Archive for February, 2013

« Older Entries

Random notes: February 28, 2013.

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Continuing our N.C.A.A. coverage:

In the past month, the N.C.A.A. and its president, Mark Emmert, have been sued, criticized and ridiculed — and more than usual. They were embarrassed by admitted mistakes in a high-profile investigation. Their critics, growing louder and in number, included a governor, state senators, lawyers, academics and university presidents.

Meanwhile, Joel Bauman is a wrestler on scholarship at the University of Minnesota. He’s also a musician, and wants to inspire people through his music.

His most recent song video, “Ones in the Sky,” which has a positive message and urges people to pursue their dreams, has drawn more than 47,000 hits on YouTube. It can also be downloaded for 99 cents on iTunes.

So?

Because Bauman performed under his own name and identified himself as a Minnesota wrestler, the N.C.A.A. ruled him ineligible for the remainder of the season. J. T. Bruett, Minnesota’s compliance director, said Bauman violated an N.C.A.A. bylaw prohibiting student-athletes from using their name, image or status as an athlete to promote the sale of a commercial product.

(I wonder: if he wasn’t selling the video on iTunes, would the N.C.A.A. still have an issue?)

In other news: your dog wants steak. Your dog does not want rodent poison. Your dog does not want people feeding it rodent poison, especially if it is in competition at Westminster.

A necropsy was not performed on Cruz, 3, who died in Lakewood, Colo., where he was competing in another show. The cause of death remains unclear, but he had symptoms that strongly resembled those of dogs that had ingested rodent poison, the veterinarian who treated him said. She said she felt it was unlikely that Cruz had been deliberately poisoned.

(It strikes me as odd that a necropsy wasn’t done. “[Lynette] Blue [one of the owners] declined for Cruz to have a necropsy because she was confident that he swallowed poison, she said.” But wouldn’t it be better to have a necropsy done and to be sure, as well as having evidence for a possible criminal case?)

(Gee, wouldn’t this make a good episode of “Law and Order”, if that show was still on the air.)

Obit watch: Van Cliburn. LAT account of his 1994 appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. A/V Club.

Dale Robertson. No A/V Club obit yet.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Time to pick up the phone, folks.

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

A friend of mine tipped me off to item #35 on the Austin City Council’s agenda for tomorrow night’s meeting:

Approve a resolution signifying the City Council’s intent to endorse efforts to develop a comprehensive approach to reducing gun crime.

You can find the agenda and supporting materials here. “Supporting materials” includes a draft resolution:

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF AUSTIN
That the City Council strongly supports Mayor Lee Leffingwell’s membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns, endorses the statement and efforts of the organization, and supports President Obama’s effort to develop a comprehensive approach to reducing gun crime.
The Council urges leaders at the state and federal level to enact legislation that requires background checks for all gun sales, provides for prosecution of straw purchasers and gun traffickers, limits the size of ammunition magazines, puts reasonable restrictions on public ownership of military-style guns, and
improves the accuracy and completeness of background check databases to ensure the safety of our citizens.

The only thing on that list that would “ensure the safety of our citizens” is “prosecution of straw purchasers and gun traffickers”. The rest of the council’s proposals are the usual “what you do instead of doing something noise”, and none of those proposals will make the public any safer.

Fortunately, this is just a resolution:

WHEREAS, due to prohibitions in the Texas Local Government Code Austin, unlike cities in other states, must rely on legislative action at the state or federal level to effect changes related to firearm and ammunition sales…

In other words, the city council can’t do anything except pass resolutions. Think they’d like some cheese with that whine?

The listed sponsor is Kathie Tovo, with Laura Morrison and William Spelman listed as co-sponsors. You can find contact information for the council here. My suggestion is: be polite, be professional, and make it clear you have a plan to vote out every single one of the SOBs.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Ah, boondoggle.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Ever hear of the “Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program”? BTOP “passed out several billion dollars to help upgrade broadband networks across America as part of President Obama’s initial stimulus package in 2009”.

Let’s set aside the question of where the government’s constitutional authority to pass out that kind of money for that purpose comes from. Some of that money went to West Virginia.

West Virginia’s cash was meant to wire up the many “community anchor institutions” such as libraries, schools, police, and hospitals across the state with Internet access delivered over fiber-optic lines. As part of the project, the state also had to purchase some sort of router for each institution.

So they needed routers. Not a problem, right? Except the State of West Virginia and Cisco decided that, instead of purchasing routers for each location that were appropriate for current and projected needs, they’d buy one specific Cisco router for everyone.

Consider, for instance, how routers were purchased for the state police. When the West Virginia State Police purchased their own routers a few years earlier, they chose Cisco model 2xxx machines at a cost of only $5,000 or so apiece, with only a single Cisco 3xxx model purchased for the largest deployment. In 2010, when the state received its grant money, no one asked the State Police what they wanted or needed; indeed, the police were “never contacted” at all by the Grant Implementation Team. (This was a widespread problem; the report notes no capacity or user needs surveys were ever done before the money was spent). Instead, the team simply ordered 77 Cisco 3945 routers at a cost of $20,661 apiece—that’s one $20,000 router for every 13.7 state police employees—and sent them off to the police. (Each router can handle several hundred concurrent users.)

But, hey, they can use these routers to run VOIP, right?

…the legislative auditor notes that each of the 3945 routers can handle 700 to 1,200 VoIP lines, which means that the 1,164 routers purchased by the state could support up to 1.39 million lines. As the auditor’s report dryly notes, only a single library in the entire state has more than eight phone lines; most have one or two. (None use a VoIP system anyway.)

And those $20,000 Cisco routers didn’t “come with ‘the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules’ to work with the system.”

The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can’t use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)

And it isn’t just the state police. There’s a one-room library in Marmet (population 1,500), open three days a week, with one internet connection. And they run it through a Cisco 3945.

The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people… and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000.

But how bad could it be? Surely Cisco was the low bidder, right?

In total, $24 million was spent on the routers through a not-very-open bidding process under which non-Cisco router manufacturers such as Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were not “given notice or any opportunity to bid.” As for Cisco, which helped put the massive package together, the legislative auditor concluded that the company “had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco’s own engineering standards” but that instead “Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers.”

I hate to say “I saw this coming” when the Feds first started talking about expanding broadband access. But then again, Hellen Keller would have seen this coming.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 26, 2013.

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Obit watch: C. Everett Koop. (True story: I used to live a stone’s throw away from the DrKoop.com headquarters. I didn’t move; DrKoop.com did.)

The NYT has discovered NFA trusts.

But because of a loophole in federal regulations

Ever notice how the NYT, LAT, and other media outlets refer to things they don’t like as a “loophole”?

…buying restricted firearms through a trust also exempts the trust’s members from requirements that apply to individual buyers, including being fingerprinted, obtaining the approval of a chief local law enforcement officer and undergoing a background check.
Lawyers who handle the trusts and gun owners who have used them say that a majority of customers who buy restricted firearms through trusts do not do so to avoid such requirements. And most gun dealers continue to require background checks for the representative of the trust who picks up the firearm. But not all do.

Frankly, I don’t believe the NYT‘s claims here. I suspect they’re being dishonest with the readers. However, I haven’t looked into NFA trusts; I’m not at the point in my life where I’m ready to purchase automatic weapons. (However, my brother and I had a discussion last night, prompted by the existence of “The Sliencer Store” near the movie theater I went to. A silencer for some of my .22LR guns is becoming more tempting.) Are there any readers out there who know more about NFA trusts and are willing to comment?

The LAT, meanwhile, is pre-occupied with the non-existant “gun show loophole”.

Speaking of movies, I considered live-blogging the Oscars on Sunday, but I figured my live blog would go something like this:

7:30 PM: Ceremony finally starts.
7.45 PM: First call by a celebrity for “reasonable gun control”. Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to bed.

The one nice thing to come out of the Oscars, in my humble opinion, was that “Argo” started playing at the Alamo Drafthouses again, and at reasonable times. I ended up seeing a matinee showing yesterday.

Yes, it is very much a “Hollywood saves the world” movie, as well as a “heroic Federal employees” movie. Yes, “based on a true story” means that some of the facts have been fudged.

And I don’t care: “Argo” is a good story, well acted, well directed, and just the right length. Of the nominees I’ve seen, I liked it more than “Django Unchained” and (sorry, Mom) “Lincoln”. (I still want to see “Zero Dark Thirty”, but haven’t gotten to it yet. The other movie from last year I was excited about and didn’t get to see is “The Master”, which I think is going to have to wait for DVD.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Guns, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Halt! Hammer-Zeit!

Monday, February 25th, 2013

…Jones returned to the apartment about 7 p.m. He attacked the resident with a hammer, hitting him several times in the head.
The resident wrapped Jones in a bear hug and the pair fell onto the floor. Jones hit the man with the hammer again. The man choked Jones.

Spoiler: things did not end well for the guy with the hammer. And no guns were involved.

This also gives me a chance to note the arrest of M.C. Hammer, who “became very argumentative” when the police asked him to get out of the car he was driving (“…that had expired registration and that was not registered to him”).

Every time I hear “U Can’t Touch This” on the radio, I want to call the station’s request line and ask them to play Rick James’ “Super Freak”. Then I want to say, “Oh, wait. You just did”, cackle maniacally, and hang up the phone.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music | Comments Closed

We’re the only ones competent enough to have radios.

Monday, February 25th, 2013

Ever since police officers started carrying radios, there have been radio related problems. One problem is “keying the microphone”: basically, pushing the talk button on the microphone and blocking other people from using the channel, or stepping on other people’s transmissions.

Sometimes this is an accident; you shift a little in the seat of your squad car and accidentally hit the button. Sometimes, though, especially in the New York Police Department, it isn’t an accident:

At least six officers have been punished since 2012 for such conduct. The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, described one case in Brooklyn in which two officers “who keyed over their sergeant” in the last year were each docked 30 vacation days and put on disciplinary probation. “That got their attention and others’ too.”

Officers have also been known to “whistle or quack like a duck to show their disdain for whoever preceded them on the airwaves.”

The NYPD’s radios are assigned to individual officers, and transmissions can be associated with a specific radio, but this hasn’t deterred the conduct. To be fair, some of it could, possibly, maybe be user interface issues:

“I showed them my memo book,” Mr. Padilla said. “I was in traffic court. Maybe it happened while I was turning the radio off. Sometimes you press the key while turning it off.”

Mr. Padilla works in the 33rd Precinct, under Inspector Joseph Dowling.

The inspector has a reputation of being a hands-on boss who is a frequent presence on the radio, often directing resources from the streets himself.
“He comes on the radio and people start clicking,” Mr. Padilla said.

But other than open disrespect for commanding officers, does this matter? Yes, it does:

Sometimes it happens during car chases, when officers have been known to try to drown out any supervisor who might call off the pursuit after concluding it is too dangerous. A number of microphones were keyed on an April night in 2008, for instance, as police officers chased a gunman in a stolen Consolidated Edison van near Yankee Stadium, one police officer recalled.

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

The most dangerous job.

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013

Any bets on when “aspiring rapper” is going to pass “commercial fisherman” as the most dangerous job in America?

And, by the way, you shouldn’t assert facts that can easily be checked, unless you know they’re true:

“He didn’t have a [criminal] record or a history. He was just a good kid trying to make it and be a good father.” Cherry had two children, [Vicki Greco, attorney for the aspiring rapper in question] said.

….

The [Oakland Tribune] reported that [Kenneth] Cherry [aka “Kenny Clutch”, the aspiring rapper] had several arrests in Oakland and Berkeley, many for gun charges. He was convicted on a gun charge in 2007, stemming from an arrest in Berkeley, sources told the Tribune, although details on that conviction weren’t immediately available.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: February 22, 2013.

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

It isn’t that I’ve gotten bored with the Bell trial. It’s just that things have been slow and repetitive over the past few days.

The defense has wrapped up closing arguments. I’d go into detail, but you’ve heard it before: it was all “Ratso” Rizzo’s fault.

“We’re here for Mr. Rizzo’s sins, ladies and gentlemen,” [George] Mgdesyan [attorney for councilman Luis Artiga] said. “We’re here because Mr. Rizzo became financially greedy.”

Also, the prosecution failed to prove their case, why wasn’t the city attorney called, and the whole case is political anyway:

[Leo] Moriarty [attorney for councilman Victor Bello] also hinted that the case against the council members was brought because then-Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley was running for attorney general. He said that if the prosecution put a mirror in front of itself, nothing would appear.

(Isn’t Moriarty a great name for a defense lawyer?)

“Almost like being a vampire, almost like being an evil — they can’t see the reflection because there’s nothing there.”
Moriarty likened himself to Don Quixote, “a man who wanted to fight injustice,” and his client to Sancho Panza.

Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think defending the right of city council members to pillage the city treasury is the kind of windmill Don Quixote would charge at.

And Bello does not strike me as being a convincing Sancho Panza. But he might be able to carry off Don Quixote. Terry Gilliam, call your office, please.

At this point, the case is in the hands of the jury, and we’re just waiting on a verdict.

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

Things you might want to think about.

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

Today’s LAT has a longish article on the decline and fall of the Jewish deli.

The article gives some reasons why the traditional deli is disappearing: health concerns, growing popularity and availability of ethnic food, the recession, and rising rents.

Art’s Deli owner Harold Ginsburg, 52, said he’s had to cut back on non-food items at the Studio City store: having fewer employees on call, trimming insurance costs and sending delivery cars to the cheapest gas stations.

What, was he sending cars to the most expensive gas stations when business was good?

But here’s what gets me: the second and third paragraphs of the article, describing customers lining up at the now closed Junior’s Deli:

…Brian Won’s main reaction was “meh.”
“The food was unremarkable,” said the West Los Angeles IT specialist, 32, who visited to use up a Groupon voucher. “Given that there are so many good places to eat in L.A., I have a really hard time saying yes to that.”

Wow, who would have thought selling unremarkable food in 2013 is no longer a license to print money?

And there’s a previous article about Junior’s linked from the sidebar of today’s:

The imminent closure of Junior’s Deli, a longtime Jewish eatery on the Westside, was the result of inexperienced ownership that exacerbated a rent dispute, according to the business’ landlord.

Apparently, the original owner died in 2011, and left the business to his two sons. The landlord claims that they had a good relationship with the original owner, and gave the deli ” several rent concessions during the recession”, even after the owner’s death.

The attorney said negotiations ground to a halt after the brothers made a “well-below market proposal” lower than their father’s rate.

Wow, who would have thought that wouldn’t be a successful negotiating strategy?

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: February 21, 2013.

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

Closing arguments have begun in the Bell trial. The LAT has your summary. Since we’re talking about the closing arguments, it basically amounts to “same s–t, different day”.

[Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward] Miller lambasted the defendants’ work on four city authorities, and said the dozens of documents shown throughout the trial — including resolutions for pay raises — were “the instruments by which they stole $1.3 million from the citizens of Bell — proof that the pen is mightier than the sword when it comes to white-collar crime.”

The big question: why didn’t anybody call Edward Lee, the former City Attorney for Bell and the guy who supposedly signed off on all of this? He was listed as a witness for the prosecution, but was never called.

Oh, yeah, by the way: it was all the fault of “Ratso” Rizzo, “a vindictive control freak”.

And:

Talking about [indicted council member George] Cole, who testified that he had voted for a 12% annual raise because he feared then-City Administrator Robert Rizzo, Miller said: “Boy, I sure wish my boss would threaten me with a raise.”

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

Surprise of the day.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

The Statesman ran a positive profile of the Austin Sure Shots women’s pistol league.

The Sure Shots, one of the country’s largest and fastest growing pistol clubs for women, started in Austin a little more than two years ago and holds weekly practices at indoor ranges in the Austin area.

More:

A few members have even built AR-15 rifles from scratch, often spending weeks or months painstakingly assembling them. Some are custom painted — bright pink, blue, white — or decorated with hearts or skulls and are instantly recognizable on the range and at competitions.

Take that, Joe Biden, you clueless wart on the ass of the body politic.

“As a society I think we tend to be afraid of things we don’t know,” Sackett said. “Fear of the unknown is age-old and universal. I’m already less afraid because I know how to operate (a gun). Then, rather than the gun having power over you, you have power over the gun.”

And having a gun, and the power over it, is a lot better than pissing or shitting yourself.

(I see why my friend Andrew likes Gutfeld so much: I am so stealing “Guns: it’s like yoga but useful.”)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

The things you learn wandering the Internet.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

A comment over here led me to the official website (are there many unofficial ones?) of Ern Malley, who I had never heard of previously.

Malley was an Australian poet who died at the age of 25 of Graves disease. His sister discovered his poetry in his personal effects, and sent it to Max Harris, the editor of a literary magazine called “Angry Penguins” (really, I am not making that up) for evaluation. Harris loved the poetry, and published it in the magazine, and in a book called “The Darkening Ecliptic”.

And none of what I’ve told you about Malley was true. He was actually the creation of two other poets, Harold Stewart and James McAuley:

Stewart and McAuley thought modernist poetry was pretentious nonsense. They likened it to “a free association test”. They agreed with A.D. Hope that it would be a good idea to “get Maxy” and to debunk what they called the “Angry Pungwungs”.

So they created Malley and his poetry (they claimed all the poems were written “in one grand burst on a wet afternoon in their barracks”) and sent it to Harris in an attempt to puncture what they saw as the pretense of modernist poetry. Hilarity ensued…

…until Harris and “Angry Penguins” became the subject of an obscenity trial over the Malley poems. (Harris ended up being fined 5 pounds and had to pick up the garbage.)

Lawrence would probably enjoy this story, as it reminds me a lot of the “Social Text” affair. As for myself, I think “the black swan of trespass on alien waters” is a neat turn of phrase.

Posted in Art, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 20, 2013.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

We must ban the deadly killer backboards!

Former Texas basketball player Gary Johnson was in stable condition Wednesday morning after undergoing surgery to repair a fractured skull he suffered during a game in Israel, his friend and marketing representative said.

I don’t have much to offer as a Bell trial update. I am assuming the court took Monday off, and there doesn’t seem to have been any reported activity on Tuesday. The LAT does have a story datelined today, but it is just a summary of the past week of testimony, focusing on the whole “it was all Rizzo!” defense strategy.

Obit watch: Donald Richie, “prominent American critic and writer on Japan who helped introduce much of the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema in 1959”. Among Richie’s works was The Films of Akira Kurosawa, a book I recommend to anyone interested in Kurosawa’s films.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

All Tesla, all the time.

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

Could be worse. Could be “all poop cruise”.

Anyway, the NYT public editor has weighed in on the Tesla story.

In my opinion, she’s done so in a rather half-assed fashion. Much of her blog entry is actually a quote from one reader’s letter, making the standard arguments:

  • the writer should have used the “Max Range” setting
  • the writer should have used the “Range Mode” setting
  • the writer should have read the section of the owner’s manual, “Driving Tips for Maximum Range”
  • and he should have left it plugged in overnight

Quoth the public editor:

My own findings are not dissimilar to the reader I quote above, although I do not believe Mr. Broder hoped the drive would end badly. I am convinced that he took on the test drive in good faith, and told the story as he experienced it.
Did he use good judgment along the way? Not especially. In particular, decisions he made at a crucial juncture – when he recharged the Model S in Norwich, Conn., a stop forced by the unexpected loss of charge overnight – were certainly instrumental in this saga’s high-drama ending.

But she fails to give any examples of what she (as opposed to the letter writer) considers to be his alleged “not good” judgment.

If the public editor wishes to take the items above as examples, there are some questions worth asking:

  • Doesn’t using the “Max Range” setting shorten the lifetime of the Tesla batteries? Isn’t it a legitimate decision to trade longer battery life for an additional “20-30 miles” of range?
  • The writer was on the phone with Tesla throughout the entire drive, and followed the advice they gave him to maximize range. Wouldn’t they have given him the same advice as far as the “Range Mode” settings and what’s in the owner’s manual?
  • Are there many hotels that have outside power outlets, in their parking areas, accessible to the public? That’s a serious question: I stay in maybe two hotels a year, if I’m lucky, and I don’t recall seeing power outlets at the ones I’ve stayed at in Vegas.

In addition, Mr. Broder left himself open to valid criticism by taking what seem to be casual and imprecise notes along the journey, unaware that his every move was being monitored. A little red notebook in the front seat is no match for digitally recorded driving logs, which Mr. Musk has used, in the most damaging (and sometimes quite misleading) ways possible, as he defended his vehicle’s reputation.

I agree somewhat with the public editor here. But, as she notes, the writer was “unaware that his every move was being monitored”. Elsewhere, I have seen Musk state that the Tesla has the capacity to do these kind of detailed logs, that it does not do them by default on consumer vehicles, but that Tesla automatically turns on the detailed logging for any vehicle they send out for review. Question: isn’t this just a little bit creepy and disturbing? I wouldn’t have a problem if Tesla had told the NYT and their writer in advance that they were going to have the car maintain a detailed trip log, especially if they shared that data with the NYT. But Musk kept this a secret from the paper, and from the reviewer, until he disputed the review. Yes, he has a right to do that, and yes, I can understand why you’d want your own logs to compare with the paper’s reporting. If Musk can do that to the NYT, though, he can do that to you, Joe Tesla Driver, too.

(So how does this differ from the “black box” in newer cars? Not sure. Need to think about that. My understanding is that the “black box” only collects the last few minutes of data from the car, as opposed to the detailed multi-day logs from the Tesla. But I’m not an auto mechanic, and I have no “black box” in my car.)

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 19, 2013.

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

Well, isn’t this special. Julie Roe Lach, the NCAA’s chief enforcement officer, has been fired. You may remember Ms. Lach from such hits as “my people totally f–ked up the Miami investigation”.

Is Sherlock Holmes in the public domain? Or is he under copyright?

…according to a civil complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Illinois by a leading Holmes scholar, many licensing fees paid to the Arthur Conan Doyle estate have been unnecessary, since the main characters and elements of their story derived from materials published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law.

The scholar in question is Leslie S. Klinger, the man behind the recent Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Klinger and the mystery writer Laurie R. King are planning a collection of “Holmes-related” stories by various authors, but the Conan Doyle estate is demanding a licensing fee. Klinger and King did a previous collection of Holmes-related stories in 2011, and paid a $5,000 licensing fee.

The complaint asks that the court make a declaratory judgment establishing that the basic “Sherlock Holmes story elements” are in the public domain, a point that some have previously argued, if not in court.

What can you say about the only college Greco-Roman wrestling program in the country? What are they going to do if wrestling is no longer an Olympic sport? I don’t know, and I wasn’t going to say anything until I read this:

After losing its federal funding last year, the program relies on USA Wrestling and the university for financial support.

Wait. The Federal Government was funding a wrestling program? On the God-forsaken Upper Peninsula of Michigan?

Hermann always has recruits visit the campus during the summer, which he acknowledges is a bit of subterfuge. When they arrive as freshmen, just as the cold winds are beginning to blow, Hermann instructs their parents to wait in the parking lot for a few minute
“I’ve actually had recruits turn around and go back home the same day,” he said.

Competition tractor restoration. No snark here: I think this is nifty. (And, really, it isn’t any different than car shows, is it? Indeed, thinking about it some more, this might also be worth noting as an example of how the mass media is out of touch with the rest of the country.)

In addition to the Delo, which is sponsored by Chevron’s brand of oil and lubricants and is considered a Super Bowl of tractor restoration, there’s also a tractor restoration Web series (“Tractor Fanatic,” with episodes available in a two-DVD set) and Midwest tractor shows that draw thousands of fans each summer.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: February 18, 2013.

Monday, February 18th, 2013

Friday’s Bell update…wasn’t much of one. Testimony has wrapped up, and the case should go to the jury this week.

There was some bickering between the prosecution and indicted council member George Cole. Cole claimed that Bell needed to pay high salaries “to bring more Latinos onto the council of the low-income, largely immigrant city”, and that’s why he voted for a pay increase. The prosecution pointed out that Victor Bello, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, all of whom were also indicted, were already on the council when Cole voted for the increase.

When [Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward] Miller presented a document that ensured no employee hired or elected after June 30, 2005, would be eligible for the city’s supplemental retirement plan, he asked Cole: “Wouldn’t taking away that benefit adversely affect Latino representation on the City Council?”
Cole replied that it would.
“Did you vote for this because your friends on the City Council and yourself would be covered?” Miller asked.
“It looks like I did.”

When Miller pushed the point that the resolutions Cole and the other council members voted for would allow them a salary of $100,000 a year…

Cole then pointed out that Los Angeles City Council members had a driver, car and staff. “I never had any of those,” he said.
“Did you feel you needed a driver and a chauffeur to get around a 2½-square-mile city?” Miller asked.

Other than that, Rizzo got thrown under the bus again.

Former City Manager Robert Rizzo was depicted as a vengeful strongman, beginning with the opening statements from defense attorneys — one of whom called the former administrator “the thief, the fraud, the destructor of the city.”

Sunday’s LAT ran a story on what council meetings in Bell are like these days. Answer: much calmer. Oddly enough, however, it appears that Rebecca “testified against the other council members in return for immunity” Valdez is still the city clerk.

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

Obit watch: February 18, 2013.

Monday, February 18th, 2013

Barnaby Conrad Jr. — bullfighter, bon vivant, portrait artist, saloonkeeper to the stars, author of 36 books, and founder of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, led a life that was anything but boring. Ninety years old, he died Tuesday in his Carpinteria home after a battle with congestive heart disease.

Conrad wrote two books that I liked very much: The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic and Absinthe: History in a Bottle.

I have very little to say about Mindy McCready except this: the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Mixology, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Bread blogging: Shiner Bock Cheddar and King Arthur Flour.

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

This time, another bread from Laurence Simon, Shiner Bock Cheddar. And another recipe closely adhered to, even to the point of brushing the bread with butter and sprinkling in jalapenos and sesame seeds.

How did it come out?

(more…)

Posted in Bread, Endorsements, Food | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! watch. (Part 1 of what I hope will be a more than infrequent series)

Saturday, February 16th, 2013

Jessie Jackson, Jr. has been charged with…

… one count of conspiracy to commit false statements, mail fraud and wire fraud in the misuse of approximately $750,000 in campaign funds…

Yes, this is just an indictment; he hasn’t been convicted yet, but all the reporting I’ve seen is stating the indictment was the first step towards a plea deal, and Jackson does plan to plead guilty to at least some of the charges.

The allegations include:

According to the WP, while the co-conspirator was not named, “the description makes clear that [Mrs. Jackson] was the co-conspirator”. She hasn’t been charged in this case, but:

Jackson’s wife was charged with filing false income-tax returns from 2006 through 2011, according to a separate criminal information in her case. That charge has a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

The reporting I’ve seen provides some additional context for Jackson Jr.’s spending. This wasn’t “I needed to pay the house payment, so I took money out of campaign funds” spending:

I remember reading the stories that Jackson Jr. was absent from Congress and out of touch, and the eventual announcements he was being treated for depression, but I did not associate those with an on-going criminal investigation:

Jackson eventually fled Washington for psychological treatment, abandoning Capitol Hill for several weeks without telling congressional leaders why he was absent. Later in the summer of 2012, his office announced that he was being treated for depression at the Mayo Clinic, whose doctors issued a more detailed statement in mid-August saying he suffered from bipolar disorder. Despite his months-long absence from the District, Jackson won reelection Nov. 6 with 71 percent of the vote.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Banana republicans on trial: February 15, 2013.

Friday, February 15th, 2013

That evil Robert “Ratso” Rizzo! He tied people up…and made them take money! The horror! The horror!

You think I’m kidding, right?

George Cole, a former steelworker, returned to the witness stand for a second day and testified that he voted for a 12% annual pay raise for a City Council board in 2008 only because he feared retribution from then-City Manager Robert Rizzo.

More:

“He had shown himself to be very vindictive if you crossed him at that time,” Cole said. “I was worried that if I didn’t vote for this, if I voted against it, he would do whatever he could to destroy the work that was important to me and the community. I knew that was his character.”
Cole said it was the most difficult decision he ever made while on the council but was in the best interest of Bell — a city, he said, where he had devoted decades to advocating for new schools and programs for at-risk youths and senior citizens.

…

The 63-year-old also told jurors that when he discovered $15,500 had been deposited into a 401(k)-style account for him, he complained. Cole said Rizzo refused to remove the money.

Cole is quoted, in a separate LANow blog post, as wanting to give up his salary in 2007, after one of Bell’s parks was closed. Ratso was not pleased:

“He got angry and told me if I didn’t take the salary I would have to resign from the City Council,” Cole said. “I told him that I was elected to that position by the people of the community, and if I didn’t want to take the salary and stay on board that was entirely up to me,” Cole said.

My understanding of city manager/council government is that the council tells the manager what to do, not the other way around. The testimony seems to be that Rizzo was driving the train. Left unanswered so far: why did the council allow this? If, indeed, the council did, and people like Cole aren’t engaging in retroactive butt covering?

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

Lenny Bruce is not afraid, and other random notes for February 15, 2013.

Friday, February 15th, 2013

More on the Maureen O’Connor story from the NYT. Highlights:

Her lawyers said that while she had made well over a billion dollars in bets at casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and San Diego, her actual net losses were around $13 million.

…

…to wager a billion dollars over the course of her nine-year gambling spree, Ms. O’Connor would have had to bet the equivalent of more than $300,000 a day, seven days a week.

The Chelyabinsk meteor story is the kind of thing I feel obligated to comment on, but am still sorting out. I know my readers are looking to me for answers to such questions as “is it time to crack open our neighbor’s heads and feast on the tasty goo inside?” While you wait, WSJ coverage. And I’m going to break with one of my rules and point folks at Slate. My justification for this is that I’m pointing you at Phil Plait and “Bad Astronomy”: if anyone is going to be on top of this story, it will be Plait. Plus, he’s got lots of video.

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

Good lord.

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor acknowledged in federal court Thursday that she gambled away millions of dollars that her late husband had earmarked for charity purposes.

Ms. O’Connor is getting a “deferred prosecution” deal.

Under a bargain with prosecutors, O’Connor agreed to make $2 million in restitution; if she violates no further laws in the next two years, the charge may be dismissed.

What happened? O’Connor’s husband was Robert Peterson, founder of Jack in the Box who “made a fortune in the restaurant, hotel and banking industries”. So she had money. LOTS of money.

O’Connor is destitute after gambling away $1 billion at casinos in the San Diego area and Las Vegas and Atlantic City from 2000 to 2009, according to prosecutors. She has admitted having a gambling addiction, prosecutors said.

Yeah, you read that right. She gambled away One. Billion. Dollars. That’s $100 million a year, or $8.3 million a month.

Anyway, when she ran out of money, she took money from the charitable foundation her husband started, which is now defunct because she stole the money.

O’Connor, who underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2011, used a cane and needed help walking as she entered the courtroom of federal Judge David Bartick. In her youth, she had been a star swimmer and later a physical education teacher before being elected to the City Council in 1971 as a maverick Democrat.

So other than the question of exactly how you gamble away $100 million a year, and how you do that for ten years without realizing you have a problem: how exactly is a destitute 66-year-old woman who needs help walking supposed to pay back $2 million? (The late Mr. Peterson’s Wikipedia entry says he had four kids from a previous marriage, but apparently none with O’Connor.)

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

Musk Music.

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary on a pogo stick, if I had known the Tesla story was going to cause this much trouble, I wouldn’t have linked to it.

Since I did, though, I feel obligated to link to updates. In what I think is chronological order:

“A Most Peculiar Test Drive”, Tesla’s blog post giving their view of what the data shows.

Hacker News discussion of “A Most Peculiar Test Drive”, which has some good points in it. (It also has a lot of “The New York Times is a shill for Big Oil!” (Oh, wait. You’re serious. Let me laugh even harder.)  and “Any publication that gives the Tesla a good review is going to get driven out of business by the car companies!” (This, of course, explains why Motor Trend is no longer publishing. Oh, wait…))

“Elon Musk’s Data Doesn’t Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery” from The Atlantic Wire.

“That Tesla Data: What It Says and What It Doesn’t”, the NYT response to the Tesla blog post.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Media | 3 Comments »

Banana republicans on trial: February 14, 2013.

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

I was out of pocket for much of the day Tuesday, which is why I didn’t update. Oddly, there seems to be a gap in the trial coverage on the LAT site: if anything did happen Tuesday, the paper didn’t report it.

As far as yesterday’s testimony: indicted former councilman George Mirabal was back on the stand.

“Did you specifically ask Mr. Lee, ‘Can I get this salary?’”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he was in charge of maintaining surveillance on all these type of actions,” Mirabal said. “His firm was getting like $13,000 a month, the least he can do is look at all the resolutions and various ordinances.”

(Mr. Lee is Ed Lee, who was Bell’s city attorney.)

Also on the stand: Annette Peretz, Bell’s former director of community services. Her salary was $273,000 a year when she retired in 2010.

Attorneys have a saying: “Never ask a witness a question that you don’t know the answer to.” In that light, this exchange is…interesting.

The court received a jolt, though, when Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller opened his cross-examination by asking: “Were you Robert Rizzo’s girlfriend?”

The judge ruled that Peretz did not have to answer that question, and Peretz also declined comment to reporters.

I can’t find a photo of Peretz, but as a reminder, this is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo:

Peretz also testified as, basically, a character witness for indicted council member Teresa Jacobo, saying “she often saw Jacobo meeting with residents at the community center and visiting senior housing facilities.”

Peretz, who took a $95,000 city loan from a program Rizzo developed, filed a lawsuit against Bell for retirement and medical benefits. A judge ruled for the city earlier this month. Rizzo is charged with illegally loaning out city money.

Also testifying as witnesses for Jacobo: two of her daughters, and “a woman who lives in one of Bell’s mobile home parks”:

Candalaria Ramirez said Jacobo was a trusted, frequent visitor who responded to residents and was instrumental in firing the management company that residents had complained was mistreating seniors and had racist employees.

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

Notes on film: The Rohauer Library

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Over a number of years, Raymond Rohauer, a producer and distributor, accumulated prints of a number of films. His collection became known as the Rohauer Library, and contains “more than 700 titles”, according to the LAT.

The collection includes original nitrate camera negatives, prints and other materials that are unavailable elsewhere. Through licenses and contracts, the collection holds rights to the movies.

Mr. Rohauer died in 1987. The collection was purchased in 2011 by a man named Charles S. Cohen, who has aggressive plans to get the collection back into circulation.

Why does this matter? Here are some of the things in the collection:

And the list goes on. This could be the best thing to happen to movies since the Criterion Collection.

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

« Older Entries