You dry-docked my battleship! Part 2!

May 3rd, 2024

Hey! Guess what!

The battleship New Jersey is in dry dock.

Being completely fair, this is a good story, especially if you’re interested in history, ships, the Navy, or some combination of those three.

It was years overdue for the routine maintenance required to keep it safely afloat for the next couple of decades in the Delaware River. And preparations for pulling the 887.7-foot ship about six miles, from Camden to Paulsboro, N.J., and then to Philadelphia, were complete even before the $10 million it will cost to finish the job was secured.

But it isn’t without annoyances.

“They don’t do this, anywhere, very often,” said Libby Jones, the museum’s director of education. “If you’re into this kind of stuff, this is it — this is the Super Bowl.”

Ahem. Ahem.

The Texas also cost a lot more, but it had gone without maintenance for much longer, too.

(Also being scrupulously fair, the Texas is now out of dry dock and in a new permanent location. On the other hand, the Texas was in dry dock for 18 months, not the two months estimated for the New Jersey, and anyone who wanted to had plenty of opportunities to go see it.)

A YouTube channel [Ryan Szimanski] and Ms. Jones created at the start of the pandemic to offer programming while the museum was closed now has nearly 240,000 subscribers. Tickets for the dry-dock tours that Mr. Szimanski leads are selling for $1,000. (Tours led by other guides are $225.)

$1,000? Really? Nothing against Mr. Szimanski: I do watch the New Jersey YouTube channel sometimes. But $775 seems like a steep YouTube premium. (As I recall, the dry dock tour of the Texas was $150.)

It is kind of nice to see the New Jersey is selling merch (though they already had an online store). But can you get Battleship New Jersey 1911 grips? As far as I can tell, no.

(Okay, that’s a trick question: you can’t get Battleship Texas 1911 grips either. Except for the deck pattern ones, which I personally don’t like. The other two patterns seem to come into stock and sell out very fast. One of these days I might be lucky enough to snag a pair.)

What’s the takeway from this, other than dry dock tours of old battleships are fun?

Posted in 1911, Guns, History, Ships | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 3, 2024.

May 3rd, 2024

The NYT ran two obits recently for people who were a little outside the mainstream of celebrity.

Larry Young passed away in March at the age of 56. Dr. Young was a neuroscientist, who got his PhD from UT Austin.

Professor Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, used prairie voles in a series of experiments that revealed the chemical process for the pirouette of heart-fluttering emotions that poets have tried to put into words for centuries.

…

With their beady eyes, thick tails and sharp claws, prairie voles are not exactly cuddly. But among rodents, they are uniquely domestic: They are monogamous, and the males and females form a family unit to raise their offspring together.
“Prairie voles, if you take away their partner, they show behavior similar to depression,” Professor Young told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2009. “It’s almost as if there’s withdrawal from their partner.”
That made them ideal for laboratory studies examining the chemistry of love.
In a study published in 1999, Professor Young and his colleagues exploited the gene in prairie voles associated with the signaling of vasopressin, a hormone that modulates social behavior. They boosted vasopressin signaling in mice, which are highly promiscuous.

…

Professor Young followed up with other prairie vole studies that focused on oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates contractions during childbirth and is involved in the bonding between mothers and newborns.
“Because we knew that oxytocin was involved in mother-infant bonding, we explored whether oxytocin might be involved in this partner bonding,” he said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019.
It was.

…

“Love doesn’t really fly in and out,” Professor Young wrote in “The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction” (2012, with Brian Alexander). “The complex behaviors surrounding these emotions are driven by a few molecules in our brains. It’s these molecules, acting on defined neural circuits, that so powerfully influence some of the biggest, most life-changing decisions we’ll ever make.”

Frank Wakefield, mandolin guy.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Wakefield played with a host of bluegrass luminaries, including Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers.

…

While still a teenager, Mr. Wakefield mastered the heavily syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who immediately recognized Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.
“You can play like me as good — or near as good — as I can,” Mr. Wakefield, in a 2022 interview with the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, recalled Mr. Monroe saying at their initial meeting. “Now you’ve got to go out and find your own style.”
Heeding Mr. Monroe’s advice, Mr. Wakefield did exactly that. He devised his own sound by alternating up and down strokes on his instrument with equal force to produce a clear, ringing tone and sustained rhythm, which he likened to a sledgehammer striking a steel rail in a 1998 interview with the bluegrass website Candlewater.com.

…

David Grisman, a student of Mr. Wakefield’s and a mandolin virtuoso in his own right, said in an often quoted passage from Frets magazine that Mr. Wakefield had “split the bluegrass mandolin atom” by taking the instrument beyond where Mr. Monroe had.
“Bluegrass,” the album that Mr. Wakefield made with Mr. Allen for Folkways Records in 1964 (and that a 19-year-old Mr. Grisman produced), proved ample confirmation of that claim: It featured versions of two of Mr. Wakefield’s most enduring originals, “New Camptown Races” and “Catnip,” both of which, with their developments in melody, tunings and chord changes, pushed the limits of what then constituted bluegrass.
Mr. Wakefield’s innovations didn’t stop there, though. By the mid-1960s he had begun composing sonatas for the mandolin and arranging classical pieces for traditional bluegrass ensembles. He performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and made a guest appearance with the Boston Pops orchestra the next year.

Posted in Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 2, 2024.

May 2nd, 2024

Duane Eddy. NYT (archived).

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 1, 2024.

May 1st, 2024

Paul Auster, author. (The New York Trilogy)

I wish I could say more about this. I know Auster was an important mainstream writer, but I’ve never read anything by him.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#116 in a series)

May 1st, 2024

Federal agents have launched a criminal probe into the embattled mayor of a Chicago suburb, Tiffany Henyard, issuing a subpoena to the self-proclaimed “super mayor” last week for a trove of business records and financial reports.

I have no joke here, I just like saying “Wonderful thing, a subpoena.”

Mike the Musicologist also tells me that Ms. Henyard’s current lawyers have asked to withdraw from the case…because Ms. Henyard isn’t paying her legal bills.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

NERFed.

April 30th, 2024

First, we had the NERF machine gun.

How do you follow that?

Would you believe…NERF night vision?

It looks like a camera with (probably) a cheap magnifying lens that’s also IR sensitive. It almost certainly isn’t great, but for $35 it might be fun to play with.

And it seems like there’s already a hacker community around it, mostly on Reddit. (No link, because Reddit.)

Hattip to awa over at Gun Free Zone, who points out there’s a meme around this too.

Posted in 1911, Bagatelle, Geek, Guns | Comments Closed

I’m all right, don’t nobody worry about me…

April 30th, 2024

…just really nothing to write about.

I want to do some more gun and gun book blogging, but I’m going to be busy through Wednesday and just won’t have time.

Posted in Admin | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#110)

April 26th, 2024

Shot:

Noem also detailed how she killed a “nasty and mean” male goat because it had not been castrated.
She described the animal as smelling “disgusting, musky, rancid” and claimed it “loved to chase” Noem’s children and knock them down.
The goat was also “dragged to a gravel pit,” but jumped when she pulled the trigger, and subsequently survived the wound. Noem went back to her truck to retrieve another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down,” she wrote.

Chaser:

A hoarder “squatter” with a large aggressive goat refused to leave a house in San Antonio for months — as the belligerent billy goat attacked the homeowner and police, sources said.
The four-legged baaaad boy stormed and butted house flipper Daniel Cabrera, who bought a five-bedroom abode for $175,000 from a woman who refused to move out in June, he told realtor.com.

Spicy bar snack:

Ammo cuffs from Andy’s Leather. So you don’t have to go back to the truck to load another round. Or you could use a rifle with a magazine.

Posted in Bagatelle, Goats, Guns, Mammals | Comments Closed

Everybody was gun book blogging…

April 25th, 2024

…they read as fast as lightning…

Needs some work.

After the jump, some more old gun books, and one new one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 1911, Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Well! Isn’t THIS special?

April 25th, 2024

New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges, a stunning reversal in the foundational case of the #MeToo era.
In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals found that the trial judge who presided over Mr. Weinstein’s case had made a crucial mistake, allowing prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.

Still breaking as I write this. THR is also on the case.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

Annals of “law”. (#1 in a series)

April 23rd, 2024

Murray Sawchuck went on “trial” a week ago Wednesday.

I put “trial” in quotes because there was no actual court of competent authority involved. The trial was at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, and the judges were members of the Magic Castle board.

Murray Sawchuck is also known as “Murray the Magician”. He had a gig at the Tropicana until it closed earlier this month, and he’s been on various TV shows.

