Obit watch: September 18, 2018.

September 18th, 2018

Alan Abel, hoaxer, is dead at the age of 94.

Or is he? The NYT certainly thinks he is, and who would know better than the paper of record.

Among his many pranks: the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, Yetta Bronstein (“the phantom Jewish grandmother from the Bronx who ran for president in 1964”), Omar’s School for Beggars…

There were also the Topless String Quartet, with which, Mr. Abel said, an unsuspecting Frank Sinatra wanted to book a recording session; the Ku Klux Klan Symphony Orchestra, which, he said, the failed presidential candidate and former Klan grand wizard David Duke briefly accepted an invitation to conduct; Females for Felons, a group of Junior Leaguers who selflessly donated sex to the incarcerated; the mass “fainting” of audience members during a live broadcast of “The Phil Donahue Show”; his “discovery” (he posed as a former White House employee) of the missing 18½ minutes from the Watergate tapes; Euthanasia Cruises (“For people who wanted to expire in luxury,” Mr. Abel’s website recounted); Citizens Against Breastfeeding, which argued that exposure to the “naughty nipple” in infancy caused a plethora of problems later on; and a great many others.

Perhaps his most famous hoax was getting the NYT to publish his obituary while he was still alive.

Mr. Abel’s putative 1980 death, orchestrated with his characteristic military precision and involving a dozen accomplices, had been confirmed to The Times by several rigorously rehearsed confederates. One masqueraded as the grieving widow. Another posed as an undertaker, answering fact-checking calls from the newspaper on a dedicated phone line that Mr. Abel had installed, complete with its own directory-information business listing.
After the obituary was published, Mr. Abel, symbolically rising from the grave, held a gleeful news conference, and a much-abashed Times ran a retraction.

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Your loser update: week 2, 2018.

September 18th, 2018

Not a whole lot to say this week.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Buffalo
Houston
Oakland
New York Football Giants
Detroit
Seattle
Arizona

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 16, 2018.

September 16th, 2018

Some from the past day or two:

David Yallop, author and journalist. He was perhaps most famous for In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I which argued that the Pope “had been poisoned by a cabal connected to a secret Masonic lodge that had infiltrated the church and the Vatican Bank.”

Peter Donat, character actor. He was Mulder’s father on “The X-Files”, but he also did a lot of theater: “Over the years he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Shylock, King Lear and Hadrian VII.”

Also:

He worked regularly in television, guest-starring on series like “The F.B.I.,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” McMillan & Wife,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Murder, She Wrote,” on which he played three different roles over several seasons. On “Dallas,” he portrayed a doctor who treated the notorious Texas oilman J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) after he had been shot in a famous cliffhanger episode in 1980.

Walter Mischel, of “marshmallow test” fame.

In a series of experiments at Stanford University beginning in the 1960s, he led a research team that presented preschool-age children with treats — pretzels, cookies, a marshmallow — and instructed them to wait before indulging themselves. Some of the children received strategies from the researchers, like covering their eyes or reimagining the treat as something else; others were left to their own devices.
The studies found that in all conditions, some youngsters were far better than others at deploying the strategies — or devising their own — and that this ability seemed to persist at later ages. And context mattered: Children given reason to distrust the researchers tended to grab the treats earlier.

…

In the late 1980s, decades after the first experiments were done, Dr. Mischel and two co-authors followed up with about 100 parents whose children had participated in the original studies. They found a striking, if preliminary, correlation: The preschoolers who could put off eating the treat tended to have higher SAT scores, and were better adjusted emotionally on some measures, than those who had given in quickly to temptation.
The paper was cautious in its conclusions, and acknowledged numerous flaws, including a small sample size. No matter. It was widely reported, and a staple of popular psychology writing was born: If Junior can hold off eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes in preschool, then he or she is headed for the dean’s list.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Geek, Mannix, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 11, 2018.

September 12th, 2018

Ah, the first week of football season. There’s a wonderful scent of mold in the air (due to all the recent rain), friends are trying to provoke us into doomed bets on the Texans, and Gregg Easterbrook finally has something to write about.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

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Your loser update: week 1, 2018.

September 11th, 2018

Administrative note:

The loser update is primarily for teams that have a shot at going 0-16 over the course of the NFL season. (Secondarily, the loser update is for teams that have a shot at going 0-(x) over the course of some other sport’s season. Thirdly, the loser update is for teams that are just plain bad, or other noteworthy loser related items.)

Teams that have a shot at going 0-15-1 don’t count. I’m just a little sorry to see the Browns come off the list, and more sorry to see Pittsburgh go. But, technically, neither team has a chance to go 0-16: if one or both of them wind up going 0-15-1 this season, there might be a special acknowledgement. But for now, neither team is part of the loser update.

(I have not heard that the beer fridges have been hacked yet. However, the word from Bud Light is that a tie is not a win, so the fridges officially stay locked for now.)

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Buffalo
Houston
Tennessee
Indianapolis
Oakland
Chargers
Dallas
New York Football Giants
Detroit
Chicago
New Orleans
Atlanta
Seattle
San Francisco
Arizona

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 11, 2018.

September 11th, 2018

Bill Daily, noted second banana. He was Major Healey on “I Dream of Jeannie” and Howard Borden on “The Bob Newhart Show”.

(Hattips: Borepatch and Lawrence.)

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Inverted Jenny watch.

September 10th, 2018

I’m a day or two behind on this, but: Inverted Jenny #49 is now accounted for.

As far as anyone was able to determine, the stamp went from William T. Robey (the guy who discovered the error and bought the sheet of 100 stamps) to Eugene Klein (who bought the sheet from Robey for $15,000) to Col. E.H.R. “Ned” Green (who bought the sheet from Klein for $20,000 and split it up). After Green, nobody knew where #49 was until recently.

Mr. Lyons said the Illinois man’s 91-year-old father had been a stamp collector, but the stamp had come from his mother’s side of the family. A great-uncle apparently bought it after the sheet of 100 was broken up, and after the great-uncle died, the great-aunt left it to the man’s mother in the 1930s.
“It spent all those years in bank vaults, which was a good thing for the stamp,” he said. Mr. Lyons said the man, who has asked not to be identified, could not explain why his father never put it in an album with his other stamps.

This is way cool. Because the stamp was never mounted and spent most of the time in safety deposit boxes, it is in very good shape. According to the article in Linn’s Stamp News, the stamp has been graded at 90 XF.

If it goes up for auction…an XF-SUP 95 graded Inverted Jenny went for $1.35 million in 2016. I can easily see this one going for over a million.

The only Inverted Jenny unaccounted for at the moment is #66: that one was part of a block of four that was stolen in 1955. The other three stamps eventually resurfaced.

Inverted Jenny website maintained by Siegal Auctions. This includes a very useful interactive reconstruction of the entire sheet.

Posted in Bookmarks, History, Stamps | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 7, 2018.

September 7th, 2018

Pour out a 40 of Coors for the man.

Burt Reynolds: NYT. LAT. THR. WP.

Also among the dead: Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch part 2.

September 6th, 2018

Breaking this one out for reasons.

Dr. Ralph R. Brown, my uncle (on my dad’s side of the family).

Not much more that I want to say about this right now.

Posted in Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: September 6, 2018.

September 6th, 2018

George Austin, blogger and regular commenter, died earlier this week. Borepatch and ASM826 have nice tributes up.

Adding to what they said: I didn’t know Mr. Austin (I wish I had) but he was a frequent commenter here: as a matter of fact, he was the originator of Gavrilo Princip Day. We extend our condolences to his people.

Kenny Shopsin, restaurant owner. I never met him, either, but I was familiar with him by way of Calvin Trillin’s writings. I even have a copy of his cookbook, though of course I waited for it to show up used.

I suspect Mr. Shopsin and my stepdad would have gotten along famously, while there’s a 50/50 chance that Mr. Shopsin and I would have rubbed each other the wrong way. Such is the way of the world.

Posted in Admin, Food, Obits | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 4th, 2018.

September 5th, 2018

The regular season starts Thursday. And TMQ gets back to something closely approaching normal next Tuesday. But for now, we have one more week of filler.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

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TMQ Watch: August 28, 2018.

August 30th, 2018

We keep saying we’re going to get the TMQ Watch out closer to Tuesday, if not actually on Tuesday.
And then things keep popping up.
We apologize for the lateness. Perhaps next week.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Oh, noes, Llano.

August 29th, 2018

Back in February, I touched on problems with the Llano Police Department. I had not seen an update on this until yesterday, when Reason‘s “Hit and Run” blog, of all places, ran a story covering the latest developments.

Summarizing:

Chief Kevin Ratliff is now ex-Chief Kevin Ratliff. He was fired July 26th…after being convicted of two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with a governmental record.

He was sentenced last week to six months in jail, but will instead serve a year of probation. If he breaks those terms, he will have to go to jail.

These were all class A misdemeanors. I can’t tell if conviction on these charges requires Ratliff to surrender his peace officer’s license. It doesn’t look like the other indicted officers have gone to trial yet. (Former officer Harden is set for trial in October.)

But wait, there’s more! There was another incident that resulted in another Llano officer and a sheriff’s deputy also being indicted on official oppression charges!

Basically, the two officers responded to a domestic dispute. The male party wouldn’t open the door to the responding officers: so first they tried to pick the lock, then they kicked the door in.

“You’re going to jail,” Roberts told Holley as he stood over him. The officers held Holley in the back of a patrol unit for nearly an hour, then later took the handcuffs off and let him go.
Holley was never charged with a crime.

And apparently, there’s body camera footage of this whole affair as well.

When asked if there was a climate of corruption at the police department, [City Manager Scott] Edmonson said, “Uh, no.”
When asked if Edmonson could be certain of that given the city’s done nothing to investigate that angle, Edmonson replied, “Can we be sure of anything?”

Existential philosophy in Llano. Who’d thunk it?

The sheriff’s deputy is currently suspended:

The sheriff disciplined Roberts the Monday after the incident and stripped him of his police powers and put Roberts on paid administrative leave when the indictment came down. Blackburn didn’t allow Roberts to sit at home to earn his pay, he put his deputy to work in the county jail until the criminal charges are resolved.
“I think for the citizens of the county, if he’s going to be on paid leave, he should be working for it,” Blackburn said.

The Llano PD officer resigned.

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

When guns are outlawed…

August 28th, 2018

Shot:

Chaser: what story is this related to?

Hong Kong Professor Faces Murder Trial in ‘Yoga Ball Killing’

“Yoga Ball Killing”? Yes: Dr. Khaw Kim-sun is accused of murdering his wife and 16 year old daughter using yoga balls filled with carbon monoxide.

The defendant also worked as an associate professor in the department of anesthesia and intensive care at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His colleagues at the university later reported having seen him pumping carbon monoxide into yoga exercise balls the day before the killings. One ball, still inflated, was found under his desk. Another was found in the trunk of the Mini Cooper.

…

Dr. Khaw, who has pleaded not guilty, had told the police that Lily [the 16-year-old daughter – DB] might have tried to kill herself with the yoga ball. Last week, the prosecutor, Andrew Bruce, said in court that was a “lame excuse” and “simply untrue.”
Prosecutors say that when Dr. Khaw drove the yoga balls home in his Toyota, he had used a monitor that would sound an alarm if the gas reached dangerous levels. They said Ms. Lee, his mistress, was an assistant in the rabbit experiment.

Look, I understand bringing your work home with you. But when your work is a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide? Leave that (stuff) in the lab.

Spicy bar snack, by way of Mike the Musicologist:

I saw Carbon Monoxide Yoga Balls open for Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test at Altamont in ’67.

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

CanCon.

August 27th, 2018

That’s “Canadian Content” for those of you in my audience unfamiliar with the term.

I don’t remember how I stumbled across this, but yesterday I discovered “The Devil at Your Heels”, a 1981 documentary by Robert Fortier which is available at the National Film Board of Canada’s website.

Perhaps surprisingly to some people, this is not a movie about blues music. “Devil” is a documentary about Ken Carter, a semi-famous Canadian stunt driver, and his attempt to jump a car from the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence River to the US side: a distance of about one mile.

According to the background blog entry on the film, Fortier originally intended this to be a short documenting the jump.

It took five years just to get to the point where Carter was actually able and ready to make the attempt. And Fortier kept filming in spite of the setbacks: rain interfering with construction of the jump ramp, exploding rocket fuel tanks, Carter’s attempts to raise money…

I “watched” about 55 minutes of it yesterday while puttering around doing other things, and plan to finish watching it in the next couple of days. There is a twist at the end which I spoiled for myself, but I won’t do that to you. (If you search for “Ken Carter” or “The Devil at Your Heels” on Wikipedia, you’ll find the twist.) From what I saw, I think this is another Canadian documentary that’s worth your attention. It isn’t quite as bat guano insane as “Project Grizzly“, but it’s still fun.

The whole movie is also available in high-def on YouTube, again thanks to the NFB:

Somehow, while searching around looking for more stuff about Ken Carter and the jump, I ran across this article on AutoFocus, a Canadian auto news site, about Jacques Ostiguy. Ostiguy was a Canadian designer, noted for his work on the Chrysler Cordoba and for Bombardier (the company that made Ski-Doo snowmobiles).

I wanted to note this because I love this quote in the article:

A visit to Carleton after his retirement confirmed his fears that the “pseudo-intellectuals” had taken over, Ostiguy said in 2009. “Fourth-year students were working on projects like a solar-powered slipper-heater [or] walkers for the elderly built from recycled cow-shit,” he ranted. “The future of design in Canada is next to nil because of them—they’re as dangerous as Ayatollah Khomeini.”

(Content warning: article may not be 100% safe for work in some environments. There are no explicit drawings in the article itself, but some people might take offense at the headline.)

Posted in Cars, History, Movies | Comments Closed

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