Category Archives: Essays

Huîtres Variées

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Earlier this month, I posted a brief reflection on John Howard Griffin. Often my mind floats back to his seminal book Black Like Me, nudged there by something I see, or hear, or smell – the language of the book is simple but evocative, and I have read it so often that many paragraphs are always close to the surface of my memory.

One such bit comes to mind when I think of New Orleans, which I have never visited but once, briefly, of an early morning while driving from Los Angeles to Key West in the summer of 1972. I stopped in at a little greasy spoon for breakfast, somewhere close to Interstate 10, possibly in the midst of the area destroyed by Katrina, but far from the French Quarter, which I know of only by hearsay and the Disney-esque reproductions that one sees from time to time.

Griffin wrote, “At Broussard’s, I had supper in a superb courtyard under the stars – huîtres variées, green salad, white wine and coffee; the same meal I had there in past years. I saw everything – the lanterns, the trees, the candlelit tables, the little fountain, as though I were looking through a fine camera lens. Surrounded by elegant waiters, elegant people and elegant food, I thought of other parts of town wher I would live in days to come. Was there a place in new Orleans where a Negro could buy huîtres variées?“1

While I speak fluent French, I have never encountered that phrase except in Griffin’s book. I began to wonder what huîtres variées were, because I love seafood (drooling now at the thought of oyster stew and steamed clams at Joseph’s Original Cap’n Cat Clam Bar in Franklinville, NJ, or a huge plate of mixed shellfish eaten at a lakeside restaurant in Torcy, France) and because I would love to try them in honor of Griffin’s life and work. Yet the only hits on the Internet lead back to the book itself or are oblique references; no restaurant seemed to offer the specific dish, except an old menu from Ben Gross restaurant in 1966, horribly misspelled as huîtres variées cheaudes et frôids, and the Grand Hôtel de Maubeuge, on the French border close to Belgium.

I had more luck when I looked up Broussard’s – they’re still there, and it does look like a lovely place to dine.

Copyright photo viewable here.

Broussard’s courtyard by day

The dinner menu at one point offered oysters as a specialty:

Definitely oysters, and prepared in various ways. So if I were a betting man, I’d say that Griffin had something like the Gulf Oyster 2-2-2, and simply chose to give it a French name, or else back in 1961 they had something similar on the menu. Sadly, the dinner menu has changed somewhat and these are no longer featured. Perhaps a seasonal change? I’ll have to keep my eyes open in the spring and summer.

Unless someone can dig up a menu from Broussard’s of that era, we may never know. What I do know is this: I gotta get me down to New Orleans.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

1Griffin, John Howard, Black Like Me, Signet Books, 1960, p. 11

What it was like when I scraped my knee

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Happened all the time. Skating, climbing trees, those deadly playground implements of destruction. And depending on what was in mom’s medicine cabinet (or even worse, if I was visiting my cousins in the country,) the cure was often worse than the injury.

Mom used Mercurochrome, until I begged her to start using Bactine™ (“Psst! Goes the Bactine™, and down go the mean old germs,” said the TV commercial, and I was all over anything that was pain-free.)

But Aunt June, for all her sweet kindness, was a closet sadist: she used merthiolate in her home, and woe unto the child who came in with a cut.

The chart below shows my impressions as a child of what various remedies were like; the pain scale images are from the inimitable Hyperbole and a Half.

Nowadays, I just wash an owie with soap and water (yeah, it stings a bit, but suck it up), slather on some Neosporin™ or other antibiotic cream, and call it good. But as a kid, my pain threshold was  lot lower. Sucks to be a kid.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

On occasion I stumble across things on Facebook or reddit or elsewhere that are relevant and which deserve to be shared. Here is one such example:

Alternate Pain Scale 1

The Old Wolf has edited.

Use Strong Passwords!

Posted on by The Old Wolf

The incidence of email hijacking is on the rise – spammers have discovered that many email accounts are child’s play to get into. Once done, the victim’s entire address book is scarfed up and used to send out spam, phishing solicitations or malware.

First of all, I hope these wastes of human cytoplasm find themselves buried beneath 7 kilometers of burning camel ejecta in Bolgia 11 of the Eighth Circle of Hell (also called Malebolge, reserved for those who perpetrate fraud.) Students of Dante will remind me that there are only 10 Bolgias. I just created a new one for cybercriminals, so there.

Now that I have that off my chest…

Use strong passwords!

