Raymond Smullyan, author, mathematician, and logician.
Archive for February, 2017
Obit watch: February 13, 2017
Monday, February 13th, 2017Quote of the day.
Thursday, February 9th, 2017Obit watch: February 8, 2017.
Wednesday, February 8th, 2017Professor Irwin Corey, “the world’s foremost authority”, has passed away. He was 102.
The lead isn’t the only thing that was buried.
Friday, February 3rd, 2017I’m kidding. Mostly.
But there’s a story in the NYT about the archaeological excavation of what turns out to be a 19th century brewery, that makes me go “Hmmmmmm.”
Not so much for the excavation itself, but for some of the surrounding details. Either this guy was really unlucky, or the past really was a different country. Or maybe both.
Damn. I hate it when I confuse the arsenic and the baking soda.
Another time, a man who had been staying in Schnaderbeck’s house died in bed. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said the coroner attributed the death to natural causes until a packet of strychnine was found “in the bed he had lain on.” The cause of death was changed to suicide.
“Apparently, Schnaderbeck had known about the packet,” Dr. Bergoffen wrote in one of her archaeological assessments, “but ‘kept mum’ as he said, ‘It was bad enough to have the old scoundrel die in my bed without having any more bother about him.’”
I know it sounds mean, but really, killing yourself in someone else’s bed and home is kind of inconsiderate, don’t you think? Schnaderbeck probably had to get all new sheets and bedding, and probably a new mattress as well. And this was the 19th century: it isn’t like he could just have ordered a new mattress from one of those Internet mattress sellers that I won’t give free advertising to here.
(Seriously, I feel a rant coming up in the not so distant future about the internet mattress/prepackaged meal delivery/website hosting based economy of podcasting. But that’s another subject for another day, after I finish updating some lists.)
Speaking of Travis County…
Thursday, February 2nd, 2017I’ve updated the county commissioners page as much as I can. Jeff Travillion’s page still has staff and contact information “coming soon”.
As always with any of these pages, if you detect errors or omissions, please contact me.
Half a million dollars.
Thursday, February 2nd, 2017This is slightly old news that I’ve been meaning to note for a couple of days now. I still think it’s worth mentioning, because it seems to me there’s something buried in the press coverage.
The Travis County Commissioners Court has voted to pay Judge Julie Kocurek $500,000.
“Does this have something to do with her being shot?” you might ask.
Indeed, it does.
“But why? The county didn’t shoot her. The cops didn’t shoot her. She was shot by a bad guy.”
Indeed, this is true. The money is being given as a settlement for “any claims against the county that Kocurek could have sought in a lawsuit”. Some of this is spelled out in the Statesman stories, and some of this is me reading between the lines, but it looks like the argument is:
- There was a credible tip that Chimene Onyeri was targeting a judge.
- The tip was investigated by the Travis County DA’s office.
- Apparently, the investigators thought that the judge being targeted was both a male judge and one that wasn’t in Travis County.
- It isn’t clear to me if the investigators knew that Onyeri had an appearance coming up in Judge Kocurek’s court (where he likely would have been sent back to prison) and ruled her out as a target because she wasn’t a male judge, or if they weren’t aware of his upcoming appearance.
- In any case, they decided there was no “credible threat to any Travis County district judge”.
- Judge Kocurek was shot three weeks later.
It’s hard for me to tell if anyone was wrong here. On the one hand, it seems like there was a credible threat: was it dismissed because the investigators screwed up and didn’t realize the subject of the threat might not have a been a male judge? And a big question is: why didn’t they warn all the judges? On the other hand, there’s an argument that the investigators did the best they could with limited information. And if they sent out warnings to all the judges every time some jackhole shot his mouth off, pretty soon it’d be “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” all over again.
No matter what, though, taxpayers are going to be out $500,000. I don’t begrudge Judge Kocurek the money: if you offered me $500,000 to let someone shoot at me, my response would be three words (two of those being “go” and “yourself”).
But it still bothers me.
Can’t get no sleeves for my records, can’t get no lasers for my shoes…
Wednesday, February 1st, 2017The St. Louis Blues, who are a professional hockey team in the NHL, fired Hitchcock.
Actually, that would be Ken Hitchcock.
(Subject line hattip. You know, for a while I thought many of the songs on Brothers In Arms were massively overplayed. I’m starting to come around to the idea that it may be a classic now.)