Wanted to get this in before another busy weekend: Gordie Howe. ESPN.
I’ve never been a huge hockey fan, but even I knew who Gordie Howe was, and kind of liked the guy.
Obit watch: June 10, 2016.
June 10th, 2016Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#Z of a series)
June 9th, 2016I was hoping to have something else to put here. Maybe that will be #AA, or #AB.
But I digress. Remember a few weeks ago, when I commented, “…in my experience so far with the Citizen’s Police Academy, the rank-and-file seem to love the guy.”
Here’s the flip side of that:
I quibble slightly with the Statesman‘s headline, “Survey: More than half of Austin police officers say morale is poor”. If memory serves, the authorized strength of the APD is just over 1,800 officers, and they told our CPA class they were about 100 officers short. They did give an exact figure: it was in the 1,700 range, but I don’t remember exactly what, and it has certainly fluctuated some since then. Point being: 883 officers is just over half of the department, and that’s just the number that responded to the survey. The actual number that described morale as “poor” – 480 – is more like 28% of the department, not half.
Continuing:
With all due respect to the fine men and women of the APD, and with the understanding that police work is different from technical support, this doesn’t sound too much different from my job. I’d prefer to have time to work on my existing cases instead of taking new phone calls. But if we’re shorthanded and there’s not enough people in the phone queue, guess what? My preferences don’t matter. And the city has some major issues right now, including a serial sexual assaulter and rock throwers on the interstate. I don’t blame the chief for wanting butts in the field.
See. Above. And yes, there probably are times when higher-ranking officers make stupid hasty decisions: I can’t think of ones from the APD, but The Onion Field is a classic example.
Note that it was the APD police union that ran the survey.
Followups.
June 9th, 2016Theresa Saldana: NYT. A/V Club.
Lawrence was kind enough to throw me a backlink and add some additional context to the Jana Duty story. Latest update: even though Duty will be out after the election, “Williamson County business leaders” are demanding that she resign now. In addition to her troubles with the State Bar, the people demanding her resignation are claiming she’s pretty much stopped showing up for work:
Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell also spoke at the news conference and said that Duty “has largely been absent from her post.”
“This makes doing my job as a judge in the community more challenging and very difficult to serve the people of Williamson County effectively,” Gravell said.
And Mike the Musicologist sent me a link to a CNN story about Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau pleading guilty to one count of “making a false statement to investigators”.
Two things about that story:
1) Rear Admiral Gilbeau’s plea is related to the ongoing investigation into the “Fat Leonard” scandal.
2) Linked it before, I’ll link it again: “Really, seriously, just shut the fuck up.”
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#30 in a series)
June 8th, 2016I’ve written previously about the growing scandal involving New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his fund raising.
Latest, and semi-breaking news: two more people have been arrested and charged with fraud.
One of them is a “hedge-fund financier”.
The other one? Norman Seabrook, also known as the head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. The COBA is the union that represents New York City’s corrections officers (about 9,000 members).
But wait! It gets better! One of the people the feds have targeted is now a cooperating witness!
More:
It amuses me enormously that they had to buy a designer bag specifically for their payoffs. Also, the Knicks tickets must have been a major clue: who’s going to pay $7,500 to watch the hapless Knickerbockers play?
Annals of law (#10 in a series)
June 8th, 2016Two sort of random notes:
1. Jana Duty, the elected district attorney of Williamson County (Williamson County is just up the road from Austin/Travis County: it covers Round Rock and Georgetown) has been placed “on probation” by the State Bar of Texas for 18 months.
Duty will still be able to practice law but will have to comply with the terms of her probation.
Why? “Professional misconduct”. Specifically, Ms. Duty was accused of withholding evidence in a murder case.
Here’s the Wilco DA’s website. I find that quote from Article 2.01 deeply ironic.
2. On Monday, a judge for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that Sonia Cacy was innocent of murder.
Ms. Cacy was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1993: she allegedly doused her uncle with “an accelerant” and set him on fire.
Except there were problems with the evidence.
Lots of problems:
The full court has to concur before Ms. Cacy is officially exonerated, but as the TM article notes, that almost seems to be a formality now.
Obit watch: June 8, 2016.
June 8th, 2016The LAT is reporting the death of actress Theresa Saldana.
She was in “Raging Bull” (which, oddly enough, I have never gotten around to watching) and the 90’s TV series “The Commish”.
It makes me feel weird to say this, but: she was perhaps best known as the victim of a vicious attack by a deranged stalker in 1982. She was stabbed 10 times before a passerby pulled the guy off her. I don’t want to say this was the first celebrity stalking attack, because I’m sure someone will prove me wrong: but it was one of the earliest I can remember, and one of the first to draw public attention. (Ms. Saldana played herself in “Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story”, the movie based on her case.)
The paper of record.
June 8th, 2016Two interesting bits from the NYT:
1. I noticed this yesterday, and Lawrence emailed me about it as well: Rudolph Stocker retired from the Times on May 18th at the age of 78.
Who?
When the Times went over to computer typesetting, part of their agreement with the union guaranteed job security to the existing printers (“…1,785 situation-holders and full-time substitutes, 810 of whom were at The Times”).
Did he sit on his butt after the paper phased out the Linotype?
Sounds like a hell of a guy. I hope he has a happy retirement.
Through his colleagues, he made it known that he was not interested in a valedictory interview.
2. The Times Insider talks about the process of getting Ali’s obit into the paper, including a literal “stop the presses”.
It’s always kind of nice to know these people are human, too:
Obit watch: June 6, 2016.
June 6th, 2016Peter Shaffer, noted playwright (“Equus”, “Amadeus”).
I’ve never seen “Equus”, either the play or the film; I wouldn’t mind seeing Burton, but I’m also oddly fascinated by the idea of the Nimoy version.
It’s not the bullet that kills you…
June 3rd, 2016…it’s an allergic reaction to the sulfa drugs they were giving you to manage infection, this being in the days before modern antibiotics.
At least, that’s what a medical professional of my acquaintance told me yesterday; this is not a theory I had heard previously, but I trust this person implicitly. It seems like the one thing we know about the death of the Kingfish is how little we really do know.
For example, this may not be a bullet hole at all: it may be just “an imperfection in the marble”, according to that NOLA.com article I linked yesterday. I’m not sure I agree with their police work there, Lou. It looks awfully strange to be just an imperfection in the marble. But on the other hand, it also seems to be in a strange spot for a bullet hole. If you’re facing the pillar, I’d say it is roughly at a 270 degree angle from the front, almost around to the back side. Maybe someone trying to hide could have been hit there? Maybe it is a hole, but from a bodyguard’s gun?
Context:
Expanded context:
One more.
June 2nd, 2016I was going to crop and enhance this, but I imported it into Shotwell, took a look at it…and I’m actually kind of happy with the way it came out, unenhanced and uncropped.
Louisiana’s Old State Capitol, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This is distinct from the new State Capitol, which is where Huey was actually shot (more on that later) but the gun and bullets on on exhibit in the old one.
Taken with the little Nikon Coolpix S6500.
Random gun geekery.
June 2nd, 2016Also: a historical note, suitable for use in schools.
Taken with the iPhone camera, cropped a little, and enhanced in Shotwell:
I like the use of the word “supposedly” there, but that’s another discussion for when I have more time.
And don’t forget who else used an FN 1910.
A little more context on Weiss, Guerre, and the bullets, along with a lot of the assassination mythology, here.
Musical interlude.
June 1st, 2016Apropos of nothing in particular:
Historical note, suitable for use in schools.
May 31st, 2016Today is the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland.
I confess, this would have gotten completely past me. Except Weaponsman has an excellent post up at his blog, keying off this Vimeo animation of the battle. (I haven’t had time to watch the latter yet, but it sounds right up my alley.)
Yes, this is sort of half-assed history, but Weaponsman writes much better than I do, so I’m really doing a public service here by pointing you his way.
(Not historical, but this is also a swell Weaponsman post, and the one that finally got me to add him to my blogroll.)
Things I did not know until now.
May 30th, 2016Robert “Simply Irresistible” Palmer’s favorite author was Jack Vance, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that: I just have a little bit of trouble reconciling a fondness for Jack Vance with Mister “Addicted to Love”. But people are a funny old lot; they’ll surprise you sometimes…
Firings watch.
May 30th, 2016University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido has been “reassigned to a role as special assistant to the athletic director”. Which basically seems to me like a nice way to fire him without actually firing him.
At UT, his teams won two national championships (in 2002 and 2005) and went to the College World Series eight times.