Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category

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I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone.

Monday, July 15th, 2013

Well, not really “gone”. I hadn’t been back to Ohio for nine years, and it amazed me somewhat both how much and how little has changed.

For example, there’s an entire grocery chain that I don’t remember from my last trip…that takes the Discover card and cash. No Visa/AmEx/MasterCard/Diner’s Club, not even debt cards with a PIN, just cash and Discover. Who came up with this idea?

On the other hand, the tractor tire store that was a landmark on the way to Grandma’s place is still there, after 40 something years. And Grandma’s place still feels remote from everything, even though there’s major strip centers at the end of her road, and even though much of the land was sold off over the past few years (and now has houses sitting on it).

And the old NASA hanger is still visible from the airport. That was another landmark for us kids. (My dad worked there, back when it was still the Lewis Research Center, before it was renamed “NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field“. Which is a mouthful. Not that I’m bitter or anything over the renaming; by gosh, if anyone deserved to have a NASA facility named after him, it was John Glenn.)

This is shaping up to be a long post, and sort of “stream of consciousness”, so I’m going to put the rest of it behind a jump. Before I do, here’s Grandma’s obituary, just for the record.

(more…)

Posted in Admin, Android, Apple, Books, Clippings, Food, Geek, Guns, Lizards, Mixology, Obits, Photography, Planes, Reptiles, Thanks, Travel | 3 Comments »

Random notes: July 15, 2013.

Monday, July 15th, 2013

Early in his career, Stephen King published several novels using the name Richard Bachman. (In 1985, after he was exposed as the real Richard Bachman, Mr. King announced that Mr. Bachman had died of “cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia.”)

And King continued to publish books as Bachman long past the “early” point of his career, including The Regulators and Blaze. Sorry, something about the NYT‘s phrasing here annoys me. As does this:

He then started reading the book. “I said, ‘Nobody who was in the Army and now works in civilian security could write a book as good as this,’ ” he said.

Nice bit of casual snobbery there, pal.

(This is actually the first Rowling book I want to read, though I don’t intend to pay an inflated price for a first.)

My heart goes out to any of my readers who are in LA:

Ignite 8,500 gallons of gasoline in a two-lane freeway underpass just north of downtown, and you have a prescription for another round of Carmageddon come Monday morning.

…

The fire erupted when a tanker truck overturned in a small tunnel connecting the northbound lanes of the 2 Freeway with the northbound lanes of the 5. Thick black smoke was seen for miles.
The intensity of the tunnel fire has so compromised the roadbed of the 5 that freeway traffic at this point would lead to greater damage, Caltrans said.

…

Chandler reported that rebar was exposed. “It was so hot that the concrete is now brittle,” he said. “It is like a popcorn ceiling. Crews are chipping away at it with hammers.”
The narrow confines of the tunnel, about 300 feet long and only two lanes and a shoulder wide, magnified the intensity of the blaze.

This is one of the best things I’ve read in the past few days.

And this is another of the best things I’ve read in the past few days: “A Statistical Analysis of Nerf Blasters and Darts” by Shawn O’Neil and Kate Drueen.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Geek, Roads | Comments Closed

Important safety tip. (#17 in a series)

Friday, July 12th, 2013

I shouldn’t have to say this, should I? People aren’t this stupid, are they?

Apparently, they are. So, safety tip:

If it is hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement, for the love of Ghu, please use a pan.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Safety | Comments Closed

Dead lawyers don’t lie.

Friday, July 12th, 2013

Sergei L. Magnitsky was convicted yesterday of tax evasion by a Russian court. Mr. Magnitsky was a lawyer: his client, William F. Browder, was convicted as well.

This isn’t ordinarily the sort of thing I’d bring up, but there are a couple of interesting points:

  • Mr. Magnitsky was a prominent critic of the Russian government, and was arrested shortly after he accused officials of stealing $230 million in government funds.
  • Both Mr. Magnitsky and Mr. Browder were convicted in absentia. Mr. Browder is currently in London.
  • Mr. Magnitsky was convicted in absentia because he’s dead. He died four years ago in prison, after being refused medical care.

(Subject line hattip. My linking to this should not be taken as implying any endorsement of the content.)

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: July 5, 2013.

Friday, July 5th, 2013

Everton Wagstaffe and Reginald Connor are serving time for the kidnapping and murder of Jennifer Negron. Ms. Negron was 16 years old when she was murdered.

