L’update Bell.

March 16th, 2011

As noted previously, the mayor and much of the city council of Bell lost the recall election.

Ah, but there’s a catch: the city of Bell is losing their shirts on this deal, but they’re looking for audiophiles who need high quality cassette tapes. has to certify the election results. Under ordinary circumstances, that would be a non-issue. But a judge has ordered three of the current city council members to stay at least 100 yards from City Hall, as well as ordering them not to conduct city business. So there’s nobody available to do the certification. The answer: special emergency legislation.

And what of Robert “Ratso” Rizzo? The latest news from his hearing on conflict of interest charges is that, as city administrator, he hired an engineering firm owned by Dennis Tarango to do various environmental studies. Tarango was also the city’s planning director. And, even better, Tarango and Ratso were business partners in a horse-racing venture.

Somebody’s going to get a great true crime book out of this.

Edited to add: Wow. Just wow. Google Books, making it possible to hattip references from the early 1980’s.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | 2 Comments »

Invest in our company or we’ll shoot this dog.

March 16th, 2011

The chief executive officer of National Lampoon Inc., the comedy brand behind “Animal House” and the “Vacation” movie franchise, was arrested early Wednesday in West Hollywood in connection with an alleged $200-million Ponzi scheme, federal authorities said.

The LAT link above contains a great photo of Timothy Durham being perp-walked by two FBI agents. Also worthy of note:

Durham became CEO of National Lampoon in 2009 after his predecessor, Donald Laikin, was arrested and charged in 2008 with allegedly manipulating the stock of the Los Angeles-based company.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Soy un perdedor.

March 16th, 2011

Overslept. Running behind. Quick note: Carlos Alvarez, mayor of Miami-Dade County, lost his recall election yesterday.

Voters favored removing the mayor by 88 percent to 12 percent.

Apparently, Mr. Alvarez managed to alienate people by raising property taxes 40 percent, while giving various county workers (including his “top aides”) raises. And his taxpayer-subsidized BMW didn’t help much.

Edited to add: The NYT article touches very briefly on this, but Commissioner Natacha Seijas also got kicked out of office. Here’s a longer article from the Miami Herald on Ms. Seijas and her loss. And here’s the Herald’s coverage of Mr. Alvarez and his loss.

(Hattip: Ace of Spades.)

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Politics, Schadenfreude | 1 Comment »

Random notes: March 15, 2011.

March 15th, 2011

The NYT has a long and interesting obit for Owsley Stanley, noted recreational chemist and sound engineer for the Grateful Dead (and others).

He moved to Australia in the 1980s, as he explained in his rare interviews, so he might survive what he believed to be a coming Ice Age that would annihilate the Northern Hemisphere.

Well, okay, then.

(He had insisted, among other things, that the [Dead] eat meat — nothing but meat — a dietary regimen he followed until the end of his life.)

Ditto. (By the way, Stanley died in a car accident.)

I kind of like Berkeley Breathed (much less so post-“Bloom County”, but still), so it doesn’t give me that much pleasure to note that “Mars Needs Moms” is being compared to “Ishtar” and “Pluto Nash”.

Walt Disney Studios spent an estimated $175 million to make and market “Mars Needs Moms,” which sold $6.9 million in tickets at North American theaters in its opening weekend.

“Mars Needs Moms” is a 3-D movie, so that $6.9 million figure is with the higher 3-D ticket prices.

“Mars Needs Moms” may lead to the end for the Zemeckis style of motion-capture filmmaking, which has proven increasingly unpopular with audiences.

Good!

Posted in Loser, Movies, Obits, Schadenfreude | Comments Closed

“…not necessarily narratively coherent.”

March 14th, 2011

Today’s news from the “Spider-Man” front isn’t really news as such: Patrick Healy and Kevin Flynn in the NYT recap the troubled history of the musical.

Didn’t someone think it was a bad omen when the first producer literally had a stroke as they were about to sign the contract? (He died two days later.)

The full quote, for Lawrence:

Ms. Taymor is known for an energetic devotion to her own ideas, which tend to be visually arresting, not necessarily narratively coherent.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Music, Theatre | Comments Closed

The timeless, changeless ways of the HouChron.

March 14th, 2011

Your annual slideshow (warning! Slideshow!) of rodeo food (warning! Slideshow!) is here.

Warning: this does include photos of the chocolate covered pickle and the pulled pork sundae. Also, did I mention that this is a slideshow?

(Wouldn’t fried beef jerky be kind of dry? Or is that the point; after eating a big plate of fried beef jerky, you really need one of those $12 beers?)

Posted in Clippings, Food, On a stick | Comments Closed

Gonzaga!

March 14th, 2011

Gonzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaga!

Now that the bracket is out, I’m once again picking Gonzaga to go all the way.

How can you not, really? Doesn’t the sound of the name stir something in your heart? Say it with me: “Gonzaga!”

Posted in Sports, Wagers | 3 Comments »

Happy Pi Day, everyone!

March 14th, 2011

Sorry, the pi related content is a bit thin this year; instead of researching the state of pi, I spent most of the weekend banging on MySQL and Perl for a project I’m working on. (I expect that folks will see some of the results of that project in an upcoming “Talking GPS Blues” post.)

In the meantime, there will be pie.

Watch this space for updates.

Posted in Geek | Comments Closed

The sands of time.

March 11th, 2011

Latest news from Vegas: the Sahara is closing in May.

This is sad news for me personally. I’ll admit the Sahara was kind of run down, but it was one of the cheapest rooms available on the Strip. I preferred it slightly to the Imperial Palace (which seems to me to be even more run down these days); on my last few trips to DEFCON, I’ve stayed at the Sahara. (Being slightly run down doesn’t bother me too much when I’m on the road. All I’m really looking for is a bed, toilet, roof, and a place for my stuff. I don’t spend a lot of time in my room.)

(I wasn’t planning on staying there this time; since the convention is at the Rio this year, I’m more likely to stay there.)

Coverage from the Las Vegas Sun. The Sun’s coverage makes another good point; one of the stations for the Vegas Monorail (which is also in deep trouble) is the Sahara. I’ll be interested in seeing how that plays out.

(Also: are they going to try to keep the NASCAR Cafe open? I never ate there; the advertising always seemed to be more about quantity than quality, which really turned me off.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Travel | Comments Closed

Star Song of the Dream Dancers.

March 11th, 2011

I believe it was one of the early 80s cyberpunk writers (I’m thinking Bruce Sterling, but it could have been Lew Shiner) who suggested that the most generic possible SF book title combined the words “star”, “song”, “dream”, and ‘”dancers”. For example, “Dream Song of the Star Dancers”. Or “Star Dancers of the Dream Song”.

I was strongly reminded of this by a post at the Tor website, outlining the most common words in fantasy and SF titles. Song and dance is apparently out; dragons and war are apparently in. A reflection of the time we live in?

(Hattip: the Scalzinator on the Twitter. His list of demands for Tor if they want him to write <go to the Tor link> actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. I mean, who among us has not wanted all of those things? Well, with one exception in my case, simply because I live in an apartment. But other than that, perfectly reasonable.)

Posted in Books, Clippings | Comments Closed

Today’s War on Drugs update.

March 10th, 2011

With a group of undercover police officers under suspicion of perjury and conducting illegal searches, the San Francisco district attorney said Wednesday that his office would drop dozens of drug and robbery cases and continue to investigate scores more for possible dismissal.

This is shaping up to be a major scandal, and I’m frankly shocked that I haven’t heard about it until now.

…officers suspected of falsifying reports, illegally entering residences and, in one instance, making a purposefully flawed arrest for drug possession.

Local coverage from the SFChron. Curiously to me, the SFChron is not giving this story major play; I had to click several levels deep in their website to find it. On the other hand, this next story was front page news in the SFChron, even though it happened clear across the country:

60 people were arrested this morning by Federal and local law enforcement in Baltimore and the surrounding area.

This wouldn’t ordinarily be big news. But one of the people arrested was Felicia Pearson, who played “Snoop” on The Wire.

Damn shame.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

“Away with her.”

March 10th, 2011

This has turned out to be one chaotic morning, but I wanted to quickly note the latest news on the “Spider-Man” front:

After nine years of work, Ms. Taymor is stepping aside as director of the most expensive and technically ambitious musical ever on Broadway, the $65 million “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” its producers announced on Wednesday night.

(Subject line hattip.)

Posted in Clippings, Music, Theatre | Comments Closed

Heretic!

March 9th, 2011

My “Applications in Business Programming” class had our first meeting last night.

This is the textbook we’re using for the class.

Note that it is:

  1. Readily available from sources other than the university bookstore.
  2. Recently published.
  3. Reasonably priced. ($34 is about average for a programming book these days.)

Given that I paid $180 for the textbook for my previous class with this professor, I think this is worthy of praise. Well done, sir!

Posted in Books, School | Comments Closed

Bang theory.

March 9th, 2011

I haven’t done any explosives blogging in a while, and a conversation over the weekend reminded me that I had two links pending:

Derek Lowe’s latest “Things I Won’t Work With”: chlorine azide.

A while back, Joe Huffman (of Boomershoot fame) exchanged emails with a gentleman named Lawrence Johnston. Dr. Johnston worked at Los Alamos during the war: specifically, he worked on designing the detonation mechanism for the implosion bombs. Mr. Huffman has a link to a presentation Dr. Johnston gave in 2006, on his experiences at Los Alamos.

In particular, the material about designing the detonators is fascinating stuff. The problem with the implosion device is that, in order to get it to work, they had to set off 32 separate explosions (in explosive lenses arranged around the core of the bomb) and all of those explosions had to take place within 1/10th of a microsecond. Using conventional detonation mechanisms gives you a timing of several tens of microseconds, which won’t work when you’re trying to get a bunch of explosive fronts to converge into one spherical wave. So how do you solve this problem? Dr. Johnston developed the exploding bridgewire detonator for this purpose, and there’s some great stuff in his presentation about things like the D’autriche test for detonator timing, determining the blast yield of the early bombs, and what daily life at Los Alamos at the time was like. I commend Dr. Johnston’s presentation to your attention, and regret not blogging it sooner.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives | Comments Closed

My heroes have always been lawyers and ambulance drivers.

March 9th, 2011

I thought about including this in the previous round of random notes, but on second thought it deserves a post by itself. Here are two epic tales from bloggers that I admire (though I have not met either of them):

Ambulance Driver and his buddy, Too Old to Work, Too Young to Retire, bring a woman back from the dead while on vacation.

Ken over at Popehat talks about a day in the glamorous life of a defense lawyer.

Posted in Clippings, Heroism, Law | Comments Closed

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