Archive for April, 2011

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New and possibly noteworthy.

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

By way of the LAT, we have learned of a new book: Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game by Dan Barry, a writer for the NYT.

Barry’s book is about the April 18, 1981 game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, which went for 33 innings, the longest game in baseball history.

We’re not sure if we’re going to purchase this or not. On the one hand, it does push some of our hot buttons (failure, Rhode Island). On the other hand, it sounds like the kind of lyrical baseball horseshit we hate. If any of our readers purchase and read Barry’s book, we’d welcome a review.

Edited to add: Lawrence pointed us to a review of a new Richard Feynman biography, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science, by Lawrence M. Krauss. This is another book we’re not sure about purchasing: between Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, and No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman, we kind of feel the ground has been well covered. We are also slightly suspicious of anyone whose book credits include The Physics of Star Trek. On the other hand, the review (by noted SF writer Paul Di Filippo) is pretty favorable, so we may have to give this one a shot.

Posted in Books, Geek, Rhode Island, Sports | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch. (#20 of a series)

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

Andres Serrano’s “P–s Christ” smashed with a hammer while on display in France.

Link goes to a BBC News story. Here’s another story from the Guardian, by way of Althouse. Althouse goes on to make some good points, including that what was actually attacked was a photograph: copies can still be made from the negative, assuming it exists.

Posted in Art, Clippings | 1 Comment »

And I think it’ll be a long long time till playoffs come around again…

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Rick Adelman is apparently out as head coach of the Houston Rockets.

It isn’t clear if he was pushed or jumped: the HouChron story is still crediting “a person with knowledge of the decision” and says “Adelman and Rockets general manager Daryl Morey failed to reach agreements on how they would continue to work together”, which makes it sound like a “you can’t fire me, I quit” situation. (Edited to add 4/19: the current version of the linked article seems to confirm this.)

(Actually, I have no idea if this is good or bad for the Rockets playoff chances. I just couldn’t resist working in a Kate Bush reference.)

Posted in Clippings, Firings | Comments Closed

“Hey! Watch it! You’re getting blood on my application!”

Monday, April 18th, 2011

The Pulitzer Prize winners have been announced.

I don’t have much to say:

  • I’m pleased that the LAT got a nod for their Bell coverage.
  • I’m slightly sad that the LAT‘s nod came at the expense of Alan Schwarz’s coverage of football and concussions.
  • I’m delighted that the WP didn’t even get a finalist nod for any of the “Hidden Lives of Guns” stories.

Other than than, meh.

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: Speaking of journalism, I know I haven’t been on the Greg Mortenson/”Three Cups of Tea” thing. I figure when the story makes 60 Minutes, there’s really nothing more I can add to it, at least for now.

Posted in Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

Happy BAG Day!

Saturday, April 16th, 2011

Yes, technically, Buy a Gun Day was yesterday. However, I can’t really get down to my local gunshop from work before 6 PM in crosstown Austin traffic. So I stretched things a little. Is that a crime?

Actually, this one has been on lawaway at Tex-Guns since the first part of the year, and it was just a happy coincidence the the payoff date corresponded to BAG Day.

Winchester Model 9422

That’s a Winchester Model 9422 Legacy. Tex-Guns sold it new to someone back in 1986 (if I remember the date correctly), and they came back in a few months ago and put it on consignment. It came with the original box and paperwork.

I need another .22 rifle like I need another 1911, or another hole in my head, but this one is beautiful; I’d put it at 99%+. I’m not even sure it has been fired. And it goes well with my pre-64 Model 94.

(Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that this one is going to end up in the hands of one of my nephews at some point, when his parents decide he’s ready for a real rifle. That is, if it suits him. If not, well, let’s just say my nephews have some choices.)

(Carlos Hathcock, call your office, please.)

Adding a little visual element to the photo are two books that I picked up recently: The Story of the Winchester 1 of 1000 and 1 of 100 Rifles, by Edmund Lewis, and the very recent limited run reprint (not a signed first printing) of Carlos Hathcock White Feather by the Chandler Brothers, which I ordered from Precision Shooting (1-860-645-8776: it isn’t listed on their website, and the advertisement in the April 2011 issue says they only have a limited number of copies available at $39.95 per.)

