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Obit watch: October 12, 2019.

Saturday, October 12th, 2019

By way of Lawrence, Robert Forster.

Yeah, he was great in “Jackie Brown”, which I still think is Tarantino’s most restrained and disciplined movie. But he did a lot of other movie and TV work to varying degrees of success. As I’ve said before, I wasn’t a “Twin Peaks” guy, so I missed him there. But he was in “Avalanche”, “Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence”, and “The Black Hole”, he did guest shots on many series (“Magnum, P.I.”, “Jake and the Fatman”, “Police Story”), and he was in a few unsuccessful series (“Banyon”, “Nakia”, “Karen Sisco”).

Aleksei Leonov, Russian cosmonaut and the first man to walk in space.

What Mr. Leonov did not reveal until many years later was that he and his fellow cosmonaut, Pavel I. Belyayev, who was also an Air Force pilot, were fortunate to have survived.
Mr. Leonov’s specially designed suit had unexpectedly inflated during his walk, and its bulk was preventing him from getting back inside the Voskhod.
“I knew I could not afford to panic, but time was running out,” he recalled in the book “Two Sides of the Moon” (2004), written with the astronaut David Scott, about their experiences in space.
Mr. Leonov slowly deflated the suit by releasing oxygen from it, a procedure that threatened to leave him without life support. But with the reduced bulk, he finally made it inside.
“I was drenched with sweat, my heart racing,” he remembered.
But that, he added, “was just the start of dire emergencies which almost cost us our lives.”
The oxygen pressure in the spacecraft rose to a dangerous level, introducing the prospect that a spark in the electrical system could set off a disastrous explosion or fire.
It returned to a tolerable level, but the cosmonauts never figured out the reason for the surge.
When it came time for the return to Earth, the spacecraft’s automatic rocket-firing system did not work, forcing the cosmonauts to conduct imprecise manual maneuvers during the descent that left them in deep snow and freezing temperatures in a remote Russian forest, far from their intended landing point.
It took several hours for a search party to find them and drop supplies from a helicopter, and they spent two nights in the forest, the first one inside their spacecraft and the second one in a small log cabin built by a ground rescue crew, until rescuers arrived on skis. They then took a 12-mile ski trek to a clearing, where a helicopter evacuated them.

He also survived an attempt to kill Leonid Brezhnev, but you’ll have to read the obit for that story.

Anna Quayle. The name didn’t ring any bells with me, but she was in a bunch of stuff: “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, “Casino Royale” (the first one, with David Niven), “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off”, and the list goes on.

…died on Aug. 16, although her death was not announced by her family until early October. She was 86.
Her family did not say where she died or specify the cause. She had received a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia in 2012.

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

Obit watch: October 11, 2019.

Friday, October 11th, 2019

The Francis Currey obit provoked a lively and delightful string of comments. Please go read them, if you haven’t already. And my thanks to Lawrence, pigpen51, and thinkingman.

I held this one from yesterday because I didn’t want to detract: Karen Pendleton, one of the original Mouseketeers.

In 1983, Ms. Pendleton was a passenger in a car accident that injured her spinal cord and left her paralyzed from the waist down. Eight years later, she earned a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fresno; she went on to earn a master’s in psychology there.
After the accident, she became an advocate for disability rights — she served on the board of the California Association of the Physically Handicapped — and worked as a counselor at a shelter for abused women.

…

Ms. Pendleton was often reminded that fans of the Mouseketeers felt great affection for the show. In 1986, when she was a judge for a beauty pageant for women in wheelchairs, she met a woman with polio who said she had been abused by her parents.
“She said, ‘Being able to see you on “The Mickey Mouse Club” was the only happy part of my childhood,’” Ms. Pendleton recalled in 1995. “My eyes just filled up with tears.”

Bjorn Thorbjarnarson. This is one of those obscure but interesting obits: Dr. Thorbjarnarson was a surgeon who specialized in operations involving the biliary tract. Among his patients: the Shah of Iran.

