Archive for June 14th, 2010

The Hidden World of Girls.

Monday, June 14th, 2010

I’m a day late and a few bucks short on this (somehow I missed it the first time around) but I did want to put up a link to this story from NPR’s “The Hidden World of Girls” project, featuring my friend Pat Cadigan.

(Lawrence and I discussed this: I get the Pat Cadigan beat, he gets the giant spider beat. Seems like a fair split to me.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Music, Radio | Comments Closed

Why does a Yugo have a rear window defroster?

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Quick thoughts on Jason Vuic’s The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History:

  1. This is almost as much a biography of Malcolm Bricklin as it is a history of the Yugo. I’ve hung around with enough car people to have heard of Bricklin, but not at the level of detail Vuic provides. One might say that Bricklin is a “colorful” character. One might also say that some of his business dealings pre-Yugo, Yugo, and post-Yugo, were…well, in the interest of avoiding lawsuits, let’s just say “a touch irregular”.
  2. Vuic makes an interesting argument that the Yugo wasn’t actually that bad a car. The short summary of his reasoning is: it was sold in the United States, therefore, it wasn’t that bad. A more elaborate summary of Vuic’s reasoning is that any car sold in the U.S. has to meet a certain minimum set of Federal standards; any car that can meet those standards is, almost by definition, not that bad a car. He goes on to argue that the Subaru 360 (a car I’d never heard of, but I was three years old when Subaru started importing it) is actually a much worse car. (I think Vuic undercuts his argument when he points out that the 360 was not sold as a car; it was actually sold as a “covered motorcycle” to get around U.S. safety standards. And guess who imported the 360 into the U.S.? Bricklin.)
  3. Vuic also manages to make Yugoslavian geopolitics somewhat interesting.
  4. He has a good sampling of Yugo jokes.
  5. And his endnotes show that he did his homework; he’s got citations to things like Composite World magazine and biographies of obscure Canadian (wait, is “obscure Canadian” redundant?) politicians. Reading the endnotes, I often found myself wondering, “Where did he dig that up?”

I was expecting, based on the reviews and excerpts I’d read online, that this would be at least a halfway decent book. The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History is much better than that. I’d recommend it to any auto buff. (You can get it on the Kindle, by the way.)

Posted in Books, Cars | Comments Closed

I heartily endorse this event or product. (#6 in a series)

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Pro Ears.

When I first started shooting, I needed ear protection. So I bought a $20 pair of no-name passive ear muffs, and have been using those for the better part of the past nine years.

There were two problems with the passive muffs:

  1. They were less than comfortable. I found myself slipping them off (sometimes at very bad moments) to adjust the fit or give my ears some relief.
  2. I had problems hearing things, like range officer instructions, when I was on the line. I sometimes found myself slipping off the passive muffs so I could hear the range officer, then slipping them back on and trying to get them adjusted and get my head back in the game before I shot.

After I shot the USPSA match in April, I decided it was time for a change. Karl recommended the Pro Ears line to me, so I ordered a pair. I didn’t actually get a chance to use them until I took Karl’s “Competition Pistol” course at the end of May. Now that I have…

Wow. The difference between the Pro Ears and the $20 passive muffs is like night and day. I had no trouble hearing range instructions; at the same time, the active muffs actually seemed (and this may just be a subjective perception on my part) to do a better job of muffling gunshots. I probably wore the Pro Ears for close to four and half hours without ever feeling the need to remove them.

I won’t say the Pro Ears are perfect. They are not cheap. (The set I purchased was the Predator Gold: link goes to Amazon, and yes, I do get a kickback if you purchase through that link. Yes, I did purchase mine; they were not a blog freebie, and I am not getting anything in return for writing this post. I have no connection with the company except as a satisfied customer.) The only other problem I have with the Pro Ears is that they use “N” batteries, which I’ve had a difficult time finding around town. (Fry’s Electronics didn’t have “N” batteries last time I was in. Odd. Worst case, you can order those from Amazon, too.) I had no problems with battery life over the length of the course, but Murphy’s Law would dictate that you keep one or two spare pairs of batteries in your range bag.

If you’re serious about shooting and haven’t tried active hearing protection, like the Pro Ears, I strongly recommend that you do so. If you’ve had good experiences with brands of active hearing protection other than Pro Ears, you’re welcome to post recommendations for those brands in the comments.

Posted in Endorsements, Guns | Comments Closed

Monday loser update.

Monday, June 14th, 2010

The Astros are no longer in last place in the division? What the heck!

Baltimore is now at 17-46, for a .270 winning percentage. That’s a projected 43.74 wins over the 162 game season; or, to put it another way, they’re on a pace to lose roughly 118 games.

Posted in Loser | Comments Closed

Perhaps he should have gotten the flambé license.

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Prominent NYC bartender and absinthe advocate arrested for pouring booze on the bar and lighting it.

Chief Byrnes said that the fire, set around 2 a.m. along the roughly 15-foot-long bar, was six feet wide and had flames that leapt two to three feet in the air. It burned for several minutes and then extinguished itself. No one was hurt, and no curtains singed, but Mr. Trummer was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance, both misdemeanors.

(The photo at the top of the first linked article is interesting, especially in light of the detail from the second linked article about Mr. Trummer’s previous citations.)

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: Lawrence sends along a link to this YouTube video of bartenders at Apotheke playing with fire. I’m linking instead of embedding because I find YouTube videos a PITA to get properly embedded.

Posted in Clippings, Mixology | 1 Comment »