For the record: Verne Troyer.
Archive for the ‘Amish’ Category
Obit watch: April 23, 2018.
Monday, April 23rd, 2018Random notes: March 6, 2015.
Friday, March 6th, 2015Speaking of fringe delicacies, your yearly slideshow of rodeo food from the HouChron is here. The deep-fried bacon-wrapped Reese’s peanut butter cup sounds interesting, but it looks a little small; I have to wonder what the value proposition is. Deep-fried Nutella also intrigues me, as does deep-fried pecan pie.
Obit watch, continued: Albert Maysles, noted documentary filmmaker. A/V Club.
Confession: I have a fair number of Maysles’ films on Criterion DVDs. I tried to watch “Grey Gardens”: I got about 10 minutes into it and just couldn’t watch any more. I’m not exactly sure why, but there was something about it that just made me extremely uncomfortable…
You could hear the music on the AM radio…
Friday, January 17th, 2014When was the last time you listened to the radio?
Actually, I still do, mostly when I’m driving around with Mom and Jeff Ward is on. If I’m alone in my own car, though, radio has become to me something like a buggy whip.
But there are some people who still need buggy whips, such as the Amish. And there are some people who still need radios. Like Federal prisoners.
But what makes this New Yorker piece more interesting to me is…the SRF-39FP is actually a pretty good radio. It uses one AA battery, will run for 40 hours, and:
I almost want to pick one up. (I checked; there aren’t any listed on eBay right now.)
(By way of the newsycombinator Twitter feed.)
Pullet surprise.
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013More:
Of course, these chickens are not dining on stale loaves from grandmother’s breadbox. On a recent afternoon at the farm, where a few hundred creatures inhabit a peaceful, 15,000-square-foot coop that would dwarf the size of most New York apartments, they clucked and ambled around pans of bread soaked in fresh milk, and white buckets full of leafy trimmings that would make a tremendous tossed salad.
“Some of this is nicer stuff than I have to eat when I get home,” said Mike Charles, a local poultry expert involved in the project.
I could snark on this, but I actually think there’s a lot to be said for chicken that tastes like chicken. (Didn’t Nero Wolfe buy chickens from a farmer who fed them on acrorns? Or was that pigs, and the chickens were fed on something else? I don’t have any of my Wolfe books here at work.)
But:
Yeah, what’s the carbon footprint of these chickens? How sustainable is “driving two and a half hours” to deliver vegetable scraps? Especially since the Amish are likely to have vegetable scraps and day-old bread of their own?
Crime watch.
Friday, February 18th, 2011Eric Delacruz and his buddy Fernando Romero were convicted of the murder of Sonia Rios Risken yesterday. Why is this noteworthy? Well, when the LAT article begins
That kind of makes you take notice. At the time of her death, Risken was being investigated by the FBI in the death of her second husband, who was killed while visiting Risken’s relatives in the Philippines.
And then Risken herself was capped; Delacruz was her grandnephew, and apparently expected to inherit Risken’s estate.
By way of Balko, we learn that Charles Stobaugh has been convicted in the murder of his wife, Kathy Stobaugh. Ms. Stobaugh disappeared the day before her divorce became final in 2004. I can’t work up the indignation of Balko over this: “despite no body, no physical evidence of a crime, and no proof the alleged victim is actually dead.” All of these things are true, but a murder conviction without a body is not unheard of (see Anne Marie Fahey). In addition:
Further:
Yeah, the evidence is circumstantial. But, to quote Thoreau, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
In other news, the LAPD apparently has a lead in the 2002 murder of two men in Studio City.
If the $75,000 reward being proposed in this case isn’t enough, surely the chance to see it dramatized on Law and Order: Los Angeles is an additional incentive.
Speaking of Ponzi schemes, we neglected to note the alleged Amish Ponzi scheme yesterday, so let’s fix that now. (This also gives us a chance to tell our favorite Amish joke: “What sounds like this: Clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop BANG! Clip clop clip clop clip clop clip clop…” “An Amish drive-by.”)
And, finally, it was anarchists who burned down the Texas Governor’s Mansion in 2008. At least, that’s what the Texas DPS is saying now. Hey, at least it wasn’t nihilists. We would post a Crimestoppers!, but the DPS claims to know who at least three out of four of the anarchists are. So we’ll ask some questions instead:
- Who told the Statesman that auto-play on videos was a good idea?
- The fire took place nearly two years ago. Why is this evidence just now being presented? Did it take them two years to go through all the video from the area? Or to do the video enhancement?
- What evidence is there connecting the Jeep to the arson? “Someone sitting in the back seat can be seen taking two photos of the house with a flash. McCraw characterized that as ‘obviously pre-ops surveillance’ but would not elaborate.” That sounds kind of hand-wavy to me.
- What kind of half-assed security lets someone walk up to a building and throw a Molotov cocktail? (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Quotes of the day.
Friday, July 9th, 2010It would be possible for me to care less about LeBron James in general, and last night’s fiasco in particular. But I would have to work really, really hard at caring less than I do now.
However, some of the quotes in Richard Deitsch’s SI article made me giggle:
…
Timeless. Changeless.
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010In my family, there’s a running joke: you know it is a slow news day when the local paper runs a story about the timeless, changeless ways of the Amish.
The NYT covers the sudden Federal interest in changing Amish farming practices. Specifically, cattle runoff from the Amish and Old Order Mennonite farmers around Chesapeake Bay is destroying the bay’s ecosystem; the Feds are trying to persuade the farmers to implement practices that would reduce runoff, and even offering government grants to farmers. Of course…
Persuading plain-sect farmers to install fences and buffers underwritten by federal grants has been challenging because of their tendency to shy from government programs, including subsidies. Members neither pay Social Security nor receive its benefits, for example.
In other news, William Grimes (author of Straight Up or On the Rocks and no slouch on the cocktail front himself) covers the reissue of Bernard DeVoto’s The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto.
(That reminds me: has anyone out there read Chasing the White Dog yet?)
Yes. I am sure Mr. Duncan arranged his death with the favorable tax consequences to his children in mind.
Oh, guess what? David Lee Powell has filed a new appeal!
Houston attorney Richard Burr said in a 53-page application for a writ of habeas corpus that Powell has been a model inmate, that he poses no threat to society and that to execute him would violate his constitutional rights prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.