Both Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor have maintained their innocence and, after years of fighting, were able to arrange DNA testing of every piece of physical evidence that could be found; none of it implicated them, and the DNA in hair found on the victim’s body came from at least one other person.

The main witness against the two men was a crack addicted prostitute who was “forcibly detained by the authorities in a hotel until she testified”.

In the case of Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor, no records were kept of police interviews with other important witnesses; there was no physical evidence to support the informant’s claims; one witness, a police detective’s daughter, who could provide a seemingly credible alibi for Mr. Wagstaffe, was never interviewed by police, prosecutors or defense lawyers; the owner of a car supposedly used in the kidnapping said she told detectives that she had it with her at church through the night of Ms. Negron’s death. There is no record of any interview of her, either, even though the car was cited as important evidence.

Is this our old friend Louis Scarcella? Is the Brooklyn DA reinvestigating this case?

No. And no.

The investigation into the death of Ms. Negron was led by a detective from a different squad, Michael Race of the 75th Precinct. His work with another informant led to the conviction of at least three innocent people.
Of 750 murder investigations that he ran, Mr. Race has said, only one was “done the correct way, A to Z.”

One. Out of 750. And three wrongful convictions.

Aye aye mateys, oh, come on the Pirate Radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave!

(Explained.)

Directors of Meade Instruments Corp., which has helped foster the consumer market with its easy-to-use telescopes and binoculars since 1972, may be tipping their hand by Monday on whether to recommend selling the company, plow ahead alone or possibly seek bankruptcy protection.

This sucks. I’ve wanted a good telescope for much of my life, even though I find it hard to use one with glasses and I really am not able to stay up late in order to do observational astronomy. Still, I’m sad to see the market shrinking, even though the technology gets better and better.

Verizon has a great idea for Fire Island. As you might have guessed, the island got the crap beat out of it by Sandy, and the phone system was devastated.

Verizon, the only phone company in town, wants most of the island and its 500 homes to go all-wireless, ending for good its century-old copper wire phone network. That means phone lines buried underground or strung between poles and then stretched into homes will go out of service and be replaced by an experimental wireless service that sends calls between cell towers and home receivers.

Sounds great, right?

Without phone lines, consumers don’t have the option of DSL Internet. Gone are faxes. Heart monitors that connect over phone lines to hospitals don’t work over wireless, either. And small businesses can’t process credit cards or operate cash machines without buying entirely new payment systems, as Verizon notes in its New York public filing.

Not mentioned in the article: Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) over copper works when the power is out. Will Verizon’s wireless system? The cell towers may have battery backup or generators, but do the home receivers?

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Geek, Law, Radio | 2 Comments »

Random notes: July 4, 2013.

Thursday, July 4th, 2013

There’s an interesting article (tied to the Arizona tragedy) in today’s LAT, about the problems of investigating these incidents.

Some of them are probably obvious: these things generally happen in remote areas, and fire destroys a lot of evidence. But the main thrust of the LAT article is that a deep distrust has developed between firefighters and investigators since 2001. That year, four firefighters died in the Thirty Mile fire. The Forest Service did an investigation, and determined that there were a lot of issues with the way the fire was fought; from my reading, some of those issues were just bad luck and equipment failures, but there were also some procedural issues:

Standard safety procedures were violated. Risks were not appropriately assessed. Rest rules were disregarded.

What happened next is that one of the crew bosses was charged with manslaughter, based on that report. (The boss pled guilty to “making false statements” and served 90 days on work release.)

When federal investigators later showed up in California to look into the 2006 Esperanza fire, near Cabazon, firefighters refused to talk to investigators without union officials present, and some sought advice of lawyers.
Firefighters across the country began seeking legal counsel instead of participating in investigations into fatalities, according to congressional testimony in 2007 from Mark Rey, then an undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture who oversaw the Forest Service.
“Many of our firefighters do not want to speak freely,” he said at the time. They were also opting not to take supervisory jobs for fear of being held liable, he said.
Chockie is not surprised. “When I saw what followed after our report, I can understand why people might be much more hesitant or cautious now,” he said. “What they told us came back to them in unexpected ways.”

