The Father of Criminal Profiling

Source	Incendiary: the psychiatrist, the mad bomber and the invention of criminal profiling
Author	Michael Cannell
Primary Subject	George Metesky  - the Mad Bomber
Cause	Paranoid schizophrenia: A chronic disorder of insidious development, characterized by persistent, unalterable, systematized, logically constructed delusions. People suffering from this disorder often have a cool and distant demeanor. They may hear demonic voices calling them to action or see things that are not real. They may believe other people are controlling them or plotting against them. They are typically reclusive, anti-social and consumed with hatred for their imagined enemies. For all their derangement, they are capable of acting quite normally until, inevitably, some aspect of their delusions enters into their conversation. The paranoic is the world's champion grudge-holder. We all get mad at other people and organizations sometimes. But, with most of us, the anger evaporates eventually. The paranoic's anger doesn't.
Quotes (Dr. Brussel)	“I’ve never fired my .32 Iver Johnson at anyone," he would say. “But it’s never far from reach while I attend patients in my mid-Manhattan office or on outside calls. And. believe me, if I ever need to shoot—l will.”
Trivia	GM signed letters to the press "FP" - Fair Play. He has a patent for a solenoid pump Dr. B used to teach a course at Yeshiva University. Carried a revolver in his briefcase Joe Petrosino "the Dago" - Italian born NY cop - pioneer in fight against organized crime. Tapped by none other than Teddy Roosevelt (NY Police Commissioner). "Needed only one glance at the wounds of the victim to know what inspired the murder and what branch of the mafia was responsible" Deductions from color of blast smoke: black - dynamite; yellow - nitroglycerin; blue - gunpowder GM used shellac to make the bomb waterproof so it could be hidden in a toilet. "Line coupling" vs "well coupling" - jargon was a clue to the resident county of the bomber. "Brooklyn (in Waterbury, CT) was a long way from the Connecticut of well-heeled commuters and country roads lined with picturesque stone walls. " Thomas Harris (creator of Hannibal Lector) got ideas from interviewing John Douglas at Quantico (FBI, BSU)
Dr. B's Lifespan	1905 - Oct 23, 1982 (77 years)
Other Books by Dr. Brussel	Casebook of a Crime Psychologist Instant Shrink : Become an Expert Psychiatrist in 10 Easy Lessons Just Murder, Darling (Kills wife's lover and frames her for it)
Dr. B's Hobbies	Composing crossword puzzles, playing electric organ and drums

 

Dr. James A. Brussel holding his book, "Casebook of a Crime Psychologist"

Joe Petrosino : Pioneer in NY's fight against organized crime

Teddy Roosevelt : NY Police Commissioner who tapped Joe Petrosino for a big position in the NYPD

Dr. Egas Moniz, first Portugeese winner of the Nobel Prize, "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (lobotomy) in certain psychoses". Dr. Brussel had to recommend lobotomies in his line of work.

Rant : How Does This Guy Do It?

This is one of the most unhelpful pages I've ever seen and yet this guy seems to have signed up all kinds of affiliates to put ads on his page.

Go figure.

http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/03/moving-some-posts-from-one-blog-to.html

Professor Pimsleur's 16 Tricks for Language Learning Greatness

#	Tip	In Practice
1	Think sounds, not letters	Speak, don't read :)
2	Never look at the letter 'r'	Because, then, English takes over
3	The correct learning sequence	Listen, get the sound down, then say it
4	The longer a word, the harder	Break it down into pieces
5	Shoot all problems on sight	Fix it right away! As soon as you find out
6	Start from the end	For long words that is
7	Work with a model	If you're learning English, you need to compare yourself with the BBC
8	Every sound is important
9	Don't practice single sounds
10	Think in sound-clusters
11	Mastering a difficult sound
12	Practice whole phrases,
13	If you block, stop	Take a break and come back
14	Difficult sounds in each language
15	Invite a friend to make fun of you
16	When to say 'the hell with it'	Be realistic - if you're 18+, you're probably stuck with your accent :)

 

Smelling the Rat : Magnus Carlsen Vs Hans Niemann

Papa : I had the impression that he wasn't tense or fully concentrating on the game in critical positions.

The God of Blogging : Chris Garrett

OMG! I've been doing this twenty years and, reading his masterpiece, I feel like a noob.

Chris Garrett - ProBlogger

I'm reminded of what Charles Townes said about Ted Maiman's paper on the laser : "the most important per word of any of the wonderful papers" that Nature had published in it's 100+ years.

1. Be granular - don't spread a post over multiple subjects!
2. Be consistent in blogging frequency.
3. Keep paragraphs short. Blog readers have short attention spans😊
4. What should you blog about? Something that the big guns aren't blogging about. In short, don't take on Gizmodo😊
5. You're better off with five blogs addressing five topics than with a single all-in-one blog
6. Quoting someone? Put the quote within a box and see your pageviews take off 😊

Shein Means?.... That's Right! Made in Xinjiang

All kinds of people are crying hoarse about how badly them Uyghurs in China's west are being beaten up. Now, when you hear about how people are buying trendy clothes dirt cheap, you wonder what kind of wages the workers making these clothes are being paid. Ugh.

To what lengths did Ava Grand go to fight back? She makes clothes out of the bags that Shein clothes come wrapped in! Don't take my word for it😊

How cheap? The high-end jeans cost $28 at Shein!

You can order 10 trendy pieces for $2 each, and you'll end up with 10 additional plastic (these are sturdy bags that have zippers!) in your house. Now picture three babes doing a Shein haul party and unboxing and then finding the bags piling up and starting to think about how many bags Shein is dumping in the environment?

Turns out Gen Zers do place a premium on sustainability - at least according to the WSJ.

In a Nutshell : Ronald Pelton, KGB Mole

Full Name	Ronald Willam Pelton
Agency	NSA
Operation Compromised	Ivy Bells (tapping of Soviet undersea cables)
Born	Nov 18, 1940
Birthplace	Benton Harbor, MI
Pre-crime stressor(s)	Increasing homeowner's taxes, home repair costs (burden of 4 children, 1979 salary of $24.5k/yr)
Handler	Vitaly Yurchenko
Collaboration session duration	Up to eight hours
Payoff	$40,000
Sentence	3x Life, $100 fine
Time served	30 years
How caught	Soviet handler defected to USA
Evidence	Cooperating witness, tape recording, confession
Incarceration facility	Allenwood, PA. Medium security

 

When I Grow Up

I want to be just like Greg Robinson. You see all kinds of people posting how great he is on LinkedIn. Did any of them take the time to check out his profile? See what I'm talking about? He has no time for that - he has something really important to do.

Now, I have to shamefully admit, when I listened to the WSJ podcast interview, that I did not expect him to be a black man. When he said, "answer not just the words of the question but the intent of the question," I detected a bit of an accent, but I was pleasantly stunned by the picture, when I eventually saw it.

Well then, what are these ten new technologies we shot up into space a few months ago?

1. Infrared detector hybrids - if it doesn't sound new enough to me, it's because I don't know enough😊
2. Micro-shutters on the scale of the human hair. Nothing before JWST can observe up to 100 objects simultaneously spectroscopically at high-resolution.
3. A five-layer sun-shield (with space-age coatings) the size of a tennis court. This one failing to unfurl was one of the 344 single-points of failure (a Mars mission has about 70-85 SPFs)
4. Wavefront Sensing and Control : Space-age math that controls the instruments (mirrors, et al) to get the image into focus.
5. A backplane (that holds everything together) that achieves mechanical steadiness down to 32 nanometers while being cooled to -240°C! Northrop Grumman did the graphite composites needed.
6. Cryogenic mirrors
7. Cryogenic imaging IC - looks like the SIDECAR was also used on the Hubble. Hey, go with what works. Can't go wrong there 😊
8. A three-stage cryocooler that ensures the low temperature of operation (kills the noise that the detector electronics is naturally prone to) from a distance of meters, while achieving a very low vibration spec. You wonder why Hubble can work for 30 years without complaining and why the JWST was only expected to do five years (the Europeans did such a good job with delivering and parking the beast at it's final home that there's enough fuel left to operate for an additional five years. The solar panels provide 2 kW of power. But, I guess there's some tolerance built in to things, but they just expect stuff to fail and fail till you no longer get the quality you need out of the thing - and so you have a finite life - not like the Hubble where you can send up a crew in a shuttle to do maintenance. I wonder if some people on death row can volunteer for a glorious death mission - go knowing you'll never come back - and take a giant leap for mankind. Sounds like something a Japanese astronaut with Samurai roots might try. Commit some white collar crime and decide to redeem yourself with a glorious death. What's more glorious than serving humanity on a suicide mission like servicing the Webb?

