In Solvang bust, a bottle of cheap vodka, counterfeit cash, and meth
The tweakers are turning out good quality counterfeit $100s? So we don’t have to worry about the Iranians any longer, but the meth addicts? Why does this surprise me?
Ripped from the headlines!
October 3rd, 2014Random notes: October 3, 2014.
October 3rd, 2014I’m a big fan of both Jimmy Stewart and Carol Burnett, so this makes me very happy. (I have family in the area around Indiana, Pennsylvania, but I’ve never had the chance to visit the Jimmy Stewart Museum. Perhaps I will remedy this on a future visit.)
Five rules for viewing art, damn it, art! There’s much here that I agree with; seek silence, take your time, do some research. On the other hand, I don’t see anything wrong with purchasing postcards or posters at the gift shop. I do think the rubber van Gogh ear is a bit over the top.
This bothers me as well, but I’m not sure I can articulate why. I need to think on it some more.
Why don’t you ask them if they’re going away?
October 2nd, 2014…in northwest Alaska, more than 35,000 walrus have come ashore seeking refuge.
“The walruses are hauling out on land in a spectacle that has become all too common in six of the last eight years as a consequence of climate-induced warming,” said a release from the U.S. Geological Survey. “Summer sea ice is retreating far north of the shallow continental shelf waters of the Chukchi Sea in U.S. and Russian waters, a condition that did not occur a decade ago. To keep up with their normal resting periods between feeding bouts to the seafloor, walruses have simply hauled out onto shore.”
Kevin Smith was unavailable for comment.
Lesson here, ‘Bey.
October 2nd, 2014TMQ Watch: September 30, 2014.
October 1st, 2014Oddly, this week’s TMQ gets a link on the FARK sports tab. We can’t remember the last time FARK bothered to link to TMQ.
And what does the collective hive mind of the Daily Kos FARK have to say? That, and this week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Quote of the day.
October 1st, 2014“He’s from Texas, honey,” I yelled at the television, startling the cats, “That’s not ‘armed’, that’s ‘dressed’, you island-dwelling herbivore!”
Jesus, you cud-chewing Eloi, how do you people open packages? With your teeth, like an animal?
–Tam
(As a Texan who doesn’t leave the house without at least two knives, including one Spyderco, I resemble this remark. Also, I have no joke here: I just like saying “like an animal“.)
All we want to do is photograph your brains.
October 1st, 2014A brief consumer note for my readers. Many of you know of my interests in neurology, books, and photography.
Please do not purchase this book for me.
Thank you.
Obit watch: September 30, 2014.
September 30th, 2014We haven’t heard much recently from the notoriously corrupt California city of Vernon.
His death appears to have been the result of natural causes (and not in the “he was shot in the head six times, so naturally he died” sense).
The autumn wind is a pirate…
September 30th, 2014I love this time of year. The leaves are changing, if you live in one of those places. Around here, the temperature is getting to the point where you can consider doing stuff outdoors, or even dining on a patio if that’s your thing. The NFL season is picking up.
And we have our first NFL coach firing: Dennis Allen of the Oakland Raiders.
Allen also has the distinction of being the first coach hired and fired in the Mark Davis era.
I have a great deal of confidence in the Raiders ability to remain winless this coming week. The question I have is: what happens the following week? Do they get the dead cat bounce against the Chargers? I wouldn’t put it past them. Perhaps I should keep an eye on the line…
What’s wrong with Kansas?
September 29th, 2014Apparently, nothing that firing Charlie Weis won’t cure.
He was 6-22 overall, and 1-18 in conference. I’m pretty sure this is the first major school coach firing of the year. (Corrections welcome if I’m wrong.)
Obit watch: September 29, 2014.
September 29th, 2014Don Keefer passed away earlier this month. He was 98 years old.
Mr. Keefer was one of those actors who knocked around a lot; he was in “The Caine Mutiny” and the original Broadway cast of “Death of a Salesman”.
But he was perhaps most famous as Don Hollis, the man who ends up wished into the cornfield by Anthony in the Twilight Zone episode “It’s A Good Life”.
Also: James Traficant.
Your loser update: week 4, 2014.
September 29th, 2014So much for it being Tampa Bay’s year. But that sounds like it was a wild game. (I missed it, being out and about and all that.)
Elsewhere in the world, Gregg Easterbrook is chomping at the bit.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Jacksonville
Oakland
Historical video, emphatically NOT suitable for use in schools.
September 26th, 2014By way of Ace of Spades: The LA Police Department Skilled Shooting Exhibition Of 1936. (As Maetenloch notes, this is probably from 1938. And although the heading says LAPD, this is actually the LA Sheriff’s Department.)
There’s some good stuff in this:
- I do love me some nice Thompson work.
- It is an interesting piece of history, if you want to see how police shot back then. I believe the LAPD was pretty progressive in their pistol training at that time; certainly they were in 1955, when Sterling Walker wrote “How Cops Get Killed” for Guns Magazine. It seems logical to assume that that the LACSD worked the same way. The one-handed shooting stance looks funny in retrospect, but you have to remember the Weaver Stance hadn’t been invented yet. And I suspect that “Combat” range and the practice drills were pretty far out in front of the curve for 1938.
- I like the course of fire shown at the range. I might try that next time I go out to the range with one of my revolvers.
- I wonder if this is where the shooting competition in Magnum Force was staged. IMDB is no help here.
There are also some things I really dislike about this video:
- The tinkly piano music really gets on my nerves.
- I wish it were better lit, or in better focus, or both. I can’t tell what guns the shooters are using (except for the one guy with the Thompson, of course). Various sources say LAPD was issuing the S&W K-38 Target Masterpiece and the K-38 Combat Masterpiece until 1988. (The difference between the two is that the Target Masterpiece had a 6″ barrel; the Combat Masterpiece had a 4″.) The Walker article mentioned above says they also used the Colt Officer’s Model Special. The problem I have is that the K-38 in either version didn’t start showing up until post-WWII. I think the guns in the video may be Colts, and there could be a couple of M&P Model of 1905 4th Change revolvers in there; it is just hard to tell. (Again, I’m assuming LACSD and LAPD used the same or similar equipment. Frankly, there weren’t a lot of choices at the time, though I guess they could have issued Registered Magnums…)
- JESUS JOSEPH AND MARY ON A FREAKING POGO STICK, WERE THESE PEOPLE IDIOTS?! In case you’re wondering why I’m screaming, it should become apparent to you at about 35 seconds into the video. What the frack? What the fracking frack? Was life cheaper back then? Were these guys getting some hefty hazard pay? For my readers at home: DON’T DO THIS, OKAY? Seriously, this has “manslaughter” written all over it.
- Also, there’s much more effective ear protection out there these days than cigarettes or wads of cotton.
When ice picks are outlawed…
September 25th, 2014Admittedly, this is kind of old, but I only ran across it today (while, oddly, looking up Trotsky for reasons I won’t go into):
…
…
The demand is greater than the store chooses to meet: because the store has a policy restricting the sale of ice picks to anyone under the age of 21, it has sold only two in the past six months or so.
“Some guy might buy this for torturing people,” another worker, Victor Reynoso said. “Sometimes they come to buy, but we don’t sell. If you are going to buy this, you have to show me ID.”
…
In other news, it appears that you can listen to Trotsky Icepick on Google Play or Spotify, or buy some of the albums from iTunes. The same cannot be said of Mussolini Headkick; only one of their songs is available on iTunes.
Well. Well well well. Well.
September 24th, 2014Original hattip on this to Jason Snell at Six Colors.
This is getting a great deal of attention, but there’s one aspect I want to point out: the ESPN Ombudsman’s page has disappeared from the site. Attempts to access it, either from the “ESPN Ombudsman” link (under “ESPN Feedback”, bottom left corner of the ESPN homepage) or direct links to columns (such as the one linked by Romenesko today) redirect to a generic “ESPN Blogs” page.
I’m not sure if this should be ascribed to malice or stupidity, but it is an interesting coincidence.
Edited to add, 9/24/2014 9:17 PM: Probably stupidity, since the Ombudsman’s page is back now. In that vein, this makes for interesting reading.