–Judge Learned Hand, Speech to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, October 24, 1952.
Oddly enough, that quote popped up on this morning’s “Perry Mason” episode.
I’m thinking, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick a favorite judge, it would be Learned Hand. I feel like I should apologize to Judge Willett for that, but I also have a feeling that if he heard me say that, he’d agree Learned Hand is a good choice.
Shot:
Blue Bell releases two holiday flavors: Christmas Cookies and Peppermint
Chaser:
The former president of Blue Bell Creameries has been charged with wire fraud for allegedly trying to cover up a 2015 listeria outbreak linked to the company’s ice cream that killed three people in Kansas and sickened several others, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.
A federal grand jury in Austin returned a seven-count indictment Tuesday charging Paul Kruse with six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to a Justice Department statement.
(I like my Blue Bell. But they sure burned through a lot of goodwill with the whole listeria thing.)
For that reason, I don’t want to say this is the stupidest thing I’ve seen this year, as I’m sure that if I apply myself, I can come up with stupider things. Also, if I do say it is the stupidest thing I’ve seen this year, Lawrence, Mike the Musicologist, or both will provide me with at least 10 stupider things.
That said, I still think this is pretty stupid.
“Mean Girls” themed toaster strudel. Yes, I’ve never seen “Mean Girls”, yes, I do get the fact that it is a reference, but themed pastry for a 16 year old movie? Here’s an idea: an all-black toaster pastry with slightly off-white icing that you can use to draw Stonehenge.
The first two panels of today’s “Dinosaur Comics”. Having extensively studied listened to the first 112 or so episodes of “The History Of Rome”, I am confident in stating that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire began when the Empire proscribed setting off fireworks whenever you felt like it.
All of this Babylon Bee op-ed. (Hattip: MtM.) Yes, I am aware that they are a satire site, but everything in that piece is correct: everything did start going downhill when men stopped wearing hats.
“The best thing about kids’ soccer being canceled this year”. Although I quibble slightly with this: the best thing about kids soccer being cancelled isn’t the renewed socialization, it is the fact that kids aren’t playing soccer.
Apropos of nothing in particular:
“If you were against the New Deal and its wholesale buying of pauper votes, then you were against Christian charity. If you were against the gross injustices and dishonesties of the Wagner Labor Act, then you were against labor. If you were against packing the Supreme Court, then you were in favor of letting Wall Street do it. If you are against using Dr. Quack’s cancer salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die. If you are against Holy Church, or Christian Science, then you are against god. It is an old, old argument.”
–H.L. Mencken
(Apologies to the tiger, the Bronx Zoo, and William Blake.)
Every now and then, I see a story in one of the papers and think to myself, “Dick Wolf’s going to get an episode of ‘Law and Order: Kinky Sex Crimes’ out of this one.”
Today is the first time I’ve ever thought “Dick Wolf’s going to get an entire season of ‘L&O:KSC’ out of this story.”
With the Preakness Stakes running this weekend, I got to wondering:
The iconic cocktail of the Kentucky Derby is a mint julep, right? What’s the iconic cocktail of the Preakness? And the Belmont?
Since the Preakness is run in Baltimore (for now) I would have expected the iconic cocktail to be heroin. Or a 40 in a brown paper bag.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate information, I may not have been too far off. Until 2009, the race was “bring your own booze”, “formerly including kegs of beer but in the 2000s restricted to all the beer cans a person could carry in a cooler.” After 2009, something called “InfieldFest” was established, where you could buy a beer mug with unlimited refills.
But there is an official cocktail: the Black-Eyed Susan, “made with vodka, St-Germain liqueur and pineapple, lime and orange juices.” Here’s a 2018 article from Newsweek that calls for “one part bourbon, one part vodka, one part peach schnapps, two parts orange juice and two parts sour mix”, shaken with ice and served over crushed ice “with an orange wedge and cherries for garnish”. Newsweek also links to recipes from “US Racing” and the Washington Post if you want to descend down that rabbit hole.
And the Belmont Stakes? Recent history is troubled. It appears that up until 1997, the official drink was something called the “White Carnation“. In 1997, the official drink changed to the “Belmont Breeze“. That, in turn, got replaced by the “Belmont Jewel” in 2011, which at least has the virtue of simplicity.
Tragically, I have plans for Saturday, so I can’t drink my way through the Preakness. But my readers are welcome to, if they wish. Just don’t drink and race: your horse might hit a bump and spill your drink.
Lawrence stated the other night that you can Google DuckDuckGo “Florida Man” and any combination of words and almost be guaranteed you’ll get some results back.
Here is a perfect example of that theory:
Florida man arrested after aggressively eating handfuls of pasta
No, you are not having a stroke. Yes, that is an actual headline, though the gentleman in question was actually arrested for (quel frommage!) being drunk and disorderly in public and resisting arrest. To the best of my knowledge, the eating of pasta – even in an aggressive fashion – is not an actual crime in Florida. Yet.
In other news of the weird:
Man in monkey mask stole mail from Southwest Austin apartments, police say
Moral of this story: don’t mess with the postal inspectors. They got his fingerprints off light bulbs, and…
“The Man in the Monkey Mask” was also one of Dumas’s less successful works.
Autopsy: Man died of meth overdose before being eaten by bear at national park
Drugs are bad, kids. Mm’kay?
Throwaway post instead of content. My five favorite Christmas songs:
The second most amusing thing I read yesterday:
“less than five seconds”. As a friend of mine put it, that’s “Oops, I clicked on the wrong link. (close)”
(If that’s second, what was the most amusing thing? The MLB RICO story, of course.)
Southwest Airlines is having a bad day.
Crying, screaming, vomiting, and texting? Sounds like every Southwest flight I’ve ever been on.
This, on the other hand, sounds more serious: an uncontained engine failure that sent shrapnel into the aircraft and possibly into the passenger cabin? I thought post-Sioux City the FAA had gotten a lot harder on manufacturers about that sort of thing. RoadRich, care to comment?
Edited to add: reports are now stating that at least one person is dead.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
–C.S. Lewis
Typically a retailer may return unsold merchandise to the manufacturer. But in this case, Dick’s Sporting Goods has decided to destroy them.
“We are in the process of destroying all firearms and accessories that are no longer for sale as a result of our February 28th policy change,” a spokeswoman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We are destroying the firearms in accordance with federal guidelines and regulations.”
A few points:
1. Why does Dick’s still have modern sporting rifles in stock, five years after they announced they were going to stop selling them?
(That actually has an answer: Dick’s apparently fudged the truth, and has been selling modern sporting rifles at their “specialty Field and Stream stores”.)
2. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I would be seriously peeved at the management for destroying inventory of a perfectly legal product to make a political point.
3. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I’d also be seeking a sweeping change of management right about now.
Here are four of them: