Your loser update: April 17, 2015.

April 17th, 2015

The end of the NBA regular season has snuck up on us.

Early in the season, it seemed like Philadelphia was the favorite to go 0-82, or at least set a record for futility.

How did that work out for them? Well, they finished 18-64. Which is bad.

But it isn’t as bad as the New York Knicks, who finished 17-65. Philadelphia didn’t even lose their own division. Which I think says something about the team, but I’m not sure what.

But, surprisingly, the Knicks weren’t the worst NBA team this year. That honor goes to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who finished the season at 16-66, for a winning percentage of 0.195. ESPN has a very nice list of the worst NBA teams, which currently includes the Timberwolves, and lets you do side-by-side comparisons with the legendary 72-73 Philadelphia team.

By the way, the Lakers finished 21-61. Just saying.

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Schadenfreude, Sports | Comments Closed

Norts spews.

April 14th, 2015

Lawrence Phillips, former NFL running back who is serving out a 31-year prison sentence, may have killed his cellmate.

Gaioz Nigalidze’s rise through the ranks of professional chess began in 2007, the year the first iPhone was released. In hindsight, the timing might not be coincidental.

Nigalidze is suspected of stashing an iPhone in a men’s room stall and using it to cheat during games.

“When confronted, Nigalidze denied he owned the device,” according to the tournament’s Web site. “But officials opened the smart device and found it was logged into a social networking site under Nigalidze’s account. They also found his game being analyzed in one of the chess applications.”

Posted in Apple, Chess, Clippings, Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 14, 2015.

April 14th, 2015

Günter Grass, noted German writer.

Somehow, I managed to miss his admission that he was an SS member during the war.

(Sorry for the radio silence the past few days. I’ve been on the road and just got home last night. More about this later.)

Posted in Admin, Books, Clippings, Nazis, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: play Freberg!

April 8th, 2015

Oh, come on, he would have laughed, too.

A/V Club. NYT.

Just for the heck of it:

Posted in Clippings, Obits | 1 Comment »

Take me out to the ball game…

April 6th, 2015

It appears that opening day has snuck up on me again.

It also looks like the Cubs will be unable to sell beer at Wrigley Field this year.*

However, I still have faith; that’s one game out of 162. And, yes, I’ve bet Lawrence $5 that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.

* Because they lost the home opener.

Edited to add: Giggle. Snort.

Posted in Clippings, Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

More tags that I don’t get to use together enough.

April 3rd, 2015

This would be the “Food->Beef” and “Austin->Politics” tags.

Lawrence wrote earlier this week about the city’s proposed “code change to limit barbecue smoke in residential areas”.

The council meeting was last night. And?

At today’s meeting, the Austin City Council voted to start a stakeholder input process on possibly regulating barbecue smoke from restaurants.

So we’ve gone from a code change to “starting a process to get input from stakeholders”.

Recommendations will be made by the city manager to the Health and Human Services Committee and the Economic Opportunity Committee. After July 31, there will be another chance for public comment.

“Recommendations will be made”. Nice use of the passive voice there.

I was actually in favor of the original version of the resolution, and I’m kind of sad to see it watered down. Why? Well, I’ve never seen an entire city council tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail…

Posted in Austin, Beef, Clippings, Food, Politics | 1 Comment »

Alligators? In my retention pond?

April 3rd, 2015

It’s more likely than you think.

(I know the linked article refers to a singular alligator, but there are other articles behind the Statesman pay wall that state there’s evidence of at least two gators.)

(That reminds me: did you know you can get “Gator” on blu-ray? You do now. You can also get “Operation C.I.A.” on DVD, but it’s one of those “produced on demand” DVDs.)

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Reptiles | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 2, 2015.

April 2nd, 2015

Rev. Robert H. Schuller, Crystal Cathedral founder. NYT. LAT.

Posted in Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#19 in a series)

April 2nd, 2015

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was indicted on bribery charges on Wednesday in what prosecutors said was a scheme to trade political favors for luxury vacations, golf outings, campaign donations and expensive flights.

