We have previously mentioned the odd case of Triton Financial.
Yesterday, the former head of Triton was indicted on charges of money laundering, wire fraud, and securities fraud.
If convicted of the most serious charges against him, Barton could face up to 30 years in prison.
(I love how the Statesman says he was indicted on “nearly three dozen criminal charges”. Because it’s too much trouble to provide an exact number, like 33.)
This doesn’t really count as “gun crankery”, though guns are somewhat involved.
This 37 Signals essay on the 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog in turn led me to this NYT piece (from 2008, but I hadn’t seen it before) on George Herter, with particular concentration on his book, “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices
Every now and then a copy of Bull Cook shows up at Half-Price Books; so far, I’ve managed to snap up two (one for myself, one as a gift). Collins has it right about what makes the book so fascinating; you’re reading along, and you come to an assertion such as the Virgin Mary’s fondness for creamed spinach, and you say to yourself, “What?”. (Herter was not a big fan of sourcing his material.)
I haven’t been able to obtain any of his other books: I’ve never seen How To Live With a B—-h (though here’s a review of it from someone who found a copy), and the one copy I’ve seen of Herter’s safari guide was priced too high for my tastes. Bull Cook seems to be the easiest Herter book to find; if you run across a copy, I’d recommend picking it up.
(Field and Stream also published a longer history of Herter sometime back; if I can find a working link to their profile, I’ll add it here.)
Three quick links that appeal to my somewhat geeky side. The first two are from Derek Lowe:
A recent case of thallium poisoning in Jersey.
Top 200 drugs (by various measures), in poster form from the University of Arizona. Including chemical structures (at least, for those “drugs” that have chemical structures: check out numbers #130 and #187 on this chart for examples of “drugs” that don’t): some of these structures, like Sevorane, are fascinating, while others like Xolair and Novoseven make you go “What the heck is that?”
Remember the berserk squid? LabRat over at the Atomic Nerds site picked up on that post, and offers an excellent dissection of the article, including some possible directions for additional research. Thanks, LabRat!
David F. Friedman, film producer. You may remember him from such classic films as “Blood Feast”, “Two Thousand Maniacs”, “Trader Hornee”, and his masterpiece: “Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S.”.
Kenneth Mars, actor. You may remember him from the original version of “The Producers”. If not:
It has been said before, but apparently it needs to be said again.
Don’t put anything into an email that you would not want to see on the front page of your local newspaper.
This is especially true if your local newspaper is the LAT.
You may ask, what brings this on? I’m glad you did.
Remember Randy Adams? Former police chief of Glendale, California, who took a job as police chief of the city of Bell, at a much higher salary, while at the same time negotiating his disability pay from the city of Bell?
The LAT reprints some choice quotes from emails between Chief Adams and assistant city administrator Angela Spaccia. Quotes such as:
“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money”.
and
As the LAT notes, the “Bob” in the above quote is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator.
Speaking of Ratso, I meant to note this last week, but it got past me: Bell’s city clerk says that Ratso ordered her to give out false information about his salary, and the salaries of the city council members. Also worthy of note: the clerk testified under a grant of limited immunity. (“Use immunity”, which prevents the DA from using her testimony against her. That doesn’t mean she can’t be prosecuted if the DA finds evidence other than her testimony to use against her. I am not your lawyer, and neither is Wikipedia, but here’s a link that explains the difference between “use immunity” and “transactional immunity”.)
Edited to add: Slightly longer version of the story here.
TXDOT states that they’re planning to close I-35 at Ben White Boulevard again the weekend of February 25th.
Does anyone have any first-hand reports from this weekend’s closure they’d care to post? I tried to stay as far away from I-35 as I could; I saw one report in the Statesman of 15-minute delays at that intersection, but someone close to WCD stated they’d heard the delay was more like an hour.
“Hell yes. We have hundreds of people coming.”
—Danny Payne of III Forks, a steakhouse in downtown Austin, responding to the Statesman asking if he was going to be open tonight, after someone drove a car into the front entrance last night.
I have previously written about my interest in failure and failure analysis, so I feel compelled to link to this fine example of failure analysis:
Kirk Bohls and Randy Riggs on why the Texas Longhorns went 5-7 last season.
Some key points of failure:
(Speaking of bad Longhorn seasons, the question came up over the weekend: “What’s John Mackovic doing these days?” The answer to that is…weird, and kind of contradictory. His Wikipedia entry says he’s the head coach of “United States national American football team”, which apparently competes in something called the “American Football World Cup”. However, the Wikipedia entry for the “United States national American football team” shows Mackovic as the head coach for the 2007 team, and Mel Tjeerdsma as the coach for the 2011 team.)
…I live in Austin, Texas.
Spamming the comments in my blog with posts about your campaign for a City Commission seat in Lawrence, Kansas is a bad idea for the following reasons:
Hugs, kisses, and die in a fire Sven Alstrom you spamming scumbag. Sincerely, your friends at sportsfirings.com.
P.S. Strongly worded message follows.
Lucky J's menu.
I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I was going to do a review of Lucky J’s once I’d had a chance to eat there. Here you go:
Would I go back? I think I would, but they need a month or two or three to settle into a groove. It would help some if they had less of an Austin slacker vibe. I’d like to try some of the waffle tacos, but the lack of coffee and the weird 11 AM – 4 PM schedule are drawbacks for me.
It’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.
CSM 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.)
I 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
This 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.)