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Gonzaga?

Sunday, March 24th, 2013

What is wrong with you people?

You go in as a #1 seed, and you lose this early to Wichita State?

You’ve cheated me out of my $5 worth of entertainment, and now I have to pay off my bet to Lawrence.

See if I bet on you next year.

Posted in Clippings, Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

Gonzaga!

Sunday, March 17th, 2013

Yep. I took Gonzaga, Lawrence took the rest of the field, $5 straight across, again.

This post is to document our wager.

I have a good feeling about Gonzaga this year.

(I also have a good feeling about the Cubs this year. But we’ll wait until closer to opening day for that.)

Posted in Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

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

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

Right turn, Clyde.

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

One of FARK’s ongoing tropes is the idea that NASCAR is the sport of white male rednecks. So the story of Tia Norfleet should push some buttons: she’s not just a woman, but she’s the first African-Amercian woman to race in NASCAR, or so she says on her website.

In speaking engagements with students and in news media interviews, Norfleet has for several years portrayed herself as an accomplished driver in the sport. She has sought sponsorships and has a PayPal account on her Web site, which includes articles and videos about her achievements.

Her website also says that she plans to run a “full schedule” in the NASCAR Nationwide series, “one rung below the top-tier Sprint Cup series”. At least, that’s what the NYT says: I can’t find this claim on her actual website. She does have a schedule, but the schedule appears to be just a list of NASCAR races this year, with links going back to the race pages on NASCAR.com. She does not appear in the results for the Dollar General 200, or the DRIVE4COPD 300. I am unable to find any mention of Tia Norfleet on the NASCAR Nationwide drivers page.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

But Norfleet is not licensed to compete at that level [the Nationwide series level – DB]. In fact, the only sanctioned race that Norfleet has entered, according to the sport’s officials, was a low-level event last year at the Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Va., where she completed one lap before driving onto pit road and parking her racecar.

More:

For the past four years, Norfleet has purchased a license to race at the lowest level of stock-car racing. There is no vetting process for such a license; individual racetracks must approve drivers for competition.
To move up to a higher level of competition — a regional touring series like the K&N Pro Series East or the K&N Pro Series West — a driver must earn approval from Nascar. Norfleet has not done that yet.

And more:

Norfleet had indicated that she planned to race in an Arca event at Daytona International Speedway last month. But she had not completed an application to race for Arca; had not bought an Arca license; and had not participated in a test at Daytona in December, which was required to race there.

In addition, Ms. Norfleet may have a bit of a criminal record for assault and “crossing a guard line at a jail with contraband and possession of marijuana“. That’s not necessarily a disqualifying factor, in my humble opinion: I’d certainly be willing to give someone a shot at redemption in NASCAR with that kind of record. But when you put that together with the other pieces, it raises alarm bells.

Noted without comment:

…publications and Web sites like The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and ESPN have heralded her ascent.

Edited to add: Ms. Norfleet has posted an Instagram photo purporting to prove she does have a license. I am not a NASCAR expert, but there are three things I wonder about:

  1. Is there anyone out there who has seen an actual NASCAR license and can vouch for the fact that the photo looks correct? There’s no driver picture on it. I’ve never seen a NASCAR license and Google Image Search isn’t helpful.
  2. If I am reading it right, the license is for the “Whelen All-American” series, which I am not familiar with, but which looks (from NASCAR’s website) to be a step or two down from the K&N Pro Series (which, in turn, is below the Nationwide series). I wonder if this is one of those series where you can purchase a license from an individual racetrack.
  3. Ms. Norfleet does not show up in the top 500 drivers in that series through last September.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Media, Sports | Comments Closed

The Spiders from Cleveland.

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

By way of Borepatch, I found this rather amusing post on the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

For those who don’t follow baseball history (or loser history) the Spiders were a major league baseball team. But you would have been hard pressed to tell in 1899: the team went 20-134, the worst record ever in baseball history. (That’s a .130 winning percentage.)

They finished 84 games out of first place. They lost 40 of their last 41 games.

(I would actually kind of like one of the hats, but I’m not sure it is a $49 hat. And the J. Thomas Hetrick book MISFITS! Baseball’s Worst Ever Team is not just available from Amazon, but actually has a Kindle edition.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Loser, Spiders, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update.

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

With the exception of my yearly $5 bet with Lawrence on Gonzaga, I don’t give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about college basketball.

However, the remarkable achievement of the Grambling men’s basketball team must be noted here: “…at 0-27, they became the only men’s basketball team in Division I to finish the regular season without a victory.”

How bad is Grambling?

Nineteen of the Tigers’ 27 losses came by 20 points or more. They have not lost a game by less than 10…
…They rate last among 345 Division I teams in offense, the only one with an average below 50 points a game (49.6), and 340th in defense, having allowed 77 points a game. They struggle to score when the clock is running, shooting a 342nd-best 36.3 percent, and when it is stopped, hitting a 343rd-best 58.5 percent of their free throws. Shots are hardly plentiful to begin with; they have been outrebounded by 7.2 a game, making the Tigers better than only three teams in the country.

To be fair, Grambling has been hit hard by NCAA penalties tied to their low academic progress rate. Grambling also has funding issues, which have lead the team to adopt the role of “cupcake opponent” for hire:

Grambling played just nine home games, all against other teams from the Southwestern Athletic Conference. In one arduous span, Grambling lost at Houston, Texas Tech, Oregon State, Auburn and Southern Mississippi by an average of 41 points.

And this is amusing:

Time has not run out on the Tigers’ season. They play Alabama A&M again Wednesday in the conference tournament, part of a seven-team field shrunk by the absence of other academic progress underperformers and a rules violator.

At least, it’s amusing to Lawrence and I and anyone else who remembers the “Charlie Tuna Oceanographic University” series of strips from “Tank McNamara”. (CTOU ended up playing in the Rose Bowl because every other team in the conference had been sanctioned by the NCAA.)

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 4, 2013.

Monday, March 4th, 2013

At various times over the last year, Olbermann and his representatives have expressed interest in his return to the employer that made him famous: ESPN.

The drop in deaths from firearms and in slayings overall — over the past two decades, homicide declined by 80 percent in the District and overall crime fell by 75 percent in New York City — has come even as the economy has tanked, the number of guns owned by Americans has soared and the number of young people in the prime crime demographic has peaked.

Well, you don’t say. More guns. Less crime. And the WP admits it. Interesting.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 28, 2013.

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Continuing our N.C.A.A. coverage:

In the past month, the N.C.A.A. and its president, Mark Emmert, have been sued, criticized and ridiculed — and more than usual. They were embarrassed by admitted mistakes in a high-profile investigation. Their critics, growing louder and in number, included a governor, state senators, lawyers, academics and university presidents.

Meanwhile, Joel Bauman is a wrestler on scholarship at the University of Minnesota. He’s also a musician, and wants to inspire people through his music.

His most recent song video, “Ones in the Sky,” which has a positive message and urges people to pursue their dreams, has drawn more than 47,000 hits on YouTube. It can also be downloaded for 99 cents on iTunes.

So?

Because Bauman performed under his own name and identified himself as a Minnesota wrestler, the N.C.A.A. ruled him ineligible for the remainder of the season. J. T. Bruett, Minnesota’s compliance director, said Bauman violated an N.C.A.A. bylaw prohibiting student-athletes from using their name, image or status as an athlete to promote the sale of a commercial product.

(I wonder: if he wasn’t selling the video on iTunes, would the N.C.A.A. still have an issue?)

In other news: your dog wants steak. Your dog does not want rodent poison. Your dog does not want people feeding it rodent poison, especially if it is in competition at Westminster.

A necropsy was not performed on Cruz, 3, who died in Lakewood, Colo., where he was competing in another show. The cause of death remains unclear, but he had symptoms that strongly resembled those of dogs that had ingested rodent poison, the veterinarian who treated him said. She said she felt it was unlikely that Cruz had been deliberately poisoned.

