The Penguin

The Penguin | Official Trailer | Max
Max

New series just started. Next episode comes out in, I dunno, two weeks maybe. Anyway, it's pretty good. The makeup department's transformation of Colin Ferrill makes him unrecognizable. If they hadn't told me who it was I wouldn't have recognized him. Might be why they have him introducing this trailer.

You watch The Godfather and you might be led to believe that gangsters are really just honest, hard working guys trying to catch the American Dream. They get a little violent sometimes, but sometimes a little violence is called for. Okay, sometimes there is a lot of violence, but usually there is a reason.

This show is full of sleazeballs who would cheat their own mother. Well, all except for Oswald, he loves his mom. And he takes this black kid under his wing. Still periodically threatens to gut him like a fish if he fucks up, but he hasn't done it yet. So maybe he really is human, or maybe they are just showing us his weak points. All in all a pretty great show.

Other notable characters:

• Sofia Falcone / The Hangman: Carmine's daughter and a psychopathic serial killer who is a former inmate of Arkham Asylum. - This one promises to be a big problem.
• Francis Cobb: Oz's mother who suffers from early-onset dementia.
• Salvatore Maroni: A mob boss and drug trafficker whose operation ended following a historic drug bust, in which Carmine was the informant.
• Eve Karlo: A prostitute and Oz's mistress. - Defromed and ugly as the Penguin is, he still has a girlfriend.
• Alberto Falcone: Carmine's son and Sofia's younger brother, who struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. - Oswald has already dealt with him in the first episode.
• Carmine - the recently deceased head of the Falcone crime family.

More English versus Metric

New Tool Day!
AvE

I enjoy the way this guy mangles the English language. He's great.

Then I realized not everyone might be familiar with hooking up the PTO on a farm tractor. This guy shows you how it's done on a modern machine.

How to connect a Drive Shaft to the tractor PTO Shaft
Quality Implement

On older equipment there is no locking ring - there is a hole through the connector that you need to line up with the shaft and then insert a pin. Even when the weather is nice it's a pain-in-the-wazoo. Out in the mud and rain it can be annoying. In those conditions a pokemon could be a big help.

Cessna 182Q Skylane

Cessna 182Q Skylane

Cessna has built over 20,000 Skylanes since they began building them in 1956. There have been 23 models identified by the trailing letter. The Q model came out in 1977, which is almost 50 years ago. Most float plane photos I come across are from Alaska. This one is from Massachusetts.

Nuclear AI

Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant

Computers are taking over the world. Well, not actually. Computers are stupid and are completely lacking in motivation. But people are smart, at least some of them. Unfortunately, some of them are crazy, and some of them are highly motivated to do something. Mix those three together and you get things like the AI (Artificial Intelligence) craze. I'm not sure that AI is going to bring us any great benefits. The one thing I can see it being used for is answering the phones at medical and medical insurance offices. This is big time sink for everyone involved. Nobody cares about the callers (clients / patients / victims), but the expense of hiring staff to answer the phones, that cuts into the bottom line. Never mind that the legions of women employed in these roles will be out of a job, it was horribly job that nobody ever wanted to do in the first place, right?

Besides entertainment and replacing phone drones, I'm not sure that AI will be good for. I suppose someone might use it to discover / invent something that could have a wide ranging effect. We'll just have to wait and see.

I'm pretty sure that advertising is what's paying for all the big data centers. Oh, there are some private enterprises that make use of them, but what they spend on them is a cost they want to minimize. If you are using them for advertising there is no end to the demand.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting:

Microsoft AI Needs So Much Power It's Restarting Site of US Nuclear Meltdown

The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania will invest $1.6 billion to revive it, agreeing to sell all the output to Microsoft Corp. as the tech titan seeks carbon-free electricity for data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.

Constellation Energy Corp., the biggest US operator of reactors, expects Three Mile Island to go back into service in 2028, according to a statement Friday. While one of the site’s two units permanently closed almost a half-century ago after the worst US nuclear accident, Constellation is planning to reopen the other reactor, which shut in 2019 because it couldn’t compete economically.

Via Zerohedge

Jerusalem

Everybody's packin' and nobody's freakin'. So okay, it is like on verge of becoming a war zone at any moment, but everyday life goes on including this old dude playing the guitar.

Color-Coding Wrenches

My collection of quarter inch drive tools

Once upon a time I had a small box holding a set of quarter-inch drive sockets and wrenches. But time passed, the box disintegrated, some of those sockets wandered off and I acquired new sockets, so now I have a mish-mash of quarter-inch drive tools. That's okay, I found a box on Amazon that would hold them all.

But now I've got metric and English size sockets all mixed together in the same box. If you are looking for a particular socket, be it either or metric, it's easy enough to tell which ones are bigger if all the sockets you have are of that one persuasion, but when you've got them mixed together the problem becomes much more difficult because some English sockets are nearly the same apparent size as some metric sockets, so now you have pick them up and hold them up the light and try to make out the tiny little markings stamped into the side. Bah and humbug.

ZEYAR Permanent Markers

But now I'm retired and I've got time to spend on sorting out my self-imposed problems, so I bought a set of colored markers and painted a red stripe around the base of each English socket and a blue stripe around the base of the metric sockets.

I got onto this because I'm working on a defunct pressure washer and I need some Allen wrenches. I had a bunch at one time, but during the new house project all my tools got scattered. Probably had something to do with my hip going bad and relying on Osmany to pick up the slack. He's probably got them, but he's busy and I don't want to bug him over something as trivial as Allen wrenches. Besides, I ones I had were kind of a mess. So I bought some new ones:

Topline Folding Hex Key Set

I was just looking for English and metric sizes, and I found some, but both grips were the same color. What is wrong with you guys? Why would you do that? So I kept looking and I found this. The set includes a third handle with Torx bits and that's okay, it's not like I'm overrun with Torx drivers. Not everyone likes this kind of tools, but I do. Having a complete set in my hand makes my life easier.

Ruger P85

Boring, Durable, Unsexy Bricks: The Remarkably Successful Ruger P85
Forgotten Weapons

I'm always interested in the business side of any business. How do they manage to survive? Well, 700,000 pistols, that'll pay a couple of bills. Call it a million pistols over a ten year run, just to make the math easy. That's a 100,000 pistols a year. If you make $10 profit off of each one that might be a pretty good return. Semi-auto pistols go for something like $500 to $1,000 dollars. Call it a $1,000, to make it easy. Figure half of that goes to the retailer, shipping, everything after it goes out the door. So that leaves $490 per pistol to pay for the rent on the building, depreciation on the machinery, wages, benefits, taxes and all the costs associated with running a business, like accountants and lawyers.

So if everything goes smoothly, you could be raking in the dough, but any kind of hiccup and the situation could easily turn sour. People go into business every day. Some of them will succeed, but some of them will fail.You gotta have some faith when you take a leap into the unknown.

Previous post about Ruger here.

Age of Rage

Democrat Congressman Preston Brooks beats Republican Senator  Charles Sumner, 1856

Even in the best of times, there are always going to be a few nut cases. It does seem like the there have been more cases lately of people losing their cool / their minds / going berserk, or maybe I've just been hearing about it more. Whatever, this story is a little disturbing.

Age of Rage: 26 Million Americans Believe Political Violence is Justified by Jonathan Turley

A poll released by the University of Chicago via the Chicago Project on Security and Threats offers a chilling account of the growing radicalism in America, particularly after the second foiled assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump, the poll found that 26 million Americans believe “the use of force” is justified to keep Trump from regaining the presidency.

As discussed in my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have seen an increasing level of rage rhetoric in our political system. For some, violent language can become violent action. There is a normalization that can occur as extreme actions become more acceptable to more and more citizens:

“We are living in an age of rage. It permeates every aspect of our society and politics. Rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others. Rage is often found at the farthest extreme of reason. For those who agree with the underlying message, it is righteous and passionate. For those who disagree, it is dangerous and destabilizing.”

With the unrelenting claims of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and others that democracy is about to die in America, some now feel a license to commit criminal acts in the name of “saving democracy.”

It is the ultimate form of self-delusion that one saves democracy by committing political violence against those with whom you disagree.

He goes on at length giving us numerous examples of supposedly intelligent, reasonable people, losing their minds and lashing out in an irresponsible if not down right criminal manner. Somebody needs to bring the smack down on these fools.

 

Geometry Refresher

Brilliant Geometry Puzzle
Andy Math

I am a sucker for math problems. I like the ones that are easy for me to solve, I don't much care for the really esoteric stuff, i.e. problems I can't easily solve. I started watching this video and I'm thinking I should be able to solve this. I attack with the Pythagorean Formula (which is basically the only tool in my geometry toolbox) but I get nowhere. So I resume watching to see how he is going to solve it and he immediately brings up the Intersecting Chords Theorem. The what? Never heard of it. What the heck is this thing? So, more YouTube:

Intersecting Chords Theorem! (explanation and examples)
You Can Learn Math with Alyssa

I like Alyssa, she moves a little too slowly for my taste, but she is crystal clear and she has a pleasant voice. But then she comes to Central Angles and Inscribed Angles and my brain objects, so more YouTube:

Central Angles and Inscribed Angles! (theorems AND examples)
You Can Learn Math with Alyssa

Alyssa explains what the theorem is and shows how to apply it, but she doesn't explain how the theorem is derived, what some people call 'a proof', so now we need another explanation.

Inscribed angle theorem proof | High School Geometry | High School Math | Khan Academy
Khan Academy

Now that I think about it, I probably learned about all this back in high school, but I think that was it for geometry. After that is was calculus, trig and matrices, and geometry kind of got left in the dust.

Love Between Fairy and Devil - Netflix Series

Official Trailer: Love Between Fairy and Devil | iQIYI Romance
iQIYI Romance - Get the iQIYI APP

This is a very silly fantasy, but the visuals are out of this world. Our girl is a flower / fairy. She is apprenticed to the Aribiter, who is some kind of record keeper. The arbiter has been on leave for a zillion years, so our girl is basically running the shop by herself. The devil has been locked up in a tower for zillion years. He manages to break out. The hero calls upon his minions to reseal the lock on the tower.  They struggle mightily, but are unsuccessful until our girl shows up and by throwing herself at the tower she manages to reseal the lock. She vanished so I thought she was stuck inside, but maybe not. The hero and his minions manage to catch all the other escaped devils except for the big guy. 

The devil runs into fairy and the collision results in a kiss which has mucho magically effects - they exchange bodies which they find disconcerting. They kiss again and manage to return to their bodies, but now anything that happens to one, like getting hit or cut, happens to the other, so now the devil has to protect the fairy even though he wants her dead. So it's a bit of a comedy.

It's not our usual fare, but the sets, the scenery, the clothes and the battle grounds are all phenomenal. The fairy's treehouse-in-the-clouds is fabulous. Some of it is ridiculous, but hey, it's fantasy, so go with the flow.

------------

When the characters in this show wish to unleash their magical powers (for good or evil), they go through some contortions with their hands. You remember that line about how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? (Arthur C. Clarke) I see modern day magicians play card tricks and I can't figure out how they do it. I know there is no real magic, it is just artful distraction and slight of hand, but to me it may just as well be real magic. And then you have people doing any kind of intricate work, like assembling a circuit board, typing at a keyboard, operating a big, complex machine. Their hands are flying over their work, too fast for the eye to follow. They work for a few minutes, and presto-chango, we have a new thing, or something has come to life. If you don't understand what's going on, it looks a lot like magic.

So we have our hero and villain fighting each other with giant magical swords. They are both lords in their respectively realms, so they have serious resources backing them. The present day equivalent would be piloted jet fighters engaged in a dogfight. Magical swordfights look better on the screen because you can see the fighter's facial expressions and body movements. Modern day dogfights all you can see is the black visor over the fighter's faces.

Exploding Pagers

Not much new in the news this morning. Oh wait, what's this? Exploding pagers:

• AlJazeera: Hezbollah members among hundreds wounded as pagers explode in Lebanon
• ZeroHedge: Hezbollah's '9/11': Iranian Ambassador Among 1,000+ Wounded After Israel Remotely Detonates Pagers

No real information on how it was done. Did someone insert an explosive into all these pagers? Or did some whiz kid figure out how to put a pager in melt down mode that somehow caused the lithium battery to explode? I'm not sure you can make a battery explode simply by messing with the controlling program, but they do pack a lot of energy in a small package, and lithium batteries can be dangerous. So, maybe.

The news reports imply that someone (Israel) managed to infiltrate the pager distribution channel, and went in and loaded explosives in a bunch of pagers. The bad guys switched to pagers only recently, and this was only done when they figured out that someone (Israel) was listening to their phone calls. I wouldn't wonder if Israel had all those pagers prepped and were just waiting for the bad guy's leader to order the switch to pagers. The trigger? Israel leaked the idea that they were listening to Hamas' and Hezbollah's phone calls.

1988 Pontiac Trans Am

An Engineer’s Abrupt Introduction to 1980’s American Muscle
The Doubtful Technician

Great story about The Doubtful Technician's Uncle and his car.

Carbonized Jimi

Carbonized Jimi

Glass Beams - Mahal

Glass Beams - 'Mahal' (Live)
Glass Beams

Whenever I post a music video, I like to post one that has some video, it's not just a still image. I mean, if you're going to post a video, it ought to be a video, right? For some tunes there just isn't any video available, all you get is a single still image. That's okay because we're really after the tune, the video, if there is any, is just icing on the cake.

That being said, in this case I almost wish I had opted for a single image instead of this video. I find their appearance a little disconcerting. I really like the tune though, so it's getting posted, and you're getting the video just so you can see what kind of strange is out there wandering around.

They are from Australia. They get bonus points for having a reel-to-reel tape recorder on the set.

Pictures

Tsar Bomba

Donald Sutherland in Kelly's Heroes

Corsairs over San Diego

Sarah Gillis playing the violin in zero-G

B-24 & B-17 over Golden Gate Bridge

Matchbox Cars
What does 2'4 mean?

Reliefs of Indonesian history at Indonesian National Monument

A-10 Warthog

The Razorback, Port Campbell National Park, Victoria, Australia
No, those white blobs are not houses. Nobody lives there.

Roadkill's 56 Chevy & Mount Shasta

Fun with Math

United States of Voronoi

California Bob reports:

I just learned about this. This is one of those things that's easy to see but difficult to describe.

Voronoi Cells

A Voronoi diagram partitions a plane around points or "seeds" within it.  It THINK it divides the area so that the boundaries are always halfway between one seed and the next closest seed.

The official description is, boundaries are drawn so that all points within that boundary, are closer to its seed, than to any other seed.

If each seed was a repelling magnet, would this describe the same boundaries?

Here [image at top] it's used to draw state boundaries around state capitals.

Mazdarati 2.0! - Roadkill

Mazdarati 2.0! - Roadkill S13E04 - Reality Car TV Show
RoadKill TV Show

More hot rodders running amuck. The longer this video plays, the funnier these guys get. It's also funny how if you wanted to set up a new shop with all the equipment they had it would cost you a fortune, but used or abandoned equipment costs next to nothing.

Cargo Ships

Cargo Sailing Ship Anemos

Bayou Renaissance Man tells us about the wonderful / ridiculous new cargo sailing ship Anemos. It's fancy, it's green, and I imagine all the oil-haters just love it. Phil B clarifies the situation in a comment:

If you read Basil Greenhill's book The Merchant Schooners (it is about the end of sail in and around Britain) he describes how sailing ships were out priced by steam ships. The steam ships were NOT cheaper to run (the typical sailing schooners had a crew of four, maybe five including a "boy") but were often weather bound for weeks. Looking at old maritime charts, sheltered harbours, bays and inlets were marked as waiting grounds where the sailing vessels could wait favourable winds. The steam ship had a larger crew and had fuel costs but could, on average, make three voyages and earn more money in the same time period than the sail. The crew had to be paid, whether under way or not.

Nowadays, with high value cargoes, the time taken on voyages ties up a lot of capital (imagine a 20 foot container packed with the latest i Phones) which represents a lot of capital tied up and costing interest payments.

Howard I Chapelle laid out the economic case in his book The Search for Speed Under Sail.

Just like cars, if you want the small engine, basic model, it is cheap but the most powerful engined GTI version is a lot more expensive. Speed costs, whether a ship or car and the ship owners would not pay money for a fast ship if they didn't need the speed.

Bulk carriers, carrying low value cargoes (coal, iron ore etc.) plod along at about 12 knots, or about as fast as a bicycle. Container ships on the Trans Pacific route crank out over 30 knots, some as high as 35 knots. That is FAST but they are carrying valuable cargoes.

Add in the fact that ports are geared to handing containers from a ship with no deck obstructions (y'know, like masts, rigging and the clutter on that one) and you need to ask how is it going to be unloaded and where? Going back to the 1890's where men carried individual sacks and boxes off the vessel ain't gonna happen, unless it is a primitive part of the world like Asia or the Pacific Islands. Again, a fast turn around in port so the ship can be earning is the aim, not paying the crew to sit around and/or waiting for another cargo. So the ship has delivered it cargo, unless it can pick up a cargo for the return leg (what kind and what needs to be shipped back to Europe in such a small quantity?), then that is cost and no income if it has to return empty.

It is a bit like a millionaire buying a ranch so his wife can play at being a horse trainer/breeder. In other words, a hobby and a money pit.

Books:

• The Merchant Schooners by Basil Greenhill
• The Search for Speed Under Sail by Howard I Chapelle

Iceberg in Sight! Full Speed Ahead!

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

My news feed is full of blather about the debate. I didn't watch it. If it didn't bore me, I am sure I would have found it irritating. I like Ms. Zakharova's take:

 Harris and Trump debating on Titanic – Moscow

The US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris lacked substance and was largely irrelevant considering that their country is going full speed ahead towards disaster, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has argued.

Speaking on Radio Sputnik on Wednesday, she said she did not consider it a high-profile event. It mattered as much as the outcome of a hypothetical wrestling match on board the ill-fated Titanic during its trip across the Atlantic Ocean, she claimed.

”Who do you think won? Why would that matter? The iceberg is 15 minutes away,” she said.

Extending the metaphor, she said neither Trump nor Harris intended to get to the wheel to change the course of the ship. America is on its way to a “total, global disaster” and the rest of the world is trying to prepare for it, she suggested.

The debate itself, according to Zakharova, was a mixture of “fantasizing about the future” and citing some facts about the past, with the candidates failing to agree on what those facts were.

”We were given the latest show by people who apparently never ever take any responsibility for what they say,” the Russian official said.

International audiences paid attention to what happened in Philadelphia on Tuesday night because they want to know which nations “will get punished and how much” during the next US presidential term, Zakharova stated.

According to the media, neither candidate had a decisive advantage over the other in the debate, which could be the only one between Trump and Harris before the November election. In a CNN focus group of 13 undecided voters from Pennsylvania, eight said the Democratic candidate won. Meanwhile six out of 10 undecided voters interviewed by Reuters said they were siding with the Republican after the face off.

Genius Girl Repairs Generator

Genius girl repaired 150kg generator burned out a lot of parts can't be used took 3 days to rep
林果儿Lin Guoer

Seeing her pick up the generator and carry it on her back, I'm thinking something is off. Generators and electric motors are mostly steel and copper and are very heavy for their size. And then she weighs herself and the generator.

	Weight of girl + generator	136.4	kilograms
minus	Weight of girl	44.6	kilograms
equals		91.8	kilograms
times		2.2	pounds per kilogram
equals		202.0	pounds

200 pounds! She must be one tough cookie. Or did something get lost in translation? So I go looking for 20 kw generators. Everybody and their mother has generators for sale, but most of them are attached to an engine. Pulley driven 20 kilowatt generators are kind of a specialty item. This is the only one I found that did not include an engine, but did include believable specs:

IMD PTO 22/2 S AVR - 22kW Tractor-Driven PTO Generator w/ AVR (540 RPM)

It weighs 170 pounds and costs $4,300. The case for our girl's generator is much larger than needed for the size of the windings, and it is much older, so that might account for the difference in weight.

Watching her attack the stator windings with a chisel was impressive.

I thought I posted another of her videos, but I cannot find it.

MT

Things you learn in the welding shop!
Chiasson Smoke

Just had to share.

out.aza.blue

out.aza.blue

out.aza.blue is a gourmet restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, 20 minutes from my house on the Wilson River highway. You gotta keep your eyes open for it because it's just a wide spot in the road. 

They serve dinner and brunch, but only when they are so inclined. We made reservations for a prime rib dinner on Saturday night to celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary. Very pleasant. We sat on the deck out back overlooking Gales Creek. We saw some mosquitoes, or at least we thought they were mosquitoes, but we didn't get bit and I didn't hear any of that annoying high pitched buzzing you often get with mosquitoes, so maybe they were some other kind of bug. 

The food was wonderful, the mushroom tart especially. Prime rib is good because it is meat, but I think I'd just as soon have a steak. You really need a sharp knife and a cutting board to dissect a slice of prime rib, especially when it is almost raw. My wife got a beer and I got a bourbon and water. The bourbon came in a tulip shaped glass and I think it was a double. The water came in a shot glass, and was only one shot. Dessert was tiramiso. Evidently they had more than they needed so Gabriel, the chef, came out and passed out second servings.

Links

Midwest Chick pulls back the curtain on the WEF's (World Economic Forum) COVID-19 scam.

• World Economic Forum Finally Tells the Truth About Covid: It Was a ‘Test’ of Our Obedience to Rapidly Forming New World Order
• ‘My Carbon’: An approach for inclusive and sustainable cities

JMSmith talks about the conflict between your loyalty to your nation and loyalty to your religion.

The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars - Notes

The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars by Maurice Dekobra is an entertaining story about Prince Seliman, a rich, sophisticated dude who goes gamboling across Europe in the company of beautiful women, some of whom he takes to bed, or vice versa. He signs on as secretary to the star of our story, Lady Diana Wynham (the Madonna) just to have something to do. She's beautiful, and he's handsome, but for some reason there is no sexual attraction between the two. And where does this title come from? There is no clue until we get to the bottom of page 95 where Madam Mouravieff lets loose with this tirade:

"I know what I know, Prince. Even if he were capable of resisting the temptation, I would still be suspicious of those beautiful English women who travel, those sleeping-car pets who carry a Pekinese in their arms and a lover at their beck and call. I know them, those emancipated females, whose souls are studded with gems from Cartier's and whose bodies are accessible to any sort of voluptuous pleasure. They would eat snobbery out of the hand of a leper and sacrifice their standing to astonish the gallery. Their colossal conceit bulges like a goître in the centre of their otherwise emaciated hearts. Their epicureanism intoxicates them. They are above conventions. They laugh at middle class morals. They prod prejudices with their fingers and they lift their skirts in the face of disconcerted virtue."

Okaaaay then. The Madonna is a jet-set playgirl, or an international slut, depending on how you view such behavior. Of course she's not in the jet-set, that would not happen for another 50 years, so she has to make do with sleeping cars in trains. Probably a lot more comfortable.

Prince Seliman might be a prototype for James Bond, except he is far too trusting. He travels to Batoum, Georgia, thinking he is going to be perfectly safe, but Georgia is in the hands of the Reds and he gets thrown in the slammer and comes within a hairsbreadth of being executed. Silly boy.

The book has some wonderful passages and a bunch of furrin words and phrases. While I was reading I was sometimes inclined to make some notes. Here they are:

Chapter 7 An Angel Needs a Valet

• Page 90 top. 
• Dr. Otto Kupfer, Zahnart (Dentist)
• Fraulein Erna Dickerhoff, Gesangsunterricht (Singing lessons)
• Page 92 top.  
• "That depends on your definition of honesty. Have you the 18th century point of view? Or do you think along the 20th century lines?" I still haven't figured out what he means by this.

Chapter 8 The Proverbial Seventh Heaven

• Page 110 "a beige coat trimmed with skunk fur". Skunk fur? Is that a real thing. Apparently so.
• Page 112 "Our two glasses of Chartreuse danced merrily with the motion of the train." I seem to remember my parents having a bottle of it. I thought it was sweet, but I don't actually remember tasting it. I might have to get a bottle.
• Page 113 "Two real tziganes, with the faces of ex-convicts, were playing softly." tzigane - Hungarian gypsy.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
before being damaged in WW2

• Page 114 "Marvelous dreams in the shadow of the Church of the Memory of Wilhelm the First."
• Page 115 
• Nicklolaia - probably Nikolaya Ostrovskogo in Russia. See map.
• Piraeus Greece. See map.
• Page 116
• Kaffee Franz - just a coffee shop
• Weiner Abendblatt - newspaper
• Bretzel - pretzel
• moka - coffee
• Haluschka - a pasta dish with curd or sheep's cheese and bacon cubes
• Page 117 Heidsick Monopole - A brand of champagne. Monopole just means there is only one company that makes it.

Map

Chapter 9 Wind From The West

• page 119 Budapest, Brasov, Bucharest, Constanza - stops on the Orient Express from Berlin to Constantinople. See map.

Chapter 16 Ohi Djarrardi

• Page 207 
• Palais d'Hiver - Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia
• Gobelins - French dyer of scarlet cloth
• Kchessinkaia - Ballerina
• Smolny Institute - School for girls in Saint Petersburg, Russia
• Page 209 dressing for dinner at Ciro's - fancy restaurant in Monaco
• Page 213 'Saint Vincent de Paul of Cook's Tourist Agency'
• St Vincent de Paul - 17th century French Catholic Saint
• Cook's Tourist Agency - big time travel agency

Chapter 17 Scotch Thistles Sometimes Prick

• Page 214 Locke Lamond - Lake in Scotland
• Page 215 
• Rob Roy - a Scottish outlaw, who later became a folk hero.
• Wallace Island - Small island in Lake Lamond possibly named for William Wallace, one of the leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence
• Page 216 Ben Lomond - hill in Scotland
• Page 218 'Our Jury has not for criminals, even when they act under the impulse of passion, the stupid indulgence of French juries, which by acquitting guilty persons, encourage the abuse of revolvers and knives.'
• Page 220
• '. . . tea-rose déshabillé trimmed with white fur.' - a negligee.
• "The Lady of the Lake." - mythical enchantress from tales of King Arthur
• Page 221 
• ". . . Patou continues to make stunning models, and" - French fashion house
• "Guerlain such heavenly perfumes." - French perfume house
• Page 222 Countess of March, known as Agnes the Black - 14th century Scottish hero
• Page 222 demagogy - rabble rousing
• Page 223 "You know that I prefer the sparkle of champagne to the dregs of port and the silent language of love to the eloquence of the flesh." - ???
• Page 224 "You will soon be rich again. And nothing else matters very much." - Really?
• Page 224 ". . . admirable Raeburn hung above the immense sofa." - 18th century Scottish portrait painter
• Page 225 ". . . the metamorphosis of nature."
• Page 226 arrière-pensée - a concealed thought or intention; an ulterior motive.

Chapter 18 Resolutions May Be Broken

• Page 230 Harry Lauder's popular songs - YouTube playlist
• Page 230 propitious solitude - favorable state of being alone
• Page 234 our S. R. in London - Solicitor Rex - criminal prosecutor

Chapter 19 Eternity Explains Everything

• Page 239 de trop - not wanted; unwelcome.

Chapter 20 The Madonna Of The Sleeping Cars

• Page 246 Josephstadt - suburb of Vienna
• Page 247 The Garden of Hesperides - a world from Greek mythology
Page 247 midinette - a seamstress or assistant in a Parisian fashion house
• Page 248 mon chevalier errant - my knight straying from the proper course
• Page 248 the virgins of Correggio - The Assumption of the Virgin is a fresco by the Italian Late Renaissance artist Antonio da Correggio decorating the dome of the Cathedral of Parma, Italy.

Afterward

• Page page 253 Destiny's Bazaar - the vast array of possibilities that may become available in the future

The Victims' Game - Season 2 - Netflix Series

The Victims' Game (Season 2 Teaser subtitled) | Trailer in English | Netflix
Trailers in English

We watched the first two episodes tonight. So far our hero has managed to be in the vicinity of the murders of two people who were vaguely connected to another pair of murders that happened fifteen years ago when our hero was the forensic examiner. The first victim had traces of his skin under her fingernails. You know our guy didn't do it, I mean he's the hero, and this a murder mystery made for TV. Of course he's not the villain, but somebody is sure going to a lot of trouble to make him look guilty. And how do you even steal enough skin from someone (without them noticing, mind you) to make a decent sample that they could then stuff under the murder victim's fingernails?

This guy is autistic, but he has two good looking women who are after him. One is Lois Lane, the investigative reporter from season one, and the other is the new forensic examiner. There's another hot chick, I think she's from the prosecutor's office, but she's been pretty neutral so far.

The police are a bunch of Keystone Kops. There's a pack of them that follow the prosecutor around and whenever they see our hero they all take off running after him, but they never manage to catch him. Huh. Imagine that. Almost like they are taking a smoke break as soon as they get around the corner and out of sight of the camera.

We watched season 1 exactly 2 years ago. Note: It is Victims' Game, not Victim's Game. That is, it is a game belonging to a group of victims, not just one. I'm telling you this because Blogger's search function could not find this old post using either Victim, Victims or Victim's. Stupid apostrophes.

Cathy Smith

The Infamous Rock Muse and the Comedy Icon
The Cody Tucker Show

Man, that chick is bad news. Belushi died in 1982! Geez I remember that like it was yesterday. Here's the two songs:

The Band - The Weight
GreatOldiesDJ

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown (1974)
Katy Jones

Wikipedia page about Cathy.

Random Thoughts

White Privilege

I was talking to some people and it occurred to me that I had some serious advantages in my life. My parents were both college graduates, I also got a degree and I got a job at a big, important company. So now I'm wondering if I compare myself to an indigent immigrant, or shoot, anyone who didn't have my advantages, how much money would it take to put us on an equal footing? I'm thinking that today it would be about $500 thousand dollars. So maybe White Privilege just means having money in the bank.

Women Drivers

These days driving takes a lot out of me. A drive to the airport and back takes about two hours which is okay, but then I need a day to recover. If you just follow the rules, stay in your lane, and don't drive aggressively, you are pretty safe, you are unlikely to have an accident. From watching YouTube videos I'm learning that weird stuff can happen at any time and at any place. Being aware of your surroundings helps, but sometimes stuff just comes out of left field. When that happens, there is often nothing you can do, but sometimes if you are quick enough and can grok the situation, you might be able to avoid disaster. So now I am wondering if men are perhaps, statistically speaking, slightly better at these reactions. This is not where I intended to go with this, but I think I kind of lost whatever idea I originally had.

Genetics Part A - Women, babies and war

Birthrates are down worldwide. I'm wondering if maybe the lack of wars that kill zillions of people has someone affected people's brains so their urge to make more babies just isn't as strong.

Genetics Part B - Fat, weight, famine, ornery

Likewise, I wonder if famines in the past tended to select for people who had built up enough fat that they could weather the storm. Not so many famines, especially in the West, and maybe that's why we have so many fat people. Likewise, Americans are known as brash, maybe that's because emigrating from Europe to the USA selected for people who "aren't going to take it anymore".

Fever

Does the body temperature go up because the higher temperature helps kill invading microbes, or does the temperature go up because the body is burning more energy because fighting infections takes more energy?

Gaza

Hamas is a a terrorist organization funded by Iran. Terrorists deserve nothing less than death. A strong society can withstand small scale terrorist attacks, but the October 7, 2023 massacre was horrific and deserves a horrific response.

Some people seem to think that only a fraction of the people in Gaza belong to Hamas, that is, most of the people in Gaza are not terrorists. Numerous idiots have been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. What Israel needs to do is mount a full scale war on Hamas (if they haven't already), but call it a war of liberation for the Palestinians. In other words, they need better PR (Public Relations). Wipe out Hamas, annex Gaza and make it part of Israel. To the victor go the spoils. Just hope that the spoils are not rotten.

Vlad the Impaler

There has also been some whining about how captured terrorists are treated. What Israel should do with captured terrorists is impale them on ten foot tall spikes. All these mideast Jihadists are uncivilized savages. They are behaving like they are living in the 15th century, so we should be treating them as we would have in the 15th century.

Ukraine

I don't understand the war in Ukraine. I've been trying to figure it out, but I'm not having much luck. But this week I came up with a couple of new ideas.

My favorite is that somebody with serious clout, he might even be running the country, though with all the infighting going on I don't think anyone is really in charge, and certainly not effing Joe Brandon. Anyway, this mythical big shot has got a personal hard on for Ukraine and he just wants to destroy the country. Somebody pissed him off so bad, made him so angry that he is going to lay waste to the entire country. So far he's doing a pretty good job.

This might even be why he decided to start poking the bear back in 2014. Irritate the Russians enough and they are likely to retaliate, and that would suit Mr. Big just fine. Also, don't allow Ukraine to actually retaliate against Russia because that would mean war and we don't really want to hurt Russia, we want to confine all the death and destruction to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Oil and Gas Reserves and War Zones

The other idea is that the war is being fought over the Ukraine's natural gas and oil fields. This would normally be my favorite, oil being money and all, but the occupied areas do not seem to coincide with the oil fields. But maybe Russia just hasn't gotten around to them yet.

Djibouti Notes

Djibouti

I finally finished reading Djibouti by Elmore Leonard and now I'm finishing up my notes. 

The story is about Dara, a middle aged woman, who is in Djibouti with her assistant Xavier to film a documentary about the pirates operating out of Somalia. They meet Idris, a pirate leader, Billy, an American zillionaire, and his girlfriend Helen. Billy has a big sailboat that he sails himself. There is also Harry who is some kind of loose cannon with connections to the CIA or the military, it's never really clear. Jama is a full-blooded American terrorist. He got locked up in prison in the USA and converted to Islam and kept going.

The first 2/3 of the book are a bit of a slog. Eventually it occurred to me that Elmore may have been writing the way people talk which doesn't always translate into smooth reading. Also, in many of the scenes we have Xavier and Dara reviewing the films they have recorded that day and talking about whether what they have is good enough to be in their film.

Around about the 2/3's of the way though the book, things get lively, or rather deadly, with bodies falling left right and center. It's kind of a shock because up till then it's all cocktails, dancing and bravado.

Billy has 600 nitro express rifle. He loves to talk about it and mentions it every chance he gets. He also loves to show it off.

Cameron Mitchell shooting the .600 Nitro Express
Cam's Wild Life

LNG Tanker

While this story is meandering along, there is also a very ominous ship lurking in the background. It's a LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) tanker. Some Al-Qaeda thugs have managed to get on board and place some explosive charges that can be detonated with a call from a cell phone, all you need is the number. (And the ship has to be in range of a cell phone tower, along with a subscription that allows it to receive calls in that region of the world. Never mind this, the story never gets that far, I'm just picking nits.)

Jama has the number and is trying to decide on the best time to blow it up. His Al-Qaeda bosses have canceled this operation. This might have something to do with the gas coming from Qatar and the elite Qatarians support for terrorists. You know, if Al-Qaeda bites the hand that feeds them, they might not be getting any more doggy treats. None of that is in the story, it's just seems obvious to me. But Jama doesn't care. He likes being a terrorist and killing people.

The best place to blow up the tanker would be at an east coast port in the USA, if the gas gets delivered there. Everyone is aware of the situation, but the terrorists are no longer on the ship and no explosives have been found, so maybe there's nothing to worry about. But not finding any explosives does not mean there aren't any there, so maybe we should be worried. Billy's solution is to shoot it with his Nitro Express rifle and blow it up where it is, in the middle of the Red Sea. Multi-million dollar loss for the gas company, but not a disaster for people living around the delivery port.

While this topic is under discussion Xavier mentions the 1937 gas explosion disaster at the New London School in east Texas:

The New London School Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Fascinating Horror

While I was reading I took sporadic notes. Here are some things that get mentioned:

Page 45

USS Vella Gulf

Page 77

USS Bainbridge

Maersk Alabama Hijacking

Page 80 Aphrodite thousand foot long LNG tanker owned by bin Laden

Page 110 Remember we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third world country so they sit on this till the twins go away.

Page 199 'the Song telling us "The sweet things in life to you were just loaned. So how can you lose what you never owned?"' - Rudy Vallee

Statue de Foch
Place du Trocadero, 75016 Paris France

Page 202 We have this passage:

Cars came around to take different streets off the Place Verdun, circling past the statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 1851-1929, on a pedestal in the center of the plaza, the single word J'Attaque below his name.

Xavier said, "Ferdinand was asked what he'd do if surrounded by Germans and he said he'd attack. I believe it was at Verdun he lost somethin like eighty thousand men j'attackin." He said, "There's your man there."

So I go looking for Place Verdun and a statue of Marshal Foch in Djibouti but all I find it this poster:

Commandant Marchand - Across Africa Book Cover

Musee de L'Armee Invalides Page 34 

"In 1896, Captain Marchand was appointed to lead the Congo-Nile mission to the White Nile River, with the aim of establishing a French protectorate in southern Egypt. Marchand led a team of eight French officers and 150 Senegalese skirmishers up the Congo, Ubangi and Bahr el-Ghazal rivers, arriving in Fashoda on 10 July 1898. They built a fort and raised the French tricolour flag. In September, the Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener arrived at Fashoda. French and British colonialist ambitions came face to face at Fashoda, a standoff that ended in December 1898 when the French government ordered its troops to retreat to Djibouti."

Eventually I realized Xavier was just giving an example of a particularly bull-headed soldier to describe Buck, the soldier they were meeting. Although the French were in Africa, Marshal Foch was not.

Page 203 plant Epimedium otherwise known as horny goat weed

Page 215 Billy is talking about Medal-of-Honor winners:

• Joe Foss shot down 26 Zeke's over the Solomons in his Grumman Wildcat and later became governor of South Dakota.
• Major Bing Bang Bong flying a P-38 shot down 40 doing it during his tour and gave his life testing a jet. 
• Another Ace, Pappy Boyington, a Sioux Indian, shot down his 26th over Rabul. Later that same day some nip sent Pappy down in flames. 
• I forgot the name of the Navy pilot in a Dauntless crashing into a cruiser after he'd been hit. Another hero giving his life for his country, all Medal of Honor winners. He's probably referring to Colin Kelly who was flying a Vindicator, which is very similar to the Dauntless.

Page 216 Sterling Hayden doing Jack D Ripper in the movie Dr. Strangelove

Page 217 1 cubic foot of liquefied natural gas will make 12,400 cubic feet of flammable gas air mix

Chapter 31 

Page 230 Golfo de Tadjoura
Page 243 Big Mucha Island

Previous posts: 

• Djibouti
• Chartres House