Odds & Ends
What is the correct response to Iran’s shooting down an unmanned drone?
From nypost.com, edited by yours truly: A small city in Florida, population 35,000, has agreed to pay nearly $600,000 in bitcoin ransom to hackers who took control of its computers. It will cost more than $1 million to fix and insure the affected systems. Hackers hijacked Baltimore’s computer systems in May, and have demanded $76,000 in bitcoin ransom. The city has so far refused to pay. The cost of that attack is an estimated $18.2 million. I hope the systems at nuclear facilities are secure.
I’d already known Christopher Lee was a WWII hero. I learned a little more about him in one of those People You Didn’t Know Were a Bad Ass youtube videos. He once considered singing opera. He stuck with acting and was, of course, highly successful. A true original, he returned to singing in an odd way late in life — doing heavy metal albums while in his nineties! He did six: Christopher Lee Sings Devils, Rogues & Other Villains (1998), Revelation (2006), Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross (2010), Charlemagne: The Omens of Death (2013), A Heavy Metal Christmas (EP-2012) A Heavy Metal Christmas Too (EP-2013), Metal Knight (2014). He died in 2015 at 93. Here’s Charlemagne: Massacre of the Saxons. Voice unmistakable as the ghost of the king, he shares the lead with, I believe, Vincent Ricciardi in the role of the young king:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFbPiUEA62A
From foxnews.com, edited by yours truly: An Alabama grandma held off an intruder up to no good with a rifle while one of her granddaughters called the cops. She fired a shot into the air and had him kneel until police arrived. He tried to run but was bagged.
The scaffold enabled the floating book shop to operate despite the foul weather. Gazing out my window, I see that the front has finally passed through and the sun is shining. My thanks to Ira, who bought another book on Gravesend, this one by Joseph Ditta, and Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh, and U.S. Army Leadership Handbook: Skills, Tactics, and Techniques for Leading in Any Situation; and to Mark, who purchased Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, and Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer, and The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs by Elaine Sciolino; and to the Quiet Man, who chose an instructional on making desks and bookcases, and the only work of fiction to sell today, Philo Vance : Four Complete Novels by S. S. Van Dine; and to Shelley, who dispatched local porter Robert with a donation of a number of best sellers.
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