The smell of leather, safety pins, and desperation.
August 18th, 2010Hookers, blow, and police professionalism.
August 18th, 2010I have been somewhat negligent in covering the trial of Scott Lando, which ended yesterday.
Mr. Lando was a former officer with the Austin Police Department; he was commended at one time for bravery, and for making the most arrests in his sector. However, things went south for some reason, and Officer Lando was fired in 2008.
Former Officer Lando has been accused of various charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and prostitution. However, in this particular case, he was charged only with four drug charges; Lando was accused of giving crack and money to hookers and their “boyfriends”.
Interestingly, three of the four drug charges were dismissed by the judge before they even reached the jury, due to insufficient evidence. After deliberating for two days, and telling the judge twice that they were hopelessly deadlocked, the jury finally convicted Lando on the one remaining charge; that he gave crack to the “boyfriend” of a hooker he met while on patrol.
The trial featured some rather sensational allegations; specifically, hookers claiming that Lando brought them to his house, had “unprotected sex” with them (note that it isn’t bad enough that Lando just had sex with hookers; it has to be spelled out that it was unprotected sex) and gave one of the hookers a pair of Harley Davidson motorcycle boots that belonged to his wife.
Speaking of Mrs. Lando, she’s stood by her man the whole time, claiming that the hookers in question broke into her house and stole her stuff.
Something stinks here, but I’m not sure what. When you go to trial on four charges, the judge throws out three of them before they even reach the jury, and the jury is deadlocked on the last one…
Recent SDC updates.
August 17th, 2010Interesting moral questions from the LAT.
August 17th, 2010Is it okay to tattoo a seven-year old child?
Is it okay to tattoo a seven-year old child if at least one parent gives consent?
Does it make a difference if the seven-year old child allegedly begged and pleaded until the parent gave in? (Note that this fact is disputed; the father claims this, but the child’s mother claimed that he was held down and forcibly tattooed. The child himself testified at the ensuing criminal trial that he didn’t want the tattoo and cried throughout.)
If any of these things do make a difference, what’s an appropriate charge? Aggravated mayhem? Injury to a child? Felony f-ing stupid?
Who bears more of the responsibility here? Certainly, you’d expect the parent to be the bigger party here and say, “I don’t care how much you whine, I’m not letting you get a tattoo.” But we all know there are parents who give in to whatever their kid wants. And it’s easy to imagine a parent who says, “Hey, what’s the big deal with a tattoo?” Does the tattoo artist have a duty to say, “I don’t care what the parents say, I’m not tattooing a freakin’ seven year old”?
Edited to add: Speaking of irresponsible parenting and art, Patrick over at Popehat makes an interesting argument that Rachel Stieringer is a more important artist than Andres Serrano. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ms. Stieringer and her artistic output, I won’t spoil it for you; I’ll just encourage you to click over to Patrick’s blog entry.
TMQ watch: August 17, 2010.
August 17th, 2010It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
That is, the start of football season. (Yes, the loser update will return this year.)
And with the start of football season comes the return of the tastefully named Gregg Easterbrook and his “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column for ESPN.
Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy Easterbrook’s column. I’ve been reading it since he was over at Slate, and find it to be one of the high points of my week during the period it runs. But I’ve been thinking for a while now that someone needs to highlight and respond to various things in TMQ.
Sometimes, Easterbrook does good work; he spent much of last season discussing the NFL’s response to head trauma among pro athletes, and I felt he was right on target. Sometimes, he uses his column to argue for things like increased Federal vehicle mileage requirements, and I think someone needs to respond to those arguments. Sometimes, he uses his column to go off on various SF TV shows for their lack of plausibility. And sometimes, Easterbrook just goes completely off the damn rails.
So I’m introducing the “Tuesday Morning Quarterback Watch”, to highlight when the man’s right, when I think he’s wrong, when I think he’s completely nuts, and some of Easterbrook’s odd obsessions.
In today’s TMQ:
- Easterbrook argues that the outcomes of sporting events should never be reversed, except if an incorrect call occurs on the final play and a correct call would have resulted in a win for the opposing team. I haven’t heard anyone seriously argue a different viewpoint; I highlight this because I’m wondering if it will be one of his obsessions this season.
- Wacky food and/or drink? Check. In this case, the Friendly’s cheeseburger served between two grilled cheese sandwiches. “At this restaurant, a lunch of Loaded Waffle Fries, Buffalo Chicken Supermelt and a milkshake weighs in at 3,670 calories.” I’m pretty dubious than anyone would order all three of those and try to eat them solo (though I will admit, that Buffalo Chicken Supermelt by itself doesn’t look terribly healthy). And do you really expect healthy food at a place with the slogan “Where ice cream makes the meal”?
- “How long until babe spy Anna Chapman signs to play Natasha Fatale in a big-budget remake of “Rocky & Bullwinkle”?” Well, Gregg (can I call you “Gregg”?), given the utter failure of the last big-budget “Rocky and Bullwinkle” remake, I’m going to suggest that you look for this around the same time as David Letterman’s “Cold Day in Hell Special”.
- Easterbrook kicks LeBron James around, but curiously, not ESPN for broadcasting the fiasco.
- Easterbrook spends 699 words out of an 8,748 word column (about 8%) recapping NYT corrections from the NFL off season. Not sports related corrections; just NYT corrections in general. Dear Mr. Easterbrook; have you ever heard of “Regret the Error“? Or “The NYTPicker“?
- Easterbrook finds an excuse to run a swimsuit photo of an attractive woman. No complaints here…
- Easterbrook kicks Robert Byrd around some more.
- Weasel coach bashing? Check.
- Easterbrook kicks Al and Tipper Gore around some more. I would have held off on the “Al listens to rap music” joke, Gregg; the Onion beat you to it, and did it better.
- Obligatory bashing of SF television shows? Check.
- Wacky lawsuits? Check. I’ll give Easterbrook this: he may lean to the left politically, but he isn’t a blind liberal hack.
- Easterbrook keeps threatening to retire the “Christmas Creep” watch, but hasn’t yet.
We’re fairly early into the NFL and TMQ season. So far, I haven’t detected any trends, but we’ll see how things go.
Oh, almost forgot! In addition to the normal TMQ column, we now have…the TMQ Trailer on Monday! How swell is that? For his first outing, Easterbrook uses the failure of JaMarcus Russell (“Ryan Leaf can relax — JaMarcus Russell has replaced him as the worst draft bust.” Can’t argue too much with that, Gregg.) as a jumping off point to “reimagine” the 2007 NFL draft, based on what we know now. I’m not sure what the point of this exercise is, except to highlight another Easterbrook trope (first-round draft choices, especially quarterbacks, are often overrated; most teams would be better served trading down to get second or third round choices) but it is mildly diverting.
The banshee screams for antelope meat.
August 17th, 2010From the police blotter: our local sheriff’s office busted a couple for breaking into a place called “Wild Bubba’s Wild Game Grill” (no, really!) in Del Valle.
Our fun couple, the female half of which goes by the name “Amber”, are accused of prying open the front door and stealing:
- a bottle of Tito’s vodka. Well, I give them some credit for stealing good vodka, but wouldn’t it have been easier to hit a liquor store? There’s no shortage of them out that way.
- a TV and VCR. Shoot, guys, you probably could have picked those up at a garage sale, if not the Goodwill.
- and 25 pounds of beef, buffalo, and antelope meat.
For this, “Amber” and her guy pal are facing felony burglary charges. As Jay G. says, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
More interesting to me, though, is the very existence of Wild Bubba’s, which had previously escaped my notice. I sense a road trip coming on in the next few weeks (as soon as some things get resolved and some scheduled events pass).
Random hysterical notes.
August 16th, 2010Interestingly, today is both:
- the 33rd anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley.
- the 50th anniversary of Captain Joe Kittinger’s 102,800 foot parachute jump.
The second link is by way of FARK. I was not aware until fairly recently that Kittinger not only held the record for highest parachute jump, he was also shot down over Vietnam and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war.
Ordinarily, I would suggest that someone needs to write a biography of Colonel Kittinger (he was a captain at the time of the jump, but retired from the Air Force as a colonel). But wait! Somebody has
Random notes: August 16, 2010.
