Bob Geren out as manager of the Oakland A’s.
Oakland is currently 27-36, and in last place in their division.
Archive for June, 2011
A-.
Thursday, June 9th, 2011Let the bodies hit the door…
Thursday, June 9th, 2011Lawrence was all over the mass grave that wasn’t in Liberty County, but I wanted to note an update or two.
HouChron interview with the “psychic” who says “she never wanted any attention and fears the worldwide interest in the case will destroy her life if her identity is known publicly.”
She strongly denied telling officers that they needed to search for bodies or that anyone was dead.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a standard fake psychic trick? “Oh, no, I never said {X}. I said {Y}. It’s their fault if they thought I said {X}.”
From the WP: “How the story of dismembered bodies at a Texas farmhouse fell apart”. “dismembered bodies”, “fell apart”. Someone at the WP was having a bit too much fun.
In other news, can we say that this story marks the official start of Silly Season 2011? When are we going to get the next shark attack?
Shade-Tovo watch: June 9, 2011.
Thursday, June 9th, 2011Oh, look! Randi Shade’s got a new TV ad and a new web video bashing her opponent, Kathie Tovo!
Oh, look! Kathie Tovo and her people say that Shade’s claims are “misleading and hypocritical”.
Oh, look! Water is wet!
Stay tuned for more stunning news on the campaign front.
Make no little plans.
Thursday, June 9th, 2011That’s Daring Fireball on the Apple campus plans, quoting Daniel Burnham.
Bear with me, please, as it is about to get geeky in here.
Here’s an image of the proposed Apple campus, hotlinked from TechCrunch:
This is the best regular image I could find of the General Atomics campus in San Diego:
Slightly better overhead shot:
I think there’s at least a superficial similarity. But so what, you ask? Well, General Atomics was the company that brought us Project Orion.
Remember Project Orion? If you don’t, there’s a pretty good book on the subject: Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship
“Make no little plans”, indeed. Can you imagine Apple building their campus on top of a giant metal plate, and then one day when the trans-humanist revolution comes, launching the entire site and all the employees into orbit? Of course, there’s minor details to work out in advance, but isn’t this the kind of plan that stirs the blood?
Is this what Jobs has in mind? Probably not, but a boy can dream, can’t he?
Tovo-Shade watch: June 8, 2011.
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011The bars on 6th Street have decided to cancel their “vote for Randi Shade” promotion. (Previously.)
I guess without the drink specials, they’re going to have to attract folks to the bars with the usual lineup of stellar bands:
- Infinite Piehole.
- $10 Beer.
- Horrible Pudding Accident.
- Poetry Night.
- and the legendary Puppet Show.
(Credit where credit is due: 1 and 3 are stolen from the Scalzinator. 2 and 4 are stolen from Lawrence. 5 should need no explanation.)
(Edited to add: Lawrence points out that I forgot Austin’s other legendary band, “Closed For Remodeling”, as well as the up and coming “Amway Meeting”.)
Obit watch: June 8, 2011.
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011Lilian Jackson Braun, author of the “Cat Who…” mystery novels.
They weren’t exactly to my taste, but I know my mother read them for a time.
“I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.”
Monday, June 6th, 2011But did Agustin Pinochet poison him?
(Mostly I wanted to throw this up for the excuse it gives me to link to possibly the greatest Simpsons’ episode ever. You guys can argue over the validity of that statement in the comments.)
The size of their toys.
Monday, June 6th, 2011I am planning to go out to Vegas for DEFCON this year. (Look for complete coverage on the blog.)
My plans do not include driving a bulldozer, though. Not because I don’t think it would be fun. (Oh, yeah, it would be.) But $400 is an airline ticket. Or a substantial portion of that really nice S&W 586 my gun shop has at the moment. Or the “Shoot the Wall” package at The Gun Store.
But tastes differ, and my hat’s off to the clever people who thought this one up.
(Hattip: Marginal Revolution.)
Shade-Tovo update: June 6, 2011.
Monday, June 6th, 2011The Statesman threw the weight of their coveted editorial board endorsement behind Randi Shade. In other news, there’s a crying need for a <SARCASM> tag in HTML.
Meanwhile, the Austin Chronicle has, not surprisingly, thrown the weight of their coveted editorial board endorsement behind Kathie Tovo. I believe that and three dollars will get her a large coffee at some hip local coffee shop.
(I think the AusChron endorsement is probably more beneficial for Tovo than the Statesman‘s would have been. At this point, though, I don’t think it matters; I’m pretty sure the people who are going to vote have made up their minds, and the people who could possibly be swayed by these endorsements are unlikely to turn out for the election.)
The Shade endorsement is interesting, though, in light of this lengthy article from Sunday’s Statesman about the possibility of a Tovo win:
Basically, the Statesman depicts Leffingwell, member Mike Martinez, and Shade as a core voting block that allows Leffingwell to push his agenda; without Shade as a reliable vote, Leffingwell’s position becomes more difficult.
What is Leffingwell looking to push?
Hmmmmm.
We’ve blown a Piston.
Monday, June 6th, 2011I know, you don’t want to hear about my personal life, you just want me to fix the damn thing.
Anyway, the new ownership of the Detroit Pistons has fired coach John Kuester.
It doesn’t exactly sound like the players were fond of him, either.
Sunday night cocktail blogging.
Sunday, June 5th, 2011When the gin hits your nose
Like the smell that from pines arose
That’s a negroni…
I can see why people like this cocktail. You can tell there’s gin in it, but there’s a nice balance of gin against the Campari and sweet vermouth. I can’t detect any bitterness in mine, just a nice combination of sweetness with some bite from the gin.
(Campari, Nolly Prat sweet vermouth, and Plymouth English gin.)
Cops gone wild!
