Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category

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Roundup from the police blotter.

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

A Smith County man busted for making his own liquor claims he was inspired by the cable TV series, ”Moonshiners,” authorities said.

Helpfully, the HouChron story includes an embedded commercial for “Moonshiners”.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m a chemist or anything, but the first alcohol that comes off the still is going to be a methane gas,” Stokke said. “You can’t drink it, and it’s probably more flammable than gasoline.”

Huh? Is he perhaps talking about methanol, not methane gas?

In other news: I really haven’t been paying attention to the trial of John Goodman (mostly because he seems to be FARK’s favorite d’bag, so my coverage would be redundant), but I am happy to report that he has been found guilty of vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter. More coverage here. I’m hoping he gets the full 30 years and does every day of that time.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Burn it to the ground and start over. (Part 4)

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

Bad news: Karl F. Thompson Jr. still has not been sentenced for beating Otto Zehm to death.

Good news: It looks like two more officers with the Spokane PD are going to be charged with crimes related to Zehm’s death.

Attorneys representing Officers Sandra McIntyre and Tim Moses both confirmed today that they have entered discussions with federal prosecutors about potential obstruction of justice charges relating to their clients’ testimony during the investigation that led to the Nov. 3 conviction of former Officer Karl F. Thompson Jr.

…

McIntyre testified three times before the grand jury in 2009. She admitted during her testimony at the 2011 trial that she met with an assistant city attorney who suggested that she answer “I don’t recall” to questions about the incident when in fact she did remember some portions of the event.

Question: if McIntyre is being charged with obstruction of justice, aren’t similar charges justified against the city attorney who suggested she lie under oath? Isn’t that, at the very least, subornation of perjury? And can’t you be disbarred for that, in addition to getting hard time in a federal prison?

(Hattip: the Injustice News Feed, by way of TJIC on the Twitter.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Instant karma’s gonna get you…

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

About two months ago, a class action suit was filed against Yassine Enterprises. The company was accused of not paying wages to employees who received tips: they own a long list of clubs in downtown Austin.

Earlier today, the FBI, IRS, and TABC raided the offices of Yassine Enterprises. 11 people involved with the company have been charged with an interesting assortment of federal crimes, including money laundering, cocaine trafficking, and “transferring a firearm knowing it is to be used in a drug trafficking crime”.

To which all I can say is “Wow”. And possibly “don’t f–k with the bartender”. It’ll be interesting to watch these cases play out.

Edited to add: Second day coverage from the Statesman here.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Schadenfreude | 1 Comment »

Stray thoughts.

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

The NYT would like to explain Wickard v. Filburn to you. If you would like to read the court’s decision for yourself, rather than trusting the NYT, you can find it here.

By way of Jimbo: Wednesday’s Denver Post has a review of a restaurant called “Roam”. “So what?” you say. “I don’t live in Denver, and neither do you.” Yes, but it isn’t very often that a newspaper runs a review of a restaurant that closed before the review ran. The section containing the review was printed Monday night; the restaurant closed on Tuesday, and, according to press reports, the closing was nearly as chaotic as the rest of the restaurant’s history.

(Holy cow, there’s a winery called “The Infinite Monkey Theorem“? I want to at least try their wine.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law | 1 Comment »

By the hammer of Goodell…

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

…this is a bad day for the Saints.

This is going to be well covered elsewhere, short version:

  • Coach Sean Payton is suspended for a year without pay.
  • Gregg Williams, the former defensive coordinator who moved over to the Rams in the off-season, is out “indefinitely” without pay.  Goodell will review Williams’ status at the end of the 2012 season
  • General manager Mickey Loomis is out for the first eight games of the season without pay.
  • Joe Vitt, assistant head coach, is out without pay for the first six games.
  • The Saints will lose second round draft picks in 2012 and 2013.
  • The team will be fined $500,000.
  • “The Saints, individuals disciplined are expected to participate in efforts to develop programs that will instruct on:
    — Respect for game and those who participate in it
    — Principles of fair play, safety and sportsmanship
    — Ensure bounties will not be part of football at any level. “

I may have more thoughts on this later.

Edited to add: Now that I have a little more time to write about this:

  • I was expecting a larger team fine, something like $1 million. $500,000 is still twice what the Patriots were fined, though.
  • A year on the bench for Payton seems right. Reports indicate that will cost him $8 million.
  • If Payton gets a year, though, why does Loomis only get eight games? He disobeyed both the NFL and his owner: I think he’s more culpable than Payton, and should have gotten at least a year. (I called for a lifetime suspension initially. And I still do not think that was out of line.)
  • Why second round picks? Why not first round? Or a first in 2012 and a second in 2013?
  • I would have preferred an outright lifetime ban for Williams, but I think it is too early to complain about the “indefinite” suspension. For me, much depends on what the commissioner does with Williams at the end of the season.

Posted in Clippings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 19, 2012.

Monday, March 19th, 2012

The “This American Life” retraction episode went up Friday night. You can download it or read the transcript here.

I listened to the whole thing over the weekend, and frankly I recommend listening rather than (or in addition to) reading the transcript. The transcript does not convey just how Mike Daisey comes across in Ira Glass’s discussion with him:

One thing that bothered me about this episode, though (and both Lawrence and Matthew Baldwin have made this same point).

Ira Glass says, “At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” when they found out that Daisey couldn’t (or wouldn’t) give them contact information for his interpreter.

Glass goes on to say “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”

That’s not good enough. Someone should have been there and asked Glass: “Why didn’t you kill the story at that point? What were your reasons for going on with it? If you felt like it was an important enough story to run with, what were your reasons for going with Daisey, rather than someone like Rob Schmitz or the NYT reporters you spoke with?”

Yankees fan (well, nobody’s perfect) John Gruber has been all over the story since it broke on Friday as well. I’d suggest just going over to Daring Fireball and scrolling down from the top, clicking on whatever Daisey links interest you.

In non-Daisey related news: I gave up on Slate a few months ago. I felt like it had reached the point Salon came to quite a while back (when I gave up on them): saying outrageous and stupid things just to get page views, increasingly dumb writing (“Dear Prudence” in particular seems to have gone nucking futs), and generally not worth the time and effort involved in paying any attention to it.

However, I did see some good word of mouth on one Slate article recently, so I decided to click over. I’m happy that I did, as I can enthusiastically recommend Annie Lowrey’s “Where’s _why?”, a long article that simultaneously covers three things:

  • the culture surrounding the Ruby programming language (with a good explanation of what Ruby and Ruby on Rails are, and why they matter)
  • the author’s attempts to learn programming using Ruby as her first language
  • and the mystery of what happened to “Why the Lucky Stiff” a beloved figure in Ruby culture.

Posted in Apple, Clippings, Geek, Media | Comments Closed

Noted without comment.

Friday, March 16th, 2012

Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, San Diego police say, was caught Thursday night masturbating, vandalizing cars and acting under the influence of alcohol and possibly drugs.

Edited to add: Additional coverage from the LAT.

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

Daisey, Daisey, give me your answer do…

Friday, March 16th, 2012

I wanted to break this out into a separate piece rather than adding updates.

Marketplace’s story on the Apple/Daisey controversy is now up. Long quote follows:

Rob Schmitz: Cathy says you did not talk to workers who were poisoned with hexane.
Mike Daisey: That’s correct.
RS: So you lied about that? That wasn’t what you saw?
MD: I wouldn’t express it that way.
RS: How would you express it?
MD: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip.
Ira Glass: Did you meet workers like that? Or did you just read about the issue?
MD: I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been, and it was a constant conversation among those workers.
IG: So you didn’t meet an actual worker who’d been poisoned by hexane.
MD: That’s correct.

“I met workers in, um, Hong Kong, going to Apple protests who had not been poisoned by hexane but had known people who had been…”

“My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.”

Posted in Apple, Clippings | 2 Comments »

This week in journalism fraud.

Friday, March 16th, 2012

One great story that is just now breaking, and one sad story.

The great story: remember that “This American Life” episode about Apple’s factories in China? Aired back in January, I think? “#454: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory”? (Amazon link provided for informational purposes only; I have removed my affiliate ID.)

This American Life and American Public Media’s Marketplace will reveal that a story first broadcast in January on This American Life contained numerous fabrications. This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

More:

During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.

 “At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”

Excerpts are from the press release attached to the story on Jimbo’s website: the TAL website is currently inaccessible (it looks to me like they’re getting hammered).

Mike Daisey has a statement on his website, which is accessible:

My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.

ETA 3/16 1:53 PM: TAL website seems to be accessible now.

ETA 3/16 2:05 PM: Selected shorts:

The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show.

Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast.

Daisey’s interpreter Cathy also disputes two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey’s story: that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and that a man with a mangled hand was injured at Foxconn making iPads (and that Daisey’s iPad was the first one he ever saw in operation).

The sad story, also by way of Jimbo: You may have seen the first part of this story earlier in the week. I didn’t cover it because it was well linked everywhere. Briefly, editorial editor Bob Caldwell of the Portland Oregonian died over the weekend. After some initial confusion, it came out that he hadn’t been found dead of a heart attack  in his parked car, but had passed away while engaged in a sex act with a 23-year-old woman.

That’s sad, but not the sad part I want to talk about. The initial information (that he’d been found dead in a parked car) was provided by a friend of the family who also worked for the Oregonian. That friend has been fired.

I understand both sides here. From editor Peter Bhatia’s summary of what went wrong:

…while we are used to sources lying to us, it is difficult to swallow when the source is a fellow Oregonian journalist.

