Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Random notes: January 8, 2010.

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Congrats, Warren St. John.

The Statesman has decided to share with us our local constabulary’s list of “most frequent bars for suspected drunken drivers“. I, personally, am a little bit shocked not to see my own favorite Austin bar on this list.

The Gilbert Arenas story is being well covered elsewhere, but I’d like to note that the NYT is all over this story like a hungry man on an all-you-can-eat buffet. Three stories today, in addition to yesterday’s coverage? For a non-New York team?

Firings: Jim Leavitt at the University of South Florida, who allegedly hit a player.

Breaking, by way of Lawrence Person, who provides the following:

When the GM says “Goodbye”

And everyone knows good and why

That’s a Mora…

Edited to add: from the linked article, “Seattle was decimated by injuries and inconsistency and finished 5-11.” Really? The Seahawks lost one out of every ten players?

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Guns, Loser, NFL | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 5, 2010.

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

By way of Roger Ebert, we learn of Matthew Dessem, a man with a goal; to watch every single movie in the Criterion Collection, and write about them.

Understand that Dessem’s essays are advanced and ambitious. These aren’t three-paragraph plot summaries. He watches the extras, reads the literature, provides detailed analysis, find still photos and grabs individual shots from a computer screen.

I had a chance to read some of the essays on Dessem’s site, and I agree with Roger; these are serious essays, not hack work.

Best quote from the article:

“My absolute favorite commentary track on any Criterion title so far,” he said, “is the one with NASA consultant Dr. Joe Allen and asteroid consultant Ivan Bekey (as well as the cinematographer, Joe Schwartzman) talking about ‘Armageddon.’ It’s basically two-and-a-half hours of these guys saying, over and over again, ‘We told Michael Bay that this scene was completely scientifically inaccurate, but he went ahead and did it anyway’.”

If you’re going to read just one of Dessem’s reviews, I recommend the Armageddon one. The movie’s an easy target, but I think he does a good job of trying to engage with it, while at the same time not neglecting the movie’s many stupid moments.

Yesterday’s WP had a nice article about Betsey Apple, wife of the late NYT writer and bon vivant R.W. Apple. She’s preparing to auction off his wine collection:

And yes, Betsey says, they all belonged to her husband and not to his employer, an important distinction given that he was a legendary expense account artist who may or may not have buried a fur coat on one of his expense reports when he was posted in Moscow.

and also promoting his new book.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the legendary Mr. Apple, Calvin Trillin’s New Yorker profile is available online, and well worth reading.

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Otters?

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Seriously? Otters? In your cargo hold? It’s more likely than you think.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Warren Beatty dies at the end.

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Obit watch: Loren Singer, author of The Parallax View, which was adapted into an Alan J. Pakula directed movie.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | 2 Comments »

Giggle. Snort.

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Remember the drunk woman from Wimberly who walked into the offices of Triton Financial brandishing a gun and a bottle of wine? Remember that I noted Trition Financial had an interesting history?

That history just got more interesting; the SEC is suing them for securities fraud, and the State of Texas is attempting to revoke their investment advisor registration. I expect this to be an amusing show.

Edited to add: Oh, look, a link from the HouChron. A rather short link, but it does mention the SI article. You know, this one. The one that the Statesman article ignores. Even though one of the co-authors of the Statesman article (the Stateman‘s golf blogger) took the trouble to interview Trition Financial officials and provide their rebuttal after the SI article ran. Nor does the Statesman mention the drunk woman from Wimberly. Interesting lack of context there, guys.

Posted in Clippings | 1 Comment »

More brains!

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

More Henry Molaison brains, even. But this NYT article is mostly about the mechanics of brain sectioning.

The blade peeled off the top layer, rolling it up in slow motion like a slice of pale prosciutto.

Did they really have to say “prosciutto“?

To prepare a brain for dissection, Dr. Annese first freezes it in a formaldehyde and sucrose solution, to about minus 40 degrees Celsius. The freezing in the case of H. M. was done over four hours, a few degrees at a time: the brain, like most things, becomes more brittle when frozen. It can crack.

I think I had one of those sucrose solutions the other day from Sonic, and yes, my brain did feel like it was going to crack.

An entire brain produces some 2,500 slices, and the amount of information in each one, once microscopic detail is added, will fill about a terabyte of computer storage.

Earlier in the article, it states that the slices are 70 microns thick, so that implies the brain is about 6.8 inches from the very top to wherever the researchers are stopping; but it isn’t clear how far down they’re going. Are they going to section just the lobes, include the cerebellum, or go all the way down into the medulla?

It’s kind of neat to think that all of that data can fit on a single $69 hard drive from Fry’s. (I hope they’ve got RAID. And backups. And restores.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Neuroscience | Comments Closed

Word of the day: simony.

Monday, December 21st, 2009

No, simony isn’t what happens when you finish in third place on Jeopardy and your consolation prize is a year’s supply of Simoniz.

n.  The buying or selling of ecclesiastical pardons, offices, or emoluments.

I hadn’t heard of anyone being charged with simony since Martin Luther and the Reformation. At least, until yesterday:

Simony was a common transgression in the Middle Ages, when simonists were condemned to hell in Dante’s “Inferno.” The modern consequences aren’t quite so dire, but in the most serious cases they can include a priest’s suspension.

Suspension? I would have expected excommunication.

Posted in Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 18th, 2009.

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Someone swiped the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign (which weighs 90 pounds and is 16 feet long) from in front of Auchwitz. This is the kind of work that doesn’t set you free; this gets you a short term in a pound you in the ass prison, and a long term in one of the lower circles of Dante’s Hell.

Three from the NYT:

  • Obit watch: C.D.B. Bryan, author of  Friendly Fire.

    He will be cremated in advance of a memorial service early next year, St. George Bryan added; until then, his remains are to be stored in martini shakers.

  • A touching and sad article about a retired policeman in Japan who spends his days trying to keep people from killing themselves.

    Mr. Shige and a group of volunteers he put together have saved 222 people so far, a tally that has made Mr. Shige a national figure in a country that often seems apathetic about its high rate of self-destruction. But he has also met with criticism from a conformist society that can look dimly on people who draw attention by engaging in activism, even of the most humanitarian kind.

  • Finally, on a much happier note, a review of “Chestnuts Roasting on the Flaming Idiots“. I saw one of their “last” shows at Zach Scott a few years back, and it wasn’t what I expected; I was totally blown away, not only because they’re talented performers, but their performance style is clearly influenced by people like Ricky Jay. I’m delighted to hear that they’re back; even better, they’re coming back to Austin.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Loser, Media, Obits, Stupid, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 16, 2009.

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Things have been kind of slow the past few days, but I did want to throw up a few notes:

Your NYT obit for Oral Roberts here. While looking that up, I discovered that the NYT has also just posted an obit for Milorad Pavic, of Dictionary of the Khazars fame.

Regret the Error has their year-end roundup of errors and corrections posted. I can’t argue with the correction of the year (which, surprisingly, is not the corrections to Alessandra Stanley’s Cronkite obit; that is, however, highlighted).

Edited to add: But wait, there’s more! The Onion A.V. Club list of the 19+ worst movies of 2009! I miss Ebert and Siskel’s  (and Ebert and Roper’s) yearly worst movies show; the A.V. Club list is the closest I’ve found to a substitute for that.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Loser, Media, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Because they’re a lot more effective than banging a flashlight on the window.

Friday, December 11th, 2009

This is why I own guns.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch.

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Thomas Hoving, former curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gene Barry.

Harlan Ellison has written well about his experiences writing for “The Name of the Game” (and, if I remember correctly, “Burke’s Law” as well). I’d love to see both of those series come out on DVD; you can’t get “Burke’s Law”, but you can get “The Starlost”?

(Edited to add: Well, I will be sheep-dipped.  You can get at least the first season of “Burke’s Law”. If Fry’s has it, I haven’t noticed, and I usually count on them for my TV on DVD availability.)