Saturday, June 4th, 2011I don’t know why, but stories about cops committing particularly horrific crimes make me even more angry than I have any rational justification for. I’ve mentioned Antoinette Frank several times before; she’s a perfect example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, and I hope they get around to sticking a needle in her arm soon. I’m hoping for the same thing for the cops involved in the Danziger Bridge shootings, too.
But let’s move away from New Orleans for a moment. Let’s move to the north, and start with the DC area.
Richmond Phillips had a problem. He was accused of fathering a child with a 20-year old woman, and was scheduled to be in court last Tuesday for a hearing on paternity and child support. Phillips worked vice for the DC police, and he already had a wife and a 12-year old daughter.
What to do, what to do? Well, if you’re Phillips, you meet your baby mama in the park the day before the hearing, shoot her in the head, hide the body, load your baby up into baby mama’s car, drive the car away, abandon it, and leave your baby inside.
Let me repeat that. He killed the mother, and left a one-year old baby to die in a hot car.
I checked. Maryland does still have the death penalty, though it appears to be used rather sparingly (five executions since 1976, and five current death row inmates). Of course, Phillips is entitled to the presumption of innocence (though it seems like they already have a strong circumstantial case against him), but let’s hope the prosecutors don’t let this chicken shit asshole plea bargain down to life without parole.
There’s another recent incident that I’ve been meaning to note. Over the Memorial Day weekend, a sheriff’s deputy in Franklin County, Virginia, shot and killed his ex-wife, then led other police officers on an hour-long chase that climaxed in a shootout on I-81. This actually would not have come to my attention except that the shootout and resulting investigation backed up traffic for miles on the interstate: Sebastian from Snowflakes in Hell got caught up in the mess and blogged about it.
In addition to the cop gone bad angle, Franklin County is in the area around Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Bedford; my family has lived in that general area from time to time, so there’s a local angle to the story for us. The other interesting aspect to this story is the role of the rogue deputy’s department in the whole affair. Here’s the original Roanoke.com story on the shooting. Jake at Curses! Foiled Again! has been linking to the followup coverage: the sheriff’s phone call to the local police, holes in the timeline, and Jake’s first post, pointing out that the shooter had previous disciplinary issues but was still on the job.
According to today’s reporting, the sheriff apparently told a dispatcher “not to mention anything” about the deputy’s threats to kill his ex-wife. It’s looking more and more like the sheriff knew his guy was rogue, but thought he could calm the situation down and avoid public embarrassment. It’s also looking more and more like the embarrassment of having one of your guys taken off the street doesn’t compare to the embarrassment of having your guy shoot several people, and having the local citizens demand your resignation.
Obit watch: June 3, 2011.
Friday, June 3rd, 2011I’m really sorry, but I don’t have a damn thing to say about Jack Kevorkian. Not even snark.
I also can’t say much about James Arness. I want to say I’m a little too young for “Gunsmoke”, but it ran until 1975, when I would have been 10. I can’t understand why I don’t have any memories of it. It may have been something my family didn’t watch, but if so, I don’t recall why.
Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt has also died, and that’s kind of an interesting story. Pratt was a Black Panther leader who was convicted of murder in 1972. His conviction was overturned in 1997; the judge ruled that the prosecutors at Pratt’s murder trial had hidden evidence that could have pointed to Pratt’s innocence. (“Pratt maintained that the FBI knew he was innocent because the agency had him under surveillance in Oakland when the slaying was committed in Santa Monica.”) Pratt later settled a lawsuit over his conviction for $4.5 million.
Finally, by way of Popehat: Joel Rosenberg, author and firearms rights advocate, died yesterday. Condolences to his family.
What goes better with booze than politics?
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011Long day, but I did want to bring you the latest development in the Shade-Tovo race.
The story is kind of confusing, perhaps because some people are obfuscating what’s going on. But the brief version is that a dozen bars on West 6th Street have put up signs offering drink specials during the early voting period (which starts next week.) The signs are also offering unspecified prizes and transportation to the polls. The signs also endorse Ms. Shade.
There are some interesting questions. For example:
- Is this an organized political action committee? Michael Klein, “president of the Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance, which represents several downtown bars” says that the bar owners are acting independently, are setting up their own specials and prizes, and that the whole thing started with one bar owner who made his own sign, which was then copied by the others. This doesn’t quite pass the smell test for me…
- Do you have to vote for Ms. Shade to get the prizes and specials? Klein says no, but I’m not sure how he can speak for all 12 of the bars if they’re all acting independently. On the other hand, how would they make you prove you voted for Ms. Shade? Or even voted at all? Would you need to get one of those “I Voted” stickers to get a buck off draft beer?
- Is all this being done independently of Ms. Shade’s campaign? Reply hazy, ask again later. Seriously, there seems to be no evidence one way or the other; the sign showed up on Ms. Shade’s FaceBook page, but her people say it was posted by someone outside the campaign and they removed it.
- The article is curiously missing any quotes from anyone with TABC.
- Can I hope for an asteroid to come along and wipe out both the Shade and Tovo campaigns?
Quirks.
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011Bruce Malkenhorst was convicted of misuse of public funds last week.
Keep those numbers in mind.
Mr. Malkenhorst was the city administrator for the corrupt city government of Vernon, California, a city government so corrupt that the state legislature is trying to disincorporate the city.
However, Mr. Malkenhorst, as city administrator, is not an elected official.
Why does that matter?
Mr. Malkenhorst, as a non-elected official, gets to keep his retirement pension. California law only allows for the revocation of pensions for elected officials.
Did I say “retirement pension”? I meant, “his $500,000 a year retirement pension“.
He pays about $100,000 in fines and restitution, gets three years of probation, and still comes out $400,000 ahead just in the first year.
Nice work if you can get it.