But I understand the fired editor’s position, too. In a moment of grief and weakness, she chose to try to shield the family from the pain that would be caused by the circumstances of her friend’s death becoming public. I think she was wrong. I think she shouldn’t have lied. But I also think the paper could have had some compassion and sympathy for the position their editor was placed in: a one or two week unpaid suspension seems more reasonable to me. It may be that I’m a wimp. It may be that I’m not a serious journalist. But I feel a great deal of compassion for the fired editor, even though I think she made a mistake.

Posted in Apple, Clippings, Media | 1 Comment »

Things you may have wondered about. (#3 in a series)

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

What do deep-fried Fruity Pebbles look like?

The HouChron has the answer, in yet another go around of the rodeo food (warning! Slideshow!) slideshow (warning! Slideshow!). The Fruity Pebbles photos are at the very start.

You may also have wondered what kind of person comes up with these ideas. The HouChron also has the answer at that same link, in the form of an interview with Ken Hoffman.

Not answered: how do they taste?

Posted in Clippings, Food, On a stick, Wondering | Comments Closed

A toast to Post.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

Melville Davisson Post, to be specific.

While looking up a related subject, I found this essay by Joseph Bottum which calls him “America’s Greatest Mystery Writer”. I am not sure I would be willing to go that far, but Bottum makes a good case, and I do admire what of Post’s work I’ve been able to find.

When I was a kid, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine would occasionally reprint one of the Uncle Abner stories. Later in life, I found a copy of the University of California collection he mentions and rediscovered Uncle Abner, who “belonged to the church militant, and his God was a war lord.”

I think the Abner stories appeal to me for the same reason Chesterton’s Father Brown stories do; the mixing of religion and reason, and the idea that one can believe in both God and the application of the human mind to solve the great mysteries. Post and Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, and others, to me fit in the great tradition of rationalist Christianity.

I am also particularly struck, and delighted, by the extended passage Bottum quotes (starting just after “The extraordinary passage…”) I, too, was struck by that passage when I read it; it hangs over my desk today, and I re-read it (along with Bolt’s line from Sir Thomas More: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide…?” and a few other select quotes) in times of great moral crisis.

“…whatever I may have to say of him hereafter I want to say this thing of him here, that his bigotry and his vanities were builded on the foundations of a man.” I admire the way he paints that word picture. “He stood up as though he stood alone, with no glance about him to see what other men would do. . . .”

I commend Bottum’s essay to your attention. He did write the “God and the Detectives” essay, which I am still reading and digesting, but which you may also care to read.

Posted in Books, Clippings | Comments Closed

And speaking of drinking…

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

…the NYT on one of my favorite drinks, Irish coffee.

With recipe. Just for the record, here’s Law Dog’s recipe. If you know how to search, you can find at least part of Larry Niven’s “Adrienne and Irish Cofffee” in Google Books, but you really should go buy Playgrounds of the Mind. (I’ve always liked Niven much better as a short story writer and essayist than as a novelist.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Mixology | Comments Closed

Important safety tip. (#11 in a series)

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

This has been covered on FARK, and my angle on it may be more of a legal tip than a safety one.

However.

While I am opposed to drinking and driving, it helps your court case if you can say you drank something reasonable and innocent sounding. “I had a Grasshopper.” Grasshopper. How threatening does that sound? “I had two Sidecars.” Nice, mellow, classic drink. Gentlemen drink Sidecars. Even “I had two Manhattans” or “I had three Negronis” doesn’t sound too bad.

But when the testimony in court is that you ordered eight of something called a “Mind Eraser”, that doesn’t look so good. Just a suggestion. If you plan to get your s–t f–ked up, you should consider a designated driver and something that doesn’t sound threatening. A nice Long Island Iced Tea or eight, perhaps.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Mixology, Safety | 2 Comments »

John Carter, John Carter, Malkovich.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

Actually, no Malkovich.

John Scalzi’s column at filmcritic.com this week is about “studio math”. Specifically, why a movie that cost $250 million to make has to bring in at least $600 million at the box office in order to turn a profit. Much of this was stuff I already knew (the movie studios take most of the first week’s box office gross, declining in subsequent weeks, distribution cuts, gross profit cuts, cocaine cuts, etc.) But I note it here because it is a handy reference for folks not familiar with show business, especially the kids.

Meanwhile, back at the House, I’m sure you’ve all been asking yourself: What does John Carter (the member of Congress from Round Rock) think of “John Carter” (the motion picture)?

He kind of liked it. I guess that’s the one thing they’ve got.

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Very, very carefully.

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

This is a multi-purpose punchline. In addition to “How do porcupines make love?” it also serves as an answer to the question: “How do you steal a three foot tall active beehive?”

Seriously, I have no idea how or why you’d want to steal an active beehive. But let’s watch some Nicholas Cage anyway.

Edited to add: You can get three pounds of bees with a queen for $105 shipped to your doorstep (when these people have them in stock). Other folks have them as low as $90. I realize criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and generally not able to do subtle economic calculations. But still, this seems like a really stupid crime. Perhaps the criminals will try to fence them, and the police can set up a sting operation.

Sorry.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies | Comments Closed

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