Archive for February, 2011
Hey! I resemble that remark!
Friday, February 11th, 2011This is NEWS?
Friday, February 11th, 2011It’s 7:15 a.m. at the Verizon store in Burbank, and tears are welling in Chelsea Northrop’s eyes.
Perhaps I should have sent my story to the LAT.
This is just what we needed.
Friday, February 11th, 2011CSM headline: “Scientists discover how to make squids go completely berserk“.
We still have no cure for cancer, or ALS, but we’ve figured out how to drive (some) cephalopods crazy. Go science. I’m sure this will come in handy next time the SyFy channel wants to make a movie.
To be honest, I’m more than a little skeptical about this article. I’m hoping someone with a stronger biology background (like LabRat) picks up on this.
(Hattip: Dinosaur Comics, the go-to comic for biological news.)
Top Gehry.
Friday, February 11th, 2011I missed this one until Tam linked to it (with her usual dose of snark):
NYT architecture critic Nicolai Ourossoff reviews 8 Spruce Street, a new residential tower designed by WCD’s favorite living architect, Frank Gehry.
Speaking of Gehry, I can buy Frank Lloyd Wright Legos
One for the Ayoob Files?
Friday, February 11th, 2011This story is worth keeping an eye on, especially since it represents a weird intersection on the Venn diagram between the jihad watch and gun crankery.
In brief, Raymond Davis is an employee with the U.S Embassy in Lahore. Davis was out driving around when (he claims) two men on motorcycles tried to rob him. Davis shot them both, and claims self-defense. Pakistani prosecutors claim that Davis killed the two men in “cold blood” and are pressing murder charges against Davis.
More:
And:
CIA, maybe? That would explain why he was carrying a pistol. It would also lead me to give more credence to his robbery defense; somehow I doubt a CIA employee would blow his cover and blow away people in the street unless he had a genuine fear for his life. (This is where you all can accuse me of being naive, which is probably true.)
The bitter, bitten.
Friday, February 11th, 2011There’s a guy in Pflugerville who leases out food trucks to independent operators. He had some issues with the way the City of Austin regulated food trucks, and started lobbying for stricter rules “to address health, safety and environmental concerns”. Ultimately, the City Council did make some changes to the law.
Can you guess what’s coming?
More:
For Cthluhu’s sake, why?
Thursday, February 10th, 2011As much as I like LaRue Tactical and the 10/22, this is one product I won’t be purchasing.
(Hattip: Say Uncle.)
(Edited to add: Video of the product in action here. Thanks to our friend James.)
Mexican Gun Ducks!
Thursday, February 10th, 2011I generally don’t read Stratfor articles unless someone points me to them. Nothing against Stratfor; it’s just a matter of limited time, and the sort of geopolitics Stratfor usually covers being more along the lines of other bloggers.
However, Snowflakes In Hell has a link to a solid article on the Mexican gun issue.
Interesting fact:
I’m not worried.
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Interesting article in the NYT about the state of the Houston Grand Opera, focusing in particular on their recent productions of “Dead Man Walking” and “Lucia di Lammermoor”.
Good to know.
Obit watch: February 10, 2011.
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Emory Bellard, former Texas, Texas A&M, and Spring Westfield football coach.
There’s nothing wrong with breast cancer awareness, but where are the colored mugs and other tchotkes for ALS?
Impressive.
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Actual HouChron headline:
Actual text of article:
I see the Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification is still in use.
Followup roundup for February 9, 2011.
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Staff Sergeant and Medal of Honor recipient Sal Giunta is leaving the military when his current tour ends in mid-June.
You know, if I ran a public (or private) university somewhere, I’d come up with the money to offer Sgt. Giunta a full free ride for four years. Maybe he’d be willing to work part-time, perhaps as a mentor to younger students who could use some help?
The NYT reports on the controversy over early “Spider-Man” reviews.
Lucky J’s Chicken and Waffles has opened their sit-down restaurant. Until I visited their website, I had no idea how tough these guys have had it. I knew about the trailer theft, of course, but the death of a child, divorce, and reconstructive hand surgery? This guy sounds like Austin’s own version of Job. I’m going to try Lucky J’s this weekend; not because of the suffering, but because I like the idea, and because it’s sort of on my usual weekend path. (Man does not live by Torchy’s Tacos alone. Though I have to admit, the new location on Burnet Road is much nicer than some of the others I’ve been to.) Full report to follow.
The LAT would like for you to know that cockfighting is bad, m’kay? And not just because people sometimes get stabbed to death by roosters with blades.
Obit watch: February 9, 2011.
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, has passed away.
I came in right at the end of the DEC era, and never really had a chance to work on a PDP-anything, a VAX, or a DEC-XX. (There was, at one point, a scheme to purchase a used PDP-8, but nothing ever came of that.)
I still smile, though, whenever I see a reference to one of those machines (or, for that matter, one of those machines in person at DEFCON).
In honor of the late Mr. Olsen, here’s a link to SIMH, which will let you emulate much of the DEC line.
Today’s bulletin from the Department of WTF? (#2 in a series)
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011If you want a pretty constant diet of WTF moments, the best thing you could do is subscribe to The Agitator‘s RSS feed. Be warned, though, that Balko’s collection of “WTF” moments is also likely to lead to an increase in your blood pressure.
Sometimes, something just jumps out at me from his site that goes beyond the usual “WTF” moments. This story is one of those moments.
Short summary: Barney Brown was arrested at the age of 14, tried in juvenile court for a rape and robbery, and acquitted. But that’s not the “WTF?” part. The prosecutor put him on trial again for the same crimes as an adult. He was convicted, and sent to prison for life.
This took place in 1969. Barney Brown served 38 years.
The fact that one trial took place in juvenile court and the second in adult court doesn’t matter. There is clearly settled case law on this; once Barney Brown was acquitted in juvenile court, jeopardy protections applied. The prosecutor had no authority, no right, no legal ground, and no business trying Barney Brown again in an adult court.
This is the kind of egregious misconduct by a prosecutor that, I believe, rises to a standard where the shield of “sovereign immunity” can, and should, be pierced. In a just world, that prosecutor (if he is still alive) would be in prison right now, and his assets would be signed over to Barney Brown.
TMQ watch: February 8, 2011.
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011Mystery! Suspense! Pathos! None of those are present in this week’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback“, but that doesn’t stop us from blogging it anyway. After the jump…
Spider-Man, Spider-Man…
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011Oh, look! The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are upset that reviewers reviewed the show when it was still in infinite preview mode!
If you’ll excuse me a second, I’m going out and purchasing tiny violin futures.
And I’d argue that part of being a “professional” is not giving the people you cover the power to jerk you around that Feldman and other critics (including John Simon) seemingly want the “Spider-Man” producers to have.
Meanwhile, Patrick Healy has a more comprehensive roundup of reviews.
(Hattip to Jimbo for both of these.)
Random notes: February 8, 2011.
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011There are a couple of interesting things in the NYT this morning.
J. Paul Getty III passed away over the weekend. That’s a name (like Koo Stark, he said, tipping his hat in Lawrence’s direction) I hadn’t thought of in years. Getty was most famous as the victim of a kidnapping “by Italian gangsters” during which his ear was cut off. I knew he was something of a party animal, but I was unaware of his 1981 stroke (apparently the result of an overdose). I was also unaware that Balthazar Getty was his son.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles (and specifically LACMA) are trying to figure out how to maintain the Watts Towers, and how to get more tourists to a part of town that’s most famous for riots.
And the NYT has made their move:
Yes, this is a real review.
The fallout from the NYT decision should be interesting. The pin has been pulled from Mr. Grenade. He is no longer Ben Brantley’s friend. On the other hand, Charles McNulty in the LAT has Brantley’s back:
And it looks like Peter Marks in the WP is standing with Brantley and McNulty:
Charles Willeford
In other news, the WP has discovered (reporter with a database!) that people in “Washington’s safest, most well-to-do neighborhoods” have registered more guns than people in “poorer, crime-plagued areas of the city”. I may have more to say on this later, time permitting.
Edited to add: I was in a hurry to finish that last post and hadn’t got to the Statesman yet, unfortunately. I previously noted the fires at several Austin restaurants, including the Green Muse Cafe. (There was also a recent fire at Habana, which I didn’t note for reasons that escape me at the moment.)
Anyway, APD made an arrest:
Public service announcement.
Monday, February 7th, 2011The Texas Department of Transportation is doing some work this weekend at the intersection of Interstate 35 and Ben White Boulevard (aka Texas 71). Specifically, they’ll be working on some new flyovers in that area. I would embed a Google Maps image here, but apparently WordPress 3.0.4 has a bug with embedding iFrames. You can try clicking here.
Anyway, what does this mean to you, Al Franken? TXDOT is closing the entire freeway from “late Friday evening to early Monday morning”. Yes, you read that right, the entire freeway. They’re diverting traffic onto the access road:
If I lived in the area, I’d stock up on popcorn. This is going to be better than the zoo and the circus combined. As for the rest of us, I think staying far away from I-35 for the duration is the best course of action.
Random notes: February 7, 2011.
Monday, February 7th, 2011I know I’m “rooting for laundry”, but I have a certain fondness for the Green Bay Packers. A major reason for that is their unique ownership structure. The Packers are a public corporation, with stock and everything. (The NFL will not allow any other team to adopt this ownership structure; the Packers are grandfathered in. This is the kind of behavior by the NFL that would make me want my congressman to start asking questions, if I believed in that sort of thing.) Anyway, here’s a good New Yorker piece that explains how the Packers work in more detail. And yes, my black little heart is filled with delight today. (Hattip: Gruber.)