What's the opposite of the baker's dozen? The NASA ten - hey, they only have eight listed on their page. Don't look at me funny.

FYI, the 200 inch telescope in Mt. Palomar's Hale Observatory is considered one of the great achievements of mankind. The glass for the mirror took six years to grind. And they got that done in 1948! That's all we had till Hubble came along in 1993 😊 Hubble isn't bigger, just better - being 50 years more advanced. It only has an 95 inch mirror.

Now, coming to the man who rescued the project. A new term : schedule efficiency : If it's 50%, that means, for each day the project is ongoing, it's end date moves out by a day 😊 Sound familiar?

Given that the Manhattan project cost $2b and the JWST cost $10b all told, in 2022, projected backwards, with inflation, that's $500m in 1940 dollars.. Is it more complicated than the first nuke? Probably. I'd say - given that very smart people worked for about 30 years on it (total involvement, about 20k people!)

I'm very mission, organization and team focused.

Greg took over the project in 2018 (already 11 years behind schedule for launch). 

I thought it was critically important to put everything on the table and answer, not just the words of the question, but the intention of the question. And to give, not just data, but information.

He is the kind of leader who will take you out to coffee and, when you're done, you will know exactly what to do and he will not have told you what he wants you to do.

One person can make a difference and, oftentimes, it's not the person you expect, and that's the person you want.

Incremental progress over many years leads to exponential progress.

Ground Truth : Ceylon 2022

Economist podcast : Average Sri Lankans were better off economically than their counterparts in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Now, the same people are skipping meals.

WSJ podcast : Due to the power-cuts and lack of fuel, people are lighting fires on balconies to cook meals.

In a nutshell : SL borrowed heavily to fund development - some projects ridiculously grandiose - like the new empty airport (named after the ruling family) which is now being infiltrated by wild elephants (real. Wait a tick! SL is an island. How did elephants get there?). They counted on tourism revenue to pay off the loans. But then the pandemic hit and choked tourism. Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit and that sent prices of food and fuel above the breaking point. Now they're bankrupt and need $6b by the end of the year (for what?)

A Woman (Girl) Did This - Always The Ones You Least Expect

If you read this, or listened to it in the audiobook, would you guess it was a woman (19 year old)?

They smashed a hole through a locked closet door, and found the passport, cash, credit card and grandmother's jewelry I had hidden inside. They took my camera, my iPod, an old laptop, and my external backup drive filled with photos, journals... my entire life. They found my birth certificate and social security card, which I believe they photocopied - using the printer/copier I kindly left out for my guests’ use. They rifled through all my drawers, wore my shoes and clothes, and left my clothing crumpled up in a pile of wet, mildewing towels on the closet floor. They found my coupons for Bed Bath & Beyond and used the discount, along with my Mastercard, to shop online.  Despite the heat wave, they used my fireplace and multiple Duraflame logs to reduce mounds of stuff (my stuff??) to ash – including, I believe, the missing set of guest sheets I left carefully folded for their comfort. Yet they were stupid and careless enough to leave the flue closed; dirty gray ash now covered every surface inside.

https://vator.tv/news/2011-07-29-airbnb-customer-service-fail-the-story-of-ej

EJ is Emily. And the perpetrator? Faith Clifton, who was doing meth, I believe..

The Fed : No Complaints

The one guy Roger has never beaten. He's beaten Rafa on various surfaces, but he never figured out Novak. Sure, it doesn't help being five years older. But, the other two are kicking guys 20 years younger without complaining.

I maintain, both R and N will end up with 26 each. 

