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As If We Needed Reminding

Shootin' Time

Ask me again why I always carry when leaving the house — and especially when going shopping:

Terrified mall-goers ran for their lives on one of the busiest shopping days of the year after a gunman opened fire in West San Jose, California.

Horrifying videos and photos showed shoppers in Westfield Valley Fair Mall taking cover and running for shelter at around 5.40 pm local time on Black Friday.

Hundreds of bargain-hungry customers ran for the nearest exits or hid behind piles of clothing and mannequins as panic swept through Westfield.

More footage showed people flooding the sidewalks and escaping past a storefront with shattered glass strewn onto the pavement outside the mall.

Police confirmed that three victims, two adults and a 16-year-old girl, sustained gunshot wounds and have been taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Then, of course, there’s the usual useless advice:

Security advisor Patrick Fiel, the founder of PVF Security Consulting, told the Daily Mail that people should be especially cautious while holiday shopping.

‘Being extra vigilant this holiday season will help keep you safe. Always trust your instincts and report any and all suspicious activity,’ he warned. 

‘Law enforcement agencies across the nation have reported an increase in calls during the holiday season, which is partially attributed to shoppers placing greater emphasis on gift selection rather than personal safety.’ 

In the event of an active shooter, Fiel has advised the public to ‘run, hide and fight.’  

‘Getting away from the attacker is the top priority. Leave your belongings behind and get away,’ he wrote. 

If you are unable to evacuate, Fiel said to look for a solid place to hide, preferably somewhere with a barrier between you and the attacker. 

Fighting the assailant is the absolute last resort. But in the face of danger, Fiel has urged people to be ‘aggressive.’

‘Recruit others to ambush the attacker with makeshift weapons like chairs, fire extinguishers, scissors, books,’ he suggested.

Books?  Well, they say that the pen is mightier than the sword;  but I’d take nine rounds of .45 ACP over a thousand words, any day of the week.  And the only assistance I need is for people to stay out of the line of fire.

But maybe I’m being too aggressive and stuff.  Far better to cower in some store and hope the asshole doesn’t choose me for a victim.

“Security advisor”, my aching African-American ass.

Classic Beauty: Marisa Mell (1)

Classic Beauty

I found out about Austrian actress Marisa Mell in a roundabout sort of way.  I was watching one of those silly “10 Movies That People Have Foregotten”-kidd of video on EeeewChooob, when suddenly I saw a woman of outstanding beauty appear for a few seconds.  So of course I looked up the cast of said movie, and there she was (and here she is):

…and even as a blonde:

Next week, we’ll look at Marisa in color.  Try to contain yourselves.

Playing Sherlock

Drive Time, Trades

Okay, as a longtime data geek and mechanical moron, this video had me enthralled.  What was it all about?  Some guys asking themselves “Why?”

This brand new L87 engine with ZERO miles never even made it into a vehicle before it was condemned by GM. It failed one of their quality control Pico tests and we want to know why. In this video, we tear it down, take some measurements, and run tests to uncover why it was tossed in the trash — and how this single engine design ended up costing GM over a billion dollars in recalls and warranty repairs.

I don’t have the faintest clue what any of the technical pieces or terms are all about, but the search is absolutely thrilling.  It’s when these mechanics start looking at the data gathered from analysis of the different engine components that my inner data geek gets excited,

It’s the kind of stuff I used to do at The Great Big Research Company in my initial job in the Stat department:  picking at the data, looking for stuff which shouldn’t be there and is, and/or stuff which should be there and isn’t.

My favorite quote:  “These are big numbers.  Are they big enough to ruin an engine?” (He’s talking about a hundred thousandths of an inch, which in the real world would scarcely matter except when you’re looking at precision-made machinery.)

I’m not going to post a spoiler, here, but it involves the level of chamfering around some holes.

What I truly love is the level of expertise shown by all the guys in the video — and when they bring in Dave himself, his explanation of the problem is absolutely brilliant.

Go and watch the video.  It’s half an hour out of your day, and I promise you that you won’t be disappointed.  Even if you’re not the slightest bit interested in the minutiae  of engines — which would make you similar to me — the journey is worth the time.

Back Story & The Brand

Toys

After I talked about my favorite watch of all time — Tissot Heritage — a couple of people wrote to me to ask about the brand.  (I’m astonished that people had never heard of the amazing company, which sells more watches than any other Swiss brand, period.)

Here’s Teddy Baldassarre’s take on the whole thing, and like his other discourses, it’s excellent.  For those with a limited budget but are interested in a super-accurate chronometer, by the way, it’s worth noting that Tissot makes the cheapest such in the whole market, and its performance equals many of the (very) spendy models like Rolex.


(They typically cost between $800 to $2,000 depending on the model — but the chronometer’s action is automatic, and therefore of no interest to me, a self-winder devotee.)

Yer welcome.

Peppery

Food & Drink

Via Insty, I found this fascinating article about how America’s food is becoming more spicy:

Consider spicy-hot food — and consider how recent it is as a mainstream phenomenon in the U.S. In 2002 many of us cheerfully chow down on Szechuan and Thai, habaneros and rellenos, nam pla and sambal ulek. Salsa outsells ketchup. But it wasn’t always that way.

When I first came over in 1982, I found American food to be kinda like what I’d left behind in South Africa:  kinda bland, almost-English in fact, and diner food very much so.  Only when I went south to New Orleans and Florida did the food start to spice up a little — in the Big Easy, quite alarmingly so.

Back in Johannesburg, although I’d grown up with at least one curry meal a week, spicy food was definitely not an everyday fare.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I moved Over Here in The Great Wetback Episode of 1986 I found out that over that short period, food in general had spiced up considerably (what the article refers to as “capsaicinization”), and frankly, I wasn’t prepared for it.  It took me a while to get used to it, but I did.

Now?  I eat nachos with one slice of jalapeño pepper per mouthful.  (Without the jalapeño, nachos are pretty awful — close to what Richard Hammond once described as “sick on a plate”.)

What made me realize how my own taste had become so capsaicinized was when New Wife came over from Seffrica to become part of my life Over Here.  Now granted, she’d never been that fond of spicy food — even curry, so much a staple of SA menu, was conspicuous by its absence on her table — and in fact, that was generally true of many Seffricans back in the day, myself included.  So when she came here, her taste buds were set on fire.  And it’s when I prepare meals for her that I realize how much I’ve become used to that increase in spice content;  I have to watch out even when using mild spices like Lawry’s steak salt or paprika.  What seems quite mild for me sets her mouth on fire.  So I make meals accordingly.

Ditto when we visit friends or family:  I have to remind them constantly to be careful of the spice quantity.  (The nice thing about having the kind of friends that I do is that they take such constraints in their stride, albeit with some gentle teasing.  Ditto Daughter and the Son&Heir when we visit them for dinner.)

I’m not going to try and change her tastes, by the way;  had someone tried to do that to me, back in the late 1980s, I’d have kicked back hard.  I may have gradually become accustomed to the modern American cuisine, but it took me well over a decade to do so.

I doubt that New Wife will do it in anything like the same time period, and that’s okay.  At home, we eat more traditional British food, anyway.  Sausage rolls, steak pies and roast beef, for example, were never spicy foods to begin with, and I for one have no problem tucking into the comfort foods of my youth.

I’ll just get the spice when we got out to eat.