Archive for April, 2013

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Shhhhhsh. The baby’s observing.

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

A team of French neuroscientists who compared brain waves of adults and babies has come up with a tentative answer: At 5 months, infants appear to have the internal architecture in place to perceive objects in adult-like ways, even though they can’t tell us.

This is…interesting. (And the photo of the wired-up baby is a little creepy.) I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently around a baby (and a toddler), and I’m not 100% sure I agree with their police work there, Lou. What does “perceive objects in an adult-like way” mean, exactly? Because the baby I’ve been hanging with doesn’t seem to understand adult-like concepts like “you can’t go through a solid object”.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with that. She is, after all, a baby. At least we haven’t had to have the conversation about how riding the dog like it’s a small horse is FROWNED UPON IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT.)

Charles Nelson, director of developmental medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, cautioned that the French scientists may be over-interpreting data…
Brain wave data and brain activity measured by functional MRI scans alone cannot imply a behavioral state, Nelson warned.
“If that were true, I should be able to look at your [electroencephalogram and MRI] response and know what you’re thinking or feeling, and we know that is not the case,” he said.

Posted in Clippings, Neuroscience | Comments Closed

Obit watch, random notes, and open thread: April 20, 2013.

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

Al Neuharth, creator of USA Today. USA Today obit.

In 1984, in an effort to push USA Today executives to cut costs, he invited them to a dinner near his home in Cocoa Beach. They arrived to see a long table set with matzo and Manischewitz wine in a mock tableau of the Last Supper and a Passover Seder. At the center sat Mr. Neuharth, a crown of thorns on his head and a huge wooden cross behind him.
“I am the crucified one,” he told the stunned executives, and warned them that they would be “passed over” if the newspaper foundered.

Headline:

Rutgers Men’s Coach Suspended With Pay Amid Investigation

This is not a repeat from two weeks ago.

Today is my birthday. I’m going to be out of pocket most of the day: going to the gun shop, then over to the capitol to take pictures, then on a tour of the UT Tower, and then to dinner. In my absence, consider this an open thread to talk about things you want to talk about: Boston, West, Michael Morton and Ken Anderson, the Astros, the vertical integration of the broiler industry, etc.

(As always, if this is your first time posting, I have to approve your comment. Once you’ve been approved, additional comments should go through without requiring moderation. Comment approval is one blog function I can do fairly easily from my phone, so you should not have to wait too long. Unless I’m driving.)

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Media, Obits | 3 Comments »

When I take over and declare martial law…

Friday, April 19th, 2013

…the radio stations will be all theremin, all the time. Except when I want to provide the people with important updates on the progress of our flying monkeys.

Posted in Clippings, Music, Radio, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

DAs Gone Wild!

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Order now! Only $19.95!

Lehmberg had been placed in an isolation cell for protective custody but she refused several orders to stop kicking the cell door and was put in “the emergency restraint chair,” the records say.

More:

According to an inmate incident report, Lehmberg also resisted a pat-down, refused to comply with officers, tried to scratch and grab an officer’s hand and yelled.
She was handcuffed and “leg-ironed,” according to the report.

And updating: in addition to the 45 days in jail, she was fined $4,000 and her license has been suspended for 180 days.

I know what you’re wondering: who will run the show while she’s doing hard time? Answer: “operational aspects of the office will be handled by senior staff“.

But DA Lehmberg isn’t the only local DA who has run aground on the shoals of the law. And at least she didn’t hurt anybody.

Former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson was ordered arrested and booked into jail for the “intentionally harmful act” of hiding favorable evidence to secure Michael Morton’s 1987 conviction for murder, the court of inquiry found.
“This court cannot think of a more intentionally harmful act than a prosecutor’s conscious choice to hide mitigating evidence so as to create an uneven playing field for a defendant facing a murder charge and a life sentence,” District Judge Louis Sturns ruled.

I did not write a lot about the Michael Morton case and the court of inquiry into Anderson’s conduct because…well, I was a little distracted at the time, the case is complex, and it was being well covered by other people. Texas Monthly did a two-part series on the case itself, and covered the court of inquiry as well.

The short version of the story: Morton came home from work one day in 1986 and found his wife had been murdered. Morton was charged with and convicted of her murder, and served 25 years in prison. In 2011, DNA testing established another man committed the crime: Morton was released from prison, exonerated, and the other man was convicted of the murder in late March of this year. During the proceedings leading to Morton’s release, there were accusations that Anderson and the Williamson County DA’s office had intentionally withheld evidence from Morton and his defense during the original murder trial: these accusations resulted in the court of inquiry and the charges against Anderson.

Posted in Clippings, Law, TCDA | 1 Comment »

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Friday, April 19th, 2013

The weather here yesterday was spectacularly crappy.

Today is beautiful. The sun is shining, the temperature is moderate – a perfect spring day.

For various reasons, including how nice a day it is (as well as some others that I don’t want to touch on just now) I thought it’d be fun to go down to the state capitol and take some photos.

So I loaded up the Honda with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction the big Nikon with the camera bag and lenses, as well as my tripod. Headed downtown to the capitol, got rockstar parking, and went inside to see a man about a racehorse before I started shooting. (Officious guard: “Sir, where are you going?” Me: “CHL holder.” OG: “Oh.”)

(For those who don’t know, the Texas capitol has a separate line for CHL holders that bypasses the metal detector.)

Anyway, get back outside, set stuff down, take out the camera…

…and the GD battery is dead. And, unlike my SD1000, I don’t have a spare Nikon battery.

Oh, well. I’m going to be down in that general area with the camera tomorrow as well, so I’ll plan on taking my photos tomorrow.

(And I stopped by Precision Camera on the way home so I could fix the “no spare Nikon battery” problem.)

(I’ve been meaning to mention this, but Precision Camera’s new store is really swell. Parking is a vast improvement over the old store, there’s much more space to move around and for them to display stuff, and the men’s room would get three stars if I was rating it for the SDC.)

Posted in Endorsements, Photography, Stupid | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: April 19, 2013.

Friday, April 19th, 2013

I wasn’t planning to do these as a regular thing this season. But I figure with everything else going on, folks could use a distraction while we wait.

Surprisingly, the Astros do not have the worst record in baseball. The Marlins are at 3-13, for a .188 winning percentage. That works out to an estimated 132 losses this season if trends continue: not quite Cleveland Spiders level, but good enough for third on the all-time list.

Houston is at 4-11, for a .267 winning percentage. That works out to an estimated 119 losses, which would be a record for the Astros, and would get them on the list right around where the 2003 Detroit Tigers are.

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Breaking!

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Not Boston: Travis County DA Rosesmary Lehmberg has pled guilty to DWI and been sentenced to 45 days in jail.

The Statesman reports she had a 0.23 BAC when she was stopped. The significance of this:

First-offense drunken driving is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by as much as six months in jail and a $2,000 fine. But last legislative session, lawmakers upped the charge to a Class A misdemeanor if a suspect’s breath or blood test shows a blood alcohol level of 0.15 or above. A Class A misdemeanor carries a sentence of up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

Posted in Clippings, Law, TCDA | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 19, 2013.

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Holy crap!

Heard on the CBS coverage: “How do you lock down an entire city?” (Nobody had a really good answer to that question.)

Ten officers were being evaluated at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton early this morning, according to a source, who said the officers said they were hurt from grenades being thrown from the window of a car during a car chase.

More:

“It was more than gunshot wounds,’’ Wolfe told reporters about 5:30 a.m. today. “It was a combination of injuries. We believe a combination of of blasts, multiple gunshot wounds.”
Wolfe said it looked like the man had been hurt by an “explosive device’’ and that the man was struck by “shrapnel.’’ The man was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m. The hospital officials said they did not know his name.

(CBS, or the local CBS affiliate – I’m not sure which – just ran a commercial featuring an exploding air conditioner. Bad timing, guys.)

I may come back to this later. I want to do some research and possibly talk to Lawrence. In other news:

As a result of last week’s settlement in the legal battle over Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” Ms. Taymor’s directing credit on the musical has been enhanced – and it is now listed above the credit for Philip Wm. McKinley, who replaced Ms. Taymor after its producers fired her in March 2011.

Jimmy Haslam recently bought the Cleveland Browns. Haslam made a pile of money off of the Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops and “travel centers”. Yesterday, the FBI raided the Pilot Flying J headquarters:

A 120-page affidavit for a search warrant filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tenn., says Pilot Flying J sales employees withheld fuel price rebates and discounts from certain companies to boost the profitability of the company and increase their sales commissions. The affidavit says FBI and IRS agents are investigating charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud.

More:

The document says “the rebate fraud has occurred with the knowledge of Pilot’s current President Mark Hazelwood and Pilot’s Chief Executive Officer James A. “Jimmy” Haslam III, due to the fact that the rebate fraud-related activities have been discussed during sales meetings in Knoxville, Tenn., in which Hazelwood and Haslam have been present.”

The Browns just can’t catch a break, can they? It will be interesting to see how this plays out as we get closer to the NFL season.

(Heard on CBS: “I was going into this thinking there was some connection to somewhere.” No s–t, Sherlock.)

Edited to add: Since folks are distracted by Boston at the moment, let me note here: the confirmed death toll in West stands at 12.

The State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association said Friday morning that it believes 11 firefighters died in the explosion, including four who were emergency medical service personnel.

According to the association, one of those firefighters was from Dallas: all of the others were volunteer firefighters with the West Fire Department.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Law, NFL, Sarcasm, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Thanks to the Statesman…

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

…for the reminder that West, Texas was also the location of the Great Crush Crash.

(Technically, the Great Crush Crash actually took place in Crush. But Crush was a temporary city erected specifically for the event, and named after William George Crush, “passenger agent for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad”.)

“The Great Crush Crash?” you say. Indeed.

On September 15, 1896, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad ran two railroad locomotives into each other. Head on. At an estimated 45 MPH. I remember reading an article in the Old Farmer’s Almanac many years ago about staged locomotive crashes; apparently, this was a fairly popular form of entertainment back in the old days. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad made a big deal out of this particular crash, which was Crush’s idea; they laid on special trains to the site, with reduced fares and what not. The entire city of Crush was built from the ground up:

In early September 500 workmen laid four miles of track for the collision run and constructed a grandstand for “honored guests,” three speaker’s stands, two telegraph offices, a stand for reporters, and a bandstand. A restaurant was set up in a borrowed Ringling Brothers circus tent, and a huge carnival midway with dozens of medicine shows, game booths, and lemonade and soft-drink stands was built. Finally, workmen erected a special depot with a platform 2,100 feet long, and a sign was painted to inform passengers that they had arrived at Crush, Texas.

An estimated 40,000 people showed up to watch the collision.

So how did that work out for them?

When the two locomotives, one painted bright green, the other bright red, collided at about 45 mph, their boilers exploded, killing three people and injuring a half-dozen more as debris was blown into spectator-filled areas.

In retrospect, this may not have been a smart thing to do. It appears that the railroad’s engineers repeatedly assured officials that there was no way the boilers would explode. But this was 1896:

People began to leave for home, the tents, stands, and midway booths came down, and by nightfall Crush, Texas, ceased to exist. The Katy quickly settled all damage claims brought against it with cash and lifetime rail passes.

And Mr. Crush? “…the railroad fired him that evening but relented and rehired him the next day.”

Why, yes, there is a historical marker. And here’s another article with some photos of the event itself.

Posted in Clippings, History, Trains | 1 Comment »

Firing watch.

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

I was out of pocket pretty much all morning and much of the afternoon for something that didn’t quite pan out. (Lousy Sapril weather.)

However, Lawrence was covering the beat for me.

Lawrence Frank out as head coach of the Detroit Pistons. 54-94 over two “seasons” (in quotes because Frank was hired during the 2011 strike).

Byron Scott out as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Three seasons, 64-166.

Doug Collins has “resigned” as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, but is apparently staying on as a “consultant”. So this is probably closer to a real resignation than “jumped before being pushed”, but I note it anyway. Three seasons, 110-120.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 18, 2013.

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

NYT headline:

Gun Control Effort Had No Real Chance, Despite Pleas

(I am still thinking about fisking the NYT Internet sales piece, but I’ve been tied up and haven’t had a chance. I might get to it tonight, if I decide to go through with it.)

The NYT is reporting that Kim Lene Williams, who was arrested yesterday and charged in the Kaufman County DA killings, is rolling on her husband.

According to an affidavit filed by the authorities, Ms. Williams confessed to her involvement in the shootings in an interview with investigators on Tuesday, and told them that her husband had been the one who shot Mr. Hasse in January and Mr. McLelland and his wife in March.
During her interview, she supplied investigators with details of both shootings that had not been made public. One law enforcement official confirmed that Ms. Williams was not a gunman in the murders, but had been the driver, and had also used the storage unit where Mr. Williams had kept a car and more than 20 guns.

I Am Not A Lawyer, but this did get me to wondering. Rule 504 of the Texas Rules of Evidence covers spousal privilege:

In a criminal case, the spouse of the accused has a privilege not to be called as a witness for the state. This rule does not prohibit the spouse from testifying voluntarily for the state, even over objection by the accused. A spouse who testifies on behalf of an accused is subject to cross-examination as provided in rule 611(b).

So she doesn’t have to testify against her husband, but she can if she wants to. And it sounds like she will, especially since she apparently wasn’t the actual trigger puller and can probably make a deal. (It sounds like whatever deal she does make will end up with her dying in prison, since the paper of record reports she’s 46 years old and has chronic health problems.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | 1 Comment »

Wow. Just…wow.

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

For the handful of my readers who don’t read FARK, here’s cell phone video of the explosion. You may find this disturbing – not so much for the actual explosion video as for the aftermath.

Waco Herald-Tribune (link goes to front page). HouChron. Statesman. Dallas Morning News (as far as I can tell, the DMN does not have their coverage behind a pay wall).

“That whole side of town looks like a disaster,” Bill Manolakis said. “Who in their right mind sticks a damn plant next to houses?”

I wonder who was there first.

Noted: Tuesday was the anniversary of the 1947 Texas City explosion.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives | Comments Closed

Note from the art beat.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

Hillel Nahmad owns the Helly Nahmad Gallery in Manhattan. The Nahmad family is kind of a big deal in the art sales world.

Despite sneers from some of their more staid peers who have accused them of unfairly negotiating special terms with auction houses, they are among the most powerful, wealthy and colorful members of the elite global club of fine art dealers.

The Helly Nahmed Gallery was raided by the FBI yesterday. Hillel Nahmed is charged with…

…playing a leading role in a far-flung gambling and money-laundering operation that stretched from Kiev and Moscow to Los Angeles and New York.
The case features a wide cast of characters, including a man described as a Russian gangster accused of trying to rig Winter Olympic skating competitions in Salt Lake City and a woman who once organized high-stakes poker games for some of Hollywood’s most famous faces. In all, 34 people were charged on Tuesday with playing a part in what federal prosecutors described as two separate but interconnected criminal groups — one operating overseas and the other in the United States. Together, they are accused of laundering more than $100 million in gambling money.

Mr. Nahmed is also charged with “defrauding an unnamed person by selling him a painting for $300,000 when it was worth only $50,000.”

Also indicted: “Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, 64, whom prosecutors describe as the leader of a Russian organized-crime gang.”

In addition to the new charges against him in this case,

Mr. Tokhtakhounov, who remains at large, was indicted in 2002 on charges that he was part of a scheme to rig the results of the Winter Olympic finals in Salt Lake City in pairs figure skating and ice dancing.

More:

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan in that case, he was accused of working with an unidentified member of a Russian crime gang and an unidentified Russian skating official to rig the competition. He helped secure a gold medal for Russia in the pairs event in exchange for a victory for the French ice dancing team, according to the complaint.

The United States attempted to extradite Mr. Tokhtakhounov from Italy, but the extradition order was overturned by the Italian courts, and Mr. Tokhtakhounov has never been tried on that charge.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Random notes: April 17, 2013.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

“anyone who has lived in Travis County for six months” and “is not currently under indictment”.

Heh. Heh. Heh. Personally, I would have waited until she was actually convicted, but that’s just my strategic thinking.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

The “not yet named as a suspect” in the Kaufman County DA shootings had “more than 20 guns” in a storage unit. Or, as we call that in Texas, “just about average”.

And the firearms included two or three handguns and seven assault rifles.

I’d like to see these “assault rifles”; I don’t trust the NYT to know which end the bullets come out of.

Edited to add: Well. Well, well, well. Well. How about that Aryan Brotherhood?

Speaking of trusting the NYT on guns:

With no requirements for background checks on most private transactions, a Times examination found, Armslist and similar sites function as unregulated bazaars, where the essential anonymity of the Internet allows unlicensed sellers to advertise scores of weapons and people legally barred from gun ownership to buy them.

More:

The Times assembled a database and analyzed several months of ads from Armslist

Whooop! Whoop! Journalist with a database alert!

I have to head out the door shortly, but may come back to this NYT article later on.

Obit watch: Pat Summerall.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Sports, TCDA, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 16, 2013.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

So here’s the latest on Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg: she says she plans to plead guilty to the DWI charge and accept whatever punishment the court gives her. No word on whether she’s going to hire a lawyer or act as her own attorney.

But. There’s a catch.

Chapter 87 of the state’s Local Government Code lists among the “general grounds for removal” of a district attorney and other county officials “intoxication on or off duty caused by drinking an alcoholic beverage.”
Under that law, a removal petition could be filed by anyone who has lived in Travis County for six months and is “not currently under indictment” for a crime here. The petition would be filed with a district judge, and a trial would be held on the charge — with a jury to determine the official’s fate, according to the law.

“anyone who has lived in Travis County for six months” and “is not currently under indictment”. You don’t say.

And I said “What about ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’?”
And Patrick Healy said “Closing on Sunday.”

Boston Globe. Boston Herald.

Edited to add: Joe Huffman, the man behind Boomershoot and someone who knows his way around explosives, has some informed speculation on what might have been used. Short version: it doesn’t look like a commercial or military grade explosive.

Speaking of crimes, remember the Kaufman County DA killings? Remember how people were suggesting the Aryan Brotherhood was involved? Yeah. About that.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Law, TCDA, Theatre | 1 Comment »

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