Safety procedures exist for reasons. And it is hard to say that people shouldn’t be held accountable. On the other hand, there’s also a very strong “do whatever it takes to fight the fire” attitude among firefighters, even if that means sometimes disregarding rest and safety rules. (And what are you going to do if it is rest time, there’s no relief, and the fire is still burning out of control? “Sorry, can’t fight that fire. On my coffee break.”) The other thing to realize is that wildfires are very volatile and chaotic situations; things can change literally in seconds. Is it fair or right to pass judgements in hindsight on the people who were there on the ground fighting the fire?

Obit watch: noted computer scientist and inventor of the mouse, Douglas Engelbart. LAT. NYT.

You, too, can have a Tony award. If you’re a “major investor” in a Tony-winning production. And you have $2,500.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Law, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Administrative note.

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013

I’m going through a little bit of personal agita right now. The next few days leading up to, and during, the holiday, are shaping up to be kind of busy. Mostly the fun kind of busy (some of us are trying to plan a range trip; plus, fireworks), but with some work involved.

This coming Saturday, I will be flying out to Cleveland. My maternal grandmother passed away on Saturday, and her funeral is scheduled for a week from today. I plan to take a laptop with me and blog as much as I can from the road, but be prepared for a bit of a slowdown.

(I know there’s been a bit of a slowdown already. Mostly, that’s because there hasn’t been a lot going on that I’ve found worthy of blogging. I think we’re into the summer slowdown season; things are so hot that everyone is acting like giant lizards, conserving energy as much as they possibly can. Which is great for keeping cool, but not so great for providing blog fodder.)

(Is it just me, or is Houston experiencing a rash of motel fires?)

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Explosives, Guns, Lizards, Reptiles, Travel | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Monday, July 1st, 2013

They were still so young they hadn’t learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy.

–Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

(Why.)

Posted in Books, Clippings | Comments Closed

Here in my car, I can’t make a call, because the system doesn’t work at all…

Saturday, June 29th, 2013

The latest in-dash “infotainment” systems are turning into a giant headache for drivers. Problems with phone, entertainment and navigation functions were the biggest source of complaints in the latest J.D. Power & Associates survey of new-car quality, easily outstripping traditional issues such as fit and finish and wind noise.

More:

But the next generation of in-car technology will get much more interesting, with embedded systems making a comeback of sorts, in more sophisticated form.
Such systems may focus on collecting data that only the car can provide — and transferring it to Web-based systems to large numbers of drivers. If cars signaled that their windshield wipers were on, for instance, that information could be fed into a navigation system that could warn other drivers of a rainstorm ahead.

Why do you need cars signaling that their windshield wipers are on to warn of a rainstorm ahead? I have a close friend who recently bought a 2013 Ford: it has weather information integrated into the navigation system. As I recall, his 2011 Ford had the same feature.

But my primary reason for blogging this is so I can link to episode 11 of the Neutral podcast, in which John Siracusa, Marco Arment, and Casey Liss discuss why car software stinks. I think all of the Neutral podcasts are worth listening to, but if you’re only going to listen to one, this is the one I’d recommend.

Posted in Android, Apple, Cars, Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

Christmas in June!

Friday, June 28th, 2013

The temperature here in Austin is projected to hit 106 today. We’re not even into July yet.

What better time than now to think about Christmas?

The former president of a troubled Austin non-profit, already in jail on drug charges, has been indicted for theft from the charity he helped run. Six months after being arrested during a traffic stop, Shon Washington has been indicted for theft from a nonprofit, a second degree felony, and false statement to obtain credit, a state jail felony.

(Previously. Previously.)

Posted in Christmas, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

I have no joke here. I just want to say…

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Police Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has been abruptly transferred to a new job in the department’s Community Partnership Office, effective immediately, so the department can refocus its “message,” Batts said in a news conference at City Hall.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 26, 2013.

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Alan Myers passed away on Monday, though I did not find out about it until today.

Myers…

…was Devo’s third drummer, joining in 1976 before the band released its Brian Eno-produced debut, “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” and remained in the band until the mid-’80s. He played on all the Akron, Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based Devo’s most mind-bending material, including the deconstructed version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” that first propelled them onto the national stage, “Whip It” and “Girl U Want.”

I’m trying to find some appropriate links. I’m not sure this one shows Myers or the rest of the band well, but it is from the right era as well as being one of my favorite Devo songs. Plus, does anyone remember “Fridays”?

And now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like:

Also, a shoutout to my homeboys at Popehat:

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

Random notes: June 26, 2013.

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Richard Matheson obits: NYT. Lawrence. LAT.

Please refrain from tasting the knob.

