BAG Day is coming!

April 11th, 2019

Again. Monday, April 15th. Of course, a lot of the good smaller gun shops are closed on Monday, so (as always) I don’t have a problem if you want to start early, or extend your BAG shopping into next week.

What am I getting this year? There’s nothing that I’m really excited about or that turns my crank. I’m tempted to pick up one of the Palmetto State Armory M&P Shields (which are still on sale) but I don’t really feel like I need one.

Earlier today, I got an email from CDNN, who are selling the “Steyr Scout RFR”. I assume “RFR” means “RimFire Rifle”, as these are available in .22 Magnum, .22 LR, and .17 HMR. I didn’t even know these existed before now.

The idea of a rimfire “scout rifle” (Cooper would call it a “pseduo-Scout”) is kind of appealing, and I’ve been thinking about something in .17 HMR. The price isn’t bad, but I haven’t quite finished getting my Savage Scout set up the way I want it yet. (I’ve got the scope, I’ve got the rings, I just need to find a gunsmith I can trust to mount and boresight it.) So I’m not sure I want to put more money into another scout that will need a scope. Plus, for .17 HMR, I’m actually thinking more along the lines of the Ruger Precision Rifle than a scout.

And I’ve actually checked off all the items I had on last year’s list. Well, mostly: I have the sling and the scope, and the Dragon Leatherworks holster is on order (expected delivery at the end of May.)

If I have time over the weekend, I might run down to Cabela’s to see if there are any targets of opportunity, but I’m not counting on it. Unless I see something that really excites me, I’m probably going to be putting BAG Day money into getting more of my collection set up the way I want it.

But don’t let me stop you, and feel free to share photos of your BAG Day finds here if you want to.

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Obit watch: April 11, 2019.

April 11th, 2019

Ed Westcott passed away at the end of March. He was 97.

Mr. Westcott was the photographer at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project era. Note I said “the photographer”: Mr. Westcott was the only person authorized to take photos at Oak Ridge. (There were also photographers at Los Alamos and Hanford.)

Thousands of his negatives were stored at Oak Ridge, and then at the National Archives in Washington, before they were declassified years later.
He also developed aerial reconnaissance photos of the devastation wrought by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as armed guards waited outside his darkroom.

Kind of related: I got curious about the Cemestos houses, did some DuckDuckGoing, and found this piece from McSweeney’s. I know, but I actually thought this was pretty good: Anne Wheeler’s a charming writer, and I’d love to hit some nuclear tourism spots with her.

Posted in Obits, Photography | Comments Closed

Own goal.

April 10th, 2019

When I was a small child, I had a book.

Well, actually, I had more than one book. But this one was about planes: I don’t remember the title, or if it was about planes in general, or just military aircraft.

But I do remember a casual mention in that book of a plane shooting itself down by running into its own cannon fire.

What brings this to mind?

The F-16, which suffered considerable damage in January during an exercise above Vlieland, appears to have been hit by its own ammunition. At least one fired cartridge caused damage to the cladding of the device. Parts of the ammunition also ended up in the engine.

(Translation by Google Translate. Original is in Dutch.)

More from Military Times, which is in English, and actually mentions the incident I think I remember.

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Obit watch: April 10, 2019.

April 10th, 2019

Charles Van Doren has passed away at the age of 93.

I wrote a little about this a while back, but to recap: Mr. Van Doren was from a cultured and educated family, had batchelor’s and master’s degrees, taught at Columbia University, and was “handsome, personable” with “an honest look about him”.

He was recruited by Albert Freedman to appear on the quiz show “Twenty-One” (he didn’t even own a TV at the time), and knocked off Herb Stempel, the reigning champion. (From some accounts I’ve seen, the producers basically felt Mr. Van Doren was “more appealing” to the audience than Mr. Stempel.)

Mr. Van Doren won $129,000 in 1956 money (the paper of record claims that’s equivalent to $1 million today).

In succeeding months, as rumors and skepticism over TV quiz shows grew, some contestants admitted that the programs had been fixed. The networks denied it, and Mr. Van Doren insisted that he had not taken part in any deceptions. Besides misleading the press and public, he continued to deceive his family and friends, and even lied to a Manhattan grand jury about his performances.
But on Nov. 2, 1959, he told congressional investigators that the shows had all been hoaxes, that he had been given questions and answers in advance, and that he had been coached to make the performances more dramatic.

Mr. Van Doren served a suspended sentence for second-degree perjury (for lying to the grand jury), went on to work for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and wrote a couple of books after he retired. (He also collaborated on some books with Mortimer Adler.)

The famous New Yorker article from 2008.

As far as I can tell, Herb Stempel is still alive at the age of 92.

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

Obit watch part 2: April 9, 2019.

April 9th, 2019

Lt. Colonel Richard E. Cole (United States Air Force – Ret.)

He was 103.

Lieutenant (at the time) Cole was Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot on the Tokyo raid. He was the last survivor of Doolittle’s Raiders.

As Mr. Cole remembered it: “The tune ‘Wabash Cannonball’ kept running through my mind. One time I was singing and stomping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked at me in a very questioning manner, like he thought I was going batty.”

…

Doolittle, Lieutenant Cole and the other three crewmen of their plane bailed out in rain and fog soon after their bomber crossed the Chinese coast as darkness arrived. Lieutenant Cole landed in a pine tree atop a mountain and was unhurt except for a black eye. He made a hammock from his parachute and went to sleep. At dawn, he began walking, and late that day he made contact with Chinese guerrillas.
He was soon reunited with Doolittle, who had come down in a rice paddy, and their three fellow crewmen. The five joined up with other stranded airmen who had been rescued. The Chinese took them all on an arduous journey, much of it by riverboat, to an air strip, where they were picked up by a United States military transport plane and flown to Chungking, the headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese.

For the record:

Three of the 80 Doolittle raiders were killed in crash landings or while parachuting. Eight others were captured by the Japanese. Three of them were executed, another died of disease and starvation in captivity, and four survived more than three years of solitary confinement and brutality.

Lt. Cole went on to fly transport planes over the Hump. He also served with the 1st Air Commando Group.

Lt. Cole’s page on doolittleraider.com which contains some great photos. Obit from MySanAntonio.com. I had no idea the gentleman lived in Comfort (about 90 minutes up the road from me). Cool story from the Express News in 2018.

Dick Cole’s War: Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commando sounds like a fascinating book.

Rest in peace, soldier.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Sometimes there’s just nothing you can say.

April 9th, 2019

A while back, I noted the death of Kelly Catlin, Olympic cyclist.

There’s a follow up article in today’s NYT.

Catlin told her sister, Christine, that seeking therapy meant she was weak and that she would rather suffer.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.

Posted in Cycling, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 9, 2019.

April 9th, 2019

Seymour Cassel, character actor.

As the obit notes, he did a lot of work with John Cassavetes and Wes Anderson. But his list of credits goes beyond that. He did a guest shot on “Convoy” (the TV series) and was in “Convoy” (the movie). He did several episodes of “12 O’Clock High” and “The F.B.I.”, was in two “Batman” episodes, guested on “Matlock”, and was even in one “ST:TNG” episode.

Never did a “Mannix”, though, as far as I can tell.

(Noted: “Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight”. Just read the summary.)

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

Obit watch: April 7, 2019.

April 7th, 2019

Vonda N. McIntyre, noted SF writer, passed away on Monday, but I did not know about this until Lawrence mentioned it last night. The NYT obit is datelined Friday, but I’m thinking it must have been posted late in the day.

Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, for the historical record.

Ly Tong. He was a pilot with the South Vietnamese Air Force.

A man who never accepted defeat, Mr. Ly Tong considered it his personal mission to take back his country from the Communists, who have ruled it since winning the Vietnam War in 1975.

So, in 1992, he…

…hijacked a commercial airliner after takeoff from Bangkok, ordered the pilot to fly low over Ho Chi Minh City — known as Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, before the Communist victory — and dumped thousands of leaflets calling for a popular uprising.
He then strapped on a parachute and followed the leaflets down to certain capture. He was released six years later in an amnesty and returned to the United States, where he had become a citizen after the war.

That takes us to 1998. In 2000…

…Mr. Ly Tong burnished his anti-Communist credentials with a flight over Havana in a rented plane, scattering leaflets as he had in Vietnam. He was commended on his return by Cuban-Americans in Florida, who gave him a victory parade.

Later that year…

…Mr. Ly Tong made a second trip over Ho Chi Minh City, sending down a new cascade of leaflets, which he had signed “Global Alliance for the Total Uprising Against Communists.”

He spent another six years in a Thai prison for that. The paper of record states he was unarmed and nobody was hurt during either of his hijackings, which makes me wonder about the definition of “hijacking”. But I digress.

In his final and most bizarre act of defiance, in 2010 in California, Mr. Ly Tong assaulted a Vietnamese singer whom he deemed sympathetic to the government of Vietnam. Disguised as a woman, he walked to the edge of the stage, reached up as if to hand the singer a bouquet and squirted a liquid, which may have been pepper spray, in her face. He was sentenced on multiple charges to six months in jail and three years’ probation. He appeared at his trial in drag.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes, Politics | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#53 in a series)

April 5th, 2019

Kind of a brief one, but I didn’t get to use this trope last night, so what the heck:

The Baltimore Sun has a good summary of the “Healthy Holly” scandal that’s threatening to take down Mayor (and former state Senator) Catherine Pugh.

There’s also a “special section” that collects links to their other stories. My personal favorite so far:

How the rise of the self-publishing industry contributed to the problems for Baltimore’s mayor

I’m not kidding. That’s an actual headline from an actual article.

Pugh’s administration was beset by other problems long before her book deal came under attack. But Baltimoreans might wonder what would have happened if the Kindle had never been invented, or if the meteoric rise of the self-publishing industry had been delayed by perhaps three decades. Would “Healthy Holly” have remained Pugh’s own private brainchild instead of a roughly 80-page national embarrassment? And would she still occupy the Baltimore mayor’s office today?

Come on. It’s Baltimore, gentlemen: if it wasn’t this, it would have been something else. Grifters gonna grift, and technology doesn’t change that.

Posted in Books, Kindleing, Politics | Comments Closed

Decisions, decisions…

April 4th, 2019

If I was a book collector and had $100,000 to spend, what should I spend it on?

Let’s see. For that money, I could maybe get two copies of the UK first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Or maybe just one.

Or I could be like this guy, who paid $100,000 for one book from “Healthy Holly LLC”.

Should I even mention that this guy does business with the city of Baltimore? And that “Healthy Holly LLC” is the mayor’s publishing company?

Grant’s firm has long done business with the city. And in December last year, Pugh voted as a member of the city’s spending board to approve a contract with the company to finance capital projects. The value of the contract will depend on what the city uses it to buy.

It doesn’t sound as interesting as Harry Potter, but it may be equally rare:

Pugh was paid $500,000 by the University of Maryland Medical System during a time when she was a state senator and then mayor — and sat on the hospital network’s board of directors. That money was supposed to buy 100,000 “Healthy Holly” books for the city’s schoolchildren in five installments from 2011 to 2018. The “Herbie” book was the second installment.

But even after days of front-page headlines, no one has stepped forward to account for all the books. UMMS said through a spokesman that “production and distribution of the books was managed by Healthy Holly LLC,” Pugh’s book company.

Bonus: the mayor has an “upscale second hand boutique” that’s been selling Groupons. (Groupons? Those are still a thing?) But when a reporter bought one and went to visit yesterday afternoon…

…the door of the Pigtown boutique was locked, and two women who entered the building Wednesday afternoon declined to answer a reporter’s questions or to allow entrance into the shop.

Getting back to the books, it’s a shame nobody can find them: Lawrence has a birthday coming up, and he’s a connoisseur of books published by political hacks to get money under the table.

Posted in Books, Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 4, 2019.

April 4th, 2019

David Fechheimer, private investigator. Noted here because this is one of the better NYT obits for a not-so-famous person I’ve read in a while.

Ron “The Ghoul” Sweed, late night TV host in Cleveland during the 70s.

Sweed broke into Cleveland TV in 1971 on WKBF Channel 61. He wore a lab coat and was armed with an assortment of low-rent props, from Cheez Whiz to firecrackers to flying pierogis, kielbasa and slime. He quickly was syndicated in six other markets — Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
He got his start working as an assistant for another late-night TV legend, Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson. He received Anderson’s permission to appear as the Ghoul in 1971.

(Previously. Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Brief notes from the legal beat.

April 4th, 2019

Following up on a few things:

The Waco biker trials turned into a huge nothingburger.

All charges have been dropped against Chauna Thompson. You may remember her as the Harris County Sheriff’s deputy who was fired and indicted after her husband choked a man to death during an altercation outside a Denny’s. Her husband has been sentenced to 25 years. (Previously. Previously. Previously.)

From the Department of Well, That Will Show Them: The Texas Department of Corrections has banned all chaplains, regardless of religion, from the death chamber. (Previously. More from Reason.)

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 2, 2019.

April 2nd, 2019

The Alliance of American Football.

I actually feel sort of sorry for Johnny Manziel. Out of the NFL, banned from the CFL (not just cut, banned from the league), and now his latest gig has folded underneath him.

Maybe he can get a new gig with the revived XFL next year.

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Obit watch: special 007 edition, April 1, 2019.

April 1st, 2019

By way of Lawrence: Tania Mallet, Tilly Masterson in “Goldfinger”.

Shane Rimmer has also passed away. He was in a whole bunch of stuff, including “The Spy Who Loved Me” and uncredited parts in “You Only Live Twice”, “Diamonds Are Forever”, “Live and Let Die”, and “Star Wars”. He was the B-52 copilot in “Dr. Strangelove” and Rusty in “Rollerball”.

He was perhaps most famous to some people as the voice of Scott Tracy on the “Thunderbirds” TV series.

Posted in Movies, Obits | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: March 30, 2019.

March 30th, 2019

I’m no military aviation expert, but I’ve read a fair amount on the subject. Much to my chagrin, I had not heard of Commander Joe “Hoser” Satrapa (USN – ret.) until McThag linked to his obit.

What a guy. He was one of the leading advocates of fighters carrying guns, instead of relying on missiles. He was also famous as something of a “swashbuckling, authority-challenging maverick”. This obit is full of great stories and quotes:

While flying and fighting in his F-8E Crusader over North Vietnam, CDR. Satrapa was famous for the personal arsenal that he wore on his flying kit in the event he was shot down. According to anecdotes shared in social media by fellow squadron members, Satrapa reportedly carried “Two Mark 33 hand grenades, a Colt Python .357 revolver with 60 rounds of ammunition, a Smith & Wesson 9mm with non-NATO hollow-point ammunition and 3 spare magazines, a custom Randall survival knife and an additional throwing knife over his left shoulder.”

Among other highpoints:

  • He was drummed out of the Navy for “administrative deficiencies” in the early 1980’s, only to be reinstated by SecNav John Lehman and President Ronald Reagan in 1981…and retroactively promoted to commander.
  • Whereupon he was assigned as an instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School: “As a part of his training syllabus, some sources recounted that Joe “Hoser” Satrapa delivered his initial lecture as an adaptation of General George Patton’s famous flag speech.”
  • His call sign later changed from “Hoser” to “Toser”. I won’t spoil the story, but I will give a hint: “a pilot without a right thumb cannot fly a jet fighter”.
  • During one training flight, he “shot down” two Air Force F-15s…in one Navy F-14…twice…with his gun.
  • He nearly caused Japan to cancel their F-15 order.
  • After he left the Navy, he went on to fly fire suppression drops in California. One day, an aircraft above him dropped fire retardant on top of him, completely covering his windscreen. What did he do? Read the obit.

How have I never heard of this guy before? And thanks, McThag, for the heads-up.

Also among the dead:

Agnès Varda, French film maker. I’ve never seen anything of hers, though I think I have the Criterion “Cléo from 5 to 7” somewhere, and I remember Roger Ebert extravagantly praising “The Gleaners and I”.

Victoria Ruvolo. Her story is kind of interesting: she was driving home one night with a friend, from her niece’s recital, when a 18-year old man threw a frozen turkey through the windshield of her car:

The turkey crashed through Ms. Ruvolo’s windshield, crushing the bones in her cheeks and jaw, fracturing the socket of her left eye, causing her esophagus to cave in and leaving her with brain trauma.

…

Ms. Ruvolo required extensive reconstructive surgery to her face and months of physical and cognitive rehabilitation before she could return to work as a collection agency manager nine months later.

In spite of this, she forgave the young man, and lobbied for him to receive a light sentence. The prosecution wanted him to serve 25 years: thanks to Ms. Ruvolo’s advocacy, he served six months in prison and five years of probation.

After Ms. Ruvolo’s recovery, she spoke about empathy and forgiveness at schools and programs like Taste (Thinking Errors, Anger Management, Social Skills and Talking Empathy), which holds criminals accountable for their actions.
As part of his rehabilitation, [the turkey thrower – DB] also spoke to Taste, Robert Goldman, its founder, said by phone.
“[The turkey thrower – DB] has a job and is a productive member of society,” said Mr. Goldman, who collaborated with Ms. Ruvolo and Lisa Pulitzer on a book, “No Room for Vengeance …” (2011). “He did everything Victoria challenged him to do and spoke to kids about the mistakes he made.
“That’s her legacy: She’s an example of forgiveness in a vengeful world.”

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

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