Archive for the ‘Rhode Island’ Category

Some random stuff for the morning of September 20, 2012.

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

There hasn’t been much in the news the past couple of days, and I’ve been depressed and upset for various reasons that the readers of this blog won’t care about.

I don’t have a lot to say about the DOJ report on “Fast and Furious”. I haven’t had time to go through the report myself, and I’m expecting that a lot of people who are smarter than I am will have smarter things to say than I do, once they’ve had a chance to go through it.

The Astros have crossed the 100 loss barrier, and are still on track for 110 losses. Woot.

Today’s NYT has two articles I found kind of interesting. One is about problems with the United Network for Organ Sharing and kidney allocation:

…many experts agree that a significant number of discarded kidneys — perhaps even half, some believe — could be transplanted if the system for allocating them better matched the right organ to the right recipient in the right amount of time.

Story number two is about the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota:

The man who plays Santa Claus here is a registered child sex offender and a convicted rapist. One of the brothers of the tribal chairman raped a child, and a second brother sexually abused a 12-year-old girl. They are among a number of men convicted of sex crimes against children on this remote home of the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe, which has among the highest proportion of sex offenders in the country.

And:

Federal agencies, however, have sought to minimize the extent of the problem, including disciplining employees who have spoken publicly about sexual abuse and questioning the competence of others, according to federal and tribal officials.

And the mayor of Central Falls, Rhode Island, resigned yesterday. He’s also agreed to plead guilty on federal charges that “he took illegal gratuities from a friend and political supporter who received lucrative work from the city boarding up abandoned buildings”.

Some homes were boarded up even though people were still living there. Others were re-boarded by Bouthillette at Moreau’s direction, even though the owners had already had their own contractors board the building.

“Some homes were boarded up even though people were still living there.” In completely unrelated news: gee, I really miss Buddy Cianci.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Loser, Rhode Island, Sports | Comments Off

TMQ watch: December 6, 2011.

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

“What’s the secret of Packers’ success?”

Here at WCD, we believe the secret of the Packers’ success is…cheese. We are firm believers in the awesome power of cheese. No holiday for us is complete without a port wine cheese ball, one of the traditional foods of our people. It fills us with delight that our neighborhood grocer is selling gourmet cheese balls. A favorite quick and dirty appetizer in the circles we move in is: take a block of cream cheese, pour a nice sauce over it (something like this Raspberry Chipolte Sauce although a good Mexican salsa also works well) and serve with crackers. Smoked gouda. Or the aged gouda we used to be able to get at our local cheesemonger, which had a nice nutty taste.

Where were we? Oh, yeah. The Packers. And this week’s TMQ after the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Food, NFL, Rhode Island, Sports, TMQ watch | 2 Comments »

Today’s municipal bankruptcy…

Monday, August 1st, 2011

…is brought to you by Central Falls, RI.

Receiver Robert G. Flanders announced the step at City Hall Monday.

(Simpsons mode ON)

Stupid Flanders.

(Simpsons mode OFF)

I used to spend a fair amount of time in Rhode Island. (There’s a reason this blog has a “Rhode Island” tag. Actually, two reasons, but Buddy Cianci’s been quiet recently.) I don’t recall ever going through Central Falls; looking on Google Maps, it appears to be to the north of my old stomping grounds, closer to Pawtucket than Providence.

Posted in Clippings, Rhode Island | Comments Off

New and possibly noteworthy.

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

By way of the LAT, we have learned of a new book: Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry, a writer for the NYT.

Barry’s book is about the April 18, 1981 game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, which went for 33 innings, the longest game in baseball history.

We’re not sure if we’re going to purchase this or not. On the one hand, it does push some of our hot buttons (failure, Rhode Island). On the other hand, it sounds like the kind of lyrical baseball horseshit we hate. If any of our readers purchase and read Barry’s book, we’d welcome a review.

Edited to add: Lawrence pointed us to a review of a new Richard Feynman biography, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science, by Lawrence M. Krauss. This is another book we’re not sure about purchasing: between Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, and No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman, we kind of feel the ground has been well covered. We are also slightly suspicious of anyone whose book credits include The Physics of Star Trek. On the other hand, the review (by noted SF writer Paul Di Filippo) is pretty favorable, so we may have to give this one a shot.

Posted in Books, Geek, Rhode Island, Sports | Comments Off

Alto! En nombre del amor!

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Cranston, Rhode Island, a town I have a passing familiarity with, has a small problem.

Some of their stop signs were put up illegally.

And when I say, “some”, I mean, “692 out of 2,600“.

Hilarity has not, so far, ensued, but the city council is working on it.

Posted in Clippings, Rhode Island | Comments Off