(Note that the musical in question, “Somewhere in Time” is based on the movie, which in turn was based on a novel, “Bid Time Return”, by Richard Matheson. I’m not linking to Amazon, but you should be able to find the novel easily: the cheaper editions are listed under “Somewhere in Time”, and the editions carrying the original title are pricy.)

You know what NYC needs? Strict pen control. And perhaps strict costume control, too.

Busking being serious business in Midtown, long-simmering tensions between the box man and one of his rivals erupted into violence on Friday night, when the box man was said to have stabbed a competing panhandler, Wayne Semancik, five times in the head and chest with a pen.

More:

…a photograph in The Daily News showed the police interviewing Alien and Predator as witnesses after the episode.

(Hotlinked: click on the photo to read the Daily News article.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 25, 2013.

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

The NYT, LAT, and WP have not yet published obits for Richard Matheson. However, the A/V Club has a very nice tribute.

I feel kind of blocked when it comes to paying tribute to Mr. Matheson. The one thing I can say is: whenever I was trying to think of “who wrote this story?” – the box with the button, the family fleeing their home planet, the girl who falls into the fourth dimension – at least seven times out of every ten, the story I was trying to think of was written by Richard Matheson. It is impossible to overstate the depth of his influence on the genre.

In other news, I’m sure some of my readers remember the 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans about the child abuse convictions of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. Since the documentary was released, there’s been a lot of back and forth about the guilt or innocence of the Friedmans, leading up to an investigation by the Nassau County district attorney.

…it concluded, “By any impartial analysis, the reinvestigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman, his advocates and the Second Circuit, has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender.”

More, and I apologize for the length of this quote:

The report centered on four points raised in the film and by the appeals court: that the case may have been tainted by repeated police interviews that pushed children toward confessions; that children may have been hypnotized to recover memories not based on fact; that the case was distorted by a “moral panic” that created false accusations and a predisposition toward conviction; and that Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea may have been unlawfully coerced by the police, prosecutors and a hostile judge.

The review rejected them all. It said that though some interviews late in the case may have been flawed, the rapid pace and early flow of accusations from children in the classes indicated that the allegations arose from spontaneous accounts, not from investigators pushing children toward accusations. It said the first child interviewed reported improper behavior, 12 children leveled accusations of illegal sexual behavior at Arnold Friedman in the investigation’s first two weeks and, five weeks into the investigation, 13 boys described criminal behavior by Jesse Friedman.

It said, that despite one student’s account in “Capturing the Friedmans” of making allegations after being hypnotized, any use of group therapy or hypnosis came after all the indictments were filed. It disputed the one account of hypnosis in the film.

Additionally, the report points out that Jessie Friedman had “competent legal representation, weighed his options intelligently and pleaded guilty after determining it was ‘the optimal strategy’ in light of the available choices.”

Mr. Friedman’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, and the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki, reacted with disappointment and anger, saying the report was a biased whitewash by the office that originally botched the case.

About that: the investigation was overseen by a “four-member independent advisory panel” that included Barry Scheck of Innocence Project fame.

The report was prefaced by a four-page statement by the panel. It said its job was about process more than findings. It did not reinvestigate the case itself, and it was not given access to key documents like grand jury records and interview reports.

Still, it commended the investigation, and said that if the evidence had pointed toward exoneration, “we have no doubt the Review Team was prepared to recommend without reservation that Friedman’s conviction be overturned.”

The statement, signed by all four members, said it was not the role of the panel to make an ultimate judgment about Jesse Friedman’s guilt, but added: “We do have an obligation to express a view as to whether we believe the conclusions expressed in the Review Team’s report are reasonable and supported by the evidence it cites. We think they are.”

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Perhaps he should consider Kickstarter.

Thursday, June 20th, 2013

In his most recent Facebook video, Gilley reached out to those who may want to invest in a 21st century Gilley’s concept. He didn’t give out a monetary goal or figure that it would take to get Gilley’s 2.0 off the ground.

(Inspired by this and this.)

(I looked around a while back: there are several people who have registered Kickstopper-like domain names, but the associated sites seem to be dormant. Which is a shame, as I think a Kickstopper blog dedicated to highlighting possible scams and stupid projects is something the Internet needs. If I thought I could make money off of it, I’d do it: after all, my hero April Winchell parlayed Regretsy into a book deal. But right now I’m putting my energy into job hunting, not starting new blogs.)

Posted in Clippings, Music | Comments Closed

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