Dr. Thorbjarnarson led a team of surgeons in removing the shah’s gallbladder, a portion of his liver and several gallstones blocking a bile duct — all under highly unusual circumstances.
“Armed guards controlled the traffic to the patient’s room, and all blinds were always down,” Dr. Thorbjarnarson wrote in a letter in response to “The Shah’s Spleen: Its Impact on History,” an article in The Journal of the American College of Surgeons, in 2010. “Threatening calls were received by nurses attending, but none to me. Outside, the hospital was surrounded by a howling mob, controlled by barricades, calling for the shah’s head.”

He also operated on Andy Warhol, and was sued.

Warhol’s estate continued a private investigation, however, and in 1991 filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the hospital (now known as NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center) and individuals involved in his care. At a trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that year, the estate’s lawyers argued that doctors and nurses had neglected Warhol’s postoperative care and given him an unsafe amount of intravenous fluids.

…

Lawyers for the hospital, as well as for Dr. Thorbjarnarson and Dr. Denton S. Cox, the attending physician and Warhol’s longtime doctor, contended that Warhol had been well enough to watch television and make telephone calls from his hospital room as he recovered. An autopsy gave the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia, which the hospital argued was related to Warhol’s poor health and not caused by medical error or negligence.

I know it is an obit (De mortuis nil nisi bonum) and it is from the NYT, but i do think the paper makes a good case that Dr. Thorbjarnarson and the hospital weren’t responsible for Warhol’s death. Warhol was a gravely ill man who was deathly afraid of hospitals (being shot by Valerie Solanas will do that to you). He put off treatment until he couldn’t any longer, and even tried to talk Dr. Thorbjarnarson into treating him at Warhol’s home.

“Dr. Thorbjarnarson refused Warhol’s entreaties and found himself justified three days later, when the sick man was at last on the operating table,” Mr. Gopnik said, adding, “The surgeon found a gallbladder full of gangrene.”

The case was settled out of court.

Posted in Geek, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Quick notes from the forensic beat.

Wednesday, October 9th, 2019

Both by way of Hacker News.

“Obsessed fan finds Japanese idol’s home by zooming in on her eyes“.

Gil Grissom, call your office, please.

Ken Thompson’s UNIX password has been cracked.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to add a dictionary of common chess openings to your hashcat runs?

Posted in Geek | 1 Comment »

Well, how do you like them apples?

Saturday, October 5th, 2019

I went over to GT Distributors this morning for Glocktoberfest. Oddly, while it isn’t terribly far from my office, I don’t make it over there that often: they tend to be more police and tactical oriented, and have less on the vintage S&W side. (Bill Orr, the founder, is a highly respected member of the S&W Collectors Association. It’s just that vintage Smiths aren’t their main line of business.)

But I had some Glock related stuff I was kind of looking for, and thought I’d swing by and check out Glocktoberfest.

Of course, they were doing door prize drawings. I went ahead and signed up, even though I never win door prizes. Then I browsed a little and waited for the door prize drawing at the top of the hour.

I’ve got my ticket out and am listening to them call the numbers. As I said, I never win door prizes, but hope springs eternal, right?

Then they called my number.

Well, okay, then. I don’t want to make a big deal about it: this was one of the hourly door prizes, not the big final prize (a new Glock). But the hourly prize was one of those snazzy 5.11 Tactical RUSH 24 backpacks. It’s kind of like walking into some place, hanging out for a bit, and then someone hands you a $100 bill right out of the blue.

(And I did pick up a few relatively small items: they were selling used Glock 22 and S&W M&P .357 SIG/.40 standard capacity magazines for $10 each. At that price, I figured I’d pick up a couple of each as a hedge. I also picked up some of the tchotchkes they were giving away for free, a Glock 42 magazine +1 mag extension for experimental purposes, and some FMJ .380 auto.)

They did take my photo for promotional purposes (with my enthusiastic consent) but I don’t see it on Facebook yet. I hope I didn’t break the guy’s phone…

Posted in Endorsements, Geek, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 3, 2019.

Thursday, October 3rd, 2019

Bill Bidwill, owner of the Arizona (formerly St. Louis) Cardinals.

Under Bidwill’s ownership, the Cardinals toiled in mediocrity. They had five winning seasons from 1972 until Ken Whisenhunt was hired as head coach in 2007, Michael’s first year in charge. The Cardinals went to their first and only Super Bowl the next season.

