Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category

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Random notes: July 1, 2010.

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Happy Canada Day, everyone. I hope you’re able to celebrate in the traditional way, with beer and back bacon.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has overturned the death sentence for Ronell Wilson. Mr. Wilson was convicted of shooting two NYPD detectives, James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews, who were engaged in a gun purchase sting. According to the NYT, Mr. Wilson was the only defendant sentenced to death by a jury between “1988 through March 2008” (?), though prosecutors asked for the death sentence 19 times during that period.

In this case, the court just overturned the sentence, not the conviction:

The Court of Appeals’ ruling centered on two arguments that prosecutors made to the jury about Mr. Wilson’s remorse and acceptance of responsibility for the killings during the penalty phase of his trial. The judges noted that prosecutors used Mr. Wilson’s demand for a trial and his failure to plead guilty as evidence that he lacked remorse and refused to accept responsibility. The judges said prosecutors had argued to the jury that Mr. Wilson’s statement of remorse should be discredited because he failed to testify.

The WP is reporting that serious consideration is being given to awarding the Medal of Honor to a living person. That person is not named in the WP article, and the nomination is still being reviewed by the White House. This is significant because every Medal of Honor awarded since Vietnam has been posthumous.

Edited to add: Florida has banned ownership of “Burmese pythons and six other large, exotic reptile species” effective today. As noted in this space previously, the state has a bit of a python problem:

Many of the creatures have escaped or been set loose by pet owners and that’s upsetting Florida’s ecology as they prey almost unchecked on native birds and animals.

Apparently, existing owners will be able to keep their snakes. This is amusing:

The ban applies as well to reticulated, northern African, southern African and Amethystine pythons, green anacondas and Nile monitor lizards, but the main focus is on Burmese pythons.

Estimates of their presence in the wild have ranged as high as 100,000, but the state’s first python hunting season ended in April without a single snake reported caught. Conservation officials said unseasonably cold weather, instead, may have killed up to half the pythons.

No snakes caught? Darn. (I was actually discussing the possibility of getting together a python hunting expedition with some of my co-workers, but none of us owns the proper weapon.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Snakes | 1 Comment »

Legal watch.

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

We have a couple of interesting cases going on at the moment.

First of all is the sentencing retrial of Laura Ashley Hall. Ms. Hall was convicted of evidence tampering and “hindering apprehension” in the death of Jennifer Cave; however, her five-year sentence was overturned on appeal. The killer, Colton Pitonyak, is serving a 55 year sentence for the murder.

I’m sort of fascinated by this case; I can’t even get women to date me, and this loser Pitonyak is able to find women who will help him cut up bodies? What’s his secret?

Interesting case #2: The cops have arrested Maurice Michael McKnight on his outstanding manslaughter warrant.

Mr. McKnight is a dancer at our local LaBare strip club. LaBare does appear to be a chain of strip clubs that cater to women; I am not personally familiar with these clubs, but to each her own. As a side note, I can remember when that strip club was a series of fairly decent restaurants, including a Serrano’s. I can also remember when that strip mall was actually a nice place to shop.

Anyway, Mr. McKnight is alleged to have gotten into an altercation with a male patron of the club. (A reliable source tells me that the fact there was a male patron of LaBare is pretty odd by itself; in her experience, LaBare does not encourage male patronage.) Allegedly, Mr. McKnight struck the other gentleman (specifically “slapped [him] in the face”), who died several days later of a brain hemorrhage.  It seems odd that a “slap in the face” would result in a brain hemorrhage, unless the slap resulted in a fall; if that is the case, that detail is missing from the Statesman coverage.

On a more serious and sadder note, Jonathan Green’s execution has been stayed by the Court of Criminal Appeals, as there are some questions about his mental competence. Green was convicted of killing a 12-year old girl, Christina LeAnn Neal.

Edited to add: Statesman comment:

You can buy all the materials needed to properly dismember a body at Home Depot. I read about it in a book about Jeffery Dahmer R.I.P. and also saw it on the hit teevee show “Breaking Bad”. I won’t divulge details here b/c there are some real sicko’s on the internets…

I see. So the “sicko’s on the internets” can’t read books or catch “Breaking Bad” reruns on the teevee?

The stupid, it burns.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Art, damn it, art! watch (#11 in a series).

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

A former Royal Navy Sea Harrier jump-jet that saw active service in the skies over Bosnia has become the centrepiece of an exhibition at Tate Britain.

The plane, which would have cost £12 million when new, has been suspended from the ceiling in one of the grand sculpture galleries, looking more like a trussed bird than a deadly piece of kit.