Congratulations Novak Djokovic. I give Rafa a higher rating for mental toughness, but you're still the man, the GOAT.

BTW, last time I saw a guy's first serve being slower than his opponent's 2nd serve? Sampras v Rafter - which Sampras won relatively easily I think - though Pat got Set 1.

On Making a Homemade Gun

Tetsuya Yamagami with his self-defense widget

At Yamagami's place, they found "zip" and "pipe" guns. Two metal barrels and a wooden board with a firing mechanism. BTW, you know who really knows guns - as in how to get good value for your money? Ans : the Royal Thai Police. They are not issued weapons and have to spend their own personal funds to acquire firearms (source : Operation Relentless by Damien Lewis)

Mitsuru Fukuda (Prof. in College of Risk Mgmt, Nihon Univ) : "The making of guns with a 3D printer and the manufacturing of bombs can nowadays be learned off the internet from anywhere in the world"

Prof. Mitsuru Fukuda circa 2010

Suspect (Yamagami) stated that he had search online for instructions and ordered parts and gunpowder off the internet. Really? What if you don't want to leave a paper trail? The gun measured 40 by 20 centimetres (15.7 by 7.9 inches), and was made of materials such as metal and wood. Electrical wire passing from the cap on the end of each pipe implied an electrical firing mechanism says N.R. Jenzen-Jones - Armament Research Services analyst. 

N.R. Jenzen Jones - kickass gun commentator

Extreme :

Mushroom: The story of the A-bomb kid Hardcover – January 1, 1978

by John Aristotle and David Michaelis Phillips (Author)

John Aristotle Phillips serves as CEO of Aristotle, where he has earned a reputation as an innovator, entrepreneur and valued advisor in the field of politics.

Mr. Phillips is a pioneer in the strategic applications of technology to politics and political communication. He has addressed the membership of the International Association of Political Consultants, the European Association of Political Consultants and the American Association of Political Consultants.

Mr. Phillips graduated from Princeton University in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. While at Princeton, Mr. Phillips received international recognition for his design, made from publicly available documents, of an atomic bomb. He is the co-author of Mushroom: the Story of the A-Bomb Kid.

More Mundane :

From the book made with taxpayer money :

In Unconventional Warfare operations it may be impossible or unwise to use conventional military munitions as tools in the conduct of certain missions. It may be necessary instead to fabricate the required munitions from locally available or unassuming materials. The purpose of this Manual is to increase the potential of Special Forces and guerrilla troops by describing in detail the manufacture of munitions from seemingly innocuous locally available materials.

Manufactured, precision devices almost always will be more effective, more reliable, and easier to use than improvised ones, but shelf items will just not be available for certain operations for security or logistical reasons. Therefore the operator will have to rely on materials he can buy in a drug or paint store, find in a junk pile, or scrounge from military stocks. Also, many of the ingredients and materials used in fabricating homemade items are so commonplace or innocuous they can be carried without arousing suspicion. The completed item itself often is more easily concealed or camouflaged. In addition, the field expedient item can be tailored for the intended target, thereby providing an advantage over the standard item in flexibility and versatility.

"This cone charge will penetrate 3 to 4 inches of armor. Placed on an engine or engine compartment, it will disable a tank or other vehicle."

What is the firing mechanism based on? A nail and and elastic band.

Based on this, who do we need to keep an eye on? Drug, hardware and paint stores. Farm and feed stores. Remember, the first World Trade Center terrorist attach of 1992 used a fertilizer bomb.

Here's one from Gallipolli for sure :

BTW, who has an extensive instruction manual for the use of explosives? The National Parks Service. Makes sense don't it? How many times have you driven through  mountainous area and wondered what it took to make that road?

The Hoss USMC explains what a "lower receiver" is for us mere mortals :

"It was invented by Eugene Stoner" of Armalite (AR-15). Here's some vintage : Mikhail Kalashnikov who went through 46 iterations and Stoner discussing the AR-15.

How Shinzo Abe rolled (Kudos : Adolfo Aranz, Aman Bhargava and Vijdan Mohd. Kwoosa) :

Timeline of Shinzo Abe's Political Life