Archive for April 8th, 2013

High speed low drag tactical stuff.

Monday, April 8th, 2013

So Lawrence and I watched the latest SyFy channel disaster, “Chupacabra vs. the Alamo” Saturday night at the home of our friends who shall remain anonymous. (Thank you, anonymous friends!)

I’m hoping Lawrence will write a review so I don’t have to, but there’s one thing I did want to highlight.

Have any of you tactical operators given any thought to how you’re going to perform your tactical operations with an iPad (or other tablet) in one hand?

Are iPad operations something that’s covered in training these days? (Karl, I sense a great need.)

Posted in Guns, Movies, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

This Sporting Life.

Monday, April 8th, 2013

The Houston Astros won their opener…and have lost five straight games since.

(There are no MLB teams that have gone winless in this first week of the season. Houston, Miami, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and San Diego are all 1-5. Also, the blog widget I was using to display MLB standings hasn’t been updated in two years, and doesn’t seem to work with the current version of WordPress.)

Why should competing against men — “pushing the envelope,” as Griner called it — be a yardstick for her when the question people should be asking is: how will she fare next summer in the W.N.B.A. against the likes of Tina Charles and Sylvia Fowles?

Perhaps because nobody pays attention to the rapidly dying W.N.B.A.? This entire NYT article strikes me as condescending: Brittney Griner can make her own decisions about where she plays, and who she plays against. She doesn’t need the NYT telling her what to do.

(Seriously, I don’t understand why people are paying so much attention to Mark Cuban’s comments. He didn’t say anything that every other owner in the NBA hasn’t thought. If Fred Phelps could hit the 3-point shot and sell tickets, Cuban would be waving bundles of cash under his nose. So would every other NBA owner.)

Magnus Carlsen is the top-ranked chess player in the world, and “the first world No. 1 from a Western country since Bobby Fischer“.

Carlsen sits at the center of a campaign carefully constructed by him and his handlers to use his intelligence, looks and nimble news-media-charming skills to increase his profile outside the sport, as if he were a tennis or golf star. Not since the days of Fischer, Kasparov and Karpov has a player managed to move so deftly beyond the world of chess into the world at large.

More:

Carlsen has been profiled on “60 Minutes”; has modeled (along with Liv Tyler) for a major clothing label; has met Jay-Z at a Nets game; and has been offered a role, as a chess player, in the coming “Star Trek” film (the role fell through because of work-permit issues).

I’m waiting for him to show up in a commercial for Citizen Eco-Drive watches, myself.

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Also noted.

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Anne Smedinghoff was killed by an IED in Afghanistan on Saturday. Four other Americans, who have not been identified, were killed as well. Ms. Smedinghoff and the others were part of a “delegation accompanying the governor of Zabul Province to inaugurate a new school in Qalat, the provincial capital. She was to help deliver donated books.”

I note this here because I actually heard about it before the NYT covered the story. I don’t know exactly how I found this, so I can’t give credit, but there’s a very nice tribute to Ms. Smedinghoff at a blog called “Email From The Embassy”.

I think there’s a lot that could be said about the importance of books, but I will let the author of “Email” say much of what I want to say:

We find them where they are, and we give them these small gifts from America, about America. We teach them to read, to think critically, to smile broadly. We show them, through our books, that America is a vast and wonderful place, full of all sorts of people and amazing ideas. So: a small, small program. And yet so big. What could be bigger than a book, really?

This is what Anne died doing. It is important. Her work was important. And I’m betting that if she’d reached that school yesterday, she would’ve had an amazing story to tell. Those schoolchildren would have each gotten their own books, still smelling of glue from the print shop. At least one of those kids would have hugged her by way of thanks. And she would have gone home smiling.

Awful damn dusty in here. Maybe I need to clean the HEPA filter.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 8, 2013.

Monday, April 8th, 2013

It hasn’t been a good few days for the movies.

Noted documentary filmmaker Les Blank passed away on Sunday. NYT. LAT. Edited to add: A/V Club (they were late in getting their obit up).

My favorite Les Blank story:

Perhaps his best-known films concern Mr. Herzog, the German director of films like “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Stroszek.” To encourage his student and friend Errol Morris to finish his long-talked-about film on pet cemeteries, Mr. Herzog had said that when it was done he would eat his shoes. The impetus worked: Mr. Morris finished the film (“Gates of Heaven”) in 1978, and Mr. Herzog kept his promise, boiling his leather desert boots in duck fat (and stuffing them with garlic) at Chez Panisse, the celebrated restaurant in Berkeley, and consuming them — partly, anyway — onstage at a local theater. Mr. Blank turned it into a comic, and rather touching, 20-minute film about what artists do for the sake of art, appropriately titled “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” (1979).

Blank’s most famous film is another one involving Herzog: “Burden of Dreams” about Herzog and the making of “Fitzcarraldo”.

Margaret Thatcher: LAT. NYT. Battleswarm. I apologize if I seem to be giving her short shrift: my feeling is that everyone who doesn’t live under a rock is aware of her passing, and I am just linking to the obits here for the historical record.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed