Coffee mugs.

November 11th, 2023

“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”

–Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC

Just how pale and insipid shoreside coffee is when compared with robust Navy joe is illustrated by an incident which occurred when a lady invited two hash-marked sailors to “tea.” Having heard than Navy men like their coffee strong, she added an extra amount of coffee and allowed it to boil twice as long as normal. The visitors nodded approvingly when the beverage was served. When time came to leave, one turned gallantly to his hostess and remarked, “Ma’am, I wanna tell you that was the finest tea I’ve ever tasted.”

–Seabeecook.com, quoting an article from the August 1949 “All Hands” magazine

When we talk about the Navy, battleships, submarines, and aircraft carriers get all the love. And let’s fact it, those are sexy. Things like the LCS, maybe less so.

But someone has to support those ships. Somebody’s got to deliver fuel and mail and toilet paper and repair parts and coffee and a million other things.

Those people serve just as heroically as the folks on the sexy ships. Sometimes, they go in harm’s way as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Boats, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 10, 2023.

November 10th, 2023

Frank Borman, astronaut (Apollo 8, Gemini 7) and later head of Eastern Airlines.

“Trained as a fighter pilot and known for his lightning-quick reflexes and exceptional decision-making skills, Borman was one of the best pure pilots NASA had,” James A. Lovell Jr., who flew with Mr. Borman on both Gemini 7 and Apollo 8, wrote in “Lost Moon” (1994), a collaboration with Jeffrey Kluger recounting the near-fatal Apollo 13 mission, on which he flew.

…

Gemini 7 took part in a pioneering rendezvous 185 miles above Earth when Gemini 6A, carrying Capt. Walter M. Schirra Jr. of the Navy and Maj. Thomas P. Stafford of the Air Force, caught up to it and flew alongside it in orbit. That kind of maneuver had to be perfected in order for a lunar module to descend to the moon from an orbiting command ship and later blast off from the lunar surface, then rendezvous and link up with the mother ship for the trip back to Earth.
The Apollo 8 mission, carrying Mr. Borman, then an Air Force colonel; Mr. Lovell, then a Navy captain; and Maj. William A. Anders of the Air Force, was only the second manned flight in the Apollo program. Several unmanned test flights had followed in the wake of the Apollo 1 disaster. It was also the first manned flight employing the hugely powerful Saturn 5 rocket for liftoff.

…

When the astronauts neared completion of their orbiting, they began their second and last television broadcast. The bright moon, in the black sea of space, was visible outside a spacecraft window. Mr. Borman described it as a “vast, lonely forbidding expanse of nothing, rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone.”
The astronauts took turns reading from the Book of Genesis, telling of Earth’s creation. Mr. Borman concluded the telecast with the words: “Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

Statement from NASA. NASA biography page.

Posted in Obits, Planes, Science | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#112 in a series)

November 10th, 2023

Still on the road, with limited time to blog, but: Marilyn Mosby convicted of two counts of perjury. (Previously.)

In the indictment, prosecutors accused Ms. Mosby of falsely claiming financial hardship tied to the coronavirus pandemic to withdraw money from her city retirement account. While typically a person cannot withdraw money from this type of account until retirement, the CARES Act permitted withdrawals for “adverse financial consequences” tied to the pandemic, such as the loss of a job or reduced work hours.
In 2020, Ms. Mosby requested funds totaling $90,000 from her retirement account, indicating on federal forms that she had been facing financial hardship. But government prosecutors said that Ms. Mosby was not eligible for the disbursements. Instead, payroll documents showed that, in her job as Baltimore City state’s attorney, Ms. Mosby continued to collect an annual salary of nearly $250,000 during the pandemic and had no reduction of her work hours. Prosecutors said that Ms. Mosby used the money to fund down payments for vacation homes in Florida.

She’s facing a second trial on fraud charges related to statements in the mortgage loan applications for the vacation homes.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Travel day.

November 8th, 2023

Blogging will be as time permits for about the next week.

Posted in Admin, Travel | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

November 6th, 2023

David Ross out as manager of the Chicago Cubs. Tribune. Sun-Times. ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 6, 2023.

November 6th, 2023

Peter White, actor. Other credits include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “I Want to Live” (the TV movie), and “The Bold Ones: The Senator”.

Evan Ellingson, actor. IMDB.

Robbin Bain (also Robbin Mele Gaudieri), former “Today Girl” and Miss Rheingold 1959.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch…

November 6th, 2023

Alex Grinch out as defensive coordinator at USC.

Grinch, who was Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator from 2019 to 2021 before leaving for USC alongside Riley, led a unit that allowed an average of 34.5 points per game this season and was in the bottom 30 in the country in nearly every statistical category, including 120th in rushing defense and 107th against the pass.

Bonus loser update: Memphis finally won a game, so there are no NBA teams left that can go 0-82 this season.

Posted in Firings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Preview of coming attractions. (Random gun crankery)

November 4th, 2023

I’ve been neglecting gun books and guns for a minute now. It just seems like every time I sit down to try and work on one of my gun related projects, either I just can’t build up the motivation, or I end up getting involved in someone else’s bolshie bushwa.

The early part of next week I’m going on the road. I’m hoping that when I get back, the bushwa should have tapered off, plus the holidays will be approaching, plus my morale will have improved, and I can work on gun books and guns. In the meantime, some quick previews with captions that the educated reader could take as “hints”.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

Three of an imperfect pair.

There is no God but John Moses Browning, and Cooper is his prophet.

I’m kind of hoping that I can get another gun book post up, and maybe even a post about one of these guns, before I leave next week. I’ve already kind of written about one of the pictured guns before, so my post about that one will probably be short (and refer back to older posts) but educational.

We will see how things go.

Posted in 1911, Guns, Smith and Wesson | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 4, 2023.

November 4th, 2023

David Kirke. The NYT calls him the first person to make a modern bungee jump, and he was a co-founder of the Dangerous Sports Club.

“We hadn’t tested it or anything like that,” Mr. Kirke told the news site BristolLive in 2019. “We were called the Dangerous Sports Club, and testing it first wouldn’t have been particularly dangerous.”
Clad in a top hat and tails, with a bottle of Champagne in hand, Mr. Kirke, who was nursing a hangover from an all-night party, was the first to take the plunge thatday. The other jumpers — Alan Weston, Tim Hunt and Simon Keeling — “waited to see what would happen to me,” Mr. Kirke told ITV News in 2019. “When I started bouncing up again, they all jumped.”
Police promptly arrested the jumpers, charged them with breach of peace and tossed them behind bars for a spell before letting them off with a small fine. Jail was hardly a traumatic experience. “They were the only police force I’ve ever known to bring half-empty bottles of red wine, from the party, in a brown paper bag and give it to us in prison,” he told ITV.

Tim Cahill did a memorable profile of Mr. Kirke and the DSC, which is reprinted in one of his books.

Straddling the line between danger sports and performance art, his stunts included steering a carousel horse down a ski slope in the Swiss Alps; piloting an inflatable kangaroo suspended by balloons over the English Channel; skateboarding among the running bulls of Pamplona, Spain; and arranging a sit-down meal on the rim of an erupting volcano on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent.

I have a recollection from Mr. Cahill’s profile of another incident involving a grand piano and a piano bench, both on skis, and a member of the DSC playing the piano as it skied downhill. These are the kind of gleeful British eccentrics that I wish I had been able to know while they were alive.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Peter S. Fischer, screenwriter and producer. He was already on my list, but I skipped over him yesterday.

Other credits include two out of five episodes of “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, “McMillan and Wife”, “Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo” (the “Columbo” TV movie: I wanted to specifically call that out, because at last week’s SDC we were discussing the odd history of “Mrs. Columbo“, the TV series, which has nothing to do with “Columbo”.), and ‘Ellery Queen” (the 1975 TV series).

Shannon Wilcox, actress. Other credits include “Jake and the Fatman”, “Alien Nation”, “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Magnum, P.I.”, “Mrs. Columbo”, and the good “Hawaii Five-O”.

Posted in Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

November 3rd, 2023

According to ESPN, Connor Stalions, the guy at the center of the Michigan sign-stealing scandal, has been officially fired.

Also, according to the tabloid of record, Michigan fired Alex Yood, who I’ve seen described as a “low-level” staffer. This firing seems to have nothing to do with sign-stealing, and is quite frankly weird.

Back in September, a man who went by “Boopac Shakur” posted a video on Instagram that purported to show Alex Yood had tried to pick up a 13-year-old girl online. Mr. Yood has not been charged by any law enforcement agency with any crime. “Boopac Shakur”‘s persona on social media seems to have been a “To Catch a Predator” wanna-be.

In the video, the man alleged to be Yood is wearing Michigan gear and seen carrying a bottle of alcohol at a store when he is confronted by two men.
At first, Yood appears to believe he has been caught by the police, but the men inform him that they are not the authorities.
When the men ask Yood what he is doing, he answers that he bought the liquor for a graduation party that he is hosting in a couple days.
Yood is asked how old he is and says he is 22.
The men ask him what he’s doing at the store and how far he drove, and Yood responds, “I’m not looking for trouble.”
The men then present Yood with photos of his online exchange with the person he allegedly thought was a 13-year-old girl.
Yood says he didn’t know she was 13, and they respond that he had been told her age twice in the exchange.
The two men then start screaming in the store: “This man is here to meet a 13-year-old girl!”

Again, Mr. Yood has not been charged with any crime, to the best of my knowledge and according to the reports I’ve seen.

Interestingly, “Boopac Shakur” (real name Robert Wayne Lee) was murdered not too long after the video was posted.

On Sept. 29 at around 10:30 p.m., Lee was in a restaurant in the area of Pontiac, Mich., — a city 30 miles outside of Detroit — when he was shot and killed by a person during an argument.
The following day, investigators told reporters Lee confronted two males sitting at a table and accused one of them of being a pedophile before punching him. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said one suspect pulled out a knife while the other pulled a gun, shooting Lee multiple times.
But in an updated statement on Tuesday, Bouchard said this no longer appeared to be the case.
“When we originally responded to the call, the community inferred he could have been there for that reason, to confront a pedophile,” Bouchard told NBC News.
“As we get deeper in the investigation, we have yet to find any corroborative information on that point,” he added.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 3, 2023.

November 3rd, 2023

Ken Mattingly, astronaut. NASA.

He was the command module pilot for Apollo 16 and commanded two shuttle missions (STS-4 and STS-51C). But he’s perhaps most famous for a mission he didn’t fly.

He was scheduled to be the command module pilot for Apollo 13, but was pulled from the mission at the last minute (after it was determined he’d been exposed to measles) and was replaced by Jack Swigert. We all know what happened next.

Commander Mattingly did not, in fact, develop German measles, and he played a significant part in the plan developed by the astronauts and mission control in Houston to get them home safely.
The three astronauts crowded into the undamaged lunar module, although it had been built to hold only two astronauts and was designed solely for landing on the moon and then returning to the orbiting mother ship.
Commander Mattingly read off a long and detailed list of instructions for the astronauts to follow as they used the lunar lander as a “lifeboat” to get them back toward Earth while short on power and food.

Interview with Mr. Mattingly:

Posted in Obits, Science | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#97)

November 2nd, 2023

Shot (click to embiggen):

(It’s the “inspirational sign” clearly labeled “inspirational sign” that gets me.)

Chaser:

“It’s Not A Crack House, It’s A Crack Home”.

Posted in Bagatelle | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »