Fireman catches baby dropped from third-story window:

With heavy smoke billowing from the windows of the apartment building and the size of the fire inside unknown, Knoxville Senior Firefighter Eric “Bo” Merritt said he could only see one option – the father would have to drop the baby from the window.

Merritt made the “once-in-a-lifetime” catch to save the life of the one-month-old boy, who was among dozens of residents inside the Lakewood Building at Magnolia Apartments, 2730 E. Magnolia Ave., in East Knoxville when someone set a fire in the rear stairwell Sunday morning….”So before we even got the ladders set up, I told him to drop it – and hope for the best. He thought about it for a second and I guess he realized, too, that was the best option. I didn’t know how bad it was on the inside, if the fire was growing or not, so I didn’t want to take the chance of the baby staying up there.”

On the one hand, I love a good “saving the baby” story.

On the other – everyone else got out – right?

After drought and now flooding, my money is on toads.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Computer hackers got into the hotel’s electronic key system and locked guests out of their rooms until management paid a ransom.

 It’s a variation on the ransom-ware scam being used with other computer users.  Pay up or you won’t get your system back.

 This is modern-day piracy.  There should be world-wide jurisdiction to pursue them, and bounties paid for their scalps.  

 Joe Doakes

No argument here.  In fact, we‘ve touched on this before.

Question:  Name a book that Trulbert may have outsold?

Answer:  Chelsea Clinton’s debut tome.

Almost no one is buying the Clinton title, co-authored by Devi Sridhar, a Global Public Health Professor at the University of Edinburgh.  It currently stands at No. 74,374 on the Amazon Bestsellers Chart.

The book profiles global health organizations and the work they do. Chelsea is Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation which prioritizes improving global health.

Published by Oxford University Press, the book is well-intentioned but bland in the extreme. And there is no answer given to the question “Who Runs the World and Why?”

In related news, “the Peter Principle” may soon be re-named “The Chelsea Principle”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Science proves that humanity is getting dumber.   This is consistent with my personal observations, driving around the Twin Cities.

 Joe Doakes

I blame Twitter.

This is the sort of statistical oddity that I obsess over.

In the entire world – eight billion people – there is one person alive known to have been born in the 19th century.  And she turns 117 today:

Born November 29, 1899, [Emma Morano] is the world’s oldest living person and the secret to her longevity appears to lie in eschewing usual medical wisdom.

“I eat two eggs a day, and that’s it. And cookies. But I do not eat much because I have no teeth,” she told AFP in an interview last month in her room in Verbania, a town in northern Italy on Lake Maggiore.

Apropos not much.

Our knowledge of the universe keeps expanding. Every year we make discoveries about the world and universe around us that make the Nobel Prize breakthroughs of previous years seem like nursery rhymes. Every new wave of discoveries pushes out the frontiers of human knowledge to levels that would leave the greatest thinkers of days gone by standing slack-jawed and agog.

And yet even the most brilliant of theoretical physicists knows that there are things that mankind may never, ever have the instrumentation, the knowledge, and even the imagination to measure.

Like my hatred of Twitter.

The country that built the Manhattan Project and the Panama Canal ain’t done yet!

Nobody who was in Minnesota in 1991 needs to be reminded; today’s the 25th anniversary of the Halloween Blizzard.

I’m not sure if the blizzard caught everyone by surprise, but it sure fooled me.  I remember seeing the first snowflake that morning as I picked my mom up for the airport – she was back from Turkey – against a fairly pleasant-looking October sky.

By that evening, we were thoroughly stuck out at my in-laws, with a 3 month old, a 10 year old, my at-the-time wife and my mother.

For three days.

So yeah, I remember it.

On a more clinical note?  I did not know that the Halloween blizzard was in part a consequence of the so-called “Perfect Storm” of Hollywood fame.

Enjoy the relatively warm day!

I’ve been deeply ambivalent about “the Internet Of Things” (IoT) for as long as geeks  have been jabbering about it.

Now, bear in mind, I work in technology; I design how people and technology (at various levels) interact.  My home office looks like Chloe O’Brien’s cubicle, or Vernon Reid’s effects rig.

But I gotta draw the line at an internet that communicates between discrete machines and the people who run them.

Net-controlled home security?  Cars?  Ubiquitous online connections to everything we interact with in life?

Well, not after last Friday, where apparently cheap, insecure IoT devices in various online-enabled appliances – DVRs, video cameras and the like – were harnessed by incredibly sophisticated hackers to launch a denial of service attack that took down vast swathes of the internet.

I’ll drive my own car and lock my own doors, thanks.

The best comment I’ve seen about the new iPhone 7’s replacement of the headphone jack with a pair of tiny, non-connected Bluetooth buds:

Of course they are.  Something’s gotta keep bluetooth device manufacturers busy…

Today is the 25th birthday of the Linux operating system – which has morphed from Linus Torvalds’ hobby into the operating system running the vast majority of the world’s servers, including the ones bringing out this blog.

Here’s the current Linux family tree:

Click to enlarge – if you need to. *shrug*

In my home, we have a couple of Macs, a couple of Linux machines – and, since nobody is paying me to use one, no Windows boxes at all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails in re tomorrow’s “Gun Buyback for Artists” in Minneapolis:

Minneapolis is having a gun buy-back [tomorrow].  I’m thinking of dumping some relics from my gun locker.  I need SITD readers to check my reasoning.

After Hillary is elected, the economy collapses and the Zombie Apocalypse hits, when there is no ammo left on the shelves, we’ll have to scrounge for ammo which means bartering with thieves who steal it. 

Where will they steal it?  From government storage, as the government will be the only ones with a supply line.   So we’re looking at standard government calibers; the government doesn’t stock weapons chambered for exotic ammo so that will be impossible to find.  Weapons chambered in exotic calibers will be useless, even for barter. 

What will be considered “exotic” at that time?

.45 ACP was popular after WW II and Special Forces use it now, but ordinary military does not.  They won’t be stocking it in quantity after The Crash.  That ammo will be highly desirable but hard to find.  Exotic.

.38 Special and .357 Magnum were popular cop revolvers until about 2000; nobody carries wheel guns as primary weapons.  They won’t be stocking that ammo in quantity after The Crash.  Backup guns and snub-nose hold-outs, maybe, but how much ammo will they store for them?  Not much.

.40 S&W was popular with cops for a short time because the FBI tried it; but as of June, the FBI is going to 9mm.  St. Paul PD switched from .40 Glocks to 9 mm Glocks five years ago.  I suspect law enforcement is going softer and smaller because women and minorities can’t handle the bigger pistols with the hotter loads but the reason doesn’t matter – what matters is what ammo they will have in stock.

Okay – so police, federal law enforcement and military are all going 9 mm.  That’s the pistol round I’ll have the easiest time scrounging.  Which means dump pistols chambered for .22 LR, .380, .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .40 S&W, .45 ACP. 

Now for rifles, it’s a different story.  .22 LR in a rifle is a fine squirrel/rabbit gun.  And everybody shoots .223/5.56 in the AR15.  Those will be fine to keep around.  I might even consider a Hi-Point 9mm Carbine; the maximum effective range is only about 100 yards but since the ammo is compatible with my pistol ammo, I only need one caliber in the backpack.

But for pistols, I’m seeing a shift in the prevailing wind away from exotics.  I might as well take some items to the gun buy-back: liberate space in the gun locker and get paid by Liberals to do it.

What do you think?

Joe Doakes

I think there’s no better way to start a bunch of gunnies duking it out that to broach this topic.

Which is fun!

Uber inks deal with Volvo for self-driving cars.

Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.

I’m never going to ride in, much less own, a self-driving car.

Partly, it’s because driving is just plain fun.  Not always, of course; navigating 494 when it turns into an Andean goat path after a major blizzard is no fun (and would be less so in a self-driving car).

Partly because I know programmers, and especially project management – and I drive better than they program.  All due respect.

So just…no.

If  you’ve been wanting to join the discussion in the comment section, but couldn’t find a “Register” link?   The problem has been fixed.   You can now register as a new commenter.

I blame Boko Haram.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Just completed my mandatory annual data security training.  From the module on passwords:

 A password will not include anything that is meaningful to the user, such as a name (either real or fictional), a date (such as family birthdays and anniversaries), telephone numbers, postal codes, car registration numbers and so on.  But DO NOT write down your password or use the “remember password” feature in any Web browser.

 So . . . a password can’t anything to me, but I must remember for 30 days until I change it to a new meaningless phrase that I also can remember, but which does not repeat any password I’ve used in the past.

 Holy crypto, Batman.  Did I get transferred to the NSA without realizing it?

 Joe Doakes

Who knows a government operation better than a government IT department?

It’s a rhetorical question.

There are two types of people in the world:

Type 1: People who don’t sort people into elaborate taxonomies.

Type 2: People who DO sort people into elaborate taxonomies.

• Type 2a: People who create taxonomies for a living
  • Type 2a1: People who do it for academic purposes
  • Type 2a2: People who do it as market research
  • Type 2a3: People who do it for illicit purposes (arguments exist over whether this is a separate subclass)
• Type 2b: Those who create taxonomies for recreational purposes
  • Type 2b1: Those for whom the exercise is a study in human nature
  • Type 2b2: Those for whom it’s a study in order and structure that could apply to any group or set.
• Type 2c: Those who create taxonomies due to mental illness
  • Type 2c1: Obsessive-compulsives
  • Type 2c2: Obsessive “Sorters”
  • Type 2c3: Classic overanalyzers

That is all.