Archive for April, 2012

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Crab cakes? Crab cakes! CRAB CAKES?!

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012

From time to time, when I am out having breakfast (or brunch) with other people, I have jokingly threatened to order the Eggs Benedict Arnold. (This is one of the many reasons why you can’t take me anywhere.)

I have never actually done so. At least, not until today.

No kidding. Those are Eggs Benedict Arnold, an actual dish at Café Blue in Bee Cave. They were quite good. And, even better, they did not try to surrender my stomach to the British an hour later.

Thanks, Mom!

(And thanks to Lawrence and Borepatch for their kind wishes, too. By the way, Lawrence isn’t kidding about that “since God was a corporal” comment.)

Posted in Food | Comments Closed

April 20th.

Friday, April 20th, 2012

I’m taking today off to celebrate my birthday, and to take care of a few minor things.

(I know we joke about the DMV, but, really, why does driver’s license renewal have to be so awful?)

One of the things I have taken care of today is school; I have finished my very last academic assignment before graduation and turned it in. I am still waiting for grades, and there are a couple of surveys I need to dispose of, but I have no more real work to do at this time. Just the long countdown to the ceremony, and a couple of events between now and then.

Anyway, folks, sorry for the slowdown. It has been less academic related, and more that there’s been a dearth of stuff I wanted to write about. As graduation gets closer, I plan to write some about that. I’ve been thinking a lot about higher education, and why I did what I did. I want to put some of those thoughts down. So expect content to pick up soon-ish.

Posted in Admin, School | 1 Comment »

Random notes and obits: April 19, 2012.

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Today’s NYT has a longer followup article about Officer Loor.

I thought I’d wait until this morning to post the Dick Clark obits, since that gives the papers a chance to pull stuff together: NYT. LAT. Onion A/V Club.

The AP is also reporting the death of Greg Ham, of “Men At Work” fame.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

A blade to the brain.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

This story is too amazing not to blog.

Officer Eder Loor of the NYPD was called out on Tuesday to escort an emotionally disturbed individual to the hospital. During the process of escorting the gentleman, he became upset and attacked Officer Loor with a 3″ knife which

...sliced through the officer’s temple and into the temporal lobe and a major vein.
It passed less than half an inch from structures that control vision and speech, touched the nerves that give sensation to the face and nicked the surface of, but did not penetrate, a major artery.

Officer Loor pulled the knife out of his head and was taken to the hospital, where doctors found he was bleeding into his brain.

They found that the knife, which entered just behind the officer’s eye, went “deep into the temporal lobe and all the way down to the skull base.”
“The temporal lobe in this area does not have major function,” Dr. Bederson said. “About half an inch away, it controls speech. About a half an inch above all his motor function.”
The knife also cut through the Sylvian fissure, the deepest and most prominent of the cortical fissures of the brain, containing major blood vessels. “It cut the major vein of the Sylvian fissure,” he said, “and almost like a paper cut, it just nicked the surface of the artery but did not cut it.” The artery supplies blood for the entire left hemisphere of the brain, Dr. Bederson said.

Doctors stopped the bleeding. Officer Loor has some residual numbness in his face, which is probably due to the fact that the tip of the knife ended up pressing against his trigeminal nerve. Doctors expect the numbness to go away, and expect Officer Loor to recover fully.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Neuroscience | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 18, 2012.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Invasive species are good eating.

Frankly, yeah, I can see eating tiger shrimp. The Asian Carp…well, it makes me think of the old joke about how to prepare carp. (Nail it to a board, prop it in front of a fire until one side turns black, turn the board over and wait until the other side turns black, then throw the fish away and eat the board.) I’m not a big chili fan, but nutria bourguignon could be interesting. And as for feral hogs, let me just say two words: feral bacon.

This one goes out to Andrew: how to replace a bridge in a weekend, instead of months.

Oh, look! Greg “Three Cups of Tea” Mortenson is being sued for fraud!

The lawsuit is asking a judge to order that everybody who bought the books be refunded. Whatever money is left over would go to a humanitarian organization selected by the plaintiffs’ attorneys and approved by the court.

Would it shock you to learn that one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs was also involved in the James Frey lawsuit?

Posted in Books, Bridges, Clippings, Food, Law, Roads | Comments Closed

Happy BAG day.

Friday, April 13th, 2012

Buy A Gun Day is coming.

Unfortunately, April 15th falls on a Sunday this year, and most of the interesting gun stores around here are closed. (Cabela’s being a notable exception.)

In addition, WCD’s official supplier of fine weapons, Tex-Guns, is taking a vacation this week and won’t reopen until the 17th. Luckily, there are at least two other interesting gun shops I can hit.

The thing is, though, I’m not really wild about BAG Day this year. There are various things going on, but a big factor is that I’m just not seeing that much interesting stuff turn up used. The guys at Tex-Guns have noticed that too; they’re saying that people are holding on to what they’ve got, not making trades. (They have had a couple of interesting Smiths: some K-38 series guns in the 4″ and 6″ lengths, and a 6″ model 19. But all of those are surplus to my requirements at the moment.)

So I’ll probably go out, keep my eyes open, and possibly even run down to Bastrop. But don’t hold your breath waiting for a BAG purchase post, unless I stumble into something neat (like a 4″ K-22).

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Tanks for the memories.

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

I was not a big fan of the M1A1 when it was introduced. In retrospect, I was wrong.

How was I to know she was with the Russians too?

Can’t talk about tanks without talking about the Sherman.

So what brings on the tank binge? I don’t usually read this comic, but Popehat pointed to today’s “The Oatmeal”, which I thought was dead on target. Read all the way to the end for the punchline.

Edited to add: Come to think of it, why don’t I read “The Oatmeal”? Fixed.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Inside jokes explained.

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

Several years ago, my aunt and uncle came from Ohio to visit us.

Of course, we wanted to show them a good time while they were visiting. The weekend they were here, Fall Creek Vineyards (whose products I wholeheartedly endorse) was having their annual “grape stomp”.

Now, the grape stomp is a family event, so of course they want to have something for the kids. That year, they happened to have a petting zoo.

While we were there, a non-child (I’d estimate his age at mid-20s to early 30s) picked up a little piglet that was running around the petting zoo.

Bad idea. You could hear the piglet screaming for miles around. Ear-piercing screams. And worse yet, the gentleman in question seemed totally oblivious to the fact that this little piggy was squealing at a decibel level only matched by AC/DC concerts.

I sidled over to my aunt and said, under my breath, “Put. The. Pig. Down. And nobody gets hurt.”

From that point forward, “Put. The. Pig. Down.” has become a family code phrase for “Somebody needs to stop what they’re doing now“.

Why do I bring this up?

Clad in a pink jacket and khakis, Young also carried a lamb around for ten minutes of his sermon. “Let’s give it up for the lamb and the lion!” Ed Young said over the bleats of the increasingly agitated lamb.

Put. The. Lamb. Down. Ed.

Posted in Clippings, Endorsements, Stupid | 2 Comments »

Begun, the Photoshops have.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

(Hattip: my brother, who both understates his Photoshop skills and needs to blog more.)

Posted in Photography, School | 2 Comments »

This is my shocked face.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Allegations of voter fraud left many unresolved questions even after officials counted the ballots in the first competitive election in years in the small city of Vernon.

Edited to add: More here.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Who would have thunk…

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

…that giving a young woman a ride on your hog would get you fired?

Seriously, I don’t have a problem with Arkansas firing Bobby Petrino. It just comes as a surprise. I read FARK’s thread yesterday and the consensus was that he might get a short suspension, perhaps a fine, but the university wasn’t going to fire him.

Yeah, I know, FARK, hardly experts. But the consensus was that Petrino was rebuilding the program, and that was too important to the university. Thinking about it some more, I’m glad to see FARK was wrong, and the weasel is gone.

Edited to add: In all the discussion of this, I haven’t seen any coverage of the most important point: how bad was the damage to Petrino’s Harley Davidson Road King?

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Mad? Of course I’m mad!

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

But! I have tenure!

Okay, I don’t really have tenure. But don’t you think I could pass as a distinguished professor of something like apocryphal chemistry or eschaton immanentization at Hogwarts?

Posted in Geek, School | 5 Comments »

Can I have a side of awesome sauce, please?

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Yes, yes you can.

The TM Daily Post has a nice profile of Joe Lansdale.

…Lansdale is often compared to a number of authors who specialize in bloody, neo-Gothic thrillers, loosely termed “country noir,” among them Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock (The Devil All the Time), Tom Franklin (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter) and the late William Gay (Twilight). After being ignored by critics and readers alike, these writers have found a measure of mainstream embrace over the past decade.

I’m not going to claim to be a close personal friend of Mr. Lansdale’s – Lawrence knows him better than I do – but in my limited interaction with him, he’s always been nothing but nice. He’s a swell guy, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m delighted that he’s “finally having a moment, after three-plus-decades toiling in semi-obscurity”.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Endorsements | Comments Closed

Notes from the crime beat.

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

I have previously written about the strange case of Maurice McKnight, the dancer at a male strip club who allegedly punched struck a patron, causing the patron to fall, hit his head, and die.

Yesterday, Mr. McKnight pled guilty to manslaughter. He will serve 5 years in prison.

Back on the “if you go clubbing downtown, you’re clubbing with Hezbollah” beat, the Statesman has a long article about Yassine Enterprises, the people behind it, and their legal problems. Interesting:

  • “Despite persistent surveillance, the Yassines and their associates are not accused of any wrongdoing after 2009…”
  • “Investigators testified that Steve Yassine has not paid his taxes in years. Hadi Yassine did not file tax returns in 2009 and 2010, and ones he did file did not match his income, IRS agent Neff said. Neff also said Yassine Enterprises was underreporting its income. “

Also noteworthy: the state wants to take away their liquor licenses. I don’t think it is so much because of the criminal charges, as it is because…

  • “…the clubs owe a local liquor distributor more than $210,000.”
  • “… businesses linked to Mike Yassine, the company’s president and owner, were almost $600,000 behind in sales and mixed-beverage taxes as of late March.”

The State of Texas really does not like it when you get behind in your sales and beverage taxes. They tend to get cranky and start seizing things, like bottles and money in the cash register. Of course, the latter might not be a problem for Yassine Enterprises, since eight of their nine businesses are closed.

And what does this mean for Sixth Street?

Owners of other downtown bars said they initially feared the closures would deter people from heading downtown but, so far, that hasn’t been the case.

…

If they remain dark long-term, landlords shouldn’t have a hard time finding new tenants, said Michele Gary, a vice president in the commercial retail division at the Weitzman Group.

My first thought is that Ms. Gary is a lot more optimistic than I am. Would you want to open a club downtown in this economy? Then again, people are going to drink no matter what…maybe she’s on to something.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Not since “Carrie”.

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

The off-Broadway revival of “Carrie” closed Sunday night…

…two weeks earlier than scheduled, as a result of poor ticket sales after the show opened to mixed to negative reviews. The production by MCC Theater did not earn all its money back. A cast album recording — a theatrical measure of success — has not been announced, though one is said to be in the works

The NYT asks: is this just a fundamentally unworkable idea?

“I see no reason to remount ‘Carrie’ at all,” [theater writer and critic Peter] Filichia said. “I have no advice on how to make it better. I can’t think of a thing. Mind you, I don’t hate it. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

Posted in Clippings, Theatre | Comments Closed

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