I don’t think this would be a good SDC destination; while I’m sure you can get food at Buc-ee’s, it isn’t really an SDC sort of place.
However, we’ve had conversations about going to the Cooper’s in New Braunfels, so we could kill two birds with one stone…
According to the study, “18.5% of 12th-grade students admitted to using a hookah in the previous year.” I’m trying to wrap my mind around this:
Maybe I’m stupid, but I just have a real hard time visualizing large numbers of teens either buying hookahs and tobacco off the Internet and smoking with their friends (and all the fuss that entails) or hanging out at the local hookah bar.
Unless by “teens” they mean “18 and 19 year olds”, in which case they need to smoke a heaping hookah of STFU flavored shisha.
Meanwhile, in the LA Unified School District, “student stores” are making money hand over fist selling food to students unhappy with the school cafeteria’s “healthy” options.
Street price for a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos is a buck, by the way.
Almost a year after he was convicted, former Spokane PD officer Karl Thompson has been sentenced for beating Otto Zehm to death. (Previously.)
Nine to eleven years. That doesn’t sound too bad.
So he gets a “downward variance” for being a cop, even thought the crime he committed was in the line of duty and under the color of his authority as a cop, and even though he and his fellow cops tried to cover up his actions? That’s…special.
(Hattip to Balko on this. I missed it earlier in the week.)
By way of Soapboxmom. And boy howdy, we’ve got a real doozy here.
http://www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=14410
Don Allen Holbrook continued to receive payments from EMCID for the defunct Earthquest Institute charity that he helped to run into the ground as its CEO and president. Frank “The Bank” McCrady is also withholding documents showing what he has paid in legal fees for the Earthquest debacle being investigated. Disgusting!
I recommend clicking through to the link. As noted, EMCID is still funding Earthquest, “despite the fact that after eight years, the property developer declared bankruptcy, investigations have been launched by the Montgomery County District Attorney, the Texas Rangers and the FBI, and the voting public tossed out two incumbent board members.”
EMCID has also spent over $300,000 in lawyers in the first nine months of 2012.
The updates just keep coming:
http://www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=14410
http://pvtimes.com/news/from-the-editor-congratulations-newly-minted-public-servants-get-to-work/
Thanks for your support!!!
To be honest, I am slightly butthurt by some of the comments in that second link, since:
That being said, though, I will give the Pahrump Valley Times editor a pass, since this brings to my attention something I was unaware of.
Don Holbrook’s latest scheme (or, at least, one of his latest) apparently involves getting the county to put $63,000, and the city of Pahrump another $63,000, to fund the expansion of a shooting range/training school. It sounds like the idea is similar to ECMID: create a “tax improvement” district, and the funds will come from sales taxes paid by all the people who flock there. Here’s an article from earlier in the year discussing the plan.
But we’re not just talking about any training facility. We’re talking about Front Sight, run by the man Tam refers to as “Four Weapon Combat Master Dr. Ignatius Piazza“. To put it mildly, Dr. Piazza has a colorful reputation in the gun community, complete with several lawsuits, at least two of which involved accusations that Dr. Piazza is a Scientologist. More here.
I haven’t been to Front Sight, so I can’t pass judgment on their training. (Nor do I want to go: if i was going to travel for training, I’d be going to Gunsite.) I don’t have a problem with Dr. Piazza being a Scientologist (if indeed he is one) as long as he doesn’t try to convert me. I do have a problem, though, with trying to get taxpayers to pay for the expansion of his facility, especially when he’s involved with Don Holbrook.
I mean, other than “The Adventures of Accordian Guy in the Twenty-First Century“?
Yes, yes he does.
I ran across this on the Y Combinator Twitter yesterday, and thought I’d give FizzBuzz a shot. I’d estimate it took me just under 30 minutes to get the code you see here, which I believe “works”. Part of that time was taken up with assisting one of my cow orkers with a problem, though. An embarrassingly large chunk of that time was taken up by my having to look up the Perl syntax for “for”, “if”, and the modulo operator. I’m a bit rusty; the last time I wrote substantial Perl code was about a year ago (a Perl script that parses CSV data from a file and imports it into a SQL database).
Anyway, code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
for ($index = 1; $index < 101; $index++)
{
$div_by_3 = 0;
$div_by_5 = 0;
if ($index % 3 == 0) {
$div_by_3 = 1;
}
if ($index % 5 == 0) {
$div_by_5 = 1;
}
if ($div_by_3 == 1 && $div_by_5 == 1 ) {
printf "FizzBuzz\n";
} else {
if ($div_by_3 == 1) {
printf "Fizz\n";
} else {
if ($div_by_5 ==1){
printf "Buzz\n";
} else {
printf "$index\n";
}
}
}
}
As always, when I put stuff like this up, I welcome criticism or comment on how I could have done it better (or, in this case, “right” if I did it wrong). The way I see it, I can’t get any better if I don’t solicit and accept criticism.
(Followup from deVilla here.)
Edited to add: I was going to upload a Python version that I wrote in (about) 20 minutes (I think). I keep planning to sit down and learn Python, but then somebody calls and wants to go riding bikes or whatever…anyway, I couldn’t paste that here and have it come out the way I wanted to, so I’ve uploaded it here. (I had to change the extension from “.py” to “.txt” because WordPress didn’t like “.py”.)
I intended to make note of this earlier in the week, but it got past me:
LAT article about what it’s like sailing on board the tall ship “Bill of Rights”.
I find this worthy of note for two reasons:
(Subject line hattip: probably a lot of things, but this in particular is what I had in mind. I get that song stuck in my head every so often.)
I kind of like Guy Fieri. But I’d note this review whether it was of a Guy Fieri restaurant, or some other random place in NYC. Not since Ninja can I recall a review this vicious in the NYT.
(Also, Jacques Pépin wants you to steam your turkey. I thought that was an Albany expression.)
Jessica Tata: guilty of felony murder.
Why is it so hard to get Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army?
In other words, something that’s not easily solved by posting videos on the Internet.
Karolina Obrycka, the bartender who got the crap beat out of her by a Chicago police officer in 2007, has been awarded $850,000 in damages against both Anthony Abate, the cop who beat her, and the city itself.
Can we have Federal supervision of the Chicago PD now? (Also: LAT coverage.)
In the interest of fairness: various news outlets are reporting that the man who accused Kevin Clash of engaging in underage sex with him has recanted that accusation.
Lawrence sent me a link to coverage from WTOP. The NYPost also has the story.
I don’t feel I have anything to apologize for in my previous coverage. But I wish this scene from “Absence of Malice” was online.
Think of this as sort of like a fruit basket, without the fruit. Or the basket.
This is a headline as it currently appears on the LAT website:
Here is the actual story. Some things that are worth noting:
There are so many things I could say about this next story, but (with one exception) I am going to avoid saying them:
The one exception (and this isn’t snark, just a statement of fact): this was the same thing that destroyed Jeff “Frugal Gourmet” Smith’s career.
Detroit and Washington still have a shot at going 0-82 this NBA season (0-7 and 0-5 respectively).
Yet another election result that amuses us: Cynthia Brim was re-elected to her seat as a judge in the Cook County Circuit Court. Why does this amuse us?
Because Judge Brim is batshit crazy. Really. As in, “can’t be prosecuted because she was legally insane at the time” crazy. Even better:
63.5 percent of the vote, folks. (Hattip on this to Overlawyered.)
This next story pushes a couple of my better hidden hot buttons. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is located in San Francisco; the church is “the oldest black pulpit in the city”. Bethel’s previous minister, who had been there for twenty years, left to take over the First AME church. First AME is kind of a big deal among AME churches: “It became a regular stop for Democratic political candidates over the years, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore and President Obama.” First AME’s minister, Rev. John J. Hunter, was transferred over to Bethel AME.
And why doesn’t Bethel AME want Hunter? Are they just upset at losing their pastor and throwing a temper tantrum?
More:
The LAT also alludes to, but does not detail, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Hunter during his tenure at First AME. Sounds like something more than a tantrum, doesn’t it?
Apparently, coaching the Lakers is not one of those things.
The team is 1-4 so far this season. (And, BTW, Washington and Detroit still have a shot at going 0-82.)
A/V Club obit for Elliott Carter.
NYT obits for Darrell Royal and influential former wine columnist Frank J. Prial.
Another election result that amuses me:
The referendum failed, 53% – 47%.
And another one: voters in San Francisco actually rejected a proposal “that would have taken the first steps toward draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and drastically revamped the way much of the Bay Area gets its water.”
From the Department of Wow: University of Houston cornerback D.J. Hayden is in the hospital. His condition is listed as “critical but stable” according to the HouChron. What happened?
This Statesman “story” is…just…odd.
Edited to add: A little more information on D.J. Hayden and his injury:
More from Dr. Lowe: “This injury has never been seen or reported in association with a football injury and is more associated with high-speed motor vehicle.” Huh? There’s a photo caption: “…a freak injury normally associated with high-speed motorcycle wrecks.”
Dr. Lowe also apparently said that this kind of injury has a “95 percent fatality rate”. I have no problem believing that.
Edited to add: Left out one significant result:
(Hattip: Sebastian.)
Darrell K Royal, former football coach for the University of Texas.
More:
(Subject line reference: the old joke about a football game in heaven, with the punchline “No, that’s God. He just thinks he’s Darrell Royal.” (Also told about Tom Landry and many other prominent figures).)
Obit watch: Elliott Carter, noted contemporary American composer and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for music.
In other news: remember 2 Live Crew? Remember Luther Campbell? Have you ever wondered what he’s up to these days? Answer: coaching high school football.
I kind of wanted to snark on this story, but it actually turns out to be a story of a man trying to redeem himself, help kids, and make his little corner of the world better.