This week in TMQ: the Chronic-what-les of Narnia?
No, we’re not kidding. And we’re not going to call Gregg Easterbrook Aaron Burr, either. After the jump…
Archive for September, 2011
TMQ Watch: September 13, 2011.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011Noted without (much) comment.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011Special non-sports firings watch.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011Back in March, we noted that the Miami PD had shot a bunch of folks, and some people were upset over this.
Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito was fired on Monday. The reason for his firing does not appear to involve shootings:
The City Commission voted 3-2 in favor of firing Chief Exposito, and is calling for amendments to the city charter. But don’t cry for the Chief:
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#24 in a series)
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011Alex Schaefer is a painter.
Alex Schaefer likes to paint banks.
Alex Schaefer likes to paint banks on fire.
Alex Schaefer was questioned by the LAPD because, supposedly, someone “felt threatened” by Mr. Schaefer standing in front of a Chase bank branch and painting it on fire.
Alex Schaefer just sold that painting to a guy in Germany for $25,000. Mr. Schaefer sold another painting of a burning Bank of America branch on eBay for $3,600.
The LAT does not mention where Mr. Schaefer has his accounts.
Your loser update: week 1, 2011.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011The Astros won last night. Now all they have to do is go 15-0 the rest of the season to avoid setting a new record, and .200 to avoid losing 110 games. I’m still pretty confident that they’ll hit 100 losses, but not 110.
But you don’t really care for music baseball, do you?
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Miami
Pittsburgh
Cleveland
Tennessee
Indianapolis
Kansas City
Denver
NY Giants
Dallas
Minnesota
New Orleans
Tampa Bay
Carolina
Atlanta
Seattle
St. Louis
Mapp v. Ohio.
Monday, September 12th, 2011I’ve mentioned previously that one of the courses I’m taking at St. Ed’s this semester is “Constitutional Criminal Procedure”, in which we’ve (so far) spent a lot of time talking about the Fourth Amendment (not the FORTH amendment, but check this out, kids), probable cause, and such like.
One of the things we have to do for this class is write “case briefs”, which are basically one to two page summaries of a major court decision, detailing what the factual elements were, what the main argument was, how the court voted, summarize the majority opinion and concurring opinions, summarize the dissenting opinion and concurring dissents, and (finally!) give our own opinion about the decision.
Anyway, with things being kind of slow, and me not wanting to let a good opportunity for y’all to mock my writing go to waste, I give you my first case brief for Mapp v. Ohio. What makes this case significant is that the Supreme Court held, for the first time, that the exclusionary rule applied to the states as well as to the federal government. The application of the exclusionary rule at the Federal level was established in the case of Weeks v. United States as far back as 1914, but for some odd reason the court didn’t apply this at the state level. As a matter of fact, in Wolf v. Colorado, a 1949 case, the Supreme Court expressly declined to apply the exclusionary rule to the states: Mapp v. Ohio amounted to a complete reversal of that decision.
Beyond the legal aspect, there’s two other things about this case that I find interesting:
- This took place in Cleveland, where I still have family. The Cleveland Memory Project has a lot of background material on Miss Mapp and Mapp v. Ohio.
- One of my fellow students mentioned this in class when I asked, “Is it just me, or did the Cleveland PD really have it out for this woman?” The confidential informant who tipped the cops off? That was…Don King. Yeah, that Don King. According to my classmate, Miss Mapp had previously been…”employed” in Mr. King’s…”business” of…”providing services to gentlemen”, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Miss Mapp decided her talents were more valuable elsewhere, Mr. King did not like this, and hilarity ensued. I’m having some trouble confirming specific details of Miss Mapp’s employment with Mr. King. But it does seem that Miss Mapp was certainly well known to the Cleveland PD, judging by some of the clippings at Cleveland Memory.
Anyway, there you go. Feel free to mock and criticize in the comments to this post.
Fast and Furious in the mainstream media.
Monday, September 12th, 2011The BATFE assured Mr. Howard they were going to follow the guns into the hands of Mexican cartels. We all know that didn’t happen.
So why am I linking this?
- This is the LAT covering the story. “Fast and Furious” is moving into the mainstream.
- Interesting detail: “[Jaime] Avila walked away with 52 firearms after he “paid approximately $48,000 cash. The firearms consisted of FN 5.7 pistols, 1 Barrett 50 BMG rifle, AK-47 variant rifles, Ruger 9mm handguns, Colt 38 supers, etc.…” Nobody was watching the hidden cameras at Lone Wolf, so the firearms never got tracked; even though Howard actually faxed the sale paperwork over to BATFE.
- Interesting detail #2: “Sometime in spring or early summer 2010 — the exact date is unknown — U.S. immigration officers reportedly stopped Avila at the Arizona border with the two semiautomatics and 30 other weapons. According to two sources close to a congressional investigation into Fast and Furious, the authorities checked with the ATF and were told to release him with the weapons because the ATF was still hoping to track the guns to cartel members.“
Loser update notes: September 12, 2011.
Monday, September 12th, 2011The NFL loser update will return Tuesday morning.
In the meantime, we wanted to note that the Houston Astros have tied the club record for losses in a single season. 100 losses seems well within reach. But with 97 losses and 16 games left, they only have to win four more games (which would be a .250 winning percentage for the rest of the season; they’re currently at .336) to avoid 110 losses.
Obit watch: September 12, 2011.
Monday, September 12th, 2011Missed posting this yesterday, as I was tied up with other things.
Cliff Robertson, Oscar winning actor and the man who brought down David Begelman.
Thank you, Tam!
Thursday, September 8th, 2011I generally try to avoid linking to stuff that’s been posted on other blogs more widely read than mine. After all, if someone like Tam’s already written about it, what more can I add?
My excuse in this case is that Tam only covered one very small part of the website in question, and there’s a lot more there that I think is fascinating.
Faded Glory: Dusty Roads of an FBI Era is devoted to the FBI agents of the early 1930s. Quoting:
In addition to Delf Bryce’s employment application, which Tam linked, there’s a lot of other great stuff here. For example:
- a list of the weapons known to have been owned by Hoover and Clyde Tolson, and where they are now.
- an article about the search for Dillinger’s gun from the Biograph; the one that was on display for many years was not the actual gun.
- Where is Hoover’s Registered Magnum (#1)?
- The FBI and the Thompson submachine gun.
- A nifty article about the .38 Super. (This makes a good companion to Stephen Hunter’s American Rifleman piece.)
And all of that is just a small part of what’s on the Faded Glory website. There’s weeks worth of browsing material there. Thanks to Tam for the heads-up.
Obit watch: September 8, 2011.
Thursday, September 8th, 2011Random notes: September 8, 2011.
Thursday, September 8th, 2011Na na na na na na na na BAT van!
Okay, context: the Houston Police Department has six special vans for roadside alcohol testing of drunk drivers, called “BAT vans”. But these vans have issues…
Ms. Culbertson used to be an HPD crime lab supervisior…
At least one DWI case involving the BAT vans has been dismissed, and defense attorneys are looking to have more cases thrown out.
In other news, the LAT has an article on the Grateful Dead’s attempt to step up their licensing and merchandising efforts.
The Dead are also releasing a 73 CD boxed set, “Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings
TMQ Watch: September 6, 2011.
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011We apologize for the delay in posting this week’s TMQ Watch. We’re taking a class on alternating Tuesday nights; last night was the first meeting, and it appears this class is going to eat up a significant chunk of time. Ah, well, onward and upward.
After the jump, haiku. Not our haiku, of course (we have already made our feelings on that subject known) but TMQ’s annual predictions haiku.
Why, yes, I AM a geek.
Friday, September 2nd, 2011Hewlett Packard is bringing back the HP15C. I was heard to go “Squeeee!” when I read that. At least one of my coworkers will testify to that.
(Bringing back the 16C would be even more cool, though I think everything the 16C did is built into the 50g.)
(Hattip: His Grubes.)
Edited to add: Well, that took me down a rabbit hole. Following the museum link to the HP41C (my first HP) reminded me of the good old days of synthetic programming and the legendary PPC ROM. Googling that turned up this profile of Richard J. Nelson, the man behind the PPC ROM. I was unfamiliar with his modulator/demodulator project, which made me sit up and go “Wow.” (The 41 series of calculators had an optical wand which could be used to read bar coded programs into the calculator. Mr. Nelson came up with a box on one end that the wand plugged into, which converted the bar codes into audio tones that could be recorded to tape or sent over a phone line. On the other end was another box that took the tones as input and controlled an LED, which the wand could read like a bar code. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you kids today, but I find it pretty stunning for late 70s/early 80s technology. Also, get off my lawn.)
The way my mind works.
Friday, September 2nd, 2011Part 1:
I was getting dressed yesterday, and looked at my “Professional Russian” shirt in the closet. I decided to save that for this week’s SDC, but I found myself struggling to make some sort of “In Soviet Russia, egg rolls you!” joke.
Which got me to thinking: is Yakov Smirnoff still around? And the Japanese fiddle player? Last I heard, Smirnoff had his own place in Branson, but that was years ago.
Answer: Yes, he’s still doing the Branson thing. And so is Shoji Tabuchi.
Not that I’m planning a trip to Branson any time in the near future, but you’ve got to love these guys for being able to keep the roof over their heads.
Part 2:
I’ve had a song intermittently stuck in my head for many, many years now: probably since middle school, though I don’t remember watching the movie there. Something (actually, a whole bunch of things) prompted me to do a Google search yesterday, and, well…I give you one of the great insurrectionist songs of our time.
This, in turn, prompted me to check the Project Appleseed schedule. And it turns out they’re doing shoots in Smithville (only about an hour’s drive from my home) every month through December. I think I can make this work; worst case, school should be wrapped by December.
SAMCRO.
Thursday, September 1st, 2011How do you top a college professor accused of pimping?
Would you believe a college professor who led a chapter of the Devils Diciples motorcycle gang, and who is charged with dealing meth?
Damn. A pound of meth?
Edited to add: More detailed LAT article here. In response to Borepatch’s comment, neither of the articles say anything about the tenure status of the professors involved. But the accused pimp has apparently been working for his university since 1969, and the biker/drug dealer has been teaching at his university for ten years, so I’d be a little surprised if both of them weren’t tenured.