Edited to add 4/17:

Just for grins, and because I was killing some time before meeting folks for breakfast, I decided to do a second photo:

The 9422 is on the bottom: the top gun is my pre-’64 Model 94 in .30-30. One of my projects when school lets out for the summer is do some work on getting a proper setup for doing gun photos. My current setup is improvised and clunky.

Posted in Books, Guns, Photography, Winchester | Comments Closed

The war on online poker.

Friday, April 15th, 2011

I haven’t seen much reporting about this elsewhere: executives of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker have been indicted on charges of bank fraud and money laundering.

The LAT is reporting that Full Tilt’s domain has been seized by the F.B.I. I’m not in a position to check that at the moment.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Notes from the food front for April 15, 2011.

Friday, April 15th, 2011

The Spaghetti Warehouse location in downtown Austin is closing.

That’s kind of a shame, but I think I last ate there maybe two years ago. When I was a kid, going to the Houston location was a rare and special treat. When I moved up here, it was nice to have a reasonably close location to eat at; I had some nice dinners there.

But some years back, the parking situation got out of hand. They didn’t provide any free parking near the restaurant, and it was hard to find parking on the street. Then a few years after that, they changed the menu and got rid of two of my favorite dishes (the mushrooms in garlic butter and the cheese sauce; if any of my readers happen to have a close clone of the cheese sauce, I’d be delighted to get an email). I don’t know what the one in Houston is like these days; I’ll miss the funky decor of the Austin one, but I won’t miss the food.

By way of Jimbo: VegNews has been caught using stock photos of dishes. Worse yet (the horror! the horror!) some of those dishes…contain meat. Here’s a link to a NYT blog entry reporting the scandal. And here’s a link to the mentioned blog post.

I’m actually kind of torn by this. On the one hand, I think if you’re publishing a magazine, you owe a duty of honesty to your readers. Using stock photos to represent things that they are clearly not breaks that duty, from my point of view. I don’t buy the “…it is simply not financially feasible for VegNews at this time” argument. How much do stock photos cost, as opposed to having someone with a digital SLR shoot photos of actual dishes for you? Clearly, VegNews knows how to use PhotoShop if they need to do “enhancements” to photos shot in house. After all, they removed the bones from the stock photo that was supposed to represent a rack of vegan “ribs”.

On the other hand…that blog post is like every bad vegan cliche rolled into one. “…eggs from those poor battery hens that are dead basically from the moment they are born”, “…infused with antibiotics, pain and anguish”, “…pork sausage, oozing in pig fat, fresh from the slaughterhouse”. That blogger is so strident, I find it hard to decide who to root for in this instance.

Oh, wait, no, I don’t find it hard to decide who to root for after all: I’m rooting for this guy.

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 14, 2011.

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

“One Life to Live” and “All My Children”. I’m personally hoping that ABC has the guts to film an ending in which it is revealed that the entire runs of both shows were actually nothing but a dream in the mind of an autistic child.

(I know that’s not an original idea, but it gives me an excuse to link to the Tommy Westphall Multiverse website, for those of my readers who are not familiar with the Westpahll Catastrophe. Which should not be confused with the Bean Dip Catastrophe.)

Arthur Marx, son of Groucho Marx (and quite successful in his own right). (Edited to add 4/15: LAT obit here.)

Posted in Clippings, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Achievement unlocked: blogmeet.

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

The staff of WCD met up with the legendary Borepatch, along with bloggers Josh and Matthew, last night at Green Mesquite BBQ.

Borepatch his ownself notes the irony of us using Al Gore’s Internets to plan this meetup, since we spent much of our dinner discussing ways to smash the state (along with how to fix the educational system, where we could go shooting, downtown apartments, SF books, and a whole bunch of other random crap).