We have previously mentioned the death of General Vang Pao, and the question of whether he would be buried at Arlington. The answer to that question was “no”; the Pentagon turned down the family’s request. Mark Arax has a good piece in the NYT about the General’s funeral.
The Washington Post FAILS to make me testy.
Monday, February 7th, 2011(I’m not going to put a “Part 1” on that because this is probably the first and last time you will ever see those words together.)
Stephen Hunter, former WP movie critic and awesome thriller writer
(Hattip: Say Uncle. Actually, one of his commenters.)
(Edited to add: Better Say Uncle link here.)
Slow down, pussycat.
Monday, February 7th, 2011Obit watch: Tura Satana, of “Faster Pussycat!! Kill! Kill!
($31.99? Are they pressing the DVDs out of solid gold?)
Matters of cinema.
Sunday, February 6th, 2011As you might have guessed, I like movies. I do not, however, go to see as many of them as perhaps I should.
There are several reasons for this. Obviously, I have to be interested in a movie before I’ll plunk down $7 to go see it. For example, I don’t do FaceBook, so The Social Network holds almost no appeal for me.
A second reason is that there’s only two places I will see movies: in a private home (my own or someone else’s) or the Alamo Drafthouse chain of cinemas in Austin and certain other areas of Texas. If I go to an Alamo Drafthouse, I know I will get the following:
- No commercials. The Alamo does show interstitial material before the movie, but the clips they show are always entertaining and relevant to the movie in some way. They do run brief house ads, and trailers for coming attractions, but I know I won’t have to put up with a Pepsi or Chevy Volt commerical.
- Food that ranges from good to excellent, a larger selection of beers than many bars in Austin, and highly efficient at your seat service.
- No disruptions. The Alamo theaters are serious about this, and make it known upfront. I have never actually seen someone evicted from an Alamo for talking or otherwise being disruptive, but I’ve also never been in one where it was actually necessary. People who go there know how to behave.
So if a movie doesn’t play the Alamo, and I don’t catch it in someone’s home, I’m not seeing it. All this is by way of saying that of the Oscar nominated films this year, I’ve seen exactly…one, so far.
I didn’t have any notions going into True Grit, beyond “Oh, look, a Coen Brothers movie.” I haven’t read the book, although I hear good things about it from many folks. (Charles Portis is a big blind spot for me, and I’d like to fix that.) I also haven’t seen the original John Wayne version. (I’d like to, but the current DVD release
…I thought it was a perfectly okay movie. I realize that’s not exactly wild praise, but I just thought the brothers took a simple story and told it very well. It didn’t have the same emotional impact on me that No Country for Old Men
Bonus movie note: There’s a series of Japanese werewolf movies that go by the name “Kibakichi”. I watched the first one a few nights ago, and, with all due respect to our gracious hosts: don’t. The fire our host built in his fireplace was vastly more entertaining to me than Kibakichi
William Gibson, call your office, please.
Saturday, February 5th, 2011I’ve been thinking a lot about cyberpunk, especially the early work of William Gibson, recently. So I was struck by this tale from the LAT. Apparently, at least according to Microsoft (and we all know how trustworthy Microsoft is) the “La Familia” drug cartel has branched out, and is selling…bootleg copies of Microsoft Office 2007.
The LAT article in turn links to this Microsoft blog post, which in turn quotes the Mexican Attorney General’s claim that “the group’s illegal counterfeiting activities involved a sophisticated distribution network of 180,000 points of sale in stores, markets and kiosks, earning more than $2.2 million dollars in revenue every day.”
I’m more than a little dubious about those numbers, and about the survey also mentioned in the blog post: “More than 38,000 consumers in 20 countries participated in the survey, and a large majority said they want the industry (72 percent) and government (65 percent) to do more to protect them from software piracy.”
Assumin the truth of these stories, this does not strike me as being a wise strategy for the drug cartels. I mean, ticking off the DEA is one thing. But ticking off Microsoft? Not smart, though perhaps not quite as dumb these days as making Google angry.
Obit watch: February 4, 2011.
Friday, February 4th, 2011Edited to add: LAT obit. I know this is short, but there’s really nothing I can say without making a tacky joke involving dairy products.
Edited to add 2: Seems it has been a bad couple of days for stars of “adult” films. The Onion A.V. Club is reporting the death of Lena Nyman, star of “I Am Curious (Yellow)”, “I Am Curious (Blue)”, and “Autumn Sonata”. I’ll admit that I’ve kind of wanted to see the “I Am Curious” films ever since reading Joe Bob Briggs’ write-up in Profoundly Erotic: Sexy Movies that Changed History
Obit watch: February 3, 2011.
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011Barney Hajiro.
Here’s Mr. Hajiro’s Medal of Honor citation:
Mr. Hajiro was nominated for the Medal of Honor at the time, but did not receive it until 2000, after a Pentagon investigation into why more Asian-Americans had not received the MoH.