Indicted California Democratic State Senator Leland “Uncle” Yee finished third out of a field of eight candidates for the post of California secretary of state, collecting “more than a quarter-million votes“.
Archive for June, 2014
Noted for the historical record.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014Obit watch.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014I missed this while I was on the road: Robert W. Sallee died last week.
Mr. Sallee was the last survivor of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire, which killed 12 out of 15 smoke jumpers (and one non-smoke jumper). Mr. Sallee and another man, Walter Rumsey, managed to run uphill and escape the fire: R. Wagner Dodge, the leader of the group, escaped by lighting a backfire and lying in the embers.
I know I’ve said this before, but Young Men and Fire
Experiments in composition.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014My great and good friend Marty recommended a Chinese restaurant named Moy’s to me. This is just a tiny hole-in-the-wall place near the Ohio State campus, but Marty was right; it was pretty darn good, and the people were very friendly. If you’re in Columbus, I urge you to give it a try.
It turns out that Moy’s was also just straight up High Street from my hotel. Waze had it at about two and a half miles; I took a cab up to the restaurant. I was going to flag one down when I left, but it was a nice night, so I decided to walk back to the hotel. The walk down High Street takes you along the fringe of Ohio State. I almost want to say High Street is to Ohio State what Guadalupe is to the University of Texas.
I didn’t bring the Nikon with me, but I did take a couple of photos with the iPhone that I thought were compositionally interesting. You might not agree, which is fine with me. I’m just messing around, trying to get better.
Wexner Center for the Arts
Those black spaces actually have quotes on them; if you zoom in far enough, you should be able to read them. I can’t find a site that transcribes them, or I’d link it here. But I do like this one from Edmund Burke: “Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.”
Edited to add: I cropped the Wexner Center photo some, but the law school photo is untouched. I didn’t do anything to the exposure on either of those.
Flames, hyena, etc. (#13 in a series).
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014Patrick D. Cannon, the former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, has pled guilty to one count of “honest services wire fraud”. (Previously.)
Strippers. Always with the strippers.
And this has the potential to be epic for more than one reason:
There’s the whole “prosecutor going to jail and being disbarred” thing. There’s the whole circus surrounding any NYC political figure being charged with a crime. And then there’s the whole “misuse of asset forfeiture funds” aspect, about which Radley Balko and others have written so eloquently.
On the road again…
Monday, June 2nd, 2014Heading home. Travel day. In the meantime:
1. Go read this post by Tam. There are echos in it of something some less smart person wrote a couple of years ago.
2. I didn’t realize until the middle of last week that this year is the 50th anniversary of the .41 Magnum. (Ask me about my Model 57.)
3. I took a fair number of photos yesterday while running around with my aunt and uncle (who graciously drove the two hours each way from Cleveland to spend part of the day with me; thanks again, guys!). I’m waiting until I get back to do the post-processing and uploading, but I thought I’d throw one up here that I played with last night.
I took this with the D40X and the 18-55 kit zoom. It was cropped and the exposure adjusted slightly using Shotwell on Project e. I’m actually pretty happy with the end product, though I may make a second pass over it once I’m in front of iPhoto.
If it weren’t for bad luck…
Sunday, June 1st, 2014I’ve briefly touched on, but never discussed in detail, Philadelphia’s two troubled daily newspapers (the Daily News and the Inquirer). In brief, they’ve gone through bankruptcy, ownership changes, ownership conflicts, and more ownership changes.
Early last week, the papers were bought by a group of investors led by Lewis Katz.
Last night, Lewis Katz and six other people were killed in a private jet crash.
This is sad and awful and I don’t intend to mock anyone’s death. I note it here because it seems like the Philly papers are just one hard luck story after another. Mr. Katz’s son is apparently going to take his place on the board that manages the papers; if you read the linked article about the purchase, though, it doesn’t seem clear that the late Mr. Katz or his partners had a turn-around plan for the papers, or that they even expected to win the bidding war for them. With Mr. Katz gone, I suspect that’s going to complicate things even more.
(Hattip: Jimbo.)