…

Indeed, all of the plane’s wartime paintwork has been stripped off to reveal a reflective metallic surface so visitors ‘can’t detach themselves from their own reaction’ to the lethal machine.

…

Banner’s previous work has included written transcriptions of the frame-by-frame action in Top Gun and an installation of Airfix models of all war planes currently in service in the world. She has also made sculptures of punctuation marks.

Photos of the installation at the first link.

(Hattip: Bayou Renaissance Man.)


Posted in Art, Clippings | Comments Closed

Miscellaneous crap.

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

The City of Austin has flushed the low-flow toilet rebate program. However, you can still get a free low-flow toilet: you just have to fill out an application and, if you’re approved, pick up your toilet from an approved toilet vendor.

The 2010 Bulwer-Lytton contest results are out.

Edited to add 1: Oh, what the heck. By way of Ace of Spades, a WP review of the greatest concert ever. Where “greatest concert ever” is defined as “complete disaster”.

Edited to add 2: Derek Lowe has a new post up in the “How Not To Do It” series. It appears that a lab at the University of Missouri underwent explosive renovations after some hydrogen and oxygen got together for a hot date. Photos of the aftermath at the link.

Edited to add 3: The HouChron has interrupted their “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” watch to let us know that Dr. Demento is ending his radio show. Why, yes, this is the same story that Slashdot and Lawrence brought you almost a month ago.

Edited to add 4: As I’ve noted in the past, my newspaper reading during the weekends can be spotty. So I missed this Ben Wear article in the Statesman about the MetroRail ridership figures. (Hattip: Blue Dot Blues, by way of Battleswarm.)

Edited to add 5: Headline from the HouChron: “Dear Abby says what to do when grandma spoils the kids”. Somehow, I suspect Dear Abby’s answer does not involve a Taser.

Speaking of Popehat, I think this is a great post by Patrick, but I’m a very bad person; whenever I read the phrase “Res Ipsa Loquitur”, all I can think of is “Ipsa this, you p—y little b—h!“

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Geek, Guns, Law, Music, Politics, Radio, TV, Writing | Comments Closed

Conflicts.

Monday, June 28th, 2010

One part of me thinks this is kind of nifty. One part of me thinks people who buy this should be taxed at the 100% level, just like people who purchase $4,295 tone arms.

So I report, you decide: $80,000 Jeep “clones“.

Posted in Cars, Clippings | Comments Closed

Byrd, Byrd, Byrd, Byrd is the word…

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Obit watch: Senator Robert Byrd.

(I cannot tell a lie: I live to make those sort of jokes.)

Also among the dead: former Texas governor Dolph Briscoe. Lawrence has more about that at his Battleswarm site.

(Hattips: Mom, who provided the word about The Byrd first, and Lawrence, who tied with my mother in tipping me off about Briscoe.)

Posted in Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Dynamo hum.

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

I wasn’t originally going to post about this, since the story was linked from Slashdot and other places. However, it came up at dinner last night; Andrew was asking me about it this afternoon, and I promised him a link.

So: here’s a link to The Register‘s article on authenticating recordings using AC power line frequency fluctuations.

At the Metropolitan Police’s digital forensics lab in Penge, south London, scientists have created a database that has recorded these deviations once every one and a half seconds for the last five years. Over a short period they form a unique signature of the electrical frequency at that time, which research has shown is the same in London as it is in Glasgow.

On receipt of recordings made by the police or public, the scientists are able to detect the variations in mains electricity occuring at the time the recording was made. This signature is extracted and automatically matched against their ENF database, which indicates when it was made.

I’d want to see a lot more scientific validation of this before I’d consider it acceptable as evidence. One of the points I made during the dinner discussion is that much of modern forensics is based on sloppy or incomplete science. For example:

Balko is all over this, too; you should be reading him regularly if you care about this stuff.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Law | Comments Closed

Hook, line, and sinker.

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

The Florida Marlins (34-36, .473 winning percentage, 4th in the division standings) have fired their manager, Fredi Gonzalez, and two of his assistant coaches.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Loser | Comments Closed

See also: victories, Pyrrhic.

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Capital Metro, our local transit agency, has spent $61,000 to date fighting a legal case against OSHA.

The case involved a $500 fine.

But wait, there’s more: because of the legal arguments Cap Metro made in the case, there’s a possibility that the agency could lose federal funding.

Another victory like this…

Posted in Clippings, Politics, Stupid | 2 Comments »

D-I-V-O-R-C-E…

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Now Mr. Musk, who is in the middle of a divorce, says his account is empty. Actually, less than empty. He says he invested his last cent in his businesses and is living off loans from his wealthy friends. He subsists, according to court filings, on $200,000 a month and still flies his private jet.

I’m sorry I don’t have more time to blog about the founder of PayPal, but I’ve got to run off now and download the latest set of patches for the world’s tiniest open source violin.

Posted in Clippings, Sarcasm, Stupid | Comments Closed

It was the dark of the moon on the 6th of June…

Monday, June 21st, 2010

What does C.W. McCall have in common with Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Ernest Hemingway?

All of the above were prematurely reported dead.

(Hattip: Jimbo.)

Posted in Clippings, Obits | 1 Comment »

Is knife! Is not safe!

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

I originally wasn’t going to blog this, since Sebastian was on it like a fat man on a Chinese buffet:

At least 14 retail stores in Manhattan — including major retailers like the Home Depot, Eastern Mountain Sports and Paragon Sports — have been selling illegal knives, District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said on Thursday.

…

The knives generally fall into one of two categories: switchblades and gravity knives. On a switchblade, the blade pops out at the simple flip of a switch; with gravity knives, the blades come out by a simple flick of the wrist. Carrying either of those kinds of knives is a crime under New York State law, prosecutors said.

Most of what I see in the photo with the linked article appears to be, not switchblades and not gravity knives, but assisted opening folders along the lines of Spyderco and others. It is interesting that the photo caption refers to “some of the 1,300 illegal knives”, while the investigation turned up 43 allegedly illegal knives over an unspecified period of months.

What did make me decide to blog this, though, was a conversation I had with Mike the Musicologist at the gun show yesterday about the linked video. Fast forward to about 1:05 in: “Are they dangerous?”

Of course it’s dangerous, you fracking moron! It’s a knife! It’s sharp! It cuts things! Including flesh! What is wrong with you people?

(Subject line explained for the benefit of M the M and other friends of mine who haven’t heard the story.)

Edited to add 6/22/2010: A thought that came to me this morning: can I order this from Amazon and have it shipped to NYC?

Posted in Clippings, Hysteria, Law | Comments Closed

Rules of the Gunfight.

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Rule #1: Have a gun.

Rule #1a: Not a caulk gun.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 18, 2010.

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Our long national nightmare is over. At least, for the next couple of months.

Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed early this morning in Utah. By firing squad.

Friday loser update: Baltimore is now 18-48, for a .273 winning percentage. That works out to a projected 44.246 wins over the 162 game season.

Edited to add: I wanted to link to this gun blogger glossary the other day, but lost the link. Thanks to Snowflakes in Hell for the repost. And I was previously unfamiliar with the Zoot Shooters: darn, that sounds like fun, especially if you throw back a bottle of beer after the match is over and the guns are put away. It turns out the Green Mountain Regulators are up in Marble Falls, which isn’t that far away…

Posted in Clippings, Law, Loser | Comments Closed

A large black cherry for me, please.

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Today’s outrage from the Statesman: a local vendor of snow cones is upset that the health department has shut down his stand.

Zapffe said he had no other realistic option when the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department required that he take his stand — an old catering truck — to department offices in East Austin for its annual inspection and operating sticker. But Zapffe, whose sticker expired May 31, said that the stand hasn’t been mobile for years and that he’d never been required to drive the truck for inspection before. Health department inspectors always came out to check the stand, he said.

I’ve stated before that I’m a libertarian. Thus, I think in an ideal world, it would be up to the customer to make the decision on purchasing snow cones, or bacon wrapped hot dogs, or tacos, from whatever trailer they want to purchase from. I figure people can make their own decisions based on how sketchy the trailer looks.

But.

The health department makes a good point, further on in the article, that they’re trying to enforce the same rules for everyone; food vending trailers are supposed to be readily mobile. I know something about this. My folks owned a snow cone trailer for a while, so I’ve gotten an earful on the restrictions they had to obey.

In addition, it isn’t like they ran the guy out of business. This particular “trailer” sits in the parking lot of the restaurant owned by the same guy. As the article notes, now that the “trailer” is shut down, he’s serving snow cones out of the restaurant itself.

I know this area very well; this is where Tex-Guns is located. As the Statesman notes (buried in the second to last paragraph of the article) there’s another snow cone vendor – a real trailer, on wheels, which can be moved – within 50 feet of this guy’s establishment.

Why does Zapffe deserve a break, when South Austin Sno doesn’t?

Edited to add: And in LA, one councilman is trying to restrict food trucks on city streets. Let me just say this: “kimchi quesadillas”? I think I just threw up a little.

Edited to add 2: No, not NYC as well! Could this be the end of the schnitzel truck? Say it isn’t so!

Also, I somehow managed to miss this NYT article on the new wave of shaved ice.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Ice | 1 Comment »

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