My apologies for not noting this yesterday, but I was out with friends from early in the morning until late in the evening. Yes, I did have fun, thank you very much.
Hang down your head, Derek Dooley.
November 19th, 2012They’re dogs! And they’re playing poker!
November 18th, 2012Lawrence blogged about our “Night Gallery” watching last night. At least, mostly about “Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture” and They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar”. A few notes I want to add:
- Lawrence is right: “Riley’s Bar” is a great story, with an ending I didn’t expect coming.
- William Windom is very good (he was nominated for an Emmy) but I’d also like to put in a good word for Diane Baker. Indeed, that’s pretty much the main reason I’m writing this post. She’s pivotal to this episode and…well…
…I’m sorry, but she’s just stunning in my books. (That image is from “Marnie”, not “Riley’s Bar”; I think she looks even better in the latter, but I can’t find a still from it.) If Ms. Baker ever comes down to Austin, I would be honored to take her out for a cheeseburger and the amusing house wine. It would be a chaste dinner: I’d just like to listen to her tell stories, as she’s had an interesting career. In addition to “Marnie”, she was Senator Martin in “Silence of the Lambs”, and Blythe House (among her other credits). And she’s still working. - We also watched “The Diary”. This is a well-executed and creepy episode, with an ending I didn’t see coming. But: can Patty Duke act? Her performance was basically one shrill note, held through much of the episode. And it struck me as being, in tone, very much like her performance in the “Hawaii 5-0” episode, “Thanks for the Honeymoon“.
- I know “Big Surprise” is based on a Richard Matheson script of one of his stories. I have a tremendous admiration for Matheson. It pains me to say that this segment didn’t work for me.
- I’d call “A Matter of Semantics” a bad “Saturday Night Live” skit, but it knows when to end. And it is very short. And there’s much to be said for this:
- It may just pale in comparison alongside “Riley’s Bar”, but I didn’t much like “The Last Laurel“, either.
Four years.
November 17th, 2012Almost a year after he was convicted, former Spokane PD officer Karl Thompson has been sentenced for beating Otto Zehm to death. (Previously.)
Nine to eleven years. That doesn’t sound too bad.
So he gets a “downward variance” for being a cop, even thought the crime he committed was in the line of duty and under the color of his authority as a cop, and even though he and his fellow cops tried to cover up his actions? That’s…special.
(Hattip to Balko on this. I missed it earlier in the week.)
Another round of Earthquest updates.
November 17th, 2012By way of Soapboxmom. And boy howdy, we’ve got a real doozy here.
http://www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=14410
Don Allen Holbrook continued to receive payments from EMCID for the defunct Earthquest Institute charity that he helped to run into the ground as its CEO and president. Frank “The Bank” McCrady is also withholding documents showing what he has paid in legal fees for the Earthquest debacle being investigated. Disgusting!
I recommend clicking through to the link. As noted, EMCID is still funding Earthquest, “despite the fact that after eight years, the property developer declared bankruptcy, investigations have been launched by the Montgomery County District Attorney, the Texas Rangers and the FBI, and the voting public tossed out two incumbent board members.”
EMCID has also spent over $300,000 in lawyers in the first nine months of 2012.
The updates just keep coming:
http://www.ourtribune.com/article.php?id=14410
http://pvtimes.com/news/from-the-editor-congratulations-newly-minted-public-servants-get-to-work/
Thanks for your support!!!
To be honest, I am slightly butthurt by some of the comments in that second link, since:
- I am one of the “gun nuts” referred to.
- It is always interesting that people who don’t like guns say, “I don’t want to take away anyone’s guns, I just want to make sure that people who have them are properly trained”…and then sneer at anyone who engages in training.
That being said, though, I will give the Pahrump Valley Times editor a pass, since this brings to my attention something I was unaware of.
Don Holbrook’s latest scheme (or, at least, one of his latest) apparently involves getting the county to put $63,000, and the city of Pahrump another $63,000, to fund the expansion of a shooting range/training school. It sounds like the idea is similar to ECMID: create a “tax improvement” district, and the funds will come from sales taxes paid by all the people who flock there. Here’s an article from earlier in the year discussing the plan.
But we’re not just talking about any training facility. We’re talking about Front Sight, run by the man Tam refers to as “Four Weapon Combat Master Dr. Ignatius Piazza“. To put it mildly, Dr. Piazza has a colorful reputation in the gun community, complete with several lawsuits, at least two of which involved accusations that Dr. Piazza is a Scientologist. More here.
I haven’t been to Front Sight, so I can’t pass judgment on their training. (Nor do I want to go: if i was going to travel for training, I’d be going to Gunsite.) I don’t have a problem with Dr. Piazza being a Scientologist (if indeed he is one) as long as he doesn’t try to convert me. I do have a problem, though, with trying to get taxpayers to pay for the expansion of his facility, especially when he’s involved with Don Holbrook.
Joey deVilla has a blog?
November 16th, 2012I mean, other than “The Adventures of Accordian Guy in the Twenty-First Century“?
Yes, yes he does.
I ran across this on the Y Combinator Twitter yesterday, and thought I’d give FizzBuzz a shot. I’d estimate it took me just under 30 minutes to get the code you see here, which I believe “works”. Part of that time was taken up with assisting one of my cow orkers with a problem, though. An embarrassingly large chunk of that time was taken up by my having to look up the Perl syntax for “for”, “if”, and the modulo operator. I’m a bit rusty; the last time I wrote substantial Perl code was about a year ago (a Perl script that parses CSV data from a file and imports it into a SQL database).
Anyway, code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
for ($index = 1; $index < 101; $index++)
{
$div_by_3 = 0;
$div_by_5 = 0;
if ($index % 3 == 0) {
$div_by_3 = 1;
}
if ($index % 5 == 0) {
$div_by_5 = 1;
}
if ($div_by_3 == 1 && $div_by_5 == 1 ) {
printf "FizzBuzz\n";
} else {
if ($div_by_3 == 1) {
printf "Fizz\n";
} else {
if ($div_by_5 ==1){
printf "Buzz\n";
} else {
printf "$index\n";
}
}
}
}
As always, when I put stuff like this up, I welcome criticism or comment on how I could have done it better (or, in this case, “right” if I did it wrong). The way I see it, I can’t get any better if I don’t solicit and accept criticism.
(Followup from deVilla here.)
Edited to add: I was going to upload a Python version that I wrote in (about) 20 minutes (I think). I keep planning to sit down and learn Python, but then somebody calls and wants to go riding bikes or whatever…anyway, I couldn’t paste that here and have it come out the way I wanted to, so I’ve uploaded it here. (I had to change the extension from “.py” to “.txt” because WordPress didn’t like “.py”.)
Land of the free and home of the brave.
November 16th, 2012I intended to make note of this earlier in the week, but it got past me:
LAT article about what it’s like sailing on board the tall ship “Bill of Rights”.
I find this worthy of note for two reasons:
- I like ships. Especially tall ships. So sue me.
- You may, or may not, remember this, but the “Bill of Rights” is the tall ship that was accidentally shelled by the “Amazing Grace” back in September. This incident, by the way, goes unmentioned in the LAT article.
(Subject line hattip: probably a lot of things, but this in particular is what I had in mind. I get that song stuck in my head every so often.)
More things that tickle my funny bone, for no apparent reason.
November 15th, 2012Wikipedia’s “List of stoffs“.
I wonder if it would have been easier to have different sized openings (and different sized nozzles) for the T-Stoff and C-Stoff tanks, instead of a “complex testing system”. But maybe I’m missing something.
(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter.)
NBA loser update.
November 15th, 2012We’re down to Washington (0-7) as the last team that has a chance to go 0-82.
Not much else going on. Sorry.
Quote of the day: special “nothing to do with Guy Fieri” edition
November 14th, 2012You’ve got questions. We’ve got cats. And Twitter.
November 14th, 2012I honestly did not know, when I wrote this morning’s “Random Notes”, that the Guy Fieri review was blowing up the Internet. (My link was, however, up before FARK’s.) Even if I had, I probably would have linked it, if only for future reference.
So. Anyway. Questions. So many questions.
Is it legitimate to write a restaurant review composed entirely of questions? (Except for the “Thanks” at the end.)
(I’d say, “Hey, it is a writerly device. If his editor didn’t have problems with it, neither do it. I wouldn’t do it too often, though.”)
While the New York Times was busy trashing Guy Fieri’s restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen was donating half of all sales to the Red Cross.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) November 14, 2012
So if you give money to charity, that somehow exempts your restaurant from criticism of the food and service? I’ll keep that in mind for the restaurant I never open.
Next the New York Times will send Anna Wintour to review Old Navy. She’s going to have so many questions! That’ll show ’em.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) November 14, 2012
So the fact that a restaurant is in Times Square and caters to the tourist trade should exempt it from criticism? So the NYT should, instead, be reviewing the latest vegan joint in NoHo, or whatever the trendy neighborhood in NYC is these days?
(Edited to add: I wonder if Steve Krakauer feels it was beneath the NYT to review a steakhouse located in a strip club?)