Eset.com published a list of the 25 most common passwords, which I reproduce below:

  1. password
  2. 123456
  3. 12345678
  4. 1234
  5. qwerty
  6. 12345
  7. dragon
  8. pussy
  9. baseball
  10. football
  11. letmein
  12. monkey
  13. 696969
  14. abc123
  15. mustang
  16. michael
  17. shadow
  18. master
  19. jennifer
  20. 111111
  21. 2000
  22. jordan
  23. superman
  24. harley
  25. 1234567

I won’t go into a Freudian analysis of this list, although that topic would be rife with opportunities for sarcasm; however, each of these passwords would be cracked instantly by the average scammer.

Simply adding a few numbers or special characters changes the landscape radically; below is a table of variations on “password”, along with the time required for the average desktop PC to crack it1:

password instantly
password1234 37 years
Password1234 25,000 years
password 1234 333,000 years
Password!1234 26 million years
 Password 1234 51 million years
P@ssword 1234  465 million years
 This Password Is Mine  5 sextillion years

So here are some simple rules about creating passwords that you can use to keep your private accounts safe from hackers:

  • Never use a dictionary word
  • Capital letters are good
  • Special characters are good2.
  • Combinations of capital letters are even better
  • Adding spaces is best of all (see footnote). A sequence of random words, such as “wolf aardvark tapioca wellsfargo” would take 633 decillion years to crack (that’s 633,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.)

So use some common sense with passwords. Try the most secure option within the limitations of whatever website or application you are using, and you’ll most likely be safe from even the most determined of hackers.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Edit: Related article – 10,000 Top Passwords

1 These figures are calculated over at “How Secure is my Password“. Check it out – it will tell you instantly how strong your password is.
2 If allowed – some system administrators – even financial institutions, if you can believe it – only allow letters and numbers, which insanity irritates me beyond measure.

An Unsettling Quandary

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I love my blogs. I love sharing interesting things with my friends; there’s so much fascinating stuff out there on the net that I think people would enjoy seeing. I haven’t gone the Pinterest route, and probably never will – it just seems too chaotic. And when I do post something, I usually try to track it back to its original source, which is often several blogs deep.

Now comes Roni Loren, with a sad tale of being set upon by hordes of attorneys bearing pitchforks and torches… well, probably only one, but you get the idea. And she really-o, truly-o got sued by a real-live photographer for violating his copyright, even though she immediately removed the photo after the initial takedown notice. And once the lawyers get involved, you don’t ever get the mushroom cloud back into that pretty little silver sphere.

Here’s what she learned about fair use from the experience (more details at her blog post):

“It DOESN’T MATTER…

  • if you link back to the source and list the photographer’s name
  • if the picture is not full-sized (only thumbnail size is okay)
  • if you did it innocently
  • if your site is non-commercial and you made no money from the use of the photo
  • if you didn’t claim the photo was yours
  • if you’ve added commentary in addition to having the pic in the post
  • if the picture is embedded and not saved on your server
  • if you have a disclaimer on your site.
  • if you immediately take down a pic if someone sends you a DMCA notice (you do have to take it down, but it doesn’t absolve you.)”

This bothers me. Ms. Loren was neither claiming copyright of someone else;s work nor attempting to monetize it, as in the case of FunnyJunk.com; in fact, she specifically gave copyright to the owners of anything she posted. I stand for intellectual property rights – I contributed to Matt Inman’s campaign to raise money for charity and embarrass supreme douchebag Charles Carreon at the same time (the entire saga is analyzed in delicious detail over at Popehat) – but I don’t stand for being a jerk; there are more human ways of handling things like this.

Case in point: some years ago, a forum I participated in was infested by the most repugnant of subhumans, the cyber-trolls. From their safe chairs of anonymity, they vomited their filth and abomination into what had become a thriving, supportive and civil community, and ultimately resulted in its demise in that venue. They may be happy with the lulz they got, but all they did was cover themselves with more shame. As a response to their actions, I wrote this little piece of nonsense, which served no greater purpose than to help me get some feelings off my chest. Later I found copies elsewhere, with no attribution, specifically here and here; I posted a comment in the first forum requesting either attribution or removal, and was pointedly ignored. My request was even deleted.

I could have gone all Clarence Darrow on these people, but what’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to make a dime off a bit of nonsense rhyme, and parody of a great author at that. Much easier to just let it go. Unfortunately in today’s society, with 47 lawyers per capita looking for billable hours, anyone with half a beef can find an attorney to cheer him one, and I think that’s sad.

So I end up being vulnerable, because if I change the nature of this blog, it simply ceases to exist, and I’m not willing to give it up. I will, however, in future posts link to a disclaimer something like this:

THIS BLOG claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to its respectful owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Despite the fact that Ms. Loren has been terrorized into sharing nuthin’ with nobody without 100% air-tight attribution – and, in light of her experience and given how nasty lawyers can be, I can’t blame her – I’m not ready to go that route. I can only hope and pray that I don’t encounter the one person in ten thousand who is willing to sell their humanity for a mess of pottage.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Technological Prejudice

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Steve Mann, called by some “The Father of Wearable Technology,” was hungry in Paris. Instead of stopping in at a local boîte, he and his family (inexplicably – this is Paris, after all) chose to dine at McDonald’s. It turned into something of an incident, which he also reported on his blog. Despite being shown a doctor’s note that explained his wearable eyepiece (a PARC1-esque precursor to Google Glass,) the staff at McDo had reservations.

Steve Mann with his EyeTap device

I imagine something like this taking place:

Staffer 1: Excusez-moi, monsieur, qu’est-ce que c’est on your face there?

Mann: It’s a wearable eyepiece. I need it. Here’s a note from my doctor.

Staffer 1: (reads.) (sniffs.) Hmp. D’accord, monsieur. For now. (Returns to work, muttering Gallic imprecations under his breath.)

[In the kitchen]

Staffer 2: What did he say?

Staffer 1: He says it’s technology. He says he needs it. He showed me a note from his doctor.

Staffer 2: And you believed him? Crétin! All américains sont des liars! He is doubtless a spy for le Wendy’s, or un Borg, or un observeur from the 7th dimension, or worse, from le CIA!

Staffer 3: Oui! We must throw him out before he begins to throw caca on les clients of our fine establishment!

All: Allons, enfants de la patrie!

Staffer 1: Monsieur! You must leave! You may not wear Borg technology in our store!

Mann: But it’s just an eyepiece…

Staffers (together): Non! Hérétique! You will burn for your blasphemy! Away avec toi! (staff hustles Mann and his family out of the restaurant, trying to rip off his eyepiece which is rather bolted to his head)

Staffers: Voila! The pûreté of our établissement has been restored! Vive la France! And stay out, or next time we will not be so charitable, cochon américain!

Of course, all révolutions begin en France, and then migrate to other shores. Perhaps a dark time will fall upon our own nation, with gangs of thugs roving the streets yanking hearing aids out of the ears of the elderly, but after the population has been decimated by the technology wars which ensue, equilibrium will be established, and portable technology will be accepted by the remainder.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go polish my optical implants.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

1PARC, or the Palo Alto Research Center of XEROX, developed the technology that has now become ubiquitous as the Macintosh, and marketed it as the 8010 STAR system and the subsequent 6085 Desktop Publishing System. They invented the desktop metaphor, with documents, folders, trashcans, windows, raster font design, and a whole host of other things… and did it in 1985, long before Windows was even a bad mushroom dream in Bill Gates’ mind.

Disclaimer

The Old Man and his Dog

Posted on by The Old Wolf

An old man and his dog were walking along a country road, enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to the man that he had died. He remembered dying, and realized, too, that the dog had been dead for many years. He wondered where the road would lead them, and continued onward.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall, white arch that gleamed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it, he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother of pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He was pleased that he had finally arrived at heaven, and the man and his dog walked toward the gate. As he got closer, he saw someone sitting at a beautifully carved desk off to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, “Excuse me, but is this heaven?”

“Yes, it is, sir,” the man answered.

“Wow! Would you happen to have some water?” the man asked.

“Of course, sir. Come right in, and I’ll have some ice water brought right up.” The gatekeeper gestured to his rear, and the huge gate began to open.

“I assume my friend can come in…” the man said, gesturing toward his dog.

But the reply was, “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t accept pets.”

The man thought about it, then thanked the gatekeeper, turned back toward the road, and continued in the direction he had been going.

After another long walk, he reached the top of another long hill, and he came to a dirt road which led through a farm gate. There was no fence, and it looked as if the gate had never been closed, as grass had grown up around it. As he approached the gate, he saw a man just inside, sitting in the shade of a tree reading a book. “Excuse me!” he called to the reader. “Do you have any water?”

“Yeah, sure, there’s a well over there,” the man said, pointing to a place that couldn’t be seen from outside the gate. “Come on in and make yourself at home.”

“How about my friend here?” the traveler gestured to the dog.

“He’s welcome too, and there’s a bowl by the well,” he said. They walked through the gate and, sure enough, there was an old-fashioned well and a bowl next to it on the ground. The man filled the bowl for his dog, and then took a long drink himself. When both were satisfied, he and the dog walked back toward the man, who was sitting under the tree waiting for them, and asked, “What do you call this place?” the traveler asked.

“This is heaven,” was the answer.

“Well, that’s confusing,” the traveler said. “It certainly doesn’t look like heaven, and there’s another man down the road who said that place was heaven.”

“Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates?”

“Yes, it was beautiful.”

“Nope. That’s hell.”

“Doesn’t it offend you for them to use the name of heaven like that?”

“No. I can see how you might think so, but it actually saves us a lot of time.   They screen out the people who are willing to leave their best friends behind.”

Whether one is a person of faith or a humanist, this parable underscores the fact that whatever world we live in, it would be a poorer world without our animal friends.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

VCR Wars: The one that lost

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Betamax. Talk to an afficionado and you’ll get a whole list of reasons why it was better. VHS supporters disagree – fairly comprehensive point-counterpoint presents both opinions.

With technology zooming ahead at such breakneck speed, many youngsters today wouldn’t even relate to this Dilbert cartoon:

With both VHS and Betamax virtually obsolete for future production, the debate is more or less moot – but I still have 162 VHS tapes on my shelf, waiting to be ripped to AVI or replaced with DVD’s.

“Why don’t you switch to Blu-Ray,” I hear someone in the background sniggering? Basically for the same reason I don’t replace my PC with a Mac – it’s no longer substantially better, just different – and a whole lot more expensive. I’ve seen lots of videos on my son’s HD/Blu-Ray set. Yeah, they’re pretty nice. But when I watch movies at home on my own equipment, I don’t feel deprived. When my DVD player goes belly-up, I’ll most likely buy a Blu-Ray capable box, but then I’ll have to get a higher-resolution screen, and I can’t see shelling out the extra money until it’s absolutely necessary.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Disclaimer

No, you didn’t win this. No, you can’t have it. No.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

DEAR,

MY NAME IS GENERAL MARTINS TANJUL. I AM THE DEPOSED MAGNATE OF PETROCO IN LAGOS, NIGERIA, AND I NEED YOUR HELP IN MOVING THE AMOUNT OF $US 205 MILLION IN CASH OUT OF MY STORAGE VAULT TO YOUR COUNTRY…

So goes about every scam letter from the Lads from Lagos, often accompanied by pictures like the one above. For some strange reason, people continue falling for these mind-bendingly absurd emails; if they didn’t, the boys would give up their trade and find some other way to separate suckers from their money.

The photo above actually does represent about $205,000,000 and was seized as part of the biggest cash-drug bust in history, somewhere in Mexico City.

Yeah. So if you weren’t sure, it’s a scam. It’s always a scam. Any email from anyone you don’t know, where the subject is money, is a scam.

Be careful out there.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Before attorneys could advertise

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Above images found at ukgraphicdesigners.com

Found at 50satomicranchhouse.blogspot.com

I had a really nice Chemcraft chemistry set when I was a kid. All sorts of poisons that could have killed me. Things that would blow up. Glass tubes to heat up, burn the piss out of my fingers, and make capillary pipettes out of. Glass labware. And nary a lawsuit to be seen. I’d love to have things around the house like this even now.

Here’s what we’ve come to today:

A chemistry set that trumpets “No Chemicals.” How sad is that?

The Old  Wolf has spoken.

Trust, but Verify

Posted on by The Old Wolf

All through the news services and the blogosphere an article is circulating (here’s a example) about a deaf man who was mocked by TSA agents as a “@#$% deafie,” humiliated in other ways, and then had his bagged candy stolen and eaten right in front of him. Sounds outrageous.

Now, I’m no huge fan of TSA excesses, nor of their basic philosophy of knee-jerk response to every sneeze or change in the wind. Numerous articles, including one quoting former TSA chief Kip Hawley have raised the issue that the entire airport security system is broken beyond repair.

That said, I’m still willing to bet that most TSA agents out there are folks just like you and me, and that only a very small minority are really there to perpetrate distilled douchebaggery or exercise unrighteous dominion for the sake of inflating their own egos. And, this article seems to stretch credibility.

Add to that the fact that the blogger, Tea and Theater, appears to have vanished from sight. The article quoted in the replicated news items is gone, and so is the root page.

And that raises all sorts of red flags in my book.

I’ve flown a lot, and had one or two less-than-pleasant interactions with the TSA, but I’ve also had countless more where I was treated with courtesy and efficiency, and even given extra help. So I really, really wonder what’s going on with this situation.

Within the realm of possibility: Tea and Theatre’s blog may be down for any number of reasons. He forgot to renew his subscription. The server is down. His blog was getting so many hits it exceeded bandwidth restrictions, and so on. It’s also possible that everything happened just the way he said it did.

But until I see some better confirmation about what really took place here, I’m thinking I should take this event with a grain of salt, rather than just forwarding it on to everybody I know in the name of whipping up more anti-government sentiment.

The Old Wolf has spoken.