Archive for February 28th, 2012

The latest news from Bell.

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

A judge has tossed out one of the felony charges against a former mayor of the city of Bell, and two felony charges against a former council member.

Both Oscar Hernandez and Luis Artiga, however, still face felony charges for allegedly collecting excessive pay for sitting on city boards and commissions that rarely, if ever, met.
Hernandez and Artiga are among six former council members in Bell who were charged in a massive public corruption case that left the city near bankruptcy. One charge was dropped against Hernandez. Two charges were dismissed against Artiga, who had accepted two cash loans.

According to an earlier LAT piece, Robert “Ratso” Rizzo was also asking for the charges against him to be dropped; I can’t tell from this article if the judge turned down that request, or simply hasn’t ruled yet.

Edited to add: Update: Ratso and Angelia Spaccia lost their bids to have the charges dismissed.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Oh, dear.

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Tommy Tuberville, head football coach at Texas Tech, is being sued for investment fraud:

A federal lawsuit filed Friday in Montgomery, Ala., names Tuberville, John David Stroud and eight investment entities as defendants, claiming the two men “employed devices, schemes, and artifices to defraud” seven plaintiffs from Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee.

The linked HouChron article doesn’t add much beyond that. As always, please keep in mind that these are just the plaintiff’s allegations in a law suit, and that there are two sides to any lawsuit. But this comes at a bad time for Tech, no matter what turns out to be true.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Sports | Comments Closed

Noted.

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Lawrence has a pretty swell writeup on the Piper Alpha disaster. I’m a little surprised that NASA hasn’t covered that in their System Failure Case Studies series yet.

My sister’s latest post over at the Park City Snowmamas site: “8 Items To Pack In a First Aid Kit For Travel”. I think there’s some good stuff in there, even for non-skiers (you might want to think about throwing some of this stuff into a range bag, for example). However, I do have to throw the yellow flag and assess the standard 15-yard penalty for an over sharing violation. Unfortunately, I don’t make the rules; I’m just a neutral ref.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Guns, Sports | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#26 in a series)

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

A 340-ton boulder is expected to begin its difficult trek Tuesday night from a Riverside County quarry, rolling to a stop 11 days later in a new art exhibit at LACMA.

I’m sure folks have all sorts of questions, including: how do you move a 340-ton rock? The LAT story includes a nifty interactive graphic that shows how the transport works.

During the day, the rock — expected to be shrink-wrapped for protection — will have to park in “the middle of the road, the only place big enough,” Rick Albrecht, the project’s logistics supervisor, told The Times last year.

“shrink-wrapped for protection”? Protection from what? It’s a rock!

At LACMA, the granite will be placed on its new home, resting atop a ramp-like slot in the ground through which visitors will pass, making it appear that the rock levitates above them. It will form the center of artist Michael Heizer’s enormous sculpture “Levitated Mass.”

Other questions you may be wondering about: the total cost of the project, including the rock moving, is estimated at “up to $10 million” according to the LAT.

Other questions you may not be wondering about: the rock has a Twitter feed, and is currently following 235 people. That kind of sounds like a bad horror movie, doesn’t it? “I’m being followed by a 340-ton rock that’s moving at 5 MPH.”

Posted in Art, Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed