Black Hat/DEFCON 27 links: August 13, 2019.

August 13th, 2019

I had a lot of trouble finding this on the site, but: the DEFCON 27 media server is here.

I’ve got to wrap this up for now, as my lunch hour is almost over. I may try to do a second post tonight, if I find enough additional material to justify one. Otherwise, please share, enjoy, comment, and thank any presenters whose work you found particularly enjoyable or valuable.

Posted in DEFCON, DEFCON 27, Photography, Radio | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 13, 2019.

August 13th, 2019

Dorothy Olsen. She was 103 when she passed away on July 23rd.

You’ve probably never heard of her, but she was one of the WWII Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). The WASPs ferried military aircraft from manufacturing plants to points where they could then be flown overseas.

Transporting and testing the latest models, towing targets and transferring captured enemy planes, the WASPs collectively flew an estimated 60 million miles from 1942 to 1944. Thirty-eight died in accidents during training or on duty.
From her base in Long Beach, Calif., Mrs. Olsen flew 61 missions for the Sixth Ferry Group in nearly two dozen models, including P-38s, P-51s and B-17s. She flew them to West Coast airfields to be deployed in the Pacific, or to Newark to be deployed in Europe.

The WASPs were initially considered to be civil service employees and not military.

The WASPs were finally recognized as veterans eligible for benefits in 1977 under President Jimmy Carter. In 2010 they received as a group the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation’s two highest civilian awards.

According to the paper of record, Ms. Olsen’s death leaves 38 surviving WASPs.

Henri Belolo, co-founder (with Jacques Morali) of the Village People.

I love the caption on that first photo.

Posted in History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: August 2019.

August 12th, 2019

Looks like the NFL is getting fired up again.

Yes, the loser update will return this year. We haven’t sat down to consider which teams are likely candidates for the Owen-16 trophy, but maybe we’ll get some time to do that between now and the start of the regular season.

But we are sure everyone is asking this question: what of Gregg Easterbrook and “Tuesday Morning Quarterback”? Has he found a new home, since the “Weekly Standard” folded up their tent and headed into the long dark night? And what of “TMQ Watch”? Will that be a recurring feature next year?

To answer the last question first: sadly, no. No “TMQ Watch” in 2019. Why?

Not our choice, Easterbrook’s. We may try to keep an eye on his Twitter feed for noteworthy items relating to the NFL. But we’ve found that Easterbrook’s Twitter feed is a reliable way of pressure testing our cerebral arteries, so we don’t recommend making bets on how much and how often we’ll be doing that.

Posted in Admin, Books, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 2 Comments »

Bagatelle (#13)

August 10th, 2019

Every now and then, I see a story in one of the papers and think to myself, “Dick Wolf’s going to get an episode of ‘Law and Order: Kinky Sex Crimes’ out of this one.”

Today is the first time I’ve ever thought “Dick Wolf’s going to get an entire season of ‘L&O:KSC’ out of this story.”

Posted in Bagatelle, Law, TV | Comments Closed

Black Hat/DEFCON 27 links: August 9, 2019.

August 9th, 2019

Some more stuff I’ve stumbled across from Black Hat:

I expect to be somewhere between slightly and highly busy this weekend, so updates will be catch as catch can. It might be Monday before I can pull more stuff together, but I’ll try as best as I can to get updates before then.

Posted in Apple, DEFCON, DEFCON 27, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 9, 2019.

August 9th, 2019

Rosie Ruiz, historical footnote. She apparently died in early July, but her death was not widely reported until recently.

For the younger set: Ms. Ruiz “won” the 1980 Boston Marathon, with a “finishing time” of 2:31:56.

But suspicions about her victory arose immediately. Spotters had not seen her at checkpoints along the 26-mile course, and after the race she told a television interviewer that she had run only one other marathon, the 1979 New York City Marathon, and that she had finished that race in 2:56:33.

Eventually, it came out that Ms. Ruiz hadn’t actually finished the NYC Marathon:

New York City Marathon officials invalidated Ruiz’s time after reviewing videotape showing that Ruiz had not crossed the finish line in the time she had mistakenly been assigned by a volunteer, who thought Ruiz was an injured runner.
Days later, Ruiz’s victory in Boston was also nullified. Race organizers there based their decision on about 10,000 photographs taken along the last mile of the race as well as on information supplied by the news media and observers along the route. In addition, at least one witness recalled seeing Ruiz enter the course at Kenmore Square, about a mile from the finish line.

Jacqueline Gareau was declared the women’s winner. According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) her time was 2:34:28, which was a record women’s time for the Boston Marathon.

Posted in History, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Black Hat/DEFCON 27 links: August 8, 2019.

August 8th, 2019

So here’s the first round of stuff from Black Hat and DEFCON 27. I apologize that I’m just posting links, but I haven’t had time to really digest any of these presentations, and I want to get the links up while they are still semi-timely:

  • “Look, No Hands! — The Remote, Interaction-less Attack Surface of the iPhone” by Natalie Silvanovich. Slides here. Google Project Zero blog post here.
  • “Bypassing the Maginot Line: Remotely Exploit the Hardware Decoder on Smartphone” by Xiling Gong and Peter Pi. White paper here. Slides here. Blog post here.
  • “Attacking and Defending the Microsoft Cloud (Office 365 & Azure AD)” by Sean Metcalf and Mark Morowczynski. Slides here.
  • “Reverse Engineering WhatsApp Encryption for Chat Manipulation and More” by Roman Zaikin and Oded Vanunu. Slides here.

I think it’s still early for today’s Black Hat and DEFCON presentations. I may try to get another post up tonight.

Posted in Apple, DEFCON, DEFCON 27 | Comments Closed

Don’t be evil.

August 7th, 2019

I’m seeing reports that Google is deleting gun blogs.

The only one I’ve been able to “confirm” so far is “No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money”: John Richardson has posted on Twitter that his blog has been locked. (Hattip: SayUncle.)

Thing is, one data point doesn’t make a trend, and it could be just incompetent Google support (is that redundant?). Or it could indeed be a Google decision.

My point here is mostly: it doesn’t matter if you’re on Google, or on a third party hosting provider, or even if you own your own server. Back your (stuff) up.

And in that vein, thanks to McThag for the valuable reminder that I hadn’t backed my (stuff) up in a while. A failing which I have since corrected.

Posted in Admin, Backups, Guns | 2 Comments »

Lock, lock, baby, baby.

August 7th, 2019

I missed these the first time around, but the Hacker News Twitter linked to them a couple of days ago. I thought I’d blog them for the benefit of all my lock/computer security/Internet of Broken Things fans.

There’s a type of lock called the FB50 smart lock. It’s manufactured by a Chinese company, and sold “under multiple brands across many ecommerce sites”. As you might guess, it has Bluetooth and an app.

And, of course, it’s vulnerable. Once you get the lock’s MAC address (which, you know, you can get just by looking for Bluetooth devices in the area), you can use a series of HTTP requests to get the lock ID and the user ID, and then disassociate the user from the lock and associate yourself.

Discussion and proof of concept code here.

And the footnotes on that led me to another Pen Test Partners lock exploit (these are the folks who brought you the Tapplock one). This time the target is something called the Nokelock, which is apparently popular on Amazon (“…they do a number of different formats in a number of different body types, sometimes with other unlocking devices, such as a fingerprint sensors. There are other brand names they get repackaged as, such as Micalock.”)

So the Bluetooth packets are encrypted. But…

…the key can be obtained from the API by two methods. All the API requests need a valid API token, which can be obtained by simply creating a user with a throw away email address.

And:

…all traffic, including the user’s traffic is sent via the unencrypted HTTP protocol.

And there’s no authorization for API calls. All you need is a token, which (as noted above) you can get with an email address. Once you’ve got a token, you can grab the information about any lock, “including email address, password hash and the GPS location of a lock”.

And the password hash is unsalted MD5. “This is a cryptographically weak hash type that can be run through very quickly.”

Extra bonus points: the footnotes for the Pen Test Partners entry point to yet another lock exploit, this one for something called the Klic Lock.

An authentication bypass in website post requests in the Tzumi Electronics Klic Lock application 1.0.9 for mobile devices allows attackers to access resources (that are not otherwise accessible without proper authentication) via capture-replay. Physically proximate attackers can use this information to unlock unauthorized Tzumi Electronics Klic Smart Padlock Model 5686 Firmware 6.2

I don’t think I can put it any better than icyphox did:

DO NOT. Ever. Buy. A smart lock. You’re better off with the “dumb” ones with keys.

Posted in Bluetooth, Locks, Radio | Comments Closed

Also an obit watch.

August 6th, 2019

It has been really, really hard to find anything linkable on this, but Lawrence has a post up at his other blog:

Barry Hughart, noted fantasy writer. I’m not a big fantasy fan, but I’ve heard a lot of folks I trust (including Lawrence) rave about the Master Li and Number Ten Ox books. I do want to read them: I just haven’t been able to accumulate copies.

(Of course, if I were sufficiently motivated, Lame Excuse Books could probably take care of that.)

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Layers and layers of fact checkers.

August 6th, 2019

I noticed this over the weekend and pointed it out to a few people, but it’s still going on:

Posted in Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 6, 2019.

August 6th, 2019

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.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Here’s an odd clipping for you…

August 5th, 2019

Odd 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…

…she became a cloistered nun.

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.

Posted in Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 5, 2019.

August 5th, 2019

D. A. Pennebaker, noted mostly as a documentary filmmaker. (“Don’t Look Back”, “Primary”, “The War Room”.)

His political films are now part of the canon, but the scenes from Mr. Pennebaker’s catalog that still circulate most widely are of pop culture figures in action: Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire in “Monterey Pop”; Elaine Stritch in “Original Cast Album: Company,” exhausted and straining to record “The Ladies Who Lunch” while Stephen Sondheim and others look on in despair; Mr. Dylan showing up the softer-edged singer Donovan in a hotel room crowded with their hangers-on; and the actor Rip Torn attacking Norman Mailer with a hammer at the end of “Maidstone” (1970), one of three eccentric movies directed by Mr. Mailer, for which Mr. Pennebaker served as a cameraman.

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.”

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

DEFCON 27/Black Hat 2019 preliminary notes.

August 1st, 2019

DEFCON 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Bluetooth, DEFCON, DEFCON 27, Radio, SDR | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 1, 2019.

August 1st, 2019

The 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.

But Mr. Rich was writing on the heels of one of Mr. Prince’s most calamitous failures, “A Doll’s Life,” a musical sequel to “A Doll’s House,” Henrik Ibsen’s domestic drama of a woman’s revolt against the stultifying expectations of womanhood. With book and lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden and a score by Larry Grossman, huge sets and grandiose sound amplification, it closed after five performances, a victim of its outsize self-importance.

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).

For many years Buoniconti was an intelligent, articulate and tough player for the Boston Patriots (now the New England Patriots) and the Dolphins, winning All-Pro honors five times in a 14-year pro football career. A former All-American at the University of Notre Dame, he anchored the Dolphins’ vaunted “No-Name Defense” under Coach Don Shula.

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.”

Posted in Media, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, Theatre | 1 Comment »

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:

Mawson kept going, covering the last 100 miles by himself. Whether or not he snacked on Mertz is a polarizing question in Mawson scholarship.

…

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.

…

Ernest Shackleton is one of those genuinely admirable people, like Nikola Tesla or Frida Kahlo, who are somehow diminished by the embrace of their posthumous admirers. I think of this as Rick and Morty syndrome. You love the original, but then you look around in horror at the people enjoying it with you and think—is this me? These people are awful! Will I become one of them?

…

In 2013, Turney saw a chance to answer a question no one was asking—what if Shackleton had had a Twitter feed?

…

There had already been choral music, and there threatened to be more.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 31, 2019.

July 31st, 2019

Breaking, 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.

…he was known, throughout his career, for his collaborations with a murderer’s row of creative talents, among them the choreographers Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett and Susan Stroman, the designers Eugene Lee, Patricia Zipprodt and Florence Klotz, and the composers Leonard Bernstein, John Kander, Stephen Sondheim, who was his most frequent confederate, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Possibly more later.

Posted in Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Tweets of the day.

July 29th, 2019

I 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:

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?

(Previously on Ed McGivern.)

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Celebration time!

July 29th, 2019

What 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.)

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Ten years burning down the road…

July 28th, 2019

Today 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.

Posted in Admin | 5 Comments »

Gratuitous gun porn (#5 in a series)

July 28th, 2019

I 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Guns, Photography | 2 Comments »

Quote of the day.

July 26th, 2019

I 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.)

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 26, 2019.

July 26th, 2019

P. 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…

In 2001, after several attempts to separate the couple, associates of Mr. Rajagopal forced the man into a car and drove off. His body was found in a resort town in the Western Ghats mountain range. He had been strangled.

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.

In 2009, an Indian high court upgraded the conviction to murder, and the sentence was changed to life in prison. He spent the rest of his life trying to avoid jail, until India’s Supreme Court rejected his final appeal this month.

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.

Ill health had kept Mr. Rajagopal away from his business in recent years. He had diabetes and hypertension and also had a stroke. By the end of his life he was almost completely blind.

He was 71 when he died.

Posted in Food, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 25, 2019.

July 25th, 2019

Rutger Hauer: NYT. Variety. THR.

I don’t have much else to say, really. He was memorable in “Blade Runner”…and that’s the only thing I’ve ever seen him in.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

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