I love the “most of whom have never heard of…the New York Times”. I bet if you asked 100 random people on the street, in any city in the United States, to name a newspaper, the vast majority (I’d go over 90%) would name the NYT.
And, from EaterNY, “The Worst Lines of Guy Fieri’s NYT Review, With Cats“. This just tickles my funny bone; I can’t explain why.
Random notes: November 14, 2012.
November 14th, 2012I kind of like Guy Fieri. But I’d note this review whether it was of a Guy Fieri restaurant, or some other random place in NYC. Not since Ninja can I recall a review this vicious in the NYT.
(Also, Jacques Pépin wants you to steam your turkey. I thought that was an Albany expression.)
Jessica Tata: guilty of felony murder.
Why is it so hard to get Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army?
In other words, something that’s not easily solved by posting videos on the Internet.
Karolina Obrycka, the bartender who got the crap beat out of her by a Chicago police officer in 2007, has been awarded $850,000 in damages against both Anthony Abate, the cop who beat her, and the city itself.
Can we have Federal supervision of the Chicago PD now? (Also: LAT coverage.)
Go ahead and tickle me, Elmo.
November 13th, 2012In the interest of fairness: various news outlets are reporting that the man who accused Kevin Clash of engaging in underage sex with him has recanted that accusation.
Lawrence sent me a link to coverage from WTOP. The NYPost also has the story.
I don’t feel I have anything to apologize for in my previous coverage. But I wish this scene from “Absence of Malice” was online.
TMQ Watch: November 13, 2012.
November 13th, 2012Unleash the kraken 1972 Miami Dolphins auto-text! Plus, we all live in a nuclear submarine, TMQ has a new book out, and more, in this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback! After the jump…
Oh, no. Not again.
November 12th, 2012Sampler platter.
November 12th, 2012Think of this as sort of like a fruit basket, without the fruit. Or the basket.
This is a headline as it currently appears on the LAT website:
Here is the actual story. Some things that are worth noting:
- Dr. Gyaami is 71. He graduated from dental school in 1983, according to the article. So he was 42 years old when he graduated. I can’t throw stones at anyone for going back to school and following their dream, but:
- Dr. Gyaami didn’t pay back his loans. “When late notices started to arrive, Gyaami ignored them. ‘There was nothing I could do about it,’ he said. ‘I was behind with my business.'”
- He ignored notices that he was being sued by the Justice Department. At that time, he owed $195,000 on a $50,000 loan.
- “He continued to discard the collection notices. He said he couldn’t afford to pay. By June 2010, the $195,000 debt had jumped to $522,214.”
- “Since 2008, Gyaami has fallen behind about $120,000 in federal taxes and pays $6,000 a month to the Internal Revenue Service on top of the $3,000 to the Justice Department.”
- Dr. Gyaami works as a dentist in the state prison system. “As an experienced dentist, Gyaami is among the highest-paid state employees in California, making about $275,000 per year.”
- “One year ago they took a two-week cruise in the Caribbean that cost about $4,000, said Gyaami, who called it the most luxurious vacation they had ever taken.”
- “They live in a 4,000-square-foot home in Vacaville, which Elizabeth purchased new in 2001 for $429,500, according to property records. In 2010, she took efforts to make the home more difficult for creditors to seize by transferring its deed to a corporation she started, Eternal Enterprise Corp.”
There are so many things I could say about this next story, but (with one exception) I am going to avoid saying them:
The one exception (and this isn’t snark, just a statement of fact): this was the same thing that destroyed Jeff “Frugal Gourmet” Smith’s career.
Detroit and Washington still have a shot at going 0-82 this NBA season (0-7 and 0-5 respectively).
Yet another election result that amuses us: Cynthia Brim was re-elected to her seat as a judge in the Cook County Circuit Court. Why does this amuse us?
Because Judge Brim is batshit crazy. Really. As in, “can’t be prosecuted because she was legally insane at the time” crazy. Even better:
63.5 percent of the vote, folks. (Hattip on this to Overlawyered.)
This next story pushes a couple of my better hidden hot buttons. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is located in San Francisco; the church is “the oldest black pulpit in the city”. Bethel’s previous minister, who had been there for twenty years, left to take over the First AME church. First AME is kind of a big deal among AME churches: “It became a regular stop for Democratic political candidates over the years, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore and President Obama.” First AME’s minister, Rev. John J. Hunter, was transferred over to Bethel AME.
And why doesn’t Bethel AME want Hunter? Are they just upset at losing their pastor and throwing a temper tantrum?
More:
The LAT also alludes to, but does not detail, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Hunter during his tenure at First AME. Sounds like something more than a tantrum, doesn’t it?
