Archive for November, 2010

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Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone!

Friday, November 5th, 2010

When you’re out and about tonight, remember to drink a toast to Guy Fawkes, the only man ever to enter the Houses of Parliament with honorable intentions.

Also remember: if your gunpowder gets damp, don’t stick it in front of a fire to dry out.

Side note: Since I’ve been hammering on the Bell thing, I did want to link to this LAT article: basically, California Attorney General (soon to be Governor) Jerry Brown may have exceeded his authority by suing for the repayment of salaries and surrender of future pension money. Note that this just applies to the civil lawsuit: the criminal cases against Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and the others are proceeding.

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

Obit watch.

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

“Undercovers“.

Sparky Anderson. I was going back and forth about blogging this; on one hand, my feelings about baseball are well known. On the other hand, well, he was prominent, and someone did email me the obit…

In the end, though, it came down to this: I found video of Sparky’s guest appearance on “WKRP In Cincinnati”. (Hattip: FARK. You’ll have to scroll down close to the bottom of the page to see the video.)

Posted in Clippings, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: November 4, 2010.

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Remember the Vietnam War? It was in all the papers. Anyway, the LAT has an interesting article about the POW bracelets that were popular at the time. Oddly enough, this came up in a recent family discussion…

So let’s see. People living in illegal lofts in NYC get a law passed in an attempt to make their lofts legal, and, in the process, bring those lofts under the same laws regulating other residential housing in NYC (including “rent stabliziation”). Loft owners respond as you might expect. Tenants are outraged. Film at 11.

Speaking of outrage, I usually don’t join in with Internet lynch mobs, but this…this train wreck is just too good to pass up. I’m reminded of something Harlan Ellison once said. Loosely paraphrased: arrogance you can work around. Stupidity you can deal with. But arrogant stupidity? There’s no cure for that.

Edited to add: Oh, yes. I knew there was something else I wanted to mention: this Slate review of The Anthology of Rap, in which the reviewer complains that the book is full of transcription errors. Transcribing rap lyrics is hard? You don’t say.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Loser, Music | 3 Comments »

Notes from the police blotter.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Susan Wright got her sentence reduced from 25 years to 20. Ms. Wright was convicted of tying her husband to a bed and stabbing him. Stabbing him 193 times, that is.

Wright got a second chance at the punishment phase because of ineffective assistance of counsel in her trial.

This was actually a somewhat sensational trial; during the trial,

then-prosecutor Kelly Siegler tied another prosecutor to the bloodied bed in the courtroom, climbed on him and acted out the stabbing.

Mostly I wanted to blog this because of Lawrence’s comment: “That’s five days off for every stab wound”.

In other news, who knew that being a fake ICE agent was so financially rewarding? I certainly didn’t.

He wore combat boots, a thigh holster, and a shirt and hat bearing the letters ICE, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He used a different car, one that looked like a police cruiser.

Sounds like a mall somewhere is missing an idiot a ninja.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: November 2, 2010.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Somebody asked me last week, “Why do you do this?”

“This” meaning the TMQ Watch, not the Safety Dance:

It isn’t an unfair question. As I explained in the very first TMQ Watch,

Sometimes, Easterbrook does good work; he spent much of last season discussing the NFL’s response to head trauma among pro athletes, and I felt he was right on target. Sometimes, he uses his column to argue for things like increased Federal vehicle mileage requirements, and I think someone needs to respond to those arguments. Sometimes, he uses his column to go off on various SF TV shows for their lack of plausibility. And sometimes, Easterbrook just goes completely off the damn rails.

I realize that may not be the best possible explanation, but look at it this way: I haven’t found anyone else who’s doing responses to TMQ, and the comments section on ESPN.com almost certainly inspired an XKCD comic. Somebody has to do it; why not me? My regular readers who don’t care about sports, or Easterbrook’s sometimes eccentric beliefs, can skip over these entries. For my irregular readers, I recommend Ex-Lax; Dr. Pepper and, believe it or not, Cherry Coke Zero are also helpful.

Shall we begin?

(more…)

Posted in Neuroscience, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 1 Comment »

Can you say, “shakedown”?

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

For at least a decade, officials in Bell arbitrarily required some businesses to make payments to the city totaling tens of thousands of dollars annually, in at least one case threatening a business owner with closure if he failed to comply, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times.

The more I read about the city of Bell, the more I wonder. It seems clear that they weren’t just corrupt, but blatantly so. How did this go on for as long as it did?

Edited to add: I missed this. The Bell city council met last night. This is significant, since the council failed to make a quorum at their last meeting:

one council member resigned, another failed to make bail and two called in sick

And what was the primary piece of business at last night’s meeting?

When the council finally was able to get to the agenda, the members present unanimously agreed to accept the recall petition signatures and to hold a recall election in conjunction with the regular election on March 8, 2011. At that time, voters will be asked if Hernandez and Council members Artiga, Jacobo and Mirabal should be removed from office.

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas!

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

Note to myself.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

You know, I really, really need to rent (or buy) This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Overkill?

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

There’s a breaking news story on the northwest side of Austin: apparently, two people were killed in a domestic disturbance, and responding police officers killed a third person. (Edited to add: The Statesman is now reporting only one person and the alleged gunman are dead.)

I’m commenting on this because I had to drive  Loop 1 south to get to work this morning: I have never seen this many cop cars in one place, not even in the parking lot of a police station. I swear I saw a dozen police cars parked, nose to nose, on the Parmer Lane exit ramp, and those weren’t the only cars around. There were cars and crime scene tape all the way down to the Baskin Robbins in the shopping center at the Mopac feeder/Parmer Lane corner. Google maps and my eyeball estimate the distance from the off-ramp to there as about 1/2 mile.

(Edited to add 2: From what the Statesman is reporting now, it looks like the APD capped the guy in the parking lot of the Jaguar dealership, which is located right next to that shopping center.)

Combine this with the unfortunate incident on Saturday, where the APD felt compelled to block off two major highways for the better part of a day (not that I’m bitter or anything, just because I was caught up in that mess) and I have to wonder: do Austin police have enough to do?

Posted in Clippings, Hysteria, Law | Comments Closed

“Special delivery. A bomb. Were you expecting one?”

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong: guilty.

You may remember her for such roles as the bizarre pizza delivery bank robbery/bomb plot in Pennsylvania.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Law | Comments Closed

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