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

A roundup of miscellaneous crap for March 9, 2011.

March 9th, 2011

Some things worth noting in the NYT on this fine day:

Michael Ruhlman reviews Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, previously noted in this space.

I was left wondering how a book could be mind-crushingly boring, eye-bulgingly riveting, edifying, infuriating, frustrating, fascinating, all in the same moment. Every time I tore myself away from these stunning pages to emerge for air, I had to shake my head so hard my cheeks made Looney Tunes noises.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider

The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are planning a significant overhaul of the $65 million Broadway musical that would involve shutting down performances for two to three weeks, as well as delaying its scheduled opening on March 15 for about three months, according to people who work on “Spider-Man” or were briefed on the producers’ plans.

Never mind.

You may ask yourself, “Why would someone pay $20,000 for a replica of an Eric Clapton Stratocaster, ‘complete with every single nick and scratch, including the wear pattern from Mr. Clapton’s belt buckle and the burn mark from his cigarettes’?” You would probably answer that question, “Because they’re a moron.” The NYT would like for you to know that evolutionary psychology suggests you’re wrong:

…the seemingly illogical yearning for a Clapton relic, even a pseudorelic, stems from an instinct crucial to surviving disasters like the Black Death: the belief that certain properties are contagious, either in a good or a bad way. Another conclusion is that the magical thinking chronicled in “primitive” tribes will affect bids for the Clapton guitars being auctioned at Bonhams in Midtown Manhattan.

Yesterday was election day in Bell, California. How did things go?

…residents voted overwhelmingly to recall Mayor Oscar Hernandez and council members Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, as well as Luis Artiga, who quit the council last year but remained targeted for recall. Even Lorenzo Velez, the lone councilman not charged in the Bell corruption case, appeared to suffer collateral damage and lost his bid to keep his seat.

Noted: Austin now has a Peruvian restaurant. (Okay, technically, Pflugerville.) Yes, I’m thinking Saturday Dining Conspiracy. No, not right away; we generally give places three months after opening before reviewing them.

Posted in Art, Food, Geek, Music, Theatre | 2 Comments »

Guns up!

March 8th, 2011

Missed this one until I saw a link on FARK, but FARK’s link was to the USAToday story.

Pat Knight fired as Texas Tech basketball coach.

This does not seem to have been unexpected, with a 13-18 record (5-11 in conference).

Overall, the younger Knight went 50-60 during his three years at Tech, which saw the Red Raiders log a single winning record in 2009-10 and no appearances at the NCAA Tournament.

(And, once again, someone told a local newspaper that auto-play videos are A-OK.)

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 8, 2011.

March 8th, 2011

Slow. Slow. Slow. And WordPress ate the first draft of this post. Argh. “Introduction to Literary Studies” is finished, but “Applications in Business Programming” fires up tonight.

So where were we?

Ken Hoffman in the HouChron on more rodeo food. The chocolate covered pickle makes us gag.

The NYT reports that Julie Taymor and the “Spider-Man” producers are “negotiating”. “Negotiating” in this case apparently means either “work with a newly expanded creative team” or “pack your <stuff> and get out”.

Speaking of art, damn it, art!, Lawrence has brought us happy news for those of you who own iPhones and are fans of Guy Debord, Karen Eliot, Monty Cantsin, and the Karen-headed Smile Monty (see also): there’s an app for that.

By way of Tam, we have learned that the Department of Homeland Security, which is apparently not satisfied with not actually catching terrorists, is going around confiscating Nissan Skylines. The Skyline is a car we were previously unfamiliar with, perhaps because it was never officially imported into the United States. One of Tam’s commenters provided this link to an excellent article about the rise and fall of a Skyline importer in California, which we commend to your attention.

Speaking of commenters, “Bob” (thanks, “Bob”) posted in this thread and provided a link with some new information about our good friend, the spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom. That link, in turn, led us to this one, which also has some good stuff about Sven. We were particularly amused by these two comments from LJWorld staff members:

…we restored Mr. Alstrom’s access to our website, despite having banned him more than a half dozen times previously.

and:

Should Sven Alstrom not be elected to the Lawrence City Commission, his current account will be banned.

Sven makes friends everywhere he goes, doesn’t he?

Posted in Art, Cars, Clippings, Food, Music, Politics, School, Theatre | Comments Closed

Y’all say what?

March 4th, 2011

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is getting underway again this year.

But there’s been a change: the rodeo is no longer a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association sanctioned rodeo. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a professional rodeo, or that there’s not money on the table ($1.75 million, according to the HouChron), just that winnings in the Houston rodeo aren’t officially counted by the PRCA, and don’t impact PRCA standings.

If I understand the story correctly, this doesn’t make Houston unique; some of the larger Canadian rodeos aren’t PRCA sanctioned, either, and it sounds like Houston may be trying to start up a competing rodeo circuit:

It already has signed a deal with Fox Sports to air the Super Series finals and Super Shootout, whereas past finals were aired only through the PRCA on pay-per-view. And bigger plans are in the works.

The goal is to become the top international invitational championship in the world.

It isn’t that I’m a huge rodeo fan (I’m not), but the situation is interesting. Lawrence made a good analogy to the whole CART/Indycar situation, which (as I see it) seriously damaged open wheel racing in the United States.

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Truffle trouble.

March 4th, 2011

It would fill my heart with delight if someone managed to grow truffles reliably in the United States.

I know there are many people working on the problem (supposedly including one person out near Dripping Springs; this article is from 1984, and I haven’t been able to find anything more recent in Google) but it seems that the growing of truffles is more difficult than you might expect for something that’s basically a fungus.

All of this is by way of introducing today’s NYT article about two truffle growers in North Carolina who’ve been engaged in a lengthy legal battle.

Important safety tip:

Local chefs give North Carolina mixed reviews.

“They don’t seem to have a lot of quality control,” said Andrea Reusing, chef and owner of the Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill. And actually getting them can be maddening.

“We need to start calling them wacky truffles on the menu,” she said. “There is a certain kind of spaciness to whole thing.”

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Musical beg.

March 3rd, 2011

Does anybody have a digital version, or a pointer to one, of “Throw Him Down, McCloskey”?

I can find the lyrics and even the sheet music online, but I’ve been unable to find a recording of someone actually performing the song. I will be happy to pay money for a recording, but I’ve been unable to find one in either the iTunes or Amazon stores.

Posted in Lazyweb, Music | Comments Closed

The lunatics are on the grass.

March 3rd, 2011

Two things that made me chuckle, and one that didn’t.

Goodnight Dune, the children’s book.

Goodnight Keith Moon, which is probably not for children.

(Hattip: Robb Allen.)

This is an old story, but I don’t think I’ve linked it before: Margaret Wise Brown left the rights and royalties from her books to her neighbor Albert Clarke. Clarke was nine years old when she died in 1952. So what’s happened since then? (I know this was published in 2000. I haven’t been able to turn up anything more recent on Albert Clarke, except a rather mean article on an obscure website calling him a drug addict and suggesting that nobody should ever buy a new copy of Goodnight Moon.)

Posted in Books, Clippings | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 3, 2011.

March 3rd, 2011

I went to the fights last night, and a case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy broke out.

Sirhan Sirhan has been turned down for parole for the 13th time. What’s interesting about this article is that it focuses almost as much on Sirhan’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, and Pepper’s previous efforts:

Pepper says [James Earl] Ray, who was convicted of killing King two months before Kennedy was slain, was framed by the federal government and that King was killed in a conspiracy involving the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis.

This gives me an excuse to plug Hampton Sides’ excellent (and Edgar-nominated) book Hellhound on His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, about the killing of King and the manhunt for Ray. I picked it up about two weeks ago, and read the first 300 pages in one night. The only reason I stopped there was because I was dozing off. Sides’ book has an amazingly strong narrative drive for a true crime work; it reads very much like a good novel.

I’m not going to say it deserves the Edgar;  I haven’t read any of the other nominated books (I did pick up The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science last weekend, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet.) but I do commend Hellhound to your attention.

This is not a strategy I had considered for driving up page views, but good for the Austin Bulldog.

Edited to add: This is the closest thing I’ve found to a discussion of food items at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year. No photos. I’d apologize, but I don’t want a photo of the “Pulled Pork Sundae”, which frankly sounds disgusting.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Law, Neuroscience, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

For you see I’m on the legal beat…

March 2nd, 2011

I love a good heist. But it has to be a good one; that is, there has to be an element of panache to it, not just a random smash and grab. Something like this:

Los Angeles police detectives sought help from the public Tuesday to identify two armed burglars who stole several million of dollars in jewels after tunneling into a downtown jewelry store.

From a second LAT article about the heist:

Investigators said the burglars dug the tunnel at a key point that avoided structural obstacles, allowing them to get in and out quickly.

I’ve previously mentioned Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World in this space. Chapter four, “The Hole in the Ground Gang” discusses a group of bank robbers who pulled off a series of robberies by digging tunnels from the sewer system under and into bank vaults. That group was never caught, and apparently retired from the business. I wonder, though…

A nearly unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the First Amendment protects even hurtful speech about public issues and upheld the right of a fringe church to protest near military funerals.

Right decision. Westboro is still a bunch of jackasses.

This decision got a lot of press yesterday. I’m kind of hoping one of my legal readers can explain why:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a shooting victim’s statement to the police at a crime scene can be used in court, even if the victim later dies and cannot testify at a trial.

I’m confused because I’ve always understood “dying words” to be an exception to the hearsay rule. (Wikipedia is not a lawyer. Wikipedia is not your lawyer. Neither am I. Contents may settle in shipping.) What exactly does this decision change?

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

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