Lawrence sent over a link to an interesting article at Grantland: “The Joy of Tanking: Hoarding prospects and being horrible with the Houston Astros”.
But the main point of the article is that the Astros actually have a chance to be good several years from now:
Currently, Houston and Miami are tied for the worst record in baseball: 12-32, with a .273 winning percentage. That puts both teams at a projected 117 losses.
My initial reaction when I saw this NYT article was, “Pakistan has problems because they’re ruled by a kleptocracy? Stop the freakin’ presses, Batman!” If that was a hot news flash to you, well, welcome to the 21st Century; we hope you enjoy your time here.
Having clicked through to the article and read it, my reaction is somewhat different: it is actually an interesting survey of Pakistan’s problems, as reflected by the state of the national rail system. That state is dysfunctional.
One thing towards the end of the article lept out at me: “Nazir Ahmed Jan, a burly 30-year-old and an unlikely Pakistani patriot” lives in Karachi. He migrated to the city in 2009, and makes a living…
So? Mr. Jan also writes patriotic Pakistani poetry. Still “so?”
His Facebook page?
Wow. So even desperately poor people in a desperately poor kleptocracy can get Internet access and have Facebook pages? Not really a shocker, but worth noting next time someone starts talking about the technology gap between rich and poor.
On a tangentially related note, something else that should not have surprised me but did. Last night’s SDC was at one of the growing breed of “fast casual” Indian places. (Review to come.) The big screen TV on the wall was showing Indian cricket.
That wasn’t the surprise. I think you’re hard pressed to find that on US television, even if you have DirectTV, but I know there are satellite TV providers that target the Indian population in the US.
What surprised me, and, in retrospect, shouldn’t have, was: discovering that there is such a thing as “fantasy cricket“. After all, there’s fantasy football, fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball, and cricket really isn’t that far from baseball, so why not fantasy cricket? I guess it surprises me because I hadn’t really considered the idea until it was thrust in my face; now that I have, well, it is interesting, but I won’t be assembling a fantasy cricket team this year.
Not news: New York State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez (D-Brooklyn) has been accused of sexually harassing several women.
News: Assemblyman Lopez is resigning rather than fighting the charges.
FARK: Soon to be former Assemblyman Lopez plans to run for a seat on the NYC City Council.
The Assembly has not expelled anyone since it ejected five socialists in the early 1920s.
About a month ago, I noted the money laundering and gambling charges against Hillel Nahmad, a prominent member of the NYC art scene. Over the past two days, the NYT has run two longish articles going into more detail about the Nahmad accusations:
Meanwhile in Utah, the West Valley City Police Department has problems.
It all started when two undercover officers shot and killed a 21-year-old woman.
More:
And:
When thrown into water, (dimethylcadmium) sinks to the bottom in large drops, which decompose in a series of sudden explosive jerks, with crackling sounds…
–Derek Lowe, “Things I Won’t Work With: Dimethylcadmium”
In other news, “A Series Of Sudden Explosive Jerks, With Crackling Sounds”, is the title of the next album from the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band.
Actual headline on an AP story from the NYT:
Well, you see, when a mommy anteater and a daddy anteater love each other very much….
Obit watch: NASCAR driver Dick Trickle. The NYT obit (by way of the AP) is just awful: here’s a better obit from the HouChron.
Obit watch: “flamboyant swindler” Billie Sol Estes. NYT.
Mr. Estes’s daughter Pamela Padget said that he died in his sleep and was found in his recliner.
The AP adds the telling detail that he died with chocolate chip cookie crumbs on his lips.
Billie Sol was a little before my time, much less the time of some of my younger readers, but the NYT gives a good one-paragraph summary:
Paging Mayor Bloomberg! Mayor Bloomberg, white courtesy phone, please!
I remember when the blood alcohol limit was 0.10%. I remember the arguments at the time for and against lowering the limit to 0.08%. The one question I had was: how many accidents were caused by drivers who were at 0.08% or above, but below 0.10%? I never got an answer to that question, and it didn’t matter anyway, since the government issued a decree:
And now the government is talking about dropping it down to 0.05%. Again, I ask: how many accidents are caused by people at or above 0.05% but below 0.08%? There was a report on Reason‘s website (I can’t find it right now) that estimated “500-800″ lives saved per year by lowering the limit to 0.05%. But does this take into account the number of lives that might be lost by diverting police resources to pursue drivers at the 0.05% level, instead of pursuing other crimes?
Larry Wayne Mahoney, the intoxicated driver, had a 0.24% BAC at the time of the crash, so he was already DWI even by 1988 standards, let alone the 2000 standard or the proposed 0.05% standard. Most of the serious DWI accidents I hear about involve people who are above – in many cases, way above – the 0.10% mark. Would we save more lives going after the highly intoxicated drunk; the guy who blows a 0.20% or the gal who blows a 0.25%?
Dr. Joyce Brothers. NYT. LAT. I think my older readers are aware of this bit of trivia, but I insert it here for the benefit of the younger set:
I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find the specific question Dr. Brothers answered for “The $64,000 Question”. The NYT has the answer, I think (the writing in that last paragraph is a bit fuzzy).
In other news, the HouChron reports that the Dallas Police Department is giving the “police commendation award” to retired detective Jim Leavelle. Why does this matter? Well, you probably know who Jim Leavelle is, but not by name:
That’s Leavelle in the hat handcuffed to Oswald.
More:
And:
Remember Detective Louis Scarcella, aka one of the “likeable scamps” who put David Ranta away for 22 years?
The other shoe has dropped.
More:
And more. I don’t want to quote the entire article, but this is an important paragraph because it illustrates a key point: what you post on the Internet doesn’t disappear.
Ms. Gomez is the crack addicted prostitute mentioned above. She’s dead now.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to manage a motel in the Rundberg/I-35 area? The Statesman has your answer.
(Note to my out-of-town readers: the Rundberg/I-35 corridor is notorious as a haven for drug dealing and prostitution.)
Austin politics note (readers who aren’t into Austin politics can skip this one):
We had an election yesterday. Specifically, we were asked to vote on bonds for the Austin Independent School District.
There were four bond proposals on the ballot, totaling $892 million. That’s right: AISD wanted to issue nearly one billion dollars worth of bonds.
This is one of the few times where I’ve actually seen organized opposition to a bond election in Austin. There were a lot of large “vote no” signs in yards and in front of businesses. Surprisingly, even the Statesman came out and opposed the bonds. (Our local alternative newspaper, the Austin Chronicle, endorsed the bonds. But the AusChron has never met a tax, a bond issue, or a government boondoggle they didn’t like.)
The end result: half the bonds passed, and half the bonds failed. This is kind of a “WTF?” moment: you’d figure the voting would go all one way or the other. Then again…
“a 500-seat performing arts center at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders”?!
Those are the propositions that failed.
Proposition 3, the other one that passed, “provides money for renovations across the district”. Proposition 1 and 3 together total out to $489.6 million, and “will add $38.40 to the property tax bill for a $200,000 home.”
As Linoge says, you can’t stop the signal.
Edited to add: Quote of the day:
The right to download CAD files is the right to be free.
–Tam
(Reference explained here for the non SF fans in my audience.)
So they raised the withdrawal limits, but shouldn’t it have set off alarms if they tried to withdraw more than the amount on the prepaid card? Or did the people involved change that as well?
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The Times notes this is bigger than Lufthansa. And no guns were involved (at least in the initial heist: one of the people alleged to be behind it was shot dead later on). As a connoisseur of hacks and heists, my hat is off to these guys.
Remember our old friends the Zeta cartel, and their plan to launder money by purchasing quarter horses? Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, not guilty.