance, later known as Howard Cunningham on the nostalgic television sitcom “Happy Days,” won a Tony in his first starring role in 1959 as the titular mayor of New York, La Guardia, in “Fiorello!” Liza Minnelli made her first Broadway appearance — and won a Tony — as the title character in “Flora, the Red Menace,” a 1965 politically-inflected musical set in 1935 about a spunky fashion designer who falls for a Communist. Produced by Mr. Prince and directed by George Abbott, “Flora” also featured the first Broadway score by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who later wrote “Chicago” and two shows produced and directed by Mr. Prince: “Zorba” and “Cabaret.”
A featured actor in “Cabaret,” Joel Grey, was a largely unknown nightclub performer with few theater credits when Mr. Prince hired him in 1966 for what turned out to be a career-defining role: the arch, leering M.C. of the bawdy Kit Kat Club in Weimar-era Berlin.
I think that’s one of the nicest things you can say about anybody in an obit: they were good at spotting and developing unknown talents.
Five performances. I thought the original production of “Carrie” ran for eight performances, but no: it only ran for five as well.
Also among the dead: Nick Buoniconti, linebacker for the Miami Dolphins in the 1970s (yes, he was one of the players on the 1972 team).
Mr. Buoniconti’s son, Marc, was paralyzed in a football accident in 1985. Mr. Buoniconti founded the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis:
For more than 30 years afterward, Buoniconti helped raise nearly $500 million for spinal cord and brain research carried out by the organization. He also played a critical role in directing the research and was a charismatic motivator of scientists and researchers.
Dr. Barth Green, a neurosurgeon and longtime chairman of the Miami Project, said in a phone interview: “People are walking now because of cellular transplants and the latest neuroengineering and bioengineering that has been applied to humans with disability. Nick was a stimulating force in that area, from bench to bedside. And this is someone who probably never took a science course.”
Oh the weather outside is frightful…
July 31st, 2019…actually, it’s not all that bad in Austin. The estimated high today is a mere 99 degrees Fahrenheit (558.67 degrees Rankine).
But I know many of my readers are suffering from the heat, so here’s something that I hope will cool you down for a few minutes:
“The Stranding of the MV Shokalskiy”.
Beyond my interest in polar exploration, there’s a lot of stuff in here that prompted chuckles:
…
Reached by the BBC, the poor marketing person for the adventure company put it succinctly: “The hull has a hole the size of a fist and the outlook is not so positive for the ship at the moment.”
The outlook became less positive a few minutes later, when the ship sank.
…
…
…
There had already been choral music, and there threatened to be more.
Obit watch: July 31, 2019.
July 31st, 2019Breaking, but I kind of want to get something up now: Harold Prince, one of the great men of Broadway.
Variety. (Hattip: Lawrence.) Preliminary obit from the NYT, with promises of a fuller obit to come.
Possibly more later.
Tweets of the day.
July 29th, 2019I was only going to do one, and technically that one was from Saturday (I couldn’t pass it up for reasons that will become obvious shortly). Then the NRA museums put up a second one that also pushed one of my buttons. So enjoy a two-fer:
#GOTD – Winchester Model 70s. One special place you can see Winchester Model 70 rifles is at the NRA's National Sporting Arms Museum at Bass Pro Shops in Springfield, MO. As a bonus, we'll include an image of the display with many more Model 70s represented. #nramuseums pic.twitter.com/lCvltyJwji
— NRA Museums (@NRA_museums) July 27, 2019
I’m lucky enough to have been to Springfield twice and have seen that display. I’m also lucky enough to be the custodian of three Model 70s (two pre-64 and one that I think is barely 1964).
I can’t find it in the photo, but one of the Model 70s in that display is, believe it or not, one with a built-in radio. There’s actually a NRA Museum video on this one, if you’re curious.
And the other tweet?
#GOTD – McGivern M&P Revolver. One great GOTD from Ed McGivern, this four-inch Smith & Wesson revolver was fitted with an adjustable rear sight and is a square butt gun. Caliber: .38 S&W Special. Production Date: 1915-1942. #nramuseums #history pic.twitter.com/SXr38fcpAr
— NRA Museums (@NRA_museums) July 29, 2019
Celebration time!
July 29th, 2019What better way to celebrate ten years of blogging than free ammo?
BulkMunitions.com sent me an email about another contest they’re running. It’s been about four months since I last linked to one of their contests, so I figure this isn’t too obnoxious. Plus I kind of like the prize they’re offering:
A $200 voucher for ammo.
“*Voucher is good for a one-time purchase up to $200 on BulkMunitions.com. The voucher will be in the form of a $200 discount/coupon code. There will be zero residual value remaining on the code after purchase.”
They’re also covering shipping up to $50 “if multiple items are purchased when voucher is redeemed”.
Again, I’m not going to enter this contest: as much as I’d like $200 worth of ammo, I don’t feel it is fair to the good folks who read this blog to compete with them.
Here’s the entry form. Good luck to all of you.
(For the record, here’s the winner of the last contest I posted.)
Ten years burning down the road…
July 28th, 2019Today is the tenth anniversary of my first post.
When I started this blog, I was afraid it would end up being a shiny new toy that I played with for a while, then got bored with and set to one side.
(Great. Now I’m depressed.)
3,652 days. 4,499 posts. That averages out to slightly more than one per day. I think that takes this blog out of “shiny new toy” status, and more into the realm of “my favorite GI Joe — you know, the good ones, not that Cobra crap — with the Kung Fu grip“.
(Great. Now I’m even more depressed.)
But I’m not bored yet. (Or tired.)
I’m not proud of everything I’ve written. But I’ve written some stuff I’m proud of. And I’ve always tried to do what I think is the right and fair thing.
I have discovered a few things:
- The posts that I consider to be short throw-away ones get more attention than the longer ones I put thought into. I believe this is a general principle of blogging that doesn’t have a name. Yet.
- I’m shocked at how much traffic the list of city council members gets.
- I seem to have become the go-to guy for obituaries. This gets depressing sometimes, especially when the obituary is for a relatively young person, and most especially when they’ve committed suicide. But I like calling out the people who have meant something to me for some reason, or the people I’ve never heard of who led interesting lives, or the war heros…and, yes, even the criminals who finally went to their just reward.
I thought about doing a thank you list, but every time I do one, there’s always someone I miss. I do want to single out Lawrence and Borepatch as the two bloggers who drive the most traffic here.
There are some people who were early supporters of this blog who have drifted away, perhaps because of political differences, and I regret that. There are some people who seem to have drifted away for personal, non-political reasons, who I miss terribly. There are some people who were early influences on this blog who I’ve drifted away from. And there’s at least two people that I know of who died (died).
Those of you who would be on a thank-you list, you know who you are, and thank you. To absent friends.
Let’s see if I can keep it up for ten more years. I plan to: I’ve got another gun porn post that I’m working on that combines a couple of things. Namely: what I bought at the S&WCA Symposium (a popular question among my friends) and, believe it or not, childhood nostalgia. I’m not sure when this is going to go up, as I have to take more photos first. But at least this one will be shorter than the last one.
I’m also thinking about doing a round-up review of some books I finished recently. I already talked about the Baatz book, but there are two more I’m thinking about covering: one that I liked with small reservations (mostly that I wanted more out of the book than the author was willing to give to his perceived target audience) and one that I found disappointing due to the author’s moralizing. If I can get to those this week I will.
Meanwhile, you can look forward to more obit watches, more random news clippings, more gun crankery, and (of course) a whacky green alien that only I can see (but who will be making some guest posts).
Drinks are on me and the alien next time we’re in the same place at the same time.
Gratuitous gun porn (#5 in a series)
July 28th, 2019I finally have my Scout rifle set up almost the way I want it.
Savage Model 11 Scout, Burris 2-7×32 Scout Scope. Ching Sling from Andy’s Leather. Scout Rifle Study by Richard Mann.
Quote of the day.
July 26th, 2019I finished Simon Baatz’s The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century a couple of days ago. I thought For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago was an excellent historical look at that case, and Girl is every bit as good: I commend it to your attention.
My only complaint is: I wish Girl had come out in 2015, not 2018. It would have made my life slightly easier. (Okay, I also kind of wish that Baatz would have given us at least a mini-review of “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing“, like Simon Winchester did for “Krakatoa, East of Java” in his book.)
Anyway, there are two paragraphs in Girl that I found particularly interesting. (I think my use of these as a quote falls under the “fair use” category).
Anthony Comstock applauded such initiatives but continued to urge his acolytes to take independent action to combat such social evils as prostitution and pornography. Nothing in this regard was more infuriating to the Society for the Suppression of Vice than the complicity of newspaper proprietors in promoting prostitution, and no one was more culpable than James Gordon Bennett Jr., the owner and publisher of the New York Herald. Hundreds of paid notices, offering various services, appeared in the Herald every day; these advertisements never explicitly mentioned sex, but their meaning was nevertheless obvious. Such notices promoted prostitution, Comstock asserted, yet Bennett had always denied any responsibility, claiming that it was impossible for the Herald to distinguish between advertisements that offered companionship and those that offered sex.
But the campaign for moral purity would not be denied, and on July 7 [1906 – DB], Charles Wahle, a magistrate in the Seventh District Police Court, issued a summons against the New York Herald for printing obscene and lewd matter. Charles Grubb, a pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, had initiated the complaint, but it was equally a triumph for Comstock and the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Does this remind you of anything in particular?
(Historical side note: Baatz doesn’t reveal what gun Thaw used, but he does get a little closer to that end: it is described as a blue steel revolver. It also sounds like it might have been a top-break, since Thaw is repeatedly referred to as having “broken” the revolver after shooting White and held it above his head by the barrel. But I apply a press discount to almost all media coverage of firearms, even from the turn of the century.
There’s no discussion of the caliber or maker in the Baatz book. We know from the trial transcripts that it was introduced into evidence and identified by the man who took it from Thaw, but the trial transcripts I’ve been able to find online do not include that part of the testimony.)
Obit watch: July 26, 2019.
July 26th, 2019P. Rajagopal, prominent Indian restaurateur.
He founded Saravana Bhavan, a chain of vegetarian restaurants based on Southern Indian cooking:
The restaurant focused on South Indian cuisine, serving freshly cooked dosas, a type of crispy golden rice and lentil crepe. As his chain expanded, the dish would earn him the nickname the “dosa king” in the media. He also sold snacks like idlis, soft round steamed rice cakes, and vadas, a kind of lentil doughnut, serving them with freshly cooked chutneys.
As his tasty, inexpensive food gained a following, his restaurant eventually turned a profit, enabling him to open branches. In 2000, with about 20 locations in India, Saravana Bhavan ventured overseas, opening in neighborhoods where the Indian diaspora had a strong presence. The chain expanded first into Dubai, then to cities like New York, London and Sydney, Australia. Though it operates under a franchise model, its chefs continue to come from Chennai.
But, as you might have guessed, there’s more to the story. Mr. Rajagopal was also a convicted murderer and was trying desperately to stay out of prison when he died.
Apparently, he desperately wanted to marry the daughter of one of his assistant managers: she wanted nothing to do with him and took up with another guy. (Mr. Rajagopal is described in the obit as a “strict disciplinarian”, so I imagine that must have make the work relationship awkward.) Anyway, Mr. Rajagopal did not take kindly to being rejected…
At first, Mr. Rajagopal was convicted of “culpable homicide” in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, he didn’t serve any time, for medical reasons.
If you’re confused about how a court can “upgrade a conviction to murder”, well, I am, too. But I freely admit to being unfamiliar with the Indian legal system.
He was 71 when he died.
Obit watch: July 25, 2019.
July 25th, 2019Obit watch: July 24, 2019.
July 24th, 2019Art Neville, of the Neville Brothers.
David Hedison, who had an interesting career. He played Felix Leiter in two Bond films, was pretty fly for a white guy in the 1958 “The Fly”, was in “The Lost World”, and turned down Robert Reed’s role in “The Brady Bunch”.
He was most famous as the submarine captain (opposite Richard Basehart’s admiral) in “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” (which you can still catch very early Sunday morning on ME TV). He also did some soaps, “Love Boat”, and “Fantasy Island”.
Oddly, from my point of view, he apparently never did a “Mannix”, though he did do other 70s cop shows. Both Mr. Hedison and Mike Connors were of Armenian descent: I’m sure he didn’t directly control the casting, but you’d figure Mr. Connors would want to help a brother out.
I don’t want to seem obsessed, but I thought this tribute from Stephen Wolfram to the late Mitchell Feigenbaum was worth sharing, especially since it gives a good explanation of the math behind his work.