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Earthquest update!

Thursday, March 21st, 2013

Latest news, by way of our good friend Heather Dobrott (who I owe an apology, as her comment was initially marked as spam by Akismet: fortunately, I’m able to actually go through and do a more detailed review of “spam” postings, thanks to my aggressive policy of blocking IP addresses. That will be the subject of a future post. Also, this is only the second false positive I’ve gotten in the entire time I’ve been using Akismet.)

Anyway:

Earthquest flounders still:

http://ourtribune.com/article.php?id=14947

Don Allen Holbrook has officially chickened out and has settle with Huber Heights, Ohio thus closing that joke of a case he filed against his legitimate critics. He is now hawking timeshares for Bluegreen resorts. That is one step above working as a used Pinto salesman. Hilarious!

And let me just quote the entire article linked above, as it is only two paragraphs:

The East Montgomery County Improvement District board held its monthly meeting and learned that the EarthQuest theme park project is still lacking investors.
Chris Brown, CEO of Contour Entertainment, told the board that the institute is still lacking a lead investor for the project. He also told EMCID board members the project need a half billion dollar-investment to get underway.

“a half billion dollar investment to get underway”.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Random notes: March 21, 2013.

Thursday, March 21st, 2013

Here’s your obit for Herbert Streicher, aka “Harry Reems”, the male star of “Deep Throat”: NYT. A/V Club.

Leaving alcohol, drugs, and pornography behind for good, Reems settled in Park City, Utah, where he got married, embraced Christianity, built a thriving real estate career, and—with the exception of interviews he did for the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat, and a round of interviews to promote its release—he made a concerted effort to stay as far out of the public eye as possible.

Oh, look! New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is re-thinking his hastily passed and poorly thought out gun control measures! It couldn’t have anything to do with his declining popularity, could it?

The gun-control law, approved in January, banned the sale of magazines that hold more than seven rounds of ammunition. But, Mr. Cuomo said Wednesday, seven-round magazines are not widely manufactured. And, although the new gun law provided an exemption for the use of 10-round magazines at firing ranges and competitions, it did not provide a legal way for gun owners to purchase such magazines.
As a result, he said, he and legislative leaders were negotiating language that would continue to allow the sale of magazines holding up to 10 rounds, but still forbid New Yorkers from loading more than 7 rounds into those magazines.

But gun control works!

A 47-year-old psychiatric patient was beaten to death in a locked shower room at Interfaith Medical Center in central Brooklyn late on Tuesday, officials said, and another patient, a 20-year-old, has been charged with second-degree murder in the killing.

I have not had time to go through all of it yet, but the NYT special section on “Museums” looks interesting. Call this a bookmark.

Here’s the LAT‘s second day article on the Bell convictions.

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you in the national recording registry…

(Also: The Ramones first album! “Einstein on the Beach”! “South Pacific”! “Sounds of Silence”! The “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack?)

Posted in Bookmarks, California Über Alles, Clippings, Guns, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Stupid | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: March 20, 2013.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Woo hoo woo hoo hoo!

I was out and about until just now and returned home to find out we have verdicts in the Bell corruption trial.

Maybe.

Former council member Luis Artiga: acquitted on all twelve of the charges against him.

Former council member George Cole: found guilty of two counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on two counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on four other counts.

Former council member Victor Bello: found guilty of four counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on four counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on eight other counts.

Former mayor Oscar Hernandez: found guilty of five counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on five counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on ten other counts.

Former council member Teresa Jacobo: found guilty of five counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on five counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on ten other counts.

Former council member George Mirabal: found guilty of five counts of misappropriation of funds from the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority, and not guilty on five counts of misappropriation of funds related to the Public Finance Authority. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on ten other counts.

The LAT has a handy cheat sheet covering who was convicted of what, in addition to their news coverage.

But.

…In a note, Juror No. 7 told Judge Kathleen Kennedy that he had misgivings about the deliberations.
The cryptic note said that the juror “questioned myself on information that had me on a [doubt] of thing [sic] that were not presented properly.”

A second juror sent a note saying “she believes the jury is ‘getting away from your instructions’ and possibly misunderstanding a law on ‘several levels.'”.

The judge, at this point, seems to be disinclined to “reopen verdicts that have been reached”, but the jury is supposed to report back to the courtroom tomorrow at 9 AM. We’ll see what happens; the judge may question the jurors about the returned verdicts, the judge may ask them to deliberate more on the undecided verdicts, some combination of the two, or possibly something I haven’t even thought of yet. We shall see.

By the way, the council members apparently have a good shot at getting probation and community service, if the verdicts stand.

But it still a good day. And this comic strip seems appropriate.

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

Upholding the doctrine.

