TMQ watch: December 31, 2013.

January 3rd, 2014

More “we’re just not feeling the clever this week”. Might as well just open the box. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

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Posted in Clippings, Mixology, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Legal update part 1.

January 3rd, 2014

The lawsuit by Alexander Calder’s heirs against his former dealer has been dismissed.

In a decision dated Dec. 23, Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich wrote that “all of these allegations are so patently inadequate that the court can only conclude that they were brought solely for the purposes of harassment or embarrassment, without any consideration of their legal sufficiency.”
The judge also invoked the statute of limitations, writing that the plaintiffs were trying to litigate issues that stretched back “decades without any personal knowledge or contemporaneous records, where nearly all of the people who had personal knowledge of the facts are dead.”

(Previously.)

(I expect to have a second legal update later today; I’m just waiting on events.)

Posted in Art, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

New year, new list.

January 3rd, 2014

I wasn’t all that wild about what the NYT did with this year’s “The Lives They Led” obituary roundup.

But this, this is a swell article:

But the diesel engine was too loud, and the Anna Mary, on autopilot, moving due south at six and a half knots, was already out of reach, its navigation lights receding into the night. Aldridge shouted once more, panic rising in his throat, and then silence descended. He was alone in the darkness. A single thought gripped his mind: This is how I’m going to die.

One aspect of this that fascinates me: the Coast Guard’s use of computers in search and rescue.

The Coast Guard has used computer simulations in search and rescue since the mid-1970s, but Sarops has been in use since only 2007. At its heart is a Monte Carlo-style simulator that can generate, in just a few minutes, as many as 10,000 points to represent how far and in what direction a “search object” might have drifted. Operators input a variety of data, from the last known location of a lost mariner to the ocean currents and wind direction. Sarops then creates a map of a search area — in this case, of the ocean south of Montauk — with colored squares representing each potential location for the search object. Red and orange squares represent the most likely locations; gray squares represent the least likely.

Posted in 2014, Clippings, Food, Geek, Lobsters, Reading list | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

January 3rd, 2014

Carol Ross, head coach of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, was fired yesterday.

Well, actually, she was laid off. Along with her staff. And the entire front office staff.

And the team’s current owner has said that they are “no longer in a position” to continue with the team.

Asked if the Sparks would field a team for the 2014 season, or if the franchise would fold, [WNBA President Laurel] Richie repeatedly said that several entities have expressed an interest in owning a WNBA team and the league is exploring those options regarding the Sparks.

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Random notes: January 3, 2014.

January 3rd, 2014

WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!*

(* Offer not valid outside of New York City.)

I’m not sure I understand the point of this article. Ostensibly, it is about the supposed economic impact on the neighborhood businesses of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” closing.

But even a full house at the 1,930-seat Foxwoods, the biggest Broadway theater, is just a drop in the bucket of the roughly 400,000 people moving through Times Square daily at this time of year.
And it can be hard to determine just where audience members for “Spider-Man” — some 89 percent of whom are from out of town, according to the show’s most recent research — have been spending their dollars, though some businesses popular with tourists seeking a classic Broadway experience say the show’s absence will be felt.

So it doesn’t seem like the NYT has any way to quantify the impact, just a bunch of anecdotes from businesses in the neighborhood. Some of them expect reduced business, others say they expect people (especially actors) to keep showing up. Is there a point?

Strippers. Always with the strippers.

The new agreement freed the 16 clubs involved in the lawsuits from abiding by the 1997 law and required the owners to contribute $1 million annually to a unit in the Houston Police Department devoted to fighting human trafficking. But a number of religious leaders and advocates for sex-trafficking victims have opposed the deal. They said it sent the wrong message about Houston’s tolerance for such entertainment, and allowed the 16 clubs to buy their way out of complying with the law. The Houston Area Pastor Council is considering suing the city over the agreement.

Is that $1 million from each club, or $1 million total? And is it just me, or is there something odd about private businesses giving money to the police department to enforce the law?

Posted in Clippings, Hysteria, Law, Theatre | Comments Closed

In case you were wondering…

January 1st, 2014

…Joe Allen will not be adding a poster for “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” to his “wall of flops”.

“Any show that plays for three years on Broadway, providing steady employment to members of the theater community and pumping money into the local economy, is no failure in my book.”

(Previously.)

Posted in Clippings, Spiders, Theatre | Comments Closed

Bloody Monday.

December 30th, 2013

This is your official Monday after the end of the season coach firings post. I’ll try to update this during the day as coaches are let go.

Starting at the beginning: the Browns didn’t even wait for Monday. Rob Chudzinski was fired last night after one season.

Yeah, they finished 4-12, but I kind of feel like Chud was being used as the scapegoat for years of bad decision making by the previous management of the Browns. Really, one season? A season in which you traded away a previous first round draft choice (who turned out to be a bust)? I smell a scapegoat cooking.

Edited to add 1: Looks like Mike Shanahan’s firing as head coach of the Redskins is now official, as opposed to merely speculative.

Edited to add 2: Leslie Frazier out in Minnesota. 21-33-1, and the Vikings were actually a playoff team last year. It does seem like most of their games this year were competitive until near the end, and I don’t think Frazier was the problem with this team. You know, the Texans could probably do a lot worse than Frazier…

Edited to add 3: Stepped away for a little while to run some errands. While I was out:

Greg Schiano out as head coach at Tampa Bay, along with general manager Mark Dominik. Schiano was 11-21 over two seasons. Perhaps now he can return to what he really loves; beating up middle school children for their lunch money.

Jim Schwartz out in Detroit. Also out: offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and recievers coach Tim Lappano. Schwartz was 29-51 over five seasons, and actually took Detroit to the playoffs once. Once.

Also, it looks like the Redskins are engaged in a major housecleaning: eight of Shanahan’s assistants are gone as well, including offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Does this count as a “firing”?

December 28th, 2013

I’m going to say “yes”.

Cavaliers coach Mike Brown declined to specify the reasons for the team’s indefinite suspension of center Andrew Bynum for conduct detrimental to the team, but it appears his tenure with the Cavs could be at an end.

I’ve seen rumblings that Cleveland plans to trade Bynum, but:

…no other team besides the Cavs was interested in signing him last summer after he missed an entire season in Philadelphia with ongoing knee problems.

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Random notes: December 28, 2013.

December 28th, 2013

Desert Hot Springs, California is in trouble.

Turn north, and you make your way up an arid stretch of road to a battered city where empty storefronts outnumber shops, the Fire Department has been closed, City Hall is on a four-day week and the dwindling coffers may be empty by spring.

Why? I’ll give you one guess.

Here, under the budget enacted last spring, about $7 million of the city’s $10.6 million annual payroll went to the 39-member police force. The situation was so dire that an audit, compiled weeks before municipal elections in November but not made public until later, showed that Desert Hot Springs was $4 million short for the year and would run out of money as early as April 2014.

Last week, the city cut all municipal salaries, including those of the police, by 22 percent. The city also capped “incentive pay” and cut back on holiday and vacation days. Naturally, the police officer’s association is stating these cuts are illegal.

Police officers here, as in many California cities, can retire as young as 50 with 30 years of service and receive 90 percent of their final salary every year — drawing those pensions for decades. Police unions say the fault lies with state and local politicians who failed to adequately fund the pension system over the years, and inflated benefits during boom years. Others wonder whether such salaries and pensions were ever affordable, particularly in cities as small and struggling as this. In Desert Hot Springs, for example, for every dollar that the city pays its police officers, another 36 cents must be sent to Calpers to fund their pensions.

Desert Hot Springs has a current population of around 27,000.

The average pay and benefits package for a police officer here had been worth $177,203 per year, in a city where the median household income was $31,356 in 2011, according to the Census Bureau. All of this had gone largely unnoticed until becoming the center of debate during the recent municipal election.

Oh, and by the way: Desert Hot Springs filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and is still making payments on a $10 million civil judgment against the city.

But, you know, the police aren’t the only people who get large salaries.

An examination of tax records, contracts and other documents by The New York Times found that hefty stagehand salaries at many New York nonprofit performance institutions are more widespread than was previously known.

You don’t say.

At nine top such institutions that have contracts with Local 1, stagehands make up 36 of the 98 most highly compensated employees, or about 37 percent. The average annual total salary and benefits of those highest-paid stagehands, at places from the Metropolitan Opera to the Roundabout Theater Company, is nearly $310,000, according to the nonprofits’ most recent tax filings.

That’s good money. I wonder when they can put in for retirement.

Backstage workers can earn more than the onstage talent. Five stagehands at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center were each paid more in total compensation in 2011 than the highest-paid dancer at New York City Ballet, filings showed. And, in 2010, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” paid its stagehands a total of $138,000 a week, while the principals and members of the ensemble earned slightly less than $100,000 put together, according to documents submitted to the state attorney general’s office.

The paper of record seems to want readers to be shocked and appalled at how much stagehands are paid. Personally, I’m glad to hear that they’re making big money; I think they have every right to negotiate lucrative contracts with their employers, and I don’t see any reason to be indignant that “the four top stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera earned more than $500,000 each in total compensation (including retirement and other benefits), tax filings showed.“

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Theatre | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: December 24, 2013.

December 27th, 2013

The heck with it. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

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Holmes for the Holidays.

December 27th, 2013

Here’s a nice little Christmas present – slightly late, but who cares? (I celebrate Christmas through January 6th, anyway.)

A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Words have meanings.

December 26th, 2013

This is how Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary on Project Gutenberg defines the word “infamous”:

INFAMOUS
In”fa*mous, a. Etym: [Pref. in- not + famous: cf. L. infamis. See
Infamy.]

1. Of very bad report; having a reputation of the worst kind; held in abhorrence; guilty of something that exposes to infamy; base; notoriously vile; detestable; as, an infamous traitor; an infamous perjurer. False errant knight, infamous, and forsworn. Spenser.

2. Causing or producing infamy; deserving detestation; scandalous to the last degree; as, an infamous act; infamous vices; infamous corruption. Macaulay.

3. (Law)

Defn: Branded with infamy by conviction of a crime; as, at common law, an infamous person can not be a witness.

4. Having a bad name as being the place where an odious crime was committed, or as being associated with something detestable; hence, unlucky; perilous; dangerous. “Infamous woods.” P. Fletcher. Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds. Milton. The piny shade More infamous by cursed Lycaon made. Dryden.

Syn. — Detestable; odious; scandalous; disgraceful; base; vile; shameful; ignominious.

I quote this here because it is in the public domain. More modern sources, such as the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, agree with the definition, especially the “having a reputation of the worst kind”.

So what?

words

That’s part of the front page of today’s HouChron. The 1993 Houston Oilers had “a reputation of the worst kind”? They were “held in abhorrence”? They were “base; notoriously vile; detestable”? That’s really not how I remember things.

After a 28-3 halftime lead against the Buffalo Bills, the Oilers eventually lost 41-38 in one of the most infamous comebacks in NFL history.

Same thing here. Guys, “inflammable” and “flammable” mean the same thing, yes. But “infamous” and “famous” do not.

They may have been “dysfunctional”. But they went 12-4. I’d be more inclined to refer to the 2013 Houston Texans as “infamous” instead of the 1993 Oilers.

That is, if I was going to use the word to refer to a football team. Which I’m not, because I feel like I have a grasp of what the word means, unlike the HouChron headline writers. (Brian T. Smith, the author of the linked article, avoids using “infamous”. Kudos to him; I’d like to read the piece that’s coming on Sunday, but it looks like it will be behind the paywall.)

Posted in Clippings, NFL, Sports, Wordplay | Comments Closed

You. Don’t. Say.

December 26th, 2013

Gun facts and terminology can be complicated for those not intimately familiar with the topic. But many readers are knowledgeable, and lapses like these hurt our credibility with them.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | Comments Closed

Mao mix.

December 26th, 2013

Mao Mao Mao, Mao Mao Mao, Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao.

(Sorry. But when was I going to get another chance to do this?)

Posted in Clippings, History | Comments Closed

Merry Christmas. (Part II)

December 25th, 2013

reindeer

Blogger, with occasional reindeer.

(Why, yes, that reindeer’s nose is red.)

(Why, yes, as a matter of fact, you might even say it glows.)

Posted in Christmas, Photography | 1 Comment »

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