Actual headline on an AP story from the NYT:
Well, you see, when a mommy anteater and a daddy anteater love each other very much….
Obit watch: NASCAR driver Dick Trickle. The NYT obit (by way of the AP) is just awful: here’s a better obit from the HouChron.
As long as we’re talking about Lawrence’s review of General Idi Amin Dada, I have a question that’s bugging me, and I know I have some aviation buffs in my audience.
What are these planes? I apologize for the pictures: they are actually screen snapshots from the DVD, and I tried to get ones that showed the best possible angles. Click to embiggen.
Lawrence suggested they might be MiGs, and I know the Ugandan Air Force had MiG-15s and MiG-17s. But both the 15 and 17 have a really blunt open nose, while these planes have a more rounded one. I don’t think these are Fouga Magisters either, because they lack the V-tail. I believe these are some sort of two seat jet trainer, and they may be French. But I can’t tell, and it really bugs me that I can’t figure it out. Maybe if I’m lucky Tam will see this. For some reason, I’ve also got in my head that the good and great Brian Dunbar knows his planes. And, of course, there’s RoadRich…
Okay. I lied. One more “one more thing”, just because this amuses me, and I’m pretty sure it amused Lawrence as well.
(Okay, one last thing. It irritates the fire out of me that Apple disabled screen captures from DVD Player in the Grab utility. And they don’t just throw up a “You can’t do this” popup: Grab lets you do the capture, but the resulting file is just a checkerboard grey and white pattern. Fortunately, VLC will a) playback DVDs, and b) even has a built-in “Snapshot” menu option. Hurray open source.)
Lawrence has put up a review of Barbet Schroeder’s classic documentary, General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait
Don’t have much to add to what he says, and I agree with him pretty much 100%, so I encourage you to wander over there and read his review.
Bacon numbers of note: Idi Amin – Bacon number of 3, if you include TV shows. Otherwise, the Oracle of Bacon says Amin can’t be linked to Bacon, which I find hard to swallow. (I checked using both “Idi Amin” and “Idi Amin Dada”.)
Fidel Castro, on the other hand, has a Bacon number of 2. Castro is linked to Bacon through Detective Munch and something called “Marilyn Monroe: Murder on Fifth Helena Drive” which is scheduled for release sometime in 2013.
Obit watch: “flamboyant swindler” Billie Sol Estes. NYT.
Mr. Estes’s daughter Pamela Padget said that he died in his sleep and was found in his recliner.
The AP adds the telling detail that he died with chocolate chip cookie crumbs on his lips.
Billie Sol was a little before my time, much less the time of some of my younger readers, but the NYT gives a good one-paragraph summary:
Paging Mayor Bloomberg! Mayor Bloomberg, white courtesy phone, please!
I remember when the blood alcohol limit was 0.10%. I remember the arguments at the time for and against lowering the limit to 0.08%. The one question I had was: how many accidents were caused by drivers who were at 0.08% or above, but below 0.10%? I never got an answer to that question, and it didn’t matter anyway, since the government issued a decree:
And now the government is talking about dropping it down to 0.05%. Again, I ask: how many accidents are caused by people at or above 0.05% but below 0.08%? There was a report on Reason‘s website (I can’t find it right now) that estimated “500-800” lives saved per year by lowering the limit to 0.05%. But does this take into account the number of lives that might be lost by diverting police resources to pursue drivers at the 0.05% level, instead of pursuing other crimes?
Larry Wayne Mahoney, the intoxicated driver, had a 0.24% BAC at the time of the crash, so he was already DWI even by 1988 standards, let alone the 2000 standard or the proposed 0.05% standard. Most of the serious DWI accidents I hear about involve people who are above – in many cases, way above – the 0.10% mark. Would we save more lives going after the highly intoxicated drunk; the guy who blows a 0.20% or the gal who blows a 0.25%?
New posts over at the SDC site: a review of Pinthouse Pizza (updates to come) and a post about America’s favorite British chef and the latest episode of his TV show. (Can you say, “batshit crazy”, boys and girls?)
On a semi-unrelated note, I have an App.net account now. I will try to start sending out notifications of new and updated posts here and on the SDC site.
Dr. Joyce Brothers. NYT. LAT. I think my older readers are aware of this bit of trivia, but I insert it here for the benefit of the younger set:
I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find the specific question Dr. Brothers answered for “The $64,000 Question”. The NYT has the answer, I think (the writing in that last paragraph is a bit fuzzy).
In other news, the HouChron reports that the Dallas Police Department is giving the “police commendation award” to retired detective Jim Leavelle. Why does this matter? Well, you probably know who Jim Leavelle is, but not by name:
That’s Leavelle in the hat handcuffed to Oswald.
Yes, I finally went to see it. Yes, I even sprang for the 3-D version. I run a full service blog here.
tl,dr: Wait for it on cable.
Notes:
and Ms. Mulligan:
I’m glad I went: it was, after all, a nice afternoon out at a nice theater. But I can’t recommend purchasing a ticket until The Great Gatsby comes to cable or the discount theater nearest you.
More:
And:
Remember Detective Louis Scarcella, aka one of the “likeable scamps” who put David Ranta away for 22 years?
The other shoe has dropped.
More:
And more. I don’t want to quote the entire article, but this is an important paragraph because it illustrates a key point: what you post on the Internet doesn’t disappear.
Ms. Gomez is the crack addicted prostitute mentioned above. She’s dead now.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to manage a motel in the Rundberg/I-35 area? The Statesman has your answer.
(Note to my out-of-town readers: the Rundberg/I-35 corridor is notorious as a haven for drug dealing and prostitution.)
Austin politics note (readers who aren’t into Austin politics can skip this one):
We had an election yesterday. Specifically, we were asked to vote on bonds for the Austin Independent School District.
There were four bond proposals on the ballot, totaling $892 million. That’s right: AISD wanted to issue nearly one billion dollars worth of bonds.
This is one of the few times where I’ve actually seen organized opposition to a bond election in Austin. There were a lot of large “vote no” signs in yards and in front of businesses. Surprisingly, even the Statesman came out and opposed the bonds. (Our local alternative newspaper, the Austin Chronicle, endorsed the bonds. But the AusChron has never met a tax, a bond issue, or a government boondoggle they didn’t like.)
The end result: half the bonds passed, and half the bonds failed. This is kind of a “WTF?” moment: you’d figure the voting would go all one way or the other. Then again…
“a 500-seat performing arts center at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders”?!
Those are the propositions that failed.
Proposition 3, the other one that passed, “provides money for renovations across the district”. Proposition 1 and 3 together total out to $489.6 million, and “will add $38.40 to the property tax bill for a $200,000 home.”
I hate being backed into a corner.
One of the reasons I wanted to do “Week of Gatsby” was so I could link to the classic Andy Kaufman routine from “Saturday Night Live”. I didn’t think that would be the problem it turned into.
That clip is not available, in any form, on the Internet, as far as I can tell. NBC Universal, as the copyright holders, seems to aggressively go after anyone who posts SNL clips on YouTube (as is their right, of course).
That clip is also not available, as far as I can determine, in Hulu’s library of SNL clips.
You can watch the entire episode with Kaufman (season 3, episode 13, with Art Garfunkel and Stephen Bishop) on Hulu – if you pay $8 a month for Hulu Plus (or sign up for a free trial). Otherwise, you’re out of luck. I say: to heck with that.
The text of Kaufman’s routine is available from the SNL Transcripts site, but reading the text of a Kaufman routine is like dancing about architecture.
This, however, might make the effort worthwhile: from a Cornell website, the “New Student Reading Project”, some notes on Gatsby. Chapter 7, “Performing Gatsby“, is rather interesting, especially for the comments by some of Kaufman’s contemporaries on his routine.
David Brenner: “And, you know, people would boo the crying. They were New Yorkers.”
(Also: a young Sam Waterson? This I’ve got to see. Was the man ever “young”?)
As Linoge says, you can’t stop the signal.
Edited to add: Quote of the day:
The right to download CAD files is the right to be free. 😉
—Tam
(Reference explained here for the non SF fans in my audience.)
So they raised the withdrawal limits, but shouldn’t it have set off alarms if they tried to withdraw more than the amount on the prepaid card? Or did the people involved change that as well?
…
…
The Times notes this is bigger than Lufthansa. And no guns were involved (at least in the initial heist: one of the people alleged to be behind it was shot dead later on). As a connoisseur of hacks and heists, my hat is off to these guys.
Remember our old friends the Zeta cartel, and their plan to launder money by purchasing quarter horses? Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, not guilty.
Following up on a previous entry: it is legal to download Gatsby in every country except for seven. The United States is one of those seven.
If you happen to live in a country other than those seven – say, for example, Australia – it is perfectly legal for you to download Gatsby from the local version of Project Gutenberg.
Also, I wanted to link to this week’s episode of “The Ihnatko Almanac”: (Edited to add: Fixed. Thanks, Lawrence.) Andy Ihnatko touches on Baz Luhrmann and Gatsby, though his primary topic is one we brought up the other day: Sebastian Faulks continuing the Wodehouse Jeeves novels.
(I also wanted to link this because if you listen to the first couple of minutes, you’ll hear a name you might recognize.)
(Important safety tip: be careful who you page, and who you send feedback to. They just might read your name on the air. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)
Guccifer’s latest target: noted Illuminati member Candace “Sex and the City” Bushnell.
Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg is out of jail.
(I think that’s pretty much SOP, but I Am Not A Lawyer. Just want to make it clear that I don’t think she got any special treatment.)
More:
Don’t really feel like I have a need for it, since I’ve been happy with my D40x, and the step up from 10 to 14 megapixels doesn’t seem like that big a jump to me. Also, I’ve already got the lenses.
But if I were looking for a new DSLR, $500 for the D3100 with 18-55 and 55-200 zoom lenses strikes me as being a heck of a deal.
I assume Nikon is blowing the D3100 out in favor of the D3200. And the 55-200 lens isn’t the VR one. But still, this strikes me as being a good bit of starter kit.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of all three cameras I’ve mentioned from Digital Photography Review. Note that I’m not getting any kickback from Nikon for this; I just like my camera.
(Precision Camera doesn’t list it on their website, but I have seen the same deal in their store.)
(Fresno is paying their poet laureate $2,000 for a two-year term.)
Paging Andy Ihnatko. Andy Ihnatko to the white courtesy phone, please.
(Seriously, this does not strike me as a good idea.)
“She” is Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Edited to add: Ken over at Popehat has a post up flaming the LAT and other newspapers (and, sort of by implication, your obedient servant) for seizing on the karaoke angle and taking out of the context it was in.
The Statesman has been all over the collapse of RunTex (a local running shoe store, which was also active in various community events) like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition. I haven’t paid much attention to the story because I’m not a runner and didn’t care about RunTex. I remember my sister (who competes in triathlons) telling me about going there a while back and being totally unable to find any shoes that fit her. (And my sister does not have giant mutant feet.)
In that vein, I found this Statesman column rather interesting. It looks like my sister wasn’t the only person who had that problem…
Edited to add: A friend of WCD told us a similar story in email; he went in looking for the Nike shoes that would work with their iPhone application and transmitter. They didn’t have any shoes in his size, let alone the Nike ones. When he inquired, they told him “We’re not a shoe store. We support the running lifestyle.”
“We support the running lifestyle.” WHAT THE FRACK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
“We’re not a shoe store.” Yeah. Now, you’re nothing.
This is just further evidence towards my theory: the problems with the American economy have much to do with the fact that nobody wants to take money for goods and services any longer. I’m not kidding: I can’t count the number of experiences I’ve had, or been told about recently, involving wanting to make a purchase and not being able to get help, get questions answered, or get people to take money.
Ray Harryhausen. NYT. LAT. A/V Club appreciation. Lawrence. Popehat.
Why isn’t “The Great Gatsby” in the public domain? F. Scott Fizgerald has been dead for nearly 73 years, after all.
This is 19 Zillicoa Street in Asheville, North Carolina:
This building is Homewood. Homewood was part of Highland Hospital, and was the home of Dr. Robert S. Carroll and his wife, Grace Potter Carroll. Dr. Carroll ran the hospital, and his wife taught music lessons. (Nina Simone was one of her students.)
In 1939, Dr. Carroll turned management of the hospital over to Duke University’s Neuropsychiatric Department. It was while Duke was managing the hospital that the final act of a great American tragedy took place.
On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out at Highland. Various reports say the fire started in the kitchen and moved upwards through the dumbwaiter shaft. The fire escapes were made out of wood and also caught fire. By the time it was extinguished, nine women were dead.
One of the women who died was Zelda Fitzgerald, the widow of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Zelda had a troubled life. I’m not an expert, but the consensus opinion I’ve seen is that she probably suffered from some form of bi-polar disorder, and medicated herself in an attempt to deal with it. She was in and out of Highland between 1936 and her death.
This is the closest thing I could find to an obituary for Zelda Fitzgerald. (Local cache if that doesn’t come up.) I hope wherever she is, she found the peace that evaded her in life.
(Information about Highland Hospital drawn from the NPS page.)
Real estate people like Gatsby.
That company, by the way, is “East Egg”.
In other news, have you driven a Gatsby lately?
(Nice looking cars, but not $34.5K worth of nice looking in my opinion. Assuming these people are still building cars, which I admit is a questionable assumption.)
Hey, remember the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania? Sold bonds to build a new trash incinerator? Then sold more bonds to pay off the earlier bonds? Remember some jackass saying
Good times, good times. Guess what?
Yeah. That wasn’t an individual charged with securities fraud, that was the city itself. Noted:
This comes to our attention by way of Shall Not Be Questioned, which also points out that Mayor Linda Thompson (who is running for re-election) is a member of Criminal Mayors Who Don’t Want You To Have Guns.
Pop quiz:
Fäviken: Understanding the Genius Behind the World’s 34th Best Restaurant
Is that a headline from the Onion, or a real article from a food blog?
Answer: That’s a real article in the current “issue” of Dark Rye, which won the James Beard Award for “Best Group Food Blog” this year.
Sorry. Where were we?
I’d write more on the subject of “Dark Rye” (Why does the design make me stabby? Why are they endorsing the crank theory of Ayurveda?) but Ryan Sutton over at “The Bad Deal” has already made about as pithy a comment as I’ve seen.
(I know there are some people in my audience who feel that New York in general, and New York dining specifically, is overblown in the food news/food blog scene. I kind of agree with this in general: when it comes to Sandy, though, that was one of the most important food stories of the year, and there were lots of real food blogs that covered it well.)
In better news, the Edgar Award winners have been announced. I like Dennis Lehane a lot, so I’m pretty happy Live by Night
True crime: I didn’t read any of this year’s nominees. Midnight in Peking
Critical/biographical: I hope The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics
I finally got my hands on a copy of In Pursuit of Spenser
Have no practical use for it.
Camera is not included.
(I wonder if you could build a business around this device.)