Batfish!
Na na na na na na na….
November 16th, 2014“Think of the extreme FUN!”
November 14th, 2014Clif Bar, the people who make Clif Bars, gives out sponsorships to various athletes. There are a whole bunch of sponsored athletes in various sports, including mountain climbing.
Recently, the Clif Bar folks decided they were going to stop sponsoring five of those athletes. Four of them are mountain climbers, and one is a BASE jumper. According to the company:
One of the funny things about this is that several of these climbers were recently featured in a documentary, “Valley Uprising”; Clif Bar was a major sponsor of the documentary.
The NYT has more coverage of this issue, including quotes from the athletes in question.
This is an interesting debate, at least to me: Clif Bar isn’t saying “don’t do this stuff”; they’re saying “we won’t sponsor you to do stuff that we think is too far out on the edge”. And you can sort of understand that they don’t want to be associated with some guy who reduces himself to a thin red smear while BASE jumping. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem (from what the NYT is saying) that there’s any shortage of companies that are willing to step in where Clif Bar left off. On the gripping hand, if everyone free-soloed a rock, would you? Does it matter that other sponsors are stepping in; isn’t Clif just taking a moral stance? But if it is a moral stance, what about this documentary? Should they still be attaching their name to it?
I’ve got no idea. I just think it is an interesting debate.
Obit watch: November 14, 2014.
November 14th, 2014Gus Vlahavas, owner of Tom’s Restaurant in Brooklyn.
Noted here because this is a great example of the kind of obit the paper of record does well. Also because there’s a lot of dust in the room:
Mr. Vlahavas lived for Tom’s, almost literally so. To make sure he arrived promptly at 5 a.m. to fire up the grill, he bought a brownstone around the corner at a time when few people were moving into the neighborhood. His dedication was reciprocated by the loyalty of his neighbors, who by the 1960s were mainly blacks from the American South and the Caribbean, who replaced the Irish, Italians and Jews. During the blackout of 1965, when rioting erupted, local people formed a human chain to protect Tom’s.
“All my neighbors, my black American friends, they all held hands around the store, 70 of them,” Mr. Vlahavas told The Daily News in 2009. “It made me feel terrific because these people were very thoughtful and kind enough to protect me,” he continued. “This doesn’t happen every day in anyone’s life.”
Also among the dead: Jane Byrne, former mayor of Chicago.
A couple of random notes: November 14, 2014.
November 14th, 2014From the LAT archives, some spectacular photos of firefighters responding to a DC-6 crash.
What I find interesting about this story is that, with the exception of the standard “junk on the bunk” photo, all the weapons photos are of guns “similar to one police say was seized from Bjorkstam’s Kirkland home”. No photos of the actual guns? Also, heroin dealing must not be that lucrative if all you can afford is a Taurus.
TMQ Watch: November 11, 2014.
November 13th, 2014This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Quick admin note.
November 12th, 2014I haven’t forgotten about TMQ, and I hope to have this week’s TMQ Watch up by tomorrow night.
I’m also working on an after-action report for my recent travels, and I’m hoping to have that done by the weekend.
I’ve just been busy with various minor annoyances, as well as putting in a few extra hours at work, and haven’t been able to devote all the time I would like to these things. Real soon now, I promise.
(There will probably also be another post somewhat related to events of the past weekend, but it is looking like that will be a ways down the road.)
Historical note, suitable for use in schools.
November 11th, 2014On this date in history, 40 years ago, the Minnesota Vikings beat the L.A. Rams 28-24 on Monday Night Football.
Of greater historical significance, my younger brother was born during halftime of this game.
Happy birthday, Doug.
Your loser update: week 10, 2014.
November 11th, 2014Sorry this is late. Sunday was busy (but fun) and yesterday was a travel day.
Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Oakland.
And in other news, Philadelphia is the only team that has a chance to finish the NBA season 0-82. (Currently, the 76ers are 0-7.)
Blogger, with occasional tank.
November 7th, 2014
Hey, if Lawrence is going to do it, I’m going to do it. (Though technically mine is not a selfie.)
Edited to add: Okay. This is absurd. The photo imported off the phone and into Shotwell in Ubuntu displayed upside down using Google Chrome and the WordPress interface. I flipped it 180 degrees using WordPress. Now it displays correctly in Google Chrome and Firefox under Ubuntu, and on the Kindle…but displays upside down on two iPhones. What is going on here, he said, slamming his head against a wall?
Edited to add 11/11: Okay. Now that I’m back home and can use iPhoto, let’s see how this comes out.
TMQ Watch: November 4, 2014.
November 5th, 2014Authentic games. Voting. Space: not a frontier, at least for man. All this and more in this week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Administrative and other notes: November 5, 2014.
November 5th, 2014Happy Guy Fawkes Day. While you’re out and about, please remember poor Guido, the last man to enter the Houses of Parliament with honorable intentions.
It seems kind of fitting that that the holiday falls today. Beyond that, I don’t have much to say about the elections for reasons of time and inclination. Battleswarm is a good place to go if you’re looking for that.
I will be updating the contact pages on this site, but I’m going to wait until after the runoffs are over, everyone is sworn in, and they actually have pages to link to. If this does get past me for some reason, please yell at me until it gets done.
I’m going to avoid my usual “what China needs” snark here, because this is a little scary: Brittney Griner attacked in China by a man with a knife.
How did Peter Siebold (the other Virgin Galactic pilot) survive a bailout from 50,000 feet without a pressure suit? Bonus: quotes from Bob Hoover. The Bill Weaver story is also touched on briefly: a fuller account can be found here.
Things may be slow from Thursday until Monday. We will see.
Headline of the day.
November 3rd, 2014For more information on the crack spider’s bitch, contact the Canadian Wildlife Service in Ottawa.
Obit watch: November 3, 2014.
November 3rd, 2014Tom Magliozzi, of “Car Talk” fame. NPR. Preliminary LAT obit. A/V Club. Car Talk.
A long time ago, I was a huge fan of “Car Talk”. My Monday nights were not complete without listening to the latest episode, and I tended to get cranky if that schedule was interrupted. (Kids, ask your parents about the time before podcasts.) I even – hold on to your hats, folks – donated money to our local NPR station at one point so I could show my support of “Car Talk”. (Oh, yeah. Like you never did anything stupid when you were young.)
Then our local station changed the schedule around so “Car Talk” was on at an inconvenient time, and I kind of dropped away from it. Then Tom and Ray started taking truly idiotic political positions (for example, advocating a federally enforced limit on horsepower to weight ratios) and I stopped being a “Car Talk” fan. As a matter of fact, I began to find the show grating. Not quite “I’d rather listen to Prairie Home Companion” grating, but grating enough. And frankly, I don’t understand why it is still on the air, since it has been nothing but re-runs since 2012. (Actually, I think I do understand why: I guess it brings in the bucks at pledge time.)
On the other hand, 77 is too damn young. Alzheimer’s sucks. I do kind of want to hear the tribute show. And he had a great beard.
Your loser update: week 9, 2014.
November 2nd, 2014Didn’t pay much attention to today’s games because reasons.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Oakland
Needful.
October 31st, 2014Do you know what Washington, DC needs?
Add this to the hatchet attack against the cops in NYC, and maybe what we need are tighter regulations for these deadly wood chopping implements. Does anybody really need a high-powered assault ax?