Any bets on when “aspiring rapper” is going to pass “commercial fisherman” as the most dangerous job in America?
And, by the way, you shouldn’t assert facts that can easily be checked, unless you know they’re true:
….
The most dangerous job.
February 23rd, 2013Banana republicans on trial: February 22, 2013.
February 22nd, 2013It isn’t that I’ve gotten bored with the Bell trial. It’s just that things have been slow and repetitive over the past few days.
The defense has wrapped up closing arguments. I’d go into detail, but you’ve heard it before: it was all “Ratso” Rizzo’s fault.
Also, the prosecution failed to prove their case, why wasn’t the city attorney called, and the whole case is political anyway:
(Isn’t Moriarty a great name for a defense lawyer?)
Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think defending the right of city council members to pillage the city treasury is the kind of windmill Don Quixote would charge at.
And Bello does not strike me as being a convincing Sancho Panza. But he might be able to carry off Don Quixote. Terry Gilliam, call your office, please.
At this point, the case is in the hands of the jury, and we’re just waiting on a verdict.
Things you might want to think about.
February 22nd, 2013Today’s LAT has a longish article on the decline and fall of the Jewish deli.
The article gives some reasons why the traditional deli is disappearing: health concerns, growing popularity and availability of ethnic food, the recession, and rising rents.
What, was he sending cars to the most expensive gas stations when business was good?
But here’s what gets me: the second and third paragraphs of the article, describing customers lining up at the now closed Junior’s Deli:
Wow, who would have thought selling unremarkable food in 2013 is no longer a license to print money?
And there’s a previous article about Junior’s linked from the sidebar of today’s:
Apparently, the original owner died in 2011, and left the business to his two sons. The landlord claims that they had a good relationship with the original owner, and gave the deli ” several rent concessions during the recession”, even after the owner’s death.
Wow, who would have thought that wouldn’t be a successful negotiating strategy?
Banana republicans on trial: February 21, 2013.
February 21st, 2013Closing arguments have begun in the Bell trial. The LAT has your summary. Since we’re talking about the closing arguments, it basically amounts to “same s–t, different day”.
The big question: why didn’t anybody call Edward Lee, the former City Attorney for Bell and the guy who supposedly signed off on all of this? He was listed as a witness for the prosecution, but was never called.
Oh, yeah, by the way: it was all the fault of “Ratso” Rizzo, “a vindictive control freak”.
And:
Surprise of the day.
February 20th, 2013The Statesman ran a positive profile of the Austin Sure Shots women’s pistol league.
More:
Take that, Joe Biden, you clueless wart on the ass of the body politic.
And having a gun, and the power over it, is a lot better than pissing or shitting yourself.
(I see why my friend Andrew likes Gutfeld so much: I am so stealing “Guns: it’s like yoga but useful.”)
The things you learn wandering the Internet.
February 20th, 2013A comment over here led me to the official website (are there many unofficial ones?) of Ern Malley, who I had never heard of previously.
Malley was an Australian poet who died at the age of 25 of Graves disease. His sister discovered his poetry in his personal effects, and sent it to Max Harris, the editor of a literary magazine called “Angry Penguins” (really, I am not making that up) for evaluation. Harris loved the poetry, and published it in the magazine, and in a book called “The Darkening Ecliptic”.
And none of what I’ve told you about Malley was true. He was actually the creation of two other poets, Harold Stewart and James McAuley:
So they created Malley and his poetry (they claimed all the poems were written “in one grand burst on a wet afternoon in their barracks”) and sent it to Harris in an attempt to puncture what they saw as the pretense of modernist poetry. Hilarity ensued…
…until Harris and “Angry Penguins” became the subject of an obscenity trial over the Malley poems. (Harris ended up being fined 5 pounds and had to pick up the garbage.)
Lawrence would probably enjoy this story, as it reminds me a lot of the “Social Text” affair. As for myself, I think “the black swan of trespass on alien waters” is a neat turn of phrase.
Random notes: February 20, 2013.
February 20th, 2013We must ban the deadly killer backboards!
I don’t have much to offer as a Bell trial update. I am assuming the court took Monday off, and there doesn’t seem to have been any reported activity on Tuesday. The LAT does have a story datelined today, but it is just a summary of the past week of testimony, focusing on the whole “it was all Rizzo!” defense strategy.
Obit watch: Donald Richie, “prominent American critic and writer on Japan who helped introduce much of the English-speaking world to the golden age of Japanese cinema in 1959”. Among Richie’s works was The Films of Akira Kurosawa
All Tesla, all the time.
February 19th, 2013Could be worse. Could be “all poop cruise”.
Anyway, the NYT public editor has weighed in on the Tesla story.
In my opinion, she’s done so in a rather half-assed fashion. Much of her blog entry is actually a quote from one reader’s letter, making the standard arguments:
- the writer should have used the “Max Range” setting
- the writer should have used the “Range Mode” setting
- the writer should have read the section of the owner’s manual, “Driving Tips for Maximum Range”
- and he should have left it plugged in overnight
Quoth the public editor:
But she fails to give any examples of what she (as opposed to the letter writer) considers to be his alleged “not good” judgment.
If the public editor wishes to take the items above as examples, there are some questions worth asking:
- Doesn’t using the “Max Range” setting shorten the lifetime of the Tesla batteries? Isn’t it a legitimate decision to trade longer battery life for an additional “20-30 miles” of range?
- The writer was on the phone with Tesla throughout the entire drive, and followed the advice they gave him to maximize range. Wouldn’t they have given him the same advice as far as the “Range Mode” settings and what’s in the owner’s manual?
- Are there many hotels that have outside power outlets, in their parking areas, accessible to the public? That’s a serious question: I stay in maybe two hotels a year, if I’m lucky, and I don’t recall seeing power outlets at the ones I’ve stayed at in Vegas.
I agree somewhat with the public editor here. But, as she notes, the writer was “unaware that his every move was being monitored”. Elsewhere, I have seen Musk state that the Tesla has the capacity to do these kind of detailed logs, that it does not do them by default on consumer vehicles, but that Tesla automatically turns on the detailed logging for any vehicle they send out for review. Question: isn’t this just a little bit creepy and disturbing? I wouldn’t have a problem if Tesla had told the NYT and their writer in advance that they were going to have the car maintain a detailed trip log, especially if they shared that data with the NYT. But Musk kept this a secret from the paper, and from the reviewer, until he disputed the review. Yes, he has a right to do that, and yes, I can understand why you’d want your own logs to compare with the paper’s reporting. If Musk can do that to the NYT, though, he can do that to you, Joe Tesla Driver, too.
(So how does this differ from the “black box” in newer cars? Not sure. Need to think about that. My understanding is that the “black box” only collects the last few minutes of data from the car, as opposed to the detailed multi-day logs from the Tesla. But I’m not an auto mechanic, and I have no “black box” in my car.)
Random notes: February 19, 2013.
February 19th, 2013Well, isn’t this special. Julie Roe Lach, the NCAA’s chief enforcement officer, has been fired. You may remember Ms. Lach from such hits as “my people totally f–ked up the Miami investigation”.
Is Sherlock Holmes in the public domain? Or is he under copyright?
The scholar in question is Leslie S. Klinger
What can you say about the only college Greco-Roman wrestling program in the country? What are they going to do if wrestling is no longer an Olympic sport? I don’t know, and I wasn’t going to say anything until I read this:
Wait. The Federal Government was funding a wrestling program? On the God-forsaken Upper Peninsula of Michigan?
Competition tractor restoration. No snark here: I think this is nifty. (And, really, it isn’t any different than car shows, is it? Indeed, thinking about it some more, this might also be worth noting as an example of how the mass media is out of touch with the rest of the country.)
Banana republicans on trial: February 18, 2013.
February 18th, 2013Friday’s Bell update…wasn’t much of one. Testimony has wrapped up, and the case should go to the jury this week.
There was some bickering between the prosecution and indicted council member George Cole. Cole claimed that Bell needed to pay high salaries “to bring more Latinos onto the council of the low-income, largely immigrant city”, and that’s why he voted for a pay increase. The prosecution pointed out that Victor Bello, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, all of whom were also indicted, were already on the council when Cole voted for the increase.
When Miller pushed the point that the resolutions Cole and the other council members voted for would allow them a salary of $100,000 a year…
Other than that, Rizzo got thrown under the bus again.
Sunday’s LAT ran a story on what council meetings in Bell are like these days. Answer: much calmer. Oddly enough, however, it appears that Rebecca “testified against the other council members in return for immunity” Valdez is still the city clerk.
Obit watch: February 18, 2013.
February 18th, 2013Conrad wrote two books that I liked very much: The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic
I have very little to say about Mindy McCready except this: the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.
Bread blogging: Shiner Bock Cheddar and King Arthur Flour.
February 17th, 2013This time, another bread from Laurence Simon, Shiner Bock Cheddar. And another recipe closely adhered to, even to the point of brushing the bread with butter and sprinkling in jalapenos and sesame seeds.
How did it come out?
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! watch. (Part 1 of what I hope will be a more than infrequent series)
February 16th, 2013Jessie Jackson, Jr. has been charged with…
Yes, this is just an indictment; he hasn’t been convicted yet, but all the reporting I’ve seen is stating the indictment was the first step towards a plea deal, and Jackson does plan to plead guilty to at least some of the charges.
The allegations include:
- “Jackson used campaign funds to buy a $43,350 gold Rolex watch along with almost $10,000 in children’s furniture that he had delivered to his home in the District.”
- “Jackson made direct expenditures of about $57,793 from the campaign’s accounts for personal expenses. The documents say he and a co-conspirator used a campaign credit card to make $582,773 worth of purchases for their own use.”
According to the WP, while the co-conspirator was not named, “the description makes clear that [Mrs. Jackson] was the co-conspirator”. She hasn’t been charged in this case, but:
The reporting I’ve seen provides some additional context for Jackson Jr.’s spending. This wasn’t “I needed to pay the house payment, so I took money out of campaign funds” spending:
- $10,105 worth of Bruce Lee memorabilia, “including four separate purchases of items associated with the late martial-arts film hero”.
- $14,200 worth of “random Michael Jackson memorabilia”.
- “$4,000 for a ‘Michael Jackson and Eddie Van Halen’ guitar.”
- And $4,600 for a fedora worn by Michael Jackson. Can’t your see it in your mind? Jackson Jr. and his wife are at the mall, and they look into the window of one of those memorabilia shops? “Oooooh,
Tom Landry’sMichael Jackson’s hat!”
I remember reading the stories that Jackson Jr. was absent from Congress and out of touch, and the eventual announcements he was being treated for depression, but I did not associate those with an on-going criminal investigation:
Banana republicans on trial: February 15, 2013.
February 15th, 2013That evil Robert “Ratso” Rizzo! He tied people up…and made them take money! The horror! The horror!
You think I’m kidding, right?
More:
…
Cole is quoted, in a separate LANow blog post, as wanting to give up his salary in 2007, after one of Bell’s parks was closed. Ratso was not pleased:
My understanding of city manager/council government is that the council tells the manager what to do, not the other way around. The testimony seems to be that Rizzo was driving the train. Left unanswered so far: why did the council allow this? If, indeed, the council did, and people like Cole aren’t engaging in retroactive butt covering?
Lenny Bruce is not afraid, and other random notes for February 15, 2013.
February 15th, 2013More on the Maureen O’Connor story from the NYT. Highlights:
…
The Chelyabinsk meteor story is the kind of thing I feel obligated to comment on, but am still sorting out. I know my readers are looking to me for answers to such questions as “is it time to crack open our neighbor’s heads and feast on the tasty goo inside?” While you wait, WSJ coverage. And I’m going to break with one of my rules and point folks at Slate. My justification for this is that I’m pointing you at Phil Plait and “Bad Astronomy”: if anyone is going to be on top of this story, it will be Plait. Plus, he’s got lots of video.