Seymour Papert. NYT. MIT A/I Lab.
I never met him, but as a very young person with my first computer, Papert’s work, especially with LOGO, was a huge influence on my thinking.
Obit watch: August 2, 2016.
August 2nd, 2016Random notes: August 1, 2016.
August 1st, 2016I’ve observed that sometimes the NYT will run nice obituaries for people who weren’t famous – the type of person whose passing would usually escape the paper of record’s notice, except that they were a community figure in their neighborhood or something very much like that.
Another nice story from the NYT: Shannon Beydler and Kevin Hillery were married July 3rd. Ms. Beydler is a judicial clerk and a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps Inactive Ready Reserve. Mr. Hillery attended the Naval Academy.
But in the spring of 2011, during an off-road adventure race with three friends in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a storm blew in as he was biking down a hill; a tree hit his head and rolled down his back, crushing his spine. Mr. Hillery was airlifted to Charlottesville, Va., where he underwent surgery.
During months of rehabilitation, he wondered if he would ever be able to get back to the Naval Academy. Less than a year later, Mr. Hillery did just that, graduating with his class — the first paraplegic to do so in the school’s 170-year history.
See also, by way of Instapundit: “Can the New York Times Weddings Section Be Justified?”
Ace of Spades had a sidebar link over the weekend to the semi-finalists in the Texas State Fair fair food competition.
“Bacon Wrapped Pork Belly on a Stick”? Isn’t that just bacon-wrapped bacon on a stick? “Buffalo Chicken Jalapeno Poppers”? Can’t you get those at Chili’s? “Injectable Great Balls of BBQ”? Don’t know, don’t want to know, don’t believe the word “injectable” should ever be used with a food item. “Deep Fried Bacon Burger Dog Sliders on a Stick”? “Loaded Bacon Mashed Potato Egg Roll”? Okay, now these people are just stringing random words together; those last two sound like something that was auto-generated by a Perl script.
Historical note: today is the 50th anniversary of the UT Tower shootings. I haven’t written much about that, and won’t: other people have done it better, and this year’s anniversary is even more politically fraught than usual. (Today is also the day that the university’s new rules on campus concealed carry take effect.)
I haven’t gone through this, and am not sure if a login is required (or if you can get away with private browsing), but here’s the Statesman‘s 50th anniversary coverage. Noted: A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders by Gary Lavergne (the definitive book on the shootings) is available in a Kindle edition.
Obit watch: July 29, 2016.
July 29th, 2016Jack Davis, noted Mad magazine illustrator. There are some nice examples of his work in the NYT and also in the A/V Club’s.
Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series of books. I actually have a copy of the first book in the series, but have not yet read it.
I’ve also never seen an episode of Babylon 5, but I keep hearing that it is above average for televised SF, and people who I do respect seem fond of it. So, for the historical record: Jerry “Michael Garibaldi” Doyle.
Obit watch: July 27, 2016.
July 27th, 2016Obit watch: July 26, 2016.
July 26th, 2016Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AA of a series)
July 19th, 2016
Blogger, with occasional chief.
This reminds me that I owe you guys a longer post on the Citizen’s Police Academy: thoughts on the academy itself, and the aftermath. I’ve had that stewing for a while now, but various things have gotten in the way.
Memo from the sentencing desk.
July 19th, 2016Remember Christopher Correa, the St. Louis Cardinals “director of baseball development” who plead guilty to hacking the Houston Astros player database? (Previously.)
46 months in prison. $279,038 in restitution.
In other news, Former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca was supposed to be sentenced yesterday. The former sheriff, as you may recall, plead guilty to lying to federal investigators. He had agreed to take a plea, and the prosecution, in turn, had agreed to seek a sentence somewhere between probation and a maximum of six months in prison.
Yesterday, the judge in the case threw out the plea agreement.
…
Former sheriff Baca has also been diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s disease, which may be one reason why the prosecution was so willing to agree to a relatively light sentence; if his condition gets worse, he may not be competent to participate in his defense, which could result in any trial being delayed.
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.
July 14th, 2016Aujourd’hui, nous sommes tous les habitants de Nice.
Easier for a teenager…
July 14th, 2016Mike the Musicologist and I found ourselves at a Barnes and Noble the other day. (Criterion Collection 50% off sale through August 1st. You’re welcome.)
For various reasons, we were flipping through the new Dana Loesch book, Flyover Nation: You Can’t Run a Country You’ve Never Been To. The jacket contains this rather pithy line:
Both of us got a chuckle out of that, since we couldn’t think of anyone we knew who got a deer rifle for their thirteenth birthday. (I think I was 13 when I got my .22, but it was for Christmas. And for my readers who are not people of the gun, a .22 is way underpowered for deer. I want to say my sister’s boys were 16 and 14 when they got a deer rifle, but I’m not sure that technically qualifies as “theirs” as much as it is “Dad paid for it and loaned it to them so they could go on a youth hunting trip.”)
Anyway, I thought of that when I read this Statesman story:
Mr. Owens is now a deputy with the Bastrop County Sheriff’s office. And he just won a gold medal in the precision/sniper rifle category at the 2016 Texas Police Games.
Owens said he drove to San Angelo on a Tuesday after work, with his Mark 12 special-purpose rifle and no air conditioning. He slept about two hours the night before his competition, when he went in and shot at 1-inch laser points on a human silhouette, in a timed, 20-shot course aimed at precision. He was positioned 100 to 200 meters from his targets.
On a regular day at his ranch in La Grange, he can hit from 600 meters.
Owens also took home a third place prize in patrol rifle, a five-hour course where he ran from bay to bay shooting enemy targets and avoiding friendly fire.
Cool story. Cool guy. I’d love to meet him somewhere with air conditioning and buy him a couple/three frosty beverages of his choice.
How far down does the well of corruption go?
July 14th, 2016Lawrence has been on the UT corruption scandal like flies over a cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation.
But I wanted to make note of this story, since I don’t think it has come to his attention yet, and it also sort of qualifies as a firing.
Backgroud: until a few years back, ticket sales for UT sports were handled by the Longhorn Foundation, “the official fundraising arm of Texas Athletics”.
More here on the audit, which was mostly completed by June 2013, but the report “was not sent to top university officials until two years later — after UT President Bill Powers and athletic director DeLoss Dodds, in office at the time of the ticket abuses, had moved on.”
I’m just going to give that one “well” for now, for reasons that should become apparent later.
Steve Patterson, who took over as athletic director after DeLoss Dodds, took ticket selling away from the Longhorn Foundation. The foundation still existed, but their fund-raising was charitable contributions – you know, donations from rich alumni who wanted good seats for football. Patterson hired a company called The Aspire Group to handle ticket sales, and they’ve apparently done a decent job: they exceeded goals for 2015. And they have a contract through August of 2017.
But. Steve Patterson isn’t the athletic directory any longer: he lasted two years. Mike Perrin is now the AD, and he wants to terminate Aspire’s contract by August 26th of this year.
Would you like to take a guess who Mike Perrin wants to handle ticket sales now?
“I believe the direction and tone of our relationships with our incredible donor and fan base needs to be adjusted, starting with the Longhorn Foundation once again leading those important relationships,” Perrin continued.
Perrin stated it was “my intention to come to an agreement to terminate our contract this summer. I am not interested in trying to figure out a way to keep this relationship active moving forward.”
So the new AD wants to turn ticket sales back over to the same crooked organization that had them previously.
And this is where we deploy the “Well. Well well well. Well.” Seriously, just how corrupt is the University of Texas these days?
Happy Bastille Day, everybody!
July 14th, 2016No, I haven’t forgotten. I just had trouble finding anything to put here this year. Old jokes are old.
Enjoy your holiday. Be careful storming prisons. Don’t drink wine and drive: you might spill it and stain the seats. And please accept this rather interesting Weaponsman post on the Chauchat machine gun as our nod at history for this year’s holiday.
From the police blotter.
July 14th, 2016This story has everything: fire, an explosion, strippers (“Willow” and “Breonna”), and a potato.
…
Yes, I’m going to make you click through to the WP if you want to find out how the potato came into play. Hint: Martin is the stripper, Garguilo is the boyfriend (she’s 19, he’s 28: isn’t love grand?) and neither one is terribly bright.
A small update.
July 13th, 2016I have previously written about the strange case of Carolyn Barnes, the local lawyer who was accused of shooting at a census worker, sent to the state mental hospital (where she continued to represent at least one client), was later ruled competent to stand trial, tried, convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to three years in prison.
Ms. Barnes is out of prison now (she got credit for time served before the trial), but was appealing her conviction.
Dear Mr. President…
July 13th, 2016…I’ve never had to fill out a Form 4473 to purchase a book.
Even The Poor Man’s James Bond.
Come to think of it, I’ve also never had to show a permit to purchase a book. Nor has anyone ever called in to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Books to get my purchase approved.
Questions. We’ve got questions.
July 13th, 2016Prompted by various things, including recent events and other people’s travels:
- Why did the FBI feel compelled to announce they’ve abandoned the search for D.B. Cooper?
Is it possible they’re playing a long game here?
“Olly olly oxen free. Come out, D.B. Cooper!”
“Hi, I’m Dan Cooper.”
“Hi, Dan. You’re under arrest.”
“Hey, wait! That’s not fair! You called ‘olly olly oxen free’! No takebacks, you cheater!”
(I would ask why they were still pursuing him after 45 years – I thought the statute of limitations would have run out long ago – but, per Wikipedia (I know, I know) there’s a John Doe indictment in absentia against Mr. Cooper.) - More of a rhetorical question: I didn’t know there was a Cleveland Museum of Natural History. I don’t think I did, anyway: if I ever went, I was very young. I’ll have to make a point of going next time I’m up Cleveland way. (And it is my turn.)
- Speaking of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, why is Balto, the famous Alaskan sled dog who took the diptheria serum to Nome, in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History?
(I know what the more or less “official” answer is: Balto died in what’s now the Cleveland Zoo. And why was Balto in Cleveland in the first place? Because the children of Cleveland and the Plain Dealer collected pennies to purchase Balto and the other dogs, because they were allegedly badly treated after being sold to a “dime museum”. It just seems odd. If George Kimble had been a resident of Houston, or a graduate of UT, would Balto be in Texas now?) - Have I linked to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History before?
- Why doesn’t the CMNH want to return Balto to Alaska? I kind of get the idea that Alaska may have forfeited rights to Balto, given the way that he was supposedly treated. But I’m not sure I blame the state, or Balto’s first owner, for what they did. Also, it was a long time ago in another country: wouldn’t it be nice to give Balto back?
- Another rhetorical question: I was unaware of the Balto/Togo controversy. It wasn’t covered in the children’s book I read about the serum run when I was a lad. (In case you were wondering: Togo’s skin is in Alaska, while his skeleton is at Yale.)
- What’s Balto’s Bacon Number? The Oracle says 3. But I’m not convinced: if you were voiced by Kevin Bacon in an animated movie based on your life, shouldn’t that lower your Bacon number?
- There were three Balto movies?
- What was the name of that children’s book about the serum run, anyway? I know it was non-fiction, and I swear it had a blueish cover, but I can’t remember the name. I’d kind of like to find a copy.