I’m wondering if we’re going to see an NFL team for sale soon, and if that’s going to result in a possible relocation. LA and Las Vegas are off the map…but with the St. Louis Rams gone, and a past history for the Cardinals there…?

John Rothman. Kind of an obscure figure, but interesting: he pioneered electronic access to the NYT archives.

Working on the index led Mr. Rothman to think about how computers could store, sort and deliver abstracts of Times content to users at the paper and other locations, like public libraries, universities and major corporations. He proposed the Information Bank — the Times Index writ large — in 1965 and began working on it with IBM the next year.

…

In 1972, Times staff members began testing the Information Bank as a research tool. It would soon augment the paper’s archives, known as the morgue, where file cabinets are packed with clippings dating to the 19th century. In Times Talk, the paper’s in-house newsletter, Mr. Rothman assured colleagues that “once the basic methods” of searching the Information Bank were mastered, “retrieving the information is quite simple.”
In late 1972, the first installation of the Information Bank outside The New York Times was made at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library. Within six months, its 14 customers included NBC, The Associated Press, the State Department, the C.I.A., the Library of Congress, Exxon and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

I’ve been running behind, so for this historical record: Jessye Norman.

Posted in Geek, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports | 2 Comments »

Thanos, call your office, please.

Friday, August 30th, 2019

Actual HouChron headline (on their homepage):

Drug ring had enough fentanyl to kill half of Texas

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: August 28, 2019.

Wednesday, August 28th, 2019

Tweet of the day:

Michael Drejka was convicted of manslaughter. (Previously.) You can call me lazy, but I’m going to point to Andrew Branca again, who is an actual lawyer and knows something about use of force and the law:

This case is an excellent example of how tiny changes in the fact pattern could lead to drastically different legal outcomes. If McGlockton had made any apparent movement consistent with re-engaging Drejka, Drejka’s perception of an imminent attack would likely have been unquestionably reasonable. Even a mere shift of McGlockton’s body weight toward, rather than away from, Drejka might have been sufficient. Such evidence was not in the case, however.
Also extremely unhelpful to Drejka was his post-event interrogation by police, to which he voluntarily consented, without legal counsel present. In that interrogation a happily compliant Drejka, believing he’s just helping the police understand why his shooting of McGlockton was no problem, hardly an inconvenience, as the internet meme puts it, agrees to conduct a re-enactment of the shooting.

“Really, seriously, just shut the f–k up.”

Interesting post from Stephen Wolfram’s blog that sits at a couple of intersections: rare book geekery, computer science (the rare book belonged to Turing), and detective work.

Actual headline from the Austin American-Statesman:

Industry experts give high marks to Statesman site plan

The article goes on to state that, according to industry experts, all of the Statesman reporters are intelligent, attractive, and all of their bodily functions smell like apple cinnamon Glade plug-ins.

Perhaps slightly more interesting: this column about the Texas State Cemetery, tied to Cedric Benson’s burial there. While the writing is slightly grating, it does answer some questions I had about who gets in and how.

Posted in Books, Geek, Guns, Law | 2 Comments »

Please refrain from tasting the KNOB.

Friday, August 16th, 2019

As a Bluetooth guy, and as someone who just posted a bunch of DEFCON 27 stuff, I feel compelled to say something about the Key Negotiation of Bluetooth Attack (aka KNOB) which has been getting a lot of attention the past few days.

Here’s the actual paper from the USENIX Security Symposium.

The attack allows a third party, without knowledge of any secret material (such as link and encryption keys), to make two (or more) victims agree on an encryption key with only 1 byte (8 bits) of entropy. Such low entropy enables the attacker to easily brute force the negotiated encryption keys, decrypt the eavesdropped ciphertext, and inject valid encrypted messages (in real-time). The attack is stealthy because the encryption key negotiation is transparent to the Bluetooth users. The attack is standard-compliant because all Bluetooth BR/EDR versions require to support encryption keys with entropy between 1 and 16 bytes and do not secure the key negotiation protocol. As a result, the attacker completely breaks Bluetooth BR/EDR security without being detected. [Emphasis in the original – DB]

Here’s a higher level overview of how the attack works.

Also of interest, also from USENIX, also getting some media attention: “Please Pay Inside: Evaluating Bluetooth-based Detection of Gas Pump Skimmers“. What’s cool about this is that the authors have developed Bluetana, an Android app that scans for Bluetooth devices in the area (every five seconds), displays a list of devices it found, and highlights ones that show characteristics similar to those of Bluetooth skimmers.

First, the app checks the device’s class. All skimmers studied within this work, whether discovered by Bluetana or not, had a device class of Uncategorized. If the device class is not uncategorized, the data is saved for later analysis. The device’s MAC prefix is then compared against a “hitlist” of prefixes used in skimming devices recovered by law enforcement. If the device has a MAC that is not on this hitlist, it is unlikely to be a skimmer, and the app highlights the record yellow. Next, if the device name matches a common product using the same MAC prefix, the record highlights in orange. If all three fields (MAC prefix, Class-of-Device, and Device Name) indicate the device is likely to be a skimmer, Bluetana highlights the record in red. The highlighting procedure is the result of a year of refinements based on our experience finding skimmers in the field, and Bluetana includes a remote update procedure to account for these incremental changes.

I’m fascinated by both of these papers, just based on a preliminary skimming. I’m hoping to do a detailed reading at that mythical point in the future when I have more free time…

Posted in Android, Bluetooth, Geek, Radio | Comments Closed

Oh the weather outside is frightful…

Wednesday, 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

Non historical note, not suitable for use in schools.

Saturday, July 20th, 2019

I bow to nobody as far as my interest in the space program goes.

But I don’t have a darn thing to say about Apollo 11, or the 50th anniversary of same. This just feels like one of those big round number anniversaries where everybody is on top of it, everything that can be said has already been said, and there’s nothing left.

If you want something, go over to Lawrence’s.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

Disappointment.

Wednesday, July 17th, 2019

I saw a post about the Kickstarter for Papillon and said to myself, “Man! What a cool idea!”

I’m not really into MMORPGs, but the idea of one where you could play a prisoner in a penal colony in French Guyana, dodging guards, forming alliances with other prisoners, struggling to survive solitary confinement, and plotting escape? I could get behind that.

Then I clicked through to the link. Apparently it has something to do with butterflies.

I like my idea better.

Posted in Geek | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 22, 2019.

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019

Stanton T. Friedman, UFOlogist.

Thomas Silverstein is dead.

Mr. Silverstein was serving three consecutive life terms for the killing of two fellow prisoners and a guard while behind bars. He had been incarcerated continuously since 1975, originally on an armed robbery conviction. He was said to have joined the Aryan Brotherhood, the white nationalist prison gang, while serving time at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.
He was in solitary confinement for 36 years, more than half his life. The American Civil Liberties Union has cited his case in its campaign against long-term solitary confinement.

More:

In 1981, Mr. Silverstein and another inmate, Clayton Fountain, were convicted of murdering Robert Chappelle, a member of the D.C. Blacks prison gang. During the trial, the gang’s national leader, Raymond (Cadillac) Smith, was transferred to Marion, apparently intent on killing Mr. Silverstein in revenge. (Prison officials, Mr. Silverstein said later, were aware of the threats but “didn’t take any action to make me safe.”)
Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Fountain got to Mr. Smith first, stabbing him 67 times with makeshift weapons, then dragging his body along prison catwalks as an object lesson. Mr. Silverstein received two more life sentences, for the murders of Mr. Chappelle and Mr. Smith. He insisted that he was innocent of the Chappelle murder and that he had killed Mr. Smith in self-defense.
By 1983 Mr. Silverstein had taken up art, teaching himself and becoming accomplished at it. One day, on his way back from showering, another prisoner handed him another makeshift knife and a homemade key. Using it, he managed to unlock his handcuffs and then fatally stabbed Merle E. Clutts, an unarmed correction officer, about 40 times.

His running buddy Mr. Fountain killed another guard that same day. These incidents are (at least in part) what prompted the construction of the SuperMax prison in Colorado.

Mildly interesting fact that I ran across last night: Clayton Fountain, who was also confined in solitary, took theology courses, converted to Catholicism, and was accepted as a lay brother by a Trappist order after his death.

Posted in Geek, Law, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

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