Posted in Art, Books, Clippings, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Did you stand by me? No way.

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Capital Metro, embroiled in a contract and insurance dispute with rail contractor Veolia Transportation, on Wednesday cancelled its five-year contract with the company to operate freight and passenger rail.

CapMet awarded “emergency” contracts to two other contractors to run the system “over the next five-plus years”. But don’t worry, this won’t delay the startup of the rail system any longer; CapMet says we’re still on target for startup “sometime before March 31, about two years later than originally scheduled”.

Two interesting food-related articles in the NYT: one about the upcoming Tavern on the Green auction, which gives a good overview of the restaurant’s decline and fall. The other article is really more of a rewritten press release on Chex and their promotion of new recipes for Chex Party Mix. Even though it has that whole rewritten PR quality to it, I feel compelled to note the later article; Chex Party Mix is a traditional food of my people.

As a side note, sometime later this evening, I’m going to add a list of BugMeNot links for the NYT, LAT, Statesman, HouChron, and WP to the sidebar. I already have cookies on my machines for most of these, so I don’t think about logins (and all of these sites are somewhat flaky about requiring logins), but Lawrence mentioned this problem to me the other day. (I can’t do it now because, believe it or not, BugMeNot is blocked at the office.)

(Edited to add: Speaking of Lawrence, I haven’t been able to listen to Ms. Aguilera yet; blocked at work. But the Bob Dylan YouTube video isn’t. I’d heard Mr. Zimmerman’s Christmas album was pretty awful; but am I a bad, evil, taste-lacking person for kind of liking “Must Be Santa”?)

Five. Five million. Five million dollars.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Food, Geek, Media | 2 Comments »

How can we dance when our Earth is turning?

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

We don’t have to worry about that now. CBS has cancelled “As the World Turns”.

(I like the song, but I’ve always thought that particular lyric was rather stupid. If the Earth wasn’t turning, dancing would be the least of our concerns.)

Posted in Clippings, Media, Music, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 8, 2009.

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

I’m not a pro wrestling fan. I did see the FARK thread about Umaga’s death over the weekend, but didn’t really think it was blog-worthy (especially since it had already been on FARK). However, Ken Hoffman has a touching obit for the late Mr. Fatu in the HouChron.

“He speaks English!” the kids said. Even more surprising, he didn’t take their money for his autograph. “He said it was Christmas and told us to use the money for presents for our parents.”

On the obit front, the LAT has a story about the sectioning of Henry Molaison’s brain. This was also noted in the NYT last week, but for some reason I didn’t blog it. I’ll take this chance to link again to the obit the NYT published after Mr. Molaison’s passing last year. (I blogged this at the time, for values of “blogged” that include “noting it on the private mailing list I was using at the time”.) If you can read the last line of that obit without tears, you have no heart.

While we’re on the subject of the NYT, the government of India has released their report on the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque. The report came out last week; the mosque was destroyed by riots in 1992.

I probably should have blogged something about Pearl Harbor yesterday, perhaps the discovery of the Japanese mini-sub. But hey, I stink, and everyone else was doing it anyway. There’s also a good story in the Statesman about the new wing of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. I’ve got some time off coming, and I haven’t been to the musuem in a few years…

Posted in Clippings, Media, Neuroscience, Obits | 1 Comment »

Random notes: December 4, 2009.

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Today’s memo from Captain Obvious: scalpers find it hard to sell tickets when the team is awful. And sympathy for the Nets.

Mangino out.

So your scam involves taking money for hot tubs from people on eBay, then not shipping the hot tubs? I can’t decide who is dumber; the scammer, for not thinking that he’d be caught, or the people who actually thought purchasing hot tubs off eBay was a good idea.

In other news, we’re all going to die (well, mostly you folks in Houston). Film at 11.

Edited to add: The Observer has a nifty interview with Maj Sjöwall. I’m kind of ashamed to admit, even though I’ve read some of the Martin Beck books, I had no idea Per Wahlöö was dead. (Hattip: Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Firings, Hysteria, Loser, Media, Roads, Stupid | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »