(Hattip.)
I don’t know what that baby’s problem was.
September 22nd, 2018Yes, we have no bananas…
September 21st, 2018Knight falls.
September 21st, 2018Somewhat to my chagrin, I have not been following the Suge Knight murder trial closely.
In fairness, though, the case has been going on for 3 1/2 years:
One man, Terry Carter, died. The second man, Cle “Bone” Sloan, was badly injured but lived.
The whole thing became a circus more or less behind my back:
…
Where is this going? Knight pled out to manslaughter yesterday:
Remember, the deadly weapon in this case was a Ford F-150. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have pickup trucks.
The Court of Last Resort.
September 20th, 2018Back in the day, when Argosy was publishing Erle Stanley Gardner the creator of Perry Mason’s “The Court of Last Resort” column, they noticed a sizeable circulation uptick. (According to Wikipedia, the magazine was “never terribly successful”, but they did get a “significant boost in sales”.)
These days, the “large mass market publication brings attention to a wrongful conviction and gets the guy off” story is so common as to almost not be news anymore. Texas Monthly has done this several times that I know of, the legendary Gene Miller won two Pulitzer Prizes for his stories at the Miami Herald, and given enough time I could probably come up with more examples than Carter had liver pills.
But this is an unusual first, as far as I know: guy has his conviction vacated after spending 27 years in prison (“the bulk of it in the infamous Attica Correctional Facility”) because of the work of a lot of people: the Erie County district attorney’s wrongful convictions unit, the Georgetown University Prison Reform Project, his daughter (who raised money for his legal fees by selling his color drawings of golf courses online), and the mass media…
Said it before, I’ll say it again: we need a new “Court of Last Resort” as a regular feature in some large circulation publication. And we need more public intellectuals like Erle Stanley Gardner, too.
(Edit: forgot to include hattips: Popehat on the Twitters, and Lawrence.)
Carbon Monoxide Yoga Balls…
September 20th, 2018…are not opening for KISS on the “End of the Road World Tour”.
But there is an update:
An anesthesiology professor at a top Hong Kong university was convicted on Wednesday of murdering his wife and daughter with a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide, in a case that drew intense local interest for its bizarre details and unusual family dynamics.
The jury voted unanimously for convicting the professor, Dr. Khaw Kim-sun, after almost seven hours of deliberation.
The judge sentenced Dr. Kim-sun to life in prison.
TMQ Watch: September 18, 2018.
September 19th, 2018Someone who isn’t us asked why we didn’t mention Vonte Davis in the loser update this week.
The truth is, we just didn’t have anything to bring to the table on that subject. We do have one thought, but we’re not comfortable sharing that in public: it would be irresponsible speculation on our part. We do (sincerely) hope for the best for Mr. Davis.
Apparently, Gregg Easterbrook has almost nothing to say on the subject either. But he does have things to say on other subjects, including the Clay Mathews penalty.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ and why his commentary is problematic…
Obit watch: September 18, 2018.
September 18th, 2018Alan Abel, hoaxer, is dead at the age of 94.
Or is he? The NYT certainly thinks he is, and who would know better than the paper of record.
Among his many pranks: the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, Yetta Bronstein (“the phantom Jewish grandmother from the Bronx who ran for president in 1964”), Omar’s School for Beggars…
Perhaps his most famous hoax was getting the NYT to publish his obituary while he was still alive.
Mr. Abel’s putative 1980 death, orchestrated with his characteristic military precision and involving a dozen accomplices, had been confirmed to The Times by several rigorously rehearsed confederates. One masqueraded as the grieving widow. Another posed as an undertaker, answering fact-checking calls from the newspaper on a dedicated phone line that Mr. Abel had installed, complete with its own directory-information business listing.
After the obituary was published, Mr. Abel, symbolically rising from the grave, held a gleeful news conference, and a much-abashed Times ran a retraction.
Your loser update: week 2, 2018.
September 18th, 2018Not a whole lot to say this week.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Buffalo
Houston
Oakland
New York Football Giants
Detroit
Seattle
Arizona
Obit watch: September 16, 2018.
September 16th, 2018Some from the past day or two:
David Yallop, author and journalist. He was perhaps most famous for In God’s Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I which argued that the Pope “had been poisoned by a cabal connected to a secret Masonic lodge that had infiltrated the church and the Vatican Bank.”
Peter Donat, character actor. He was Mulder’s father on “The X-Files”, but he also did a lot of theater: “Over the years he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Shylock, King Lear and Hadrian VII.”
Also:
Walter Mischel, of “marshmallow test” fame.
In a series of experiments at Stanford University beginning in the 1960s, he led a research team that presented preschool-age children with treats — pretzels, cookies, a marshmallow — and instructed them to wait before indulging themselves. Some of the children received strategies from the researchers, like covering their eyes or reimagining the treat as something else; others were left to their own devices.
The studies found that in all conditions, some youngsters were far better than others at deploying the strategies — or devising their own — and that this ability seemed to persist at later ages. And context mattered: Children given reason to distrust the researchers tended to grab the treats earlier.
…
In the late 1980s, decades after the first experiments were done, Dr. Mischel and two co-authors followed up with about 100 parents whose children had participated in the original studies. They found a striking, if preliminary, correlation: The preschoolers who could put off eating the treat tended to have higher SAT scores, and were better adjusted emotionally on some measures, than those who had given in quickly to temptation.
The paper was cautious in its conclusions, and acknowledged numerous flaws, including a small sample size. No matter. It was widely reported, and a staple of popular psychology writing was born: If Junior can hold off eating a marshmallow for 15 minutes in preschool, then he or she is headed for the dean’s list.
TMQ Watch: September 11, 2018.
September 12th, 2018Ah, the first week of football season. There’s a wonderful scent of mold in the air (due to all the recent rain), friends are trying to provoke us into doomed bets on the Texans, and Gregg Easterbrook finally has something to write about.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Your loser update: week 1, 2018.
September 11th, 2018Administrative note:
The loser update is primarily for teams that have a shot at going 0-16 over the course of the NFL season. (Secondarily, the loser update is for teams that have a shot at going 0-(x) over the course of some other sport’s season. Thirdly, the loser update is for teams that are just plain bad, or other noteworthy loser related items.)
Teams that have a shot at going 0-15-1 don’t count. I’m just a little sorry to see the Browns come off the list, and more sorry to see Pittsburgh go. But, technically, neither team has a chance to go 0-16: if one or both of them wind up going 0-15-1 this season, there might be a special acknowledgement. But for now, neither team is part of the loser update.
(I have not heard that the beer fridges have been hacked yet. However, the word from Bud Light is that a tie is not a win, so the fridges officially stay locked for now.)
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Buffalo
Houston
Tennessee
Indianapolis
Oakland
Chargers
Dallas
New York Football Giants
Detroit
Chicago
New Orleans
Atlanta
Seattle
San Francisco
Arizona
Obit watch: September 11, 2018.
September 11th, 2018Bill Daily, noted second banana. He was Major Healey on “I Dream of Jeannie” and Howard Borden on “The Bob Newhart Show”.
Our favorite zany astronaut, Bill Daily has passed. Billy was wonderful to work with. He was a funny, sweet man that kept us all on our toes. I'm so thankful to have known and worked with that rascal. Until we meet again Billy, xo -B #RIPBillDaily pic.twitter.com/OVZjaWB9CP
— Barbara Eden (@Barbara_Eden) September 8, 2018
Bill Daily & I go back to Chicago in the 50's. He and I were both trying to get into standup. Later, he joined the Bob Newhart Show. He was our bullpen guy – you could always go to him. He was one of the most positive people I've ever known. I will miss him dearly
— Bob Newhart (@BobNewhart) September 8, 2018
Inverted Jenny watch.
September 10th, 2018I’m a day or two behind on this, but: Inverted Jenny #49 is now accounted for.
As far as anyone was able to determine, the stamp went from William T. Robey (the guy who discovered the error and bought the sheet of 100 stamps) to Eugene Klein (who bought the sheet from Robey for $15,000) to Col. E.H.R. “Ned” Green (who bought the sheet from Klein for $20,000 and split it up). After Green, nobody knew where #49 was until recently.
Mr. Lyons said the Illinois man’s 91-year-old father had been a stamp collector, but the stamp had come from his mother’s side of the family. A great-uncle apparently bought it after the sheet of 100 was broken up, and after the great-uncle died, the great-aunt left it to the man’s mother in the 1930s.
“It spent all those years in bank vaults, which was a good thing for the stamp,” he said. Mr. Lyons said the man, who has asked not to be identified, could not explain why his father never put it in an album with his other stamps.
This is way cool. Because the stamp was never mounted and spent most of the time in safety deposit boxes, it is in very good shape. According to the article in Linn’s Stamp News, the stamp has been graded at 90 XF.
If it goes up for auction…an XF-SUP 95 graded Inverted Jenny went for $1.35 million in 2016. I can easily see this one going for over a million.
The only Inverted Jenny unaccounted for at the moment is #66: that one was part of a block of four that was stolen in 1955. The other three stamps eventually resurfaced.
Inverted Jenny website maintained by Siegal Auctions. This includes a very useful interactive reconstruction of the entire sheet.
Obit watch: September 7, 2018.
September 7th, 2018Pour out a 40 of Coors for the man.
Burt Reynolds: NYT. LAT. THR. WP.
Also among the dead: Richard DeVos, co-founder of Amway.
Obit watch part 2.
September 6th, 2018Breaking this one out for reasons.
Dr. Ralph R. Brown, my uncle (on my dad’s side of the family).
Not much more that I want to say about this right now.