I am sad that William Ash, a gentleman I was previously unfamiliar with, has died.
On the other hand, 96 years is a pretty good run, and his NYT obit is quite entertaining.
I suspect one reason he was always recaptured is that the Germans could hear him clanking as he walked from miles away.
The NYT has an obituary specific Twitter feed. I did not know this.
Thanks, Popehat!
Farley Mowat, perhaps most famous for his book Never Cry Wolf
A comment by Guffaw in an earlier thread led me to Wikipedia, where I learned:
Heh. Heh. Heh. The charity in question was “New York 4 Life”, which the paper of record describes as an “anti-obesity charity”.
On an unrelated note: former State Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin had his prison term reduced from ten years to six. I enjoy the NYT lead:
He stole from the Little League? He took money from kids? Why reduce his sentence?
Answer: because he flipped.
Bill Dana, legendary NASA test pilot.
That “sleek, black aircraft” was the X-15. Dana earned astronaut wings for two of his X-15 flights.
I haven’t paid much attention to Nate Silver or fivethirtyeight.com, but this story (by way of the Y Combinator Twitter) pushes a couple of buttons.
What’s the worst movie ever, according to IMDB? Not “Exterminator City“, Lawrence. IMDB’s bottom ranked movie is something called “Gunday“, which David Goldenberg describes as “a pretty silly, over-the-top Bollywood action flick about gun couriers that features a love triangle and lots of comical misunderstandings typical to the genre“.
Is it that bad? 1.4 bad? Worse than “The Hottie and the Nottie” bad?
(The RogerEbert.com review was written by Danny Bowes, for what it may be worth.)
So, if mainstream critics don’t think “Gunday” is so bad, how did it end up at the bottom of the IMDB rankings?
One word: crowd-sourcing.
Two words: Gonojagoron Moncho.
What? Gonojagoron Moncho is a “Bangladeshi nationalist movement” (the name translates to “National Awakening Stage”) that got very offended by “Gunday”. Specifically, they object to “Gunday”‘s depiction of the “Bangladesh Liberation War”:
So “Gunday”‘s low ranking is the result of a concerted political campaign, not because it actually is a crappy movie. And what does IMDB say about this?
Hand to God, I thought this was a joke at first: Bernie Tiede, who killed his “long-time companion” Marjorie Nugent and inspired Richard Linklater’s movie “Bernie”, has been freed from prison.
In other news:
And who was the “now discredited homicide detective”? Louis Scarcella. (I’m starting to think I need a “Scarcella” sub-category. And maybe an NYPD one as well.)
Over at the other blog:
Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Edited to add: NYT obit.)
I was five months old when it first aired, and nine years old when it went off the air, so the show is kind of at the fringes of my memory. But I remember thinking “The F.B.I.” was a swell show.
And, of course, it was a Quinn Martin production.
The NYT is reporting the death of Walter R. Walsh on Tuesday at the age of 106.
I linked to the American Rifleman‘s profile of Mr. Walsh some time ago. That article is still up, and I commend it to your attention.
On Oct. 12, 1937, Mr. Walsh was in the sporting goods store Dakin’s in Bangor, Me., posing as a gun sales clerk and waiting for Public Enemy No. 1, Alfred Brady, and two gunmen, James Dalhover and Clarence Lee Shaffer.
Wanted for four murders, 200 robberies and a prison breakout, they had been in the store days earlier and were returning for Thompson submachine guns. But a large force of federal agents and state and local police officers were waiting in ambush, hidden in cars, storefronts and offices across the street.
The gang’s car drew up at 8:30 a.m. Dalhover got out and entered the store. He was immediately seized and disarmed by Mr. Walsh and taken to the back by other agents. Shaffer and Brady, sensing something was wrong, emerged with guns drawn.
Mr. Walsh, meanwhile, approached the store’s front with a .45 in his right hand and a .357 Magnum in his left. But as he reached the door he realized he was looking through the plate glass at Shaffer. The glass exploded as both men fired simultaneously.
Shaffer fell, mortally wounded, to the sidewalk. Mr. Walsh, although hit in the chest, shoulder and right hand, stepped outside firing his Magnum at Brady, who was cut down in a thundering fusillade from all sides as he shot back wildly. Witnesses said he was still moving as Mr. Walsh put another bullet in him.
Edited to add: tribute from the American Rifleman.