Will history blame the Internet, or the bees?
That quote makes it sound like the SFChron no longer produces their own honey. Do I have any readers in the area who can confirm this? Or, alternatively, send me a jar of SFChron honey in return for…something negotiable. Drop me a line. Address is on the contact page.
(Hattip.)
I wanted to highlight this because of the illustration attached to the article:
What the FRACK is this? I don’t think it is a photograph: is it supposed to be an artist’s conception of the new residence? It looks like someone used a fisheye lens to take a photo of a Thomas Kinkade painting.
ESPN reports that the Grambling State football team returned to practice on Monday. (Previously.)
It also looks like the team may be getting some financial help:
Also:
That’s great, and good on the Cytosport folks. (I’ve never used Muscle Milk, but I know people who do.)
I have to wonder, though: how sustainable is this?
And per SI, “In recent years, Grambling’s football program has run a deficit of between $1.2 and $1.8 million.”
In other news, Grambling State fired the online editor of the school newspaper and suspended the opinions section editor.
David Lankster, the online editor, claims his firing is in retaliation for photos he tweeted of the conditions the football team deals with. (Some of those photos are reproduced in the linked article.) The person who fired Lankster claims he did so over concerns about the use of anonymous sources:
The linked article doesn’t go into more detail on those concerns, and the complaint strikes me as odd. Is there material that Lankster published that was not confirmed by other sources? Is there material that Lankster published that turned out to be false? If either of these was actually the case, you’d think it would be mentioned somewhere.
On the other hand, the opinions editor was suspended “for organizing and participating in a ‘State of Emergency’ student rally calling out the school’s perceived flaws including ‘crumbling buildings and the student-teacher ratio.’” She admits to organizing the rally, but says “it grew into a media spectacle beyond her control or simple goals once football players decided to participate.”
It looks bad, especially in light of the Lankster firing, but I’m on the side of the school when it comes to the suspension. You’re supposed to cover the story, not be the story.
(Hattip on this: Jimbo.)
The NFL loser update will return Tuesday. (The Giants play Monday night.)
In the meantime, I wanted to take note of a story that’s been on the FARK sports tab, but is too strange to ignore here.
The Grambling State athletic program, as I like to say, does not have “issues”: they have a lifetime subscription and a complete run of bound volumes. You may recall that the men’s basketball team went 0-28 this past season. You may also recall that the football team lost the first two games of the season, and fired coach Doug Williams.
Things have not gotten better for the football team. They’re now 0-7 and 0-4 in conference. And the players are unhappy. It seems there’s some concern over Williams being fired, and over “poor facility conditions”.
The players are also unhappy about travel policies. Money’s tight, so the team travels by bus.
Grambling was scheduled to play Jackson State tonight. The game is Jackson State’s homecoming game, so it is kind of a big deal for the school (in terms of both spirit and money).
Note the use of the word “was”: the Grambling State players refused to get on the team buses Friday afternoon, and the game has been cancelled.
Yes, you understand that correctly; the football team is in open revolt.
The conference has ruled the game a forfeit, which I guess makes Grambling State 0-8 now. I can’t remember the last time there was a forfeit of this kind in college football; this list at SportsReference.com appears to include games that were retroactively forfeited due to NCAA enforcement actions, and (oddly enough) Wikipedia does not have a “forfeited college football games” entry.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There’s already some detail coming out about the Williams firing that makes the school look bad. And the school is clearly struggling financially: ESPN has a good backgrounder from Tim Keown.
I have a lot of respect for the Grambling players for standing up and saying “We’re not gonna take it anymore”, and I would hate to see them punished for expressing legitimate concerns. At the same time, though, given the university’s financial troubles and athletic struggles, I have to wonder if maybe the best solution is to shut down the athletic program completely. That certainly seems like a better option than Grambling renting itself out as a cupcake opponent or players spending 15 hours on buses.
(To be fair, ESPN says it is only 160 miles to Jackson State. That’s about the distance between Houston and Austin, or roughly three hours travel time. I wonder if the protest would have been more effective if they’d refused to get on the buses for Indy? Then again, 15 hours each way on a bus gives you a lot of time to think. And plan.)
Edited to add: Totally forgot that I wanted to note this bit from the horribly written TampaBay.com article FARK linked:
“…has won a record 14 mythical national championships”? Say what?
Edited to add 2: By way of the FARK discussion thread, here’s a really good article from SI that goes into more detail on Grambling’s issues, including the whole weight room floor issue and the money problems.
…
Yes, that’s correct: the Statesman wants you to pay in order to read what is basically an advertisement for Trader Joe’s.
You don’t have to pay to read their article about Trader Joe’s confirming a North Austin (Arboretum) store, though.
(Does anyone other than myself and Mike the Musicologist remember Krispy Kreme, and how the local news media treated the opening of their first store here like it was the second coming of Christ?)
The Washington Generals? Dude, what are you smoking, and where can I get some?
Thinking about the WP sale some more:
We must do something about the deadly killer trees! (See also.)
(Insert joke about “Empire” here.)
Breaking news: the Washington Post has been sold.
To Jeff Bezos. Yeah, that Jeff Bezos.
For $250 million in cash. First reaction: the WP was only worth that much?
Second reaction: is this part of some grand Amazon content strategy? Well…
Or, to put it another way: reply hazy, ask again later.
Today is Cormac McCarthy’s 80th birthday. Reliable sources tell us that his presents include a giant box of punctuation.
(Hey, I loved No Country For Old Men. I can make that joke.)
A different reliable source just informed us of the death of Helen Thomas, which is confirmed by CNN.
I have previously written about the strange case of Carolyn Barnes, the local lawyer who was accused of shooting at a census worker, sent to the state mental hospital (where she continued to represent at least one client) and was later ruled competent to stand trial.
Ms. Barnes was convicted yesterday of assault with a deadly weapon.
She could be sentenced to up to 20 years in jail, though I have serious doubts that she will be given that much time.
In other news, the Statesman is reporting that Governor Perry is threatening to withhold funding for the “state’s Austin-based ethics-enforcement unit” unless Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg resigns. As you may recall, Ms. Lehmberg was convicted of DWI back in April and sentenced to 45 days in jail.
I apologize that the link stinks. The Statesman‘s new paywall goes into effect today, and I have been unable to find a link to this story elsewhere. (Edited to add: Link? What link? Seriously, I griped about the Statesman link but forgot to actually include it. Here’s a story from the HouChron “Texas Politics” blog that reports the same thing: the HouChron blogger suggests that this is part of an effort to cut off “a criminal investigation into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas”.)
I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the Statesman yet. Paying for digital access would give me a tax write-off for Low Fat Heavy Industries. On the other hand, the cheapest subscription is $9.99 a month. I already subscribe to the NYT and LAT for you, my readers, and I find it hard to justify $10 a month for the Statesman.
I feel sure I’ve written before about the Feds and their effort to shut down the Mongols Motorcycle Club by…seizing their trademarks. Because, of course, not having a logo will deter members of the Mongols from engaging in criminal activity, and they’d never think of something like adopting a new logo, or doing without. After all, how can you make meth without a snazzy logo?
Oddly, though, I can’t find that post. But by way of Reason‘s “Hit and Run”, I have discovered a couple of updates:
So not only did the government not get what they were looking for, they have to pay out a quarter million dollars worth of taxpayer’s money and clean up the garbage.
In other news, I was considering writing an extended rant about the Statesman and their forthcoming paywall. But now I don’t have to: Lawrence has saved me the trouble, in a post with charts and graphs and words and all that good stuff. I commend it to your attention.
Freewheeling Bicycles, official purveyor of bicycles, accessories, and repairs to sportsfirings.com, is closing at the end of May.
This makes me sad. There are other bike shops in Austin: REI in particular isn’t a bad place to go. But the people at Freewheeling were always nice and helpful to me, and the store felt like it had a personality. That’s something lacking at REI, or Bicycle Sport Shop, or pretty much all the other shops I’ve found in Austin.
Al Neuharth, creator of USA Today. USA Today obit.
Headline:
This is not a repeat from two weeks ago.
Today is my birthday. I’m going to be out of pocket most of the day: going to the gun shop, then over to the capitol to take pictures, then on a tour of the UT Tower, and then to dinner. In my absence, consider this an open thread to talk about things you want to talk about: Boston, West, Michael Morton and Ken Anderson, the Astros, the vertical integration of the broiler industry, etc.
(As always, if this is your first time posting, I have to approve your comment. Once you’ve been approved, additional comments should go through without requiring moderation. Comment approval is one blog function I can do fairly easily from my phone, so you should not have to wait too long. Unless I’m driving.)
The LAT just put up a profile of noted gunsmith Terry Tussey.
I’ve heard of Mr. Tussey before. I’ve never had any work done by him, or handled any guns he’s worked on. But he is frequently mentioned in the pages of American Handgunner. I gather that he and the editor of AH are friends.
(I’m not implying that there’s anything wrong with that. Just saying.)
I’m happy to see this kind of thing in the LAT. I’m glad anytime I see gun ownership shown positively in the media.
But there are a couple of things that give me pause.
This comes across as kind of snobbish to me, even within the full context of the article. (Tussey is referring to “two revolvers purchased online” that cost “cost under $400 apiece” and are made of “polymer and metal”. No brand name is given.)
The reference to “plastic guns” also seems odd, given that:
He keeps a loaded 9mm Glock on his workbench and a 9mm Rohrbaugh in his pocket.
And then there’s this:
“can’t see a purpose for assault weapons or high-capacity magazines”, but “is a passionate supporter of the 2nd Amendment”. Uh-huh.
I am hesitant to jump down Mr. Tussey’s throat: it is possible that he was misquoted or misrepresented by the LAT. I’ve used the contact form at his site to ask if this is the case, and will report back if I get any response.
Two points of followup on “The War Within”: