NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
Kansas City
Jacksonville
New Orleans
Tennessee
Oakland
The Astros, believe or not, seem to be on a winning streak (having won their last two games) and are currently 48-99, for a .327 winning percentage. This projects out to 109 losses.
Lawrence sent me a link that seems to imply the Cubs have been mathematically eliminated.
MLB.com seems to confirm this.
So this is to document that I owe Lawrence $5.
Edited to add 9/24: Paid in full, in front of witnesses.
This weekend was the grand opening for the new Half-Price Books in Round Rock.
As they usually do, Half-Price was distributing coupons: 40% off one item on Thursday, 30% off on Friday, 20% off on Saturday, and 50% off on Sunday. (I heard one clerk complain that those coupons were only supposed to apply to the Round Rock store, but they made them valid for all the stores in error. I think that clerk was full of it, but that’s just my opinion.)
Anyway, I picked up a few interesting things Thursday through Saturday, including a copy of An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies
Today was 50% off day. I had some things I was thinking about picking up, but then I got lucky. Fortunately, I had two coupons…
The new (2010) of Bill Warren’s magnificent book, Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties, The 21st Century Edition
Hoglegs, Hipshots and Jalapenos
Squee!
(Insert obvious joke about shooting at the Bill of Rights here.)
Onward. According to the LAT, one of the crew members accidentally “grabbed a box of buckshot ammunition after the Amazing Grace ran out of blanks”.
Two people were injured, apparently not critically.
So off the top of my head:
This appears to be the Amazing Grace’s website. I was trying to figure out what kind of guns it had, and how they worked; it kind of sounds like they may use commercial shotgun cartridges, instead of muzzle loaders like you’d see in the movies. The site isn’t helpful, but the “Ship’s Log” is good for a chuckle.
It sounds like this was part of the Toshiba Tall Ships Festival. “Back by popular demand again this year, children can take part in Cap’n Jack’s School for Scallywags. Watch as your young buccaneers learn to walk, talk, and sing like a pirate!” That sounds like it would get annoying. Fast.
Previously on Whipped Cream Difficulties:
Previously on WCD, I wrote about the Mangia Pizza bankruptcy hearing, and the proposal by “Cloud Cap LLC” to take over the remaining restaurant (and the stand out at the airport).
Today’s Statesman informs us that Cloud Cap won. Apparently, the Mesa location has been closed (I had not noticed that, but I have not been up that way recently); Cloud Cap plans to re-open it, and is hiring former Mangia employees.
In answer to our question about what would happen to the two independently owned location if Cloud Cap got control; those have been rebranded as “The Pizza Bistro”, which strikes me as being a pretty stupid name. However, I suspect we’ll end up doing dining conspiracies at both “The Pizza Bistro” and the new Mangia once they have a chance to settle down. (Generally, SDC policy is to allow three months from opening before visiting a restaurant.)
This was covered some on FARK yesterday, but I kind of feel like it is important enough to mention here.
On April 15, 1989, at the Hillsborough Stadium (located in Sheffield), 96 people were crushed to death. The initial inquiry on the deaths basically blamed the fans for what happened; that was a controversial verdict.
The British government agreed to a new inquiry in December of 2009. The results of that inquiry were issued yesterday.
More:
And further:
Additionally, the report suggests that at least some of the people who died may have lived, if they had been given prompt medical treatment:
Ramiro Pozos Gonzalez, a “founding member” of the La Resistencia drug gang, has been captured.
Ordinarily, I don’t note the capture of every cartel member that comes down the pike. But the HouChron article includes a charming photograph of Mr. Gonzalez’s gold-plated “AK-47”, which was also captured with him.
I can sort of, vaguely, understand plating the gun. But the magazines? That’s just a waste of money. Magazines are disposable items. You should be prepared to trash them if they don’t feed; gold-plating them just makes the decision that much more difficult.
Amy Bishop took a plea. She’s going away forever. Good.
Speaking of plea deals, one of the suspects in the Austin nightclub case has also pled out to charges of selling and distributing cocaine. He’ll do 46 months in prison, and three years of “supervised release”. The cases against the other suspects are proceeding, but it looks like at least one of them is on the run.
Obit watch: Dr. Thomas Szasz, noted critic of psychiatry.
This is interesting to me on a personal level: there’s a shopping center at the corner of North Lamar and 38th Street that has what is easily one of the Top Ten worst parking lots in Austin. The tenants in that center have been told that they need to move out: apparently, someone plans to demolish that center for new development.
The other thing that makes this interesting to me (besides the loss of the horrible parking lot) is that one of the anchor tenants is Precision Camera, a regular stop for me on Saturday and (as far as I know) the only real camera store in Austin. Even better, they’re moving to a location at Burnet and Anderson, almost within walking distance of my apartment.
Preach it, brother! I’m excited about this move, in case you couldn’t tell.
First TMQ of the new season. What can we say: we’ve got high hopes.
After the jump, oops, there goes another rubber tree plant…
…than insurrectionist music and cheesy ’80s videos?
“If you’ve got a crush, don’t need an octopus”?
Bitter much?
We are back, baby! Like that toenail fungus you just can’t get rid of.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Football Giants
Indianapolis
Cleveland
St. Louis
Miami
Kansas City
Jacksonville
New Orleans
Buffalo
Tennessee
Carolina
Green Bay
Seattle
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Oakland
And as we draw ever closer to the end of the long national nightmare that is baseball season, the Houston Astros are 44-97, with a .312 winning percentage. This projects out to 111 losses.
(As best as I can tell, the Astros have been mathematically eliminated from any possibility of post-season play. The Chicago Cubs have an extremely long shot at a wild card slot, still. I don’t think this is going to happen, but they haven’t technically been mathematically eliminated, so I don’t have to pay off Lawrence. Yet.)
I’m sure it comes as no great shock to anybody that California isn’t the only place in the country where corruption runs rampant.
Also arrested were the mayor’s brother, Ralphiel, and Joseph Giorgianni, described as a “sandwich shop owner” and “convicted sex offender”.
It appears that Giorgianni was the bagman for the mayor, and that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. The “Boss Tweed” line above is a direct quote from Giorgianni. Other great quotes:
More:
“We’re not greedy. We’re corruptible.” That’s got to be a quote of the year right there.
And by way of the awesome Jay G., we learn that the not greedy, but corruptible, Mayor Mack was also a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. So he’s for gun control, but apparently had no problem with Giorgianni, who…
(Giorgianni and some other folks (not including the mayor and his brother) are also charged with selling oxycodone, and Giorgianni is also being charged with “weapon possession by a convicted felon”, speaking of illegal guns.)
(I’m linking to the WP rather than the Trenton papers, because I looked at the two Trenton newspaper sites that came up in Google, and their coverage wasn’t good.)
An article from this week’s NYT Magazine:
Unfortunately, the article isn’t about couches with knife-like edges on the underside, but rather about the alleged dangers of flame retardant chemicals used in couch foam.
The big problems are:
One question sort of implied, but not explicitly asked, by this article: many of these standards, like TB 117, were implemented at a time when far more people smoked, and smoke detectors were far less common. The idea was to keep Grandpa’s cigarette from setting the couch on fire if he dozed off in front of the TV set. Now that smoking has decreased dramatically, and smoke detectors are everywhere, do these standards continue to make sense? And shouldn’t this be a consumer choice? If you have kids, buy a couch with all natural fabric and stuffing. If you smoke and drink in front of the TV set and frequently doze off, get a couch that you couldn’t set on fire with a blowtorch and napalm.
Friday’s LAT had an interesting article about the tensions between LAPD beat officers and the homeless in downtown LA. Specifically, the homeless beer vendors:
Yeah, yeah, illegal, yeah, yeah, alcohol drives crime on skid row, yeah yeah. But I have to admit that my first reaction was “Damn, I wish Austin’s homeless were that entrepreneurial.” Seriously, it’d be kind of nice to be able to walk down the street and pick up a cold bottle of something to sip on for $2.50 or so. (This being Austin, you couldn’t get away with selling that Colt 45 or Steel Reserve crap on the streets. You’d have to go with the local craft brews; Shiner Bock in bottles, maybe some Fat Tire. Leave the malt liquor to the gas stations.)
Come to think of it, you don’t even have to limit yourself to beer, and all the problems associated with that. There are times when, if that guy on the street corner wasn’t panhandling for cash, but had a cooler full of ice and cold sodas and bottled water, damn sure I’d give him at least $2 bucks for a cold drink when it is 103 degrees out there. I know someone who tried this experiment a while back, but I’ll let him report in comments if he wishes.
(And before you jump on my case: I know the problem is more complex than I’m making it sound, and selling bottled water and sodas on street corners isn’t a surefire way to get folks from homelessness to prosperity. But providing a useful good and/or service to a willing customer beats begging for bucks in my mind.)