We are encouraged by Borepatch’s suggestion that we might be doing this again next time he’s out, and are hopeful that we can get at least a couple of other folks to join us. The honorable Borepatch is a charming and gregarious dining companion; dinner with him is indeed a treat. (Edited to add: We just realized that might be read as slighting Josh and Matthew, so let us make it clear that they’re pretty good guys, too.)

Posted in Admin, Beef, Books, Food | 4 Comments »

Living looking straight ahead.

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

I generally don’t like to blog two articles in a row from the same source, but this is too interesting for me to pass on.

The WP also has an article about Tomohiro Narita, who runs a motorcycle shop in Toyko. Narita-san is from Sendai.

…his Tokyo motorcycle business has taken a back seat to full-time relief work for the devastated communities 200 miles north.

Here’s what I find most interesting, though:

…Narita’s relief effort, dubbed “The Underground,” fills an unusual niche. Organized through motorcycle clubs, tattoo parlors and biker bars, it appeals to anarchists, outcasts, people who don’t trust the government’s efforts and who don’t donate to the Red Cross. In the past month, the group has sent $250,000 worth of food, supplies and gasoline to disaster-stricken areas.

The one frustrating thing about this article is the WP doesn’t give any contact information for Narita-san and “The Underground”. I know some of my readers are also motorcycle riders; if there’s a way to get donations directly to this organization from the United States, I would be delighted to hear about it.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Corruption and cronyism? In Louisiana?

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

According to the WP and ProPublica, lots of folks are getting rich off of BP money.

Unfortunately, it seems like many of those folks were, well…

…documents show that companies with ties to parish insiders got lucrative contracts and then charged BP for every possible expense. The prime cleanup company submitted bills with little or no documentation. A subcontractor billed BP $15,400 per month to rent a generator that usually cost $1,500 a month. Another company charged BP more than a $1 million a month for land it had been renting for less than $1,700 a month. Assignments for individual fishermen also fell under the control of political leaders.

More:

Some of the money also went to overtime pay for more than 40 parish employees, including three who claimed overtime for picking up dog food for the animal shelter. St. Bernard’s homeland security director, David Dysart, a salaried employee, got almost $23,000 for working 497 hours of overtime in less than seven weeks, a fact first reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Dysart did not respond to a query about his overtime.

This is my shocked face:

Shocked face.

Posted in Clippings, Politics | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 13, 2011.

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

The Dallas Stars have fired Marc Crawford. I think I speak for many of my readers when I say “People still play hockey? That’s a thing?”

How much credence should you put in Restaurant magazine’s annual list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants?

The California Legislature is considering revoking the city charter of Vernon, a notoriously corrupt city in L.A. County. But business owners are worried…

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Food, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 12, 2011.

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Pierre Celis, of Celis Brewery fame. Celis made some swell beers back in the 90’s.

There’s an old saying, “In heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here.”

I think this is wrong, and I think Mr. Celis is sitting on God’s right hand, trying out Heaven’s own homebrew.

Posted in Clippings, Mixology, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 11, 2011.

Monday, April 11th, 2011

I wanted to note the passing of Sidney Lumet.

There have been some surprisingly good discussions of Lumet’s career at both FARK and the Onion A/V Club. I don’t have much to add to those, but I did want to link to one of my favorite moments in a movie; a movie directed by Lumet, of course. Those who know me well, or pay attention to my blog taglines, probably already know which moment that is. But there’s more to it than just Howard Beale yelling “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Note how this opens, with the disheveled crazed prophet walking through the rain.

“…all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.'” How many of us think that?

“You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!'”

“Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!.”

Much of this is, of course, also attributable to Paddy Chayefsky’s script, and Peter Finch’s acting. But I suspect this would have failed and come off as strident or ridiculous in the hands of a lesser director.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Noted without comment.

Friday, April 8th, 2011

101 Nook Color Tips, Tricks, and Hacks: The Unofficial Guide to Getting the Most Out of the Newest Nook eReader By William Percy.

Link goes to the Kindle edition.

Posted in Kindleing | Comments Closed

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