August 16th, 2010Obit watch: James J. Kilpatrick.
For those who are wondering, I’ll save you the trouble: I couldn’t find any “Point-Counterpoint” videos on YouTube, and Shana Alexander died in 2005.
In other news, Austin’s MetroRail service was disrupted this morning. Why? Well, someone found a mysterious package on the tracks that contained…a cow tongue studded with nails, along with a note (“incoherent”, according to the Statesman), and a photograph. There was also a glass jar found nearby with an unidentified liquid inside.
Edited to add: Lawrence sends along this link to cow tongues found nailed to trees at Prospect Park around this time last year. Speculation in the linked article is that this is some sort of Santeria ritual intended to stop gossip, which seems to fit in with speculation by Statesmen commentators.
Friday loser update.
August 13th, 2010I will be darned. Baltimore no longer has the worst record in baseball. (40-75, .348 winning percentage, projected 56.376 wins.)
That honor just barely belongs to Pittsburgh. (39-75, .342 winning percentage, projected 55.404 wins.)
And Houston is still holding on to fourth place in the division. (48-67, .425 winning percentage, projected 68.85 wins.)
Who guards the (Bay) Guardian?
August 12th, 2010Answer: the First District Court of Appeal.
We have previously noted the ongoing legal battle between the SF Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly (owned by Village Voice Media) over alleged predatory price-cutting by the latter. A jury awarded the Bay Guardian $21 million, but the Weekly appealed the decision.
That decision has now been upheld by the appellate court.
There is a claim in the linked article that the two parties have “reached a settlement”. Apparently, this settlement came after the SFBG was told they could seize and sell the Weekly‘s delivery trucks.
Obit watch.
August 12th, 2010Everyone and his brother is on this already, but I have to get my kicks in: “Cathy“. (Chicago Tribune.)
The best commentary I’ve seen so far is from Josh and his gang over at the Comics Curmudgeon website.
With “Cathy” gone, that takes care of one of the comics on my top ten hit list. Now if we could only do something about “The Amazing (Glacial) Spider-Man”, “Gasoline Alley”, “Funky Winkerbean”, and “Crankshaft”, I’d be a very happy man.
Edited to add: Lawrence was on my case because I didn’t mention “Dinette Set” in the above list. I pointed out that I didn’t intend for that to be a complete list. Then I went and clicked on the Chron link for today’s “Dinette Set”, just to make sure the damn thing was still being published.
Wow. This isn’t even just “not funny”. This doesn’t even approach “what’s the deal with airline food?” levels. There’s not even an attempt at humor here; this is just someone who can’t draw or write, recounting an event without giving us any clue as to why we should find this interesting or amusing.
Reddit’s “anti-joke” thread is funnier than this. Heck, your average NYT editorial is funnier than this.
The Thais that bind.
August 12th, 2010Rob Balon wonders in his latest blog entry, “why so many Austinites seem to be either indifferent toward or uncomfortable with Thai food“. As Dr. Balon frequently does, he suggests that Austinites are so used to barbecue and TexMex that “something relatively unfamiliar has a hard time breaking through”.
Dr. Balon’s essay is curious for a few reasons. First of all, he’s talking about Thai food, yet completely omits the longest lived (as far as I know) and single most successful group of Thai restaurants in Austin. We could argue about the merits of Thai Kitchen versus Madam Mam’s all day long, but just simply ignoring the metaphorical 800-pound elephant in the room is…curious, to say the least.
Dr. Balon does mention Madam Mam’s, but I find his comments kind of dismissive. He doesn’t even note that there are actually three locations; the third one is near the Alamo Drafthouse in the Village, and to my untrained eye appears to be doing well.
“And yet just a few miles south on W 6th st. fine restaurants like Lemongrass and Thai Tara have languished and ultimately closed.” I would have to go back to the archives and do some research, but my recollection is that the closing of Lemongrass was a lot more complicated than that. As for Thai Tara, it stayed open much longer than I would have expected; I’d suggest that it closed almost entirely due to a bad location, and especially due to parking issues downtown.
Dr. Balon mentions relatively new places such as Chon Som and Titaya, but I see even more Thai places that he doesn’t mention popping up on street corners all over town. (For example, Pad Thai on Guadalupe, and Thai Cuisine at Parmer and I-35.) Thai Village seems to be doing much better than the shopping center it’s in. Bangkok Cuisine has stayed in business for many years (how, I don’t exactly know). Compared to the Thai situation in, say, 2007, we’re living in a golden age.
Could some of these places (like Satay) use more customers? Dr. Balon seems to know more about this than I do. But let’s say that they could use more customers; is that because they serve Thai food, or is that because of the economy in general? If we compared Thai places to TexMex places, or barbecue joints, would we see a similar trend towards a smaller customer base?
Dr. Balon may have a point, but I don’t think he’s mustered the evidence to back it up.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#14 in a series).
August 11th, 2010I’m putting this under the “Art, damn it, art!” watch because I haven’t made up my mind about this one.
Would you pay someone to sharpen your pencil for you? (This is not a metaphor for something else: when I say “sharpen your pencil”, I mean a regular #2 pencil, with graphite and an eraser.)
Would you pay someone $15 to sharpen your pencil for you?
Would you pay someone $15 to sharpen your pencil for you, using a “specially selected” implement that “suits your pencil best”?
Would you pay David “Get Your War On” Rees $15 to sharpen your pencil for you?
My first thought was: this is moronic.
But considering it some more, “artisanal pencil sharpening” could be a subtle and brilliant parody of the whole “artisanal” movement. Artisanal food, artisanal axes; why not “artisanal pencil sharpening”?
DEFCON 18 updates.
August 10th, 2010I’m actively going back and adding links to my original DEFCON 18 posts as they become available and/or I find them.
However, I know some people use RSS to read WCD, and don’t automatically get updated posts in their feed. So I’m also going to try posting lists of updates I’ve added, at least for the DEFCON 18 stuff.
- added a link for “Build your own UAV 2.0 – Wireless Mayhem from the Heavens!“.
- added a link for “Black Ops Of Fundamental Defense: Web Edition” (DEFCON title)/”Black Ops of Fundamental Defense: Introducing the Domain Key Infrastructure” (actual title) (Black Hat version).
- added link to “Extreme-range RFID tracking” (Black Hat 2010 version of talk). (Paget’s blog entry on the talk; contains links to slides and code.)
- added link to “Jackpotting Automated Teller Machines Redux” (MP4 file of presentation from Black Hat 2010).
- added link to “Practical Cellphone Spying” (Paget’s blog, which links to slides).
- added link to “How to Hack Millions of Routers” (Black Hat version).
- added link to “Hacking with Hardware: Introducing the Universal RF Usb Keboard Emulation Device – URFUKED“.
- added link to “Programmable HID USB Keystroke Dongle: Using the Teensy as a Pen Testing Device“.
If you’re aware of links I’ve missed so far (and by the way, thanks Gremlin), or if there’s a talk you saw that I haven’t covered, please feel free to leave comments.
Firing watch.
August 10th, 2010The Seattle Mariners (43-70) fired Don Wakamatsu, their manager, yesterday. As the Seattle paper notes, this took place right before the Mariners’ celebration of Japanese heritage day, and Wakamatu’s firing was just the latest in a long string of odd incidents this year.
Missed this on Sunday, but the Pirates fired their pitching coach and bench coach.
And the city of Maywood (remember Maywood?) is considering firing the city of Bell, due to the ongoing salary scandal in Bell.
Not exactly a firing, but I’m going to throw this in anyway: LA County Sheriff Lee Baca is refusing to release records involving the death of Ruben Salazar. Salazar was a television journalist covering an anti-Vietnam war rally in East LA on August 29, 1970; he was killed when a sheriff’s deputy fired a tear-gas grenade into a bar and hit Salazar in the head.
The LAT doesn’t mention this aspect of Salazar’s life, but I will. I’ve been interested in Salazar ever since I read The Great Shark Hunt
Edited to add: Whoops, I was mistaken. I had Salazar confused with Oscar Zeta Acosta. That’s what I get for relying on my memory while I was at work, and not waiting until I got home to check my sources. HST did write about Salazar in The Great Shark Hunt, though.