He also has a YouTube channel. And that’s the problem.

The troubles began in late January, when he and his showgirl wife, Dani, cooked up a new video, inspired by the bickering of Lucy and Desi Arnaz, in which he’d perform a series of tricks for the camera — mostly basic illusions one could purchase off of Amazon. She, playing the role of unimpressed wife, reveals how they’re done.
A bouquet of flowers, for example, is shown to be sucked into the base of the trick table on which it stands. A sword-swallowing act is rendered all the less impressive when she flicks the blade — and it coils up like a measuring tape. The whole thing took 10 minutes to make. Then they posted it to YouTube.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But it did make a lot of people in the magic community upset. This, in turn, led to the “hearing”, for want of a better word.

Summarizing Mr. Sawchuck’s arguments, from the article: “teaching magic” is “exposing magic”, “exposing magic” isn’t as black and white as magicians would have it, exposing magic “forces magicians to be more entertaining and charismatic”, and there’s a long tradition of “exposing magic” (including Houdini and Penn and Teller).

Anybody remember “Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed” with the “Masked Magician”? I always thought that was a hoot. And I don’t see where the “Masked Magician” was ever “prosecuted” by the Magic Castle (though Wikipedia says he was sued by some people whose illusions he spoiled).

Obligatory:

I have not seen any follow-up on this, and I have no idea how long it takes for the Magic Castle to rule. If I do see an update, I’ll let y’all know.

Posted in Magic | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 23, 2024.

April 23rd, 2024

Playing catch-up from the past few days:

Terry Anderson, journalist who was kidnapped and held for six years by Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon.

While he had not been tortured during his captivity, he said, he was beaten and chained. He spent a year or so, on and off, in solitary confinement, he said.
“There is nothing to hold on to, no way to anchor my mind,” he said after the ordeal. “I try praying, every day, sometimes for hours. But there’s nothing there, just a blankness. I’m talking to myself, not God.”
He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defense was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Roman Gabriel, quarterback for the Rams and Eagles.

He was voted the N.F.L.’s Most Valuable Player when he led the league in touchdown passes, with 24, in a 14-game season with the 1969 Rams.
He was also named the comeback player of the year by pro football writers in 1973, his first season with the Eagles. Coming off knee problems and a sore arm, he led the N.F.L. in touchdown passes (23), completions (270) and passing yardage (3,219) that season.
He played in four Pro Bowl games, three with the Rams in the late 1960s and another with the Eagles in 1973. But he reached the postseason only twice, and his Rams were eliminated in the first round both times.

Terry Carter, actor. This is buried a bit in the article, but he was McCloud’s partner and played “Colonel Tigh” on the original “Battlestar Galactica”.

Other credits include “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Search”…

…and “Mannix” (“Medal For a Hero”, season 3, episode 14).

And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Slightly misquoting Mark Twain, Mr. Carter posted on social media: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Frederick Celani, serial con man. He conned people into thinking he was going to build a package delivery hub in Springfield (Illinois), conned inmates into giving him money to have their convictions overturned (he wasn’t a lawyer), and ran various real estate cons.

Fred Neulander. You may recall that name, as his trial was a brief sensation back in the 1990s.

The rabbi and his wife, Carol Neulander, 52, were well-known in the community through both the shul and Classic Cakes, the popular bakery Carol co-founded, CNN reported.
The mother of 3 had just returned from the bakery when she bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the couple’s Cherry Hill home on the evening of Nov. 1, 1994, the outlet said.

…

Neulander was indicted for the murder in 1999, but the case did not come together until the following year, when private investigator Len Jenoff told police that the rabbi paid him and another man, Paul Daniels, $30,000 to kill his wife.
At trial in 2001, prosecutors argued that the rabbi wanted to get rid of Carol to continue his two-year affair with Philadelphia radio host Elaine Soncini.
Soncini, who was Catholic, had even supposedly converted to Judaism to be with the rabbi, whom she met when he performed funeral rites for her late husband.

…

When the first trial ended in a hung jury, the 2002 retrial was moved from Camden County to Monmouth County to downplay the local scrutiny.
Following the retrial, Neulander was convicted of Carol’s murder. He narrowly avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
Soncini testified against Neulander at both trials, as did two of his three children.

Posted in 1970s, Law, Mannix, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

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