Apparently, I’m not getting invitations to the right kind of weddings.
(Seriously, I wanted to link to this post because it is excellent advice from Ken, and not the kind of advice that can be easily summarized as “Shut the hell up.“)
Darn it.
May 28th, 2011Books in brief: Boomtown DA
May 27th, 2011The population of Houston, Texas in 1960 was 1,364,569. By 1980 the population was 2,754,304, or slightly more than doubled in twenty years.
A reasonable argument can be made that the period from 1960 to 1980 marks the end of the Texas frontier era, and the beginning of the modern Texas era. My family moved to the Houston area fairly late in that period. I remember reading the daily newspaper (we were a Chron family), and it seemed that there were giants in the earth in those days. Carol Vance was one of them. Boomtown DA
Public service announcement.
May 26th, 2011Since this weekend is a national drinking holiday, the Austin Police Department would like for you to know that it’s perfectly okay for you to get totally trashed on booze and then drive and/or boat.
Can someone explain to me why you’d ever purchase a personal watercraft, at least if you live in Austin? It seems that personal watercraft are banned on the lakes every single damn holiday: if you do own one, when can you use it?
Ah, what the heck, I’ve been meaning to link this for a while, and the national drinking holiday makes it relevant: bonus Negroni related content just for Glen. I may have to pick up a bottle of Campari and some sweet vermouth this weekend.
Your May 25, 2011 bulletin from the Department of WTF?!
May 25th, 2011This by way of FARK: I’m breaking with policy because…it’s just so mind-croggling.
Four suspensions. Six incidents of insubordination.
Where is this going? Back in November, Officer Alvarado once again disregarded the orders of a supervisor and went chasing after a suspect: a 14-year old boy who punched a classmate in the face. Officer Alvarado ended up shooting the unarmed 14-year old.
And there are parts of his story that don’t add up:
“There is no evidence of close range firing of the wound,” the report concludes.
Quotes of the day.
May 25th, 2011One serious, one not so serious, both from Boomtown DA
(Background for young people and non-Texans: Vance was the District Attorney for Harris County from 1966 – 1979. More than likely, there will be a longer post about this book once I finish it.)
It is the duty of the district attorney in Harris County, Texas (Houston included) to represent the State of Texas in all serious criminal cases. That includes the misdemeanors carrying jail time which are tried in our County Criminal Courts at Law and the felonies tried in our District Courts.
It is the duty of the district attorney not just to convict but to see that justice is done. [Emphasis added. -DB]
The “Claude” in the next quote is Claude Langston, who was an investigator for the D.A.’s office. As Vance puts it, “Thirty years in the homicide division gave Claude a nose for finding witnesses and good barbecue.” (“Orange” refers to the glass bottled soda, not the fruit itself.)
Claude often said, “You know, even sittin’ outside in August in ninety-nine degrees isn’t so bad if a man has some good barbecue and a large orange. That’s just part of a good homicide case.”
Obit watch: May 25, 2011.
May 25th, 2011Huguette Clark, “antisocial socialite”.
I recommend clicking through and reading the entire NYT obit. Ms. Clark was 104 when she died, and her story is one of the saddest things I’ve read recently.
In addition to the Astor comparison, I’m reminded somewhat of the Green family, particularly Sylvia Green.
On a totally unrelated note, I think I’m going to have to pre-order the Blu-Ray edition of Citizen Kane
(Hattip: I actually saw the obit skimming over the NYT site this morning, but thanks to Althouse for providing the link.)
Blue Blazers.
May 25th, 2011Sorry: I intended to link to this yesterday, but got distracted.
Rich Cho out as GM of the Portland Trail Blazers after 10 months on the job.
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#22 in a series)
May 24th, 2011Rachel Owens is looking for money to purchase wrecked Hummers.
But wait, there’s more! She also plans to install a stereo system!
If you’d like to help Ms. Owens out, her Kickstarter project has five days to go. However, she’s raised (as of this writing) $17,111, and only needed $15,000 for the project, so don’t feel obligated.
How can you resist this offer at the $5,000 level, though? Pledge that much money and you’ll get
33 in the Shade.
May 24th, 2011Randi Shade’s first ethics complaint was dismissed on Friday; somehow I managed to miss that. (Previously.)
Ms. Shade has responded by filing a second ethics complaint against her opponent, Kathie Tovo. We’ll see how that works for her.
Links to make Lawrence happy.
May 23rd, 2011Because I live for his happiness.
- The 75 MPH speed limit bill has passed both houses and is headed to the Governor’s desk for his signature. (Previously, and not 100% related.)
- Dennis Kucinich is losing his district due to redistricting, and is considering making a run for a seat in Washington State. This is not at all a transparent attempt to justify linking to this post. Not at all. We have standards here.
- Kelly Clarkson will be performing live at the new Microsoft store in the Houston Galleria on June 25th. This actually doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything Lawrence cares about, except possibly the phrases “epic failure” and “you’re doing it wrong”.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang.
May 23rd, 2011I meant to blog this on Friday, but I got distracted by shiny objects.
“What’s Blippy?” you cry. Blippy was the “social website” that allowed you to “share” your credit card purchases with other people in your “social network”.
There are things that would interest me less than that, but I am hard pressed to think of many.
The shocking thing, at least to me, is that Philip Kaplan (aka “Pud”, aka “the guy behind F—edCompany.com”) apparently thought this was a good idea. I suppose even Homer nods from time to time.
Celtic Women Sing Do-Wop Hits of the 1950s.
May 23rd, 2011By way of Jimbo, we found this amusing article in today’s NYT:
Of course, the first thing we were reminded of is the old joke about the end of the world and how it is reported by the various papers. (We’d always heard “World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit” attached to the WP; the canonical NYT hed was something like “End of the World Strikes Manhattan: Also Outer Bouroughs. <subhed>Midwest, Other States Afffected As Well.”)
But the key point of the article isn’t how happy PBS execs are with their new series. No, they’re worried because PBS stations are in financial trouble. WMFE terminated their PBS affiliation and sold the station to a religious programmer because they couldn’t pay PBS dues of “just under $1 million annually”.
KCET in Los Angeles went independent at the first of this year, also due to a messy dues dispute with PBS. We were previously unaware that Waco’s PBS station shut down last year. And the more stations that leave, the more dues go up for the remaining stations.
We don’t give money to PBS. We do watch a fair amount of PBS programming: “American Experience”, “Nova”, “Secrets of the Dead”. But when our local PBS station begs for money every other month, they don’t ask for money by presenting stuff we”d actually watch. Instead, they beg for money with multiple reruns of Dr. Wayne Dyer, the Three Tenors On Ice, “How to Learn to Play the Piano in Five Minutes Using Only Common Household Materials”, and other old warhorses that come out of the stable only during pledge time.
We’d suggest that this may be part of the problem for PBS. If they feel they deserve funding, show folks why. Instead of Nicholas Perricone, run a NOVA marathon. Bring out the old episodes of Julia Child. Do “American Experience” and “Nova” marathons. Have the courage to embrace who and what you are. Stop trying to fool people.
I’ve got a Nikon camera, I love to take photographs…
May 23rd, 2011Les Jones recently upgraded from a Nikon D40 to a D7000, and he’s done some posts I find particularly interesting.
This post actually predates his upgrade, but it contains an interesting link to SD card performance testing on the D7000. I’ve been swearing by Kingston SD cards in my D40X and other SD capable devices, but I may have to pick up at least one of the SanDisk Extreme III cards. This is a good companion post which summarizes what cards Nikon recommends, and breaks down the differences between Class 4, Class 6, Class 10, and UHS-1.
I haven’t had a chance to try StolenCameraFinder.com yet, but it’s good to know about.
I’ve been using the D40X in RAW+JPEG mode, and doing all of my work in iPhoto using just the RAW version of the file. I’m happy to know I have some support for this. (At least the shooting RAW part: see the linked piece from Thom Hogan about the drawbacks of shooting RAW+JPEG. In my case, I can’t count on iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom or Photoshop being part of my workflow, so I feel better sticking with RAW+JPEG.)
And I’ve been looking for a F1.8 50mm lens, so this is kind of exciting.
The saga of Maurice Pierce.
May 23rd, 2011The long-awaited Statesman profile of Maurice Pierce finally ran on Sunday.
My feeling is that the Statesman glosses over a few things. Yes, Pierce may not have been guilty of the murders, but what was a 16-year-old doing carrying a pistol at the mall?
And why did Pierce react so violently to traffic stops? He was arrested in 2006 for not paying three minor traffic tickets issued in 2003, he punched someone in a traffic altercation in 2007 (and was fined $200 on a disorderly conduct charge), he got into an altercation with a cop in Plano after being pulled over for doing 70 in a 40 (this led to charges of aggravated assault on a public servant and evading arrest), and the final incident that led to his death started as a traffic stop for running a stop sign.
“Maurice stated that he hates cops and that he did not want to go to prison,” the report said.
With the possible exception of the Plano incident, which Pierce escalated, nothing on his rap sheet would have led to prison.
So what was his major malfunction?