More:

Through his company, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, Dr. Melgen directed $700,000 in corporate contributions to Majority PAC, a super PAC intended to help Democrats retain control of the Senate. Dr. Melgen instructed the group to use those contributions to aid Mr. Menendez’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Among the favors for Dr. Melgen, the department said, Mr. Menendez encouraged the Obama administration to change the Medicare reimbursement policy in a way that would make millions for the doctor. Prosecutors said he also tried to push a port security deal that Dr. Melgen was involved in, and helped the surgeon’s foreign girlfriends obtain travel visas to the United States.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Happy April Fools Day!

April 1st, 2015

Our policy regarding your personal data:
Please stop sending us your personal data.
We are running out of places to put it.
Is this even yours?
Does anyone recognize whose data this is?
Oh jeez never mind here comes more data.
Why are you doing this?
Please stop.
Help.

“NSA Tells Public To Reduce Use of Passive Voice In Email”

“Congress To Extend Copyright Terms for All Artistic Works to ‘Life of Mickey Mouse plus 70 years.'”

The Internet of Fish.

California’s new state flag.

More later, maybe. It has been a busy morning.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Geek, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 31, 2015.

March 31st, 2015

Robert L. Hite passed away on Sunday.

Lt. Col. Hite was one of Doolittle’s Raiders. He was captured by the Japanese after his plane ran out of fuel and the crew bailed out over China.

Mr. Hite was imprisoned for 40 months, 38 of them in solitary confinement. His weight had dropped to 76 pounds from 180 when the war ended.

Posted in Clippings, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Duke sucks.

March 30th, 2015

Duke, however, does not suck enough.

Gonzaga!

Yes, I owe Lawrence $5. I’m not that disappointed, though: making the final eight is a pretty good run, and I think Gonzaga is going to get stronger and stronger in the coming years.

Posted in Clippings, Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

The horses have left…

March 29th, 2015

Not official yet, but various sources are reporting that Rick Barnes is going to be shown the door.

If there’s an official announcement today, I’ll update; otherwise, I’ll do a new post tomorrow.

Edited to add: Official. Statesman. Statesman II. ESPN.

Some interesting things about this:

  • The university is spinning this as an agreed upon parting of the ways.
  • Barnes says he wanted to stay, was told last week his job was safe, and he was let go for refusing to fire some of his assistant coaches.
  • Barnes is owed $1.75 million in severance pay. But if UT had waited until Wednesday to fire him, they would only have owed him $1.5 million. I wonder what the hurry was.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Gonzaga 74, UCLA 62.

March 28th, 2015

Elite Eight, baby.

Their next game is against Duke on Sunday.

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 27, 2015.

March 27th, 2015

This has been covered elsewhere, but I did want to highlight the NYT coverage of Richard III’s reburial.

After three days of viewing by thousands who lined up for hours to file past the bier in Leicester’s Anglican cathedral, Richard’s skeletal remains, in a coffin of golden English oak with an incised Yorkist rose and an inscription giving the sparest details of his life — “Richard III, 1452-1485” — were removed overnight from beneath a black cloth pall stitched with colorful images from his tumultuous times.

I wish I could have been there.

To those seething at the spectacle of a notoriously violent monarch being rehabilitated by the church, the cardinal cautioned that power in Richard’s time was “invariably won or maintained on the battlefield and only by ruthless determination, strong alliances and a willingness to employ the use of force, at times with astonishing brutality.”

Giggle. Snort.

For more than 500 years, he has been popularly cast as one of the most odious villains of English history — the “poisonous, bunch-back’d toad” of Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” reviled as a child killer for his role, as Shakespeare and generations of historians have depicted it, as the prime mover in the smothering murders of the two young brothers known as the Princes in the Tower.

…

Since the 1700s, there has been a minority voice among writers and historians that has cast Richard as the victim of a conspiracy by the Tudors, whose dynasty was founded on Henry Tudor’s victory. Among these protagonists, Shakespeare is seen as having won favor at court as a spin doctor for the Tudor cause, especially for Queen Elizabeth I, who, this version contends, wanted Richard’s reputation blackened to strengthen the Tudors’ own shaky legitimacy.

I’m just going to leave these links here.

The Richard III Society.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.

Also: nice tribute by the NYT to the author, John Burns.

Posted in Books, Clippings, History, Horses, Obits | Comments Closed

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