Legendary actor Nicol Williamson passed away on December 16. However, his death was apparently not reported until yesterday.
And:
(In addition to playing Hamlet and Macbeth, he was also Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”.)
Obit watch: January 26, 2012.
January 26th, 2012Traffic.
January 25th, 2012The city of Galveston has placed all twelve members of the city’s traffic division on “paid administrative leave”. Apparently, there’s some sort of investigation going on.
Note: these are not Galveston PD officers, and don’t issue traffic tickets. These are the folks who maintain the city traffic lights and suchlike. Which kind of makes this a full on “WTF?!” moment. (As the HouChron notes, there is a budget for the division, but they don’t collect money from the public, so you’d figure the chances for skimming and embezzlement are slim.)
Obit watch: The final countdown…
January 25th, 2012…for James Farentino.
I really wish someone would put “The Bold Ones” (or even the individual “wheels” within the series, such as Farentino and Ives’s “The Lawyers”) out on DVD. From what I saw back when I could get RTN, that was actually a pretty good series.
Sentiment.
January 24th, 2012My opinion of baseball is well established.
My opinion of the New York Yankees is perhaps less well established; in brief, I consider them as an organization to be the representatives of Satan on Earth.
That being said…
Lot of cedar pollen in the air today. That must be why my eyes are watering.
(Hattip: His Grubes.)
A quick one that kicked over my giggle box.
January 24th, 2012I’m particularly fond of this one. (Yes, that is a real status code, although it is technically HTCPCP, not HTTP. See RFC 2324. Yes, there are documented implementations of this.)
This obit watch does not compute. Warning! Warning!
January 24th, 2012The Onion A/V Club is reporting the death of Dick Tufeld, noted television announcer and voice actor, perhaps most famous as the voice of “Lost in Space”‘s Robot.
TMQ watch: January 24, 2012.
January 24th, 2012Before we jump into this week’s TMQ, we thought we’d mention D.J. Gallo’s list of the worst college basketball blowouts in Division I history. “Long Island 179, Medgar Evers 62”. It took all of Long Island to defeat one guy? And “Texas 102, San Marcos Baptist 1”. “San Marcos Baptist Academy was — and is — a boarding school for teenagers.”
After the jump…
Like Saunders through the hourglass…
January 24th, 2012…so go the Washington Wizards.
Flip Saunders out as coach. 51-130 over three seasons, but the Wizards started 2-15 this season.
(Thanks to Lawrence for the tip.)
Noted.
January 24th, 2012Today is “Bad Website Day” over at Lawrence’s.
We’re talking really bad. Awesomely bad. Eyeballs bleeding bad.
So bad that I’m linking to his posts, rather than the websites themselves, just for your protection.
See how kind and caring I am?
I hope they get tongue prints.
January 23rd, 2012LAT headline: “Gene Simmons look-alike robs stores in Sacramento“.
(First comment: “That’s Paul Stanley you morons.” How can you tell from that photo?)
Happy dance!
January 23rd, 2012The Supreme Court has handed down their decision in the case of United States v. Jones, the case involving attaching GPS tracking devices to vehicles.
The court held that, yes, attaching a GPS tracking device to someone’s vehicle is a search under the Fourth Amendment, and yes, this does require a search warrant. The decision is here.
Even better: it was a 9-0 ruling. (Five of the justices signed on to the majority opinion; the other four wrote a separate concurring opinion.)
Here’s preliminary coverage from Wired‘s “Threat Level” blog. I haven’t had a chance to review the full ruling yet; I may have additional links or commentary later.
Edited to add: Correction. According to the WP, there were two concurring opinions; I missed one in my quick skim of the ruling. Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan signed on to one concurrence; Sotomayor wrote a second concurrence, and also signed on to the majority opinion.
Edited to add 2: Discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Still wading through this, but part 2 makes a good point; the Court did not actually rule per se that GPS tracking requires a warrant, but that it is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Not all searches require a warrant (see Terry v. Ohio or Chimel v. California) but, in general, the types of searches that the Court has held do not require a warrant involve “exigent circumstances” and are highly limited in scope. I find it hard to see the Court applying an “exigent circumstances” exception to GPS tracking in just about any case.
ETA3: And one of Volokh’s commenters makes a good point: the police apparently had a warrant, but botched the execution of it (“The warrant authorized installation in the District of Columbia and within 10 days, but agents installed the device on the 11th day and in Maryland.”) and then tried to argue that they didn’t need no stinking warrant anyway.
Very interesting indeed, Mr. Bond.
January 22nd, 2012One might go so far as to say “Damn Interesting”.
Many of my friends and some bloggers seem to be regular followers of this site:
- Lawrence sent me a link a while back to the story of William Rankin, who spent 40 minutes inside a thunderstorm after ejecting from his F-8 Crusader. (I actually own a copy of The Man Who Rode the Thunder
, which is not easy to find.)
- Roberta X linked earlier today to the story of a motley crew of mountain climbers and other folks who were enlisted by the CIA to plant equipment on Nanda Devi in order to monitor Chinese nuclear tests. Basically; imagine climbing Mount Everest. Now imagine climbing Mount Everest with a bunch of heavy equipment, including an RTG.
- The most recent “Damn Interesting” posting is on a little known, and frightening event, in aviation history: the attempted takeover of FedEx flight 705 on April 7, 1994. (Speaking of “Gun Death“, Weer’d, there’s a prototype for you; though nobody was actually killed, it was a damn close thing…)
Obit watch: January 22, 2012.
January 22nd, 2012As opposed to last night, when he was apparently declared dead but actually wasn’t. (Good on Devon Edwards for standing up and taking responsibility, but I still feel sorry for him; especially since it sounds like they were taken in by a forged email and a dishonest source.)
Also among the dead: Philip Vannatter, LAPD detective. I know, you probably never heard of him. He led the Ron Goldman/Nicole Brown Simpson investigation and the Roman Polanski investigation, two of the LAPD’s biggest cases.
Rumor control update.
January 22nd, 2012Following up on the previous post:
Scary Yankee Chick was kind enough to leave a comment pointing back to her blog post on the same subject. (Thank you, SYC, and again I apologize for not following you more diligently.)
It looks like Stuff from Hsoi (who I also should be following more diligently) has done some research into this; not only has he not turned up much supporting this rumor, but he’s found a response from the NSCA pretty much debunking it.
I’m still open to discussion and additional information on this. I also still think being conscious about how you store your guns when traveling and what signals you’re sending to potential thieves is a good idea. But right now, I’m not seeing a whole lot supporting that particular rumor.
(Thanks again, and apologies, to Scary Yankee Chick and Hsoi.)
Holy…goat? Maybe. Kind of. Sort of.
January 22nd, 2012The German Sport Guns folks are putting out some interesting stuff. I’ve been tempted for a while to pick up one of their .22LR MP-5 clones (Mike the Musicologist has been pushing me to do so as well); they’re nice looking guns, I think they’d be a lot of fun to shoot, and I often see them at the gun show for reasonable prices. But I can’t find any practical use for them (other than “they’d be fun to shoot”) and I’ve got enough .22LR guns already, thankyouverymuch.
I do also kind of like the idea of an AK-47 clone in .22LR, but it has less appeal to me than the MP-5 clones. I’d rather have a full-on AK-47. (And that is on my list, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.)
New at the SHOT show, we’ve got the Mexican drug dealer line of guns from GSG: gold-plated AK and MP-5 clones. Yeah. Not on the list, but lord love GSG for trying.
On the other hand, American Tactical Imports (GSG’s US importer) is also going to be importing GSG’s .22LR version of the StG 44. This could be interesting; .22LR is a lot easier to find than 7.92×33mm Kurz, and I do have a certain interest in the StG 44 after reading Pale Horse Coming (in which the Audie Murphy clone uses one to great effect against a guard tower).
Also, if I’m going to be honest with myself, the wooden crate “handmade by a Amish community in New York state” pushes a button, too.
(Hattip: The Firearm Blog on both of these.)
Edited to add: Something occurs to me. You know what ATI/GSG could probably rake in the cash with? A Thompson clone in .22LR, complete with drum magazine. Especially if they sold it (and the drum) at a price that doesn’t make you think it is made out of compressed unicorn tears and ambergris.
However, I’d be willing to bet that the current owners of Auto-Ordnance might not take too kindly to that without some sort of licensing deal. Which I think actually raises an interesting legal question; to what extent is the physical look and design of a firearm protected by law? GSG was, after all, sued by H&K (“you suck and we hate you”) for trade dress infringement, but how long does trade dress protection last? Forever? The Thompson is, after all, an 84 year old gun…