(It strikes me as odd that a necropsy wasn’t done. “[Lynette] Blue [one of the owners] declined for Cruz to have a necropsy because she was confident that he swallowed poison, she said.” But wouldn’t it be better to have a necropsy done and to be sure, as well as having evidence for a possible criminal case?)

(Gee, wouldn’t this make a good episode of “Law and Order”, if that show was still on the air.)

Obit watch: Van Cliburn. LAT account of his 1994 appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. A/V Club.

Dale Robertson. No A/V Club obit yet.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 20, 2013.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

We must ban the deadly killer backboards!

Former Texas basketball player Gary Johnson was in stable condition Wednesday morning after undergoing surgery to repair a fractured skull he suffered during a game in Israel, his friend and marketing representative said.

I don’t have much to offer as a Bell trial update. I am assuming the court took Monday off, and there doesn’t seem to have been any reported activity on Tuesday. The LAT does have a story datelined today, but it is just a summary of the past week of testimony, focusing on the whole “it was all Rizzo!” defense strategy.

Obit watch: Donald Richie, “prominent American critic and writer on Japan who helped introduce much of the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema in 1959”. Among Richie’s works was The Films of Akira Kurosawa, a book I recommend to anyone interested in Kurosawa’s films.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 19, 2013.

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

Well, isn’t this special. Julie Roe Lach, the NCAA’s chief enforcement officer, has been fired. You may remember Ms. Lach from such hits as “my people totally f–ked up the Miami investigation”.

Is Sherlock Holmes in the public domain? Or is he under copyright?

…according to a civil complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Illinois by a leading Holmes scholar, many licensing fees paid to the Arthur Conan Doyle estate have been unnecessary, since the main characters and elements of their story derived from materials published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law.

The scholar in question is Leslie S. Klinger, the man behind the recent Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Klinger and the mystery writer Laurie R. King are planning a collection of “Holmes-related” stories by various authors, but the Conan Doyle estate is demanding a licensing fee. Klinger and King did a previous collection of Holmes-related stories in 2011, and paid a $5,000 licensing fee.

The complaint asks that the court make a declaratory judgment establishing that the basic “Sherlock Holmes story elements” are in the public domain, a point that some have previously argued, if not in court.

What can you say about the only college Greco-Roman wrestling program in the country? What are they going to do if wrestling is no longer an Olympic sport? I don’t know, and I wasn’t going to say anything until I read this:

After losing its federal funding last year, the program relies on USA Wrestling and the university for financial support.

Wait. The Federal Government was funding a wrestling program? On the God-forsaken Upper Peninsula of Michigan?

Hermann always has recruits visit the campus during the summer, which he acknowledges is a bit of subterfuge. When they arrive as freshmen, just as the cold winds are beginning to blow, Hermann instructs their parents to wait in the parking lot for a few minute
“I’ve actually had recruits turn around and go back home the same day,” he said.

Competition tractor restoration. No snark here: I think this is nifty. (And, really, it isn’t any different than car shows, is it? Indeed, thinking about it some more, this might also be worth noting as an example of how the mass media is out of touch with the rest of the country.)

In addition to the Delo, which is sponsored by Chevron’s brand of oil and lubricants and is considered a Super Bowl of tractor restoration, there’s also a tractor restoration Web series (“Tractor Fanatic,” with episodes available in a two-DVD set) and Midwest tractor shows that draw thousands of fans each summer.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 12, 2013.

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

This Statesman story is notable because it avoids answering the key question: how does it smell?

Followup on the Tesla story: Elon Musk claims that the story is fake, and that the vehicle logs show something different than the NYT writer claims. The NYT vigorously denies this claim. Summary of the back and forth, with links, at Jimbo’s site.

The International Olympic Committee has decided to keep modern pentathlon in the 2020 Olympics. This makes me happy, as I have a fondness for modern pentathlon, the sport George S. Patton competed in. It strikes me as being a true test of all-around athleticism; the sort of sport true gentlemen compete in.

But wait, there’s more to the story: the IOC is keeping modern pentathlon…and dropping wrestling as a “core sport”. Yes, wrestling, a sport that was part of the first modern Olympics in 1896, and one that dates back to the ancient Greeks. I’m not a big wrestling fan, but this decision seems strange to me. Especially since the 2020 Olympics are also keeping taekwondo and field hockey.

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history, continued:

Since arriving in Los Angeles from Japan in 1962, the Buddhist teacher Joshu Sasaki, who is 105 years old, has taught thousands of Americans at his two Zen centers in the area and one in New Mexico. He has influenced thousands more enlightenment seekers through a chain of some 30 affiliated Zen centers from the Puget Sound to Princeton to Berlin. And he is known as a Buddhist teacher of Leonard Cohen, the poet and songwriter.

Sounds like a great guy, right? 105 years old, charismatic teacher, hangs with Leonard Cohen?

Mr. Sasaki has also, according to an investigation by an independent council of Buddhist leaders, released in January, groped and sexually harassed female students for decades, taking advantage of their loyalty to a famously charismatic roshi, or master.

More:

When the report was posted to SweepingZen, Mr. Sasaki’s senior priests wrote in a post that their group “has struggled with our teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s sexual misconduct for a significant portion of his career in the United States” — their first such admission.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Law, Sports, Zen | 1 Comment »

TMQ Watch: February 5, 2013.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

Today’s the last TMQ of the season!
Hurrah, hurrah!
No more “cosmic thoughts”!
Hurrah, hurrah!
The readers will cheer and the blogger will shout!
And we’ll all feel happy after the last TMQ of the year…

(more…)

Posted in Books, Bridges, Clippings, Geek, NFL, Roads, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 1, 2013.

Friday, February 1st, 2013

Nobody needs a high-capacity assault snowmobile. Actually, I’m not even sure the general public should be allowed snowmobiles; perhaps we need to limit those to the police and military, people who have had special snowmobile training.

This is intended to enrage you:

At the 11th hour of its deadline to do so, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration on Thursday asked a judge to allow it to withdraw from a federal consent decree aimed at implementing sweeping reforms in the New Orleans Police Department.

The request is based on three factors:

  1. The consent decree “failed to disclose costs to fix Orleans Parish Prison until after the NOPD consent decree was executed”.
  2. Former prosecutor Sal Perricone and the NOLA.com comments scandal.
  3. There are questions about whether the consent decree’s provisions regulating secondary employment for police officers are compliant with federal labor law.

Previously. I am still unable to find an execution date for Antoinette Frank.

Over the past several weeks, dozens of other sheriffs from across the country have reacted with similar public opposition to Mr. Obama’s call for stiffer gun laws, releasing a deluge of letters, position papers and statements laying out their arguments in stark terms. Their jurisdictions largely include rural areas, and stand in sharp contrast to those of urban police chiefs, who have historically supported tougher gun regulations.

“C’est un Nagra. C’est suisse, et tres, tres precis.” (I’m surprised that quote, or the English translation, isn’t on the IMDB page for “Diva”.)

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Nine current and former Philadelphia Traffic Court judges were charged with conspiracy and fraud Thursday, capping a three-year FBI probe into what authorities said was rampant ticket-fixing and pervasive corruption on the bench.

The judges are being accused of pretty much what you’d expect: taking bribes to fix tickets.

According to the indictment, [Fortunato] Perri [one of the indicted judges – DB] got free landscaping and a patio for assisting one unnamed contractor with “dozens of Traffic Court citations.” He also is accused of accepting free auto services, towing, and a load of shrimp and crab cakes from Alfano, whose company, Century Motors, ran a towing service.

You know, I like shrimp. I like crab cakes. I wouldn’t go to prison for them, though.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Obits, Rage, Sarcasm, Schadenfreude, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: January 29, 2013.

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

Ah. The week between the championship games and the Superb Owl. Also known as “the silly week”, in which people look for things to fill space. And TMQ is no exception. This week’s column after the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Clippings, NFL, Safety, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

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