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Oddly enough, FARK made note of this yesterday, but I wanted to link it here: it is one of the few things that’s actually made me happy recently.

Yesterday, on a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of “first sale”. Specifically, the Court stated that, if you legally purchase copyrighted material in another country, you have the right to rent out or resell it in the United States.

In the case before the Court, Supap Kirtsaeng, a student at Cornell and USC, got his family to purchase textbooks in his home country of Thailand, where they were cheaper. His family shipped the textbooks to him in the United States, where he re-sold them for a profit. The publisher John Wiley & Sons sued Mr. Kirtsaeng, alleging this violated copyright law. Wiley and Sons won a $600,000 award in lower courts, but the Supreme Court decision tosses out the lower court verdicts.

Two points I’d like to make:

  1. Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion, and was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagen. Ginsburg and Kennedy wrote a dissenting opinion. Scalia partially joined the dissenting opinion, but also took exception to parts of it. I have not found the actual opinions online yet; when I do, I will link to them.
  2. It might be worth keeping in mind that John Wiley and Sons was in favor of restricting your right to lend or resell things you’d purchased. I’d suggest that you consider the role of John Wiley and Sons in this case very carefully before purchasing any publications from John Wiley and Sons.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

“Likable scamps”

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

That’s how the prosecution described two NYPD detectives, Stephen Chmil and Louis Scarcella, at the trial of “a drug-addicted, unemployed printer” named David Ranta:

At trial, prosecutors acknowledged the detectives had misbehaved but depicted them as likable scamps.

Mr. Ranta was charged with shooting Chaskel Werzberger, a Hasidic rabbi, during a robbery that went bad. Mr. Ranta was convicted in 1991 and has spent the years since in prison.

Mr. Ranta could walk free as early as Thursday. In the decades since a jury convicted him of murder, nearly every piece of evidence in this case has fallen away. A key witness told The New York Times that a detective instructed him to select Mr. Ranta in the lineup. A convicted rapist told the district attorney that he falsely implicated Mr. Ranta in hopes of cutting a deal for himself. A woman has signed an affidavit saying she too lied about Mr. Ranta’s involvement.
Detective Scarcella and his partner, Stephen Chmil, according to investigators and legal documents, broke rule after rule. They kept few written records, coached a witness and took Mr. Ranta’s confession under what a judge described as highly dubious circumstances. They allowed two dangerous criminals, an investigator said, to leave jail, smoke crack cocaine and visit with prostitutes in exchange for incriminating Mr. Ranta.

Yeah. “Likable scamps” fabricated evidence and put an innocent man away for 22 years.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Louis Scarcella | 3 Comments »

Bad lawyer! No parole!

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Back in November of 2011, I wrote about Paul Bergrin, “The Baddest Lawyer in the History of Jersey“. At that time, a mistrial had been declared in Mr. Bergrin’s trial on various charges, including drug trafficking and murder.

Mr. Bergrin was retried, and yesterday…

…a jury in Federal District Court convicted Mr. Bergrin of all 23 of the counts against him, including murder, after less than two full days’ deliberation. A previous trial ended in a hung jury.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

No longer Hot Wheels?

Monday, March 18th, 2013

As someone who has been spending a lot of time with small children recently, as well as being a professional child myself, this HouChron article piqued my interest: “Are moms to blame for stagnant Hot Wheels sales?”

Mattel has a problem. Sales of its three toy car lines—Hot Wheels, Matchbox, and Tyco R/C—have remained stagnant for the past three years. The toy maker is still pulling in $1 billion a year but that number isn’t going up.

More:

Mattel thinks moms are the problem. Women don’t understand cars the way they do a Star Wars figurine, which is essentially a doll, or blocks, which are obviously meant for building. But pushing cars around on the floor and making them crash into each other as explosive sounds spew from your mouth—moms don’t get that, Mattel speculates.

That’s…dumb, at least from my viewpoint. My childhood was a while back, but I don’t think moms ever get the toys their kids play with. At least, the male children. The girls: moms probably get Barbie, and maybe some other toys. But I don’t think moms ever get G.I. Joe, or Spiderman, or, yes, Hot Wheels.

Just for grins, I sent this to a mom I know who has boys and a house full of Hot Wheels. Her response: “Whoever said that at Mattel is full of poop.” As she went on to point out, moms get what kids ask for, within reason. The moms I know don’t buy everything their kids want, but if they’re out at the store and the kids behave reasonably well, they don’t have any problem buying one or two Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars as a reward. Even an unemployed but indulgent uncle can pick up a couple of Hot Wheels just so they don’t come over empty-handed.

(As a side note: my recollection is that Hot Wheels when I was a child sold for about $1, in 1970 money, or $5.98 in 2013 dollars. Today, Hot Wheels at my local grocery store sell for about $1, or 17 cents in 1970 money.)

(Also as a side note: I played with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars interchangeably. Hot Wheels rolled more smoothly, but Matchbox cars were more realistic.)

More:

Thinking back on the toys I’ve bought my son and told grandparents to give to him, I’m always looking for products that encourage building, creating, critical.

Setting aside the incomplete thought at the end of the sentence, I understand what she’s driving at here. I support the idea of giving kids toys that encourage what I’ll call “imaginative play”. But when I watch the kids I know play with Hot Wheels, they are playing with them in imaginative ways. My own childhood memories match that: I remember building tracks, both with the Hot Wheels track sets and with household objects, and playing with Hot Wheels in an unstructured, unguided, imaginative way.

(The HouChron writer mentions things like Magna-Tiles and Legos. Magna-Tiles are before my time, and I don’t know any kids who have those. Legos are great; I loved Legos when I was a kid. But what I see now is that Legos are moving away from unstructured, unguided, imaginative play, and in the direction of structured, guided, not imaginative play. For example, Harry Potter and Star Wars Lego kits.)

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Stupid | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 17, 2013.

Sunday, March 17th, 2013

Well, this is odd. I completely missed the story until I went over to ESPN’s web site. (I was trying to find out when the NCAA brackets will be announced. Again, not that I care about men’s basketball, but Gonzaga!)

Ruth Ann Steinhagen passed away on December 29th, but her death did not become public knowledge until last week.

“Who?”

On the night of June 14, 1949, Ms. Steinhagen lured Eddie Waittkus, first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, to her room in the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Mr. Waitkus had played for the Chicago Cubs, but was traded after the 1948 season. Ms. Steinhagen had an obsession with him.

After he sat down, Steinhagen walked to a closet, said, “I have a surprise for you,” then turned with the rifle she had hidden there and shot him in the chest. Theodore wrote that she then knelt by his side and held his hand on her lap. She told a psychiatrist afterward about how she had dreamed of killing him and found it strange that she was now “holding him in my arms.”

Mr. Waitkus survived. Ms. Steinhagen was found to be insane and spent three years in a mental hospital. And if this story sounds very familiar, yes, this was the basis for Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, which was in turn made into the movie starring Robert Redford.

The “Theodore” in the quote above is John Theodore, who wrote what sounds like an interesting non-fiction book about the incident, Baseball’s Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus.

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

I have no joke here, I just like saying…

Saturday, March 16th, 2013

…there are snakes in Ireland.

During the Celtic Tiger boom, snakes became a popular pet among the Irish nouveaux riches, status symbols in a country famous for its lack of indigenous serpents. But after the bubble burst, many snake owners could no longer afford the cost of food, heating and shelter, or they left the country for work elsewhere. Some left their snakes behind or turned them loose in the countryside, leading to some startling encounters.

Posted in Clippings, Reptiles, Snakes | Comments Closed

“…a community of knife geeks”

Saturday, March 16th, 2013

Just noticed in the LAT (sorry): a profile of Jonathan Broida.

Mr. Broida runs a shop in Venice (California, not Italy) called Japanese Knife Imports. But:

Walk into his shop as a novice and he won’t just sell you a knife. He’ll want to sit down at the low table in the center of the room, preferably over genmaicha tea served in a lovely ceramic tea bowl, made by his wife Sara’s family in northern Japan, and explore your relationship to knives. Call him a knife shrink. What sorts of things do you like to cook? How are your knife skills? What kinds of things do you cut? What sort of cutting board do you have? What other knives do you own? How comfortable are you with sharpening your own knife?

Mr. Brodia used to be a professional cook, and caters to that community.

With a degree in Asian studies, he had started cooking for a living, and at one point went to work in Japan. There, he asked his chef to show him how to sharpen his knife. Big mistake. Soon he was expected to sharpen everybody’s knives, he says with a laugh. But he learned, and he got better at it.
Every chef he met had a different technique. But they were still chefs who sharpened knives, he explains, not professional knife sharpeners. And there’s a big difference. As he got more interested, he sought out craftsmen who could show him more. During that process he found father-son professional sharpeners who were the best he’d ever seen. And he still goes back every year to work with them.

And that’s the key to his shop. He’s less interested in selling you a knife:

The most important thing, he says, is knowing how to sharpen. He can do it for you, but it’s better if you learn yourself. “There’s always a level of disconnect with your tools if you don’t sharpen your own, and that bothers me.”

This is one of my many character flaws. My father tried to teach me to sharpen knives on a whetstone when I was younger, but I didn’t have the patience to learn. These days, I think I could sharpen a knife if I had to, but I have a lot of trouble holding the knife at a constant angle. I’ve tried various gadgets, but what I end up doing is taking my knives to a local knife shop or the gun show when they need to be sharpened. That’s the lazy man’s way of working; I feel like I should be better than that.

And, interestingly, Japanese Knife Imports has a YouTube channel with sharpening demonstrations.

I’m not going to California any time soon (I don’t have a passport, so I can’t travel outside of the United States), but this place sounds like somewhere I could drop a lot of money fast.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Geek, Knives | 2 Comments »

Some people have all the luck.

Friday, March 15th, 2013

For example, former Harris County DA Pat Lykos, who escaped grand jury indictment once again.

The Harris County grand jury’s decision to end its term without action ends a yearlong probe. It was initiated when the Texas Rangers asked for a special prosecutor to look into allegations that members of the Lykos administration had investigated members of another grand jury who spent six months looking into evidence collected by the Houston Police Department’s troubled breath alcohol testing vehicles.

More background is available by clicking the “HCDA” category. Also, Murray Newman has a few words to say.

Posted in Clippings, HCDA, Law | Comments Closed

Your loser update.

Friday, March 15th, 2013

For the record: Grambling played their SWAC tournament game Wednesday night…and lost, finishing the season 0-28.

Meanwhile, Liberty University (of Jerry Falwell fame) started the season 0-8. But:

With four consecutive upsets, each one a little more astounding than the last, Liberty won the Big South tournament and barged into the N.C.A.A. tournament with a 15-20 record.

(I don’t place bets before the brackets are announced, but I’m thinking this is Gonzaga’s year. Just an aside.)

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

…saves you from trial!

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

A while back, I wrote about the case of Robert Carroll Gillham, who set fire to a Gallery Furniture store, doing $20 million in damage, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor while awaiting trial.

The HouChron has an update on the case. Good news: Mr. Gillham’s brain tumor was removed.

Good or bad news, depending on how you look at it: Mr. Gillham probably will never stand trial on the charges.

“An expert has found him incompetent and unlikely to regain competence and neither side is disputing that,” said Brett Podolsky, his attorney. “Both sides are working on an agreed order for a lengthy civil commitment.”

Summarizing, the damage that the tumor did before it was removed, the side effects of the removal, and Mr. Gillham’s age have left him in a state where both sides agree he’s not competent to stand trial.

Noted:

Gallery Furniture and [Jim] McIngvale, its colorful pitchman, are well-known Houston icons. He said Wednesday he was disappointed by the development, but had no quarrel with the criminal justice system.
“We wanted to get this behind us, and get some closure on this,” McIngvale said. “But the court system is the court system and if they say he’s incompetent, we certainly respect whatever the court system rules.”

That’s actually a pretty classy statement for a man who had $20 million worth of stuff burned up.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Neuroscience | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: March 14, 2013.

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

The jury is still out in the Bell trial.

The LAT‘s “LA Now” blog ran an article yesterday speculating on the possibility of deadlock.

Over the last 2-1/2 weeks, they have struggled to reach a verdict that would answer the basic question: Could those salaries — which approached $100,000 — be excessive and still be legal?

Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?

The general rule of thumb when it comes to deliberations tends to be one day for every week of testimony, said veteran defense attorney Paul Wallin. Anything longer, he said, is a strong sign of a hung jury or at least a deadlock on some counts.

Yesterday was day 13 of deliberations, according to the LAT. (It looks like they’re not counting the week of deliberations which ended with one juror being replaced and the judge ordering a restart.)

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

And as long as we’re on the subject of California…

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

I have often heard the accusation that the Better Business Bureau is more interested in money than protecting customers. That is, if you’re a business that pays enough money to the BBB, you’re guaranteed a high rating, and customer complaints against you might just magically disappear.

I’ve never been able to prove that to my satisfaction. But in at least one case, I don’t have to.

The BBB of the Southland was expelled Tuesday from the national organization, losing the right to use the BBB name and logo.

The BBB of the Southland is the branch that covers LA and the surrounding area. Why did they get kicked out? Some folks may remember this:

In 2010, a group of Los Angeles business owners that had been critical of the BBB conducted a sting operation by paying dues for fake companies, including one named after the Palestinian organization, Hamas, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist group.
The fake businesses were all accredited and given ratings, according to the ABC News report. Hamas received an A-minus rating.

Ken over at Popehat covered this in more detail at the time. I haven’t seen an update from him, but I don’t blame Ken, as he’s been tied up with the whole Prenda Law saga. (If you haven’t been following Prenda Law, I recommend checking Popehat; the entire saga is way to complex for me to summarize here, and Ken’s done a pretty good job of doing so over there.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

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