How did Detroit get where it is today? How inept do you have to be at running a city to get there?
Failed cities.
March 12th, 2013Lying liars who lie.
March 11th, 2013Yesterday’s NYT ran an article about conflicted gun owners, “For Some, Owning Guns Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Liking Them“.
The article leads off with Michael Kundu:
More:
I would have gone after this story yesterday, but I didn’t for two reasons. I was out and about much of the day, and Sebastian already did.
You see, there’s no evidence that Kundu is a competitive shooter:
Yeah, it gets better. Kundu is also involved with the Sea Shepherd people. You know, the anti-whaling activists? The ones that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals calls “pirates”?
There’s more over at Shall Not Be Questioned, including what it really takes to get a handgun in California. (Hint: it isn’t easier than getting a iPhone, unless you’re a lying liar who lies, like John Flores and Patricia Speed.) I encourage you to go read the whole thing. My hope is that Sebastian has made the NYT public editor aware of Susan Saulny’s dishonesty; not that I think it will matter much, but I haven’t had all hope beaten out of me yet.
If I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat.
March 11th, 2013Back in the old days, before he was driven from office by prosecutoral misconduct and later killed in a plane crash, Ted Stevens managed to get a prototype “amphibious assault vessel for the Navy” diverted to Alaska. The plan was to use it as a commuter ferry between downtown Anchorage and suburbs to the north of Anchorage. (Wait. Anchorage has suburbs?)
None of this ever happened.
Now the Matanuska-Susitna Borough is offering the boat for free to any “government entity” that wants it. Guess who is in “very preliminary discussions”?
I wonder; if it didn’t work for suburban Anchorage (which apparently needs a $750 million bridge), is it going to work out for Catalina Island?
Gales of derisive laughter, Bruce.
March 8th, 2013Beyond.com has been sending me emails with “recent opportunities and information”. Here’s a screen shot of one I got yesterday:
(Click to enbiggen.)
What’s so funny about this? Note the subject line, and the bottom listing. (I cut off the rest, as it wasn’t relevant.)
Note that the Scooter Store was raided by Federal agents on February 20th.
I wonder if they’re still looking for a sysadmin. (Not that I would apply; I’m not all that interested in working for a company that’s been raided by the Feds. Even if I was, San Antonio/New Braunfels is too far for me to commute.)
Crime of the century!
March 8th, 2013Somebody, or a group of somebodies, stole eight – that’s right, eight – school buses from a Chicago area bus yard last night.
The people who stole the buses drove them to a scrapyard, where they were shredded.
(The linked article includes some photos of the pile of scrap.)
Apparently, the buses were stolen sometime between 7 PM last night (when the yard was closed) and 5 AM this morning (when the theft was discovered). So are scrap yards typically open after 7 PM on a weeknight? And wouldn’t you figure that someone would ask questions when eight school buses were driven in for scrap? Or was there more going on?
(This could also double as important safety tip #18 17:
Don’t steal stuff with GPS tracking devices, or stuff that you might think has GPS tracking devices. Among the things that you might think have GPS tracking devices, if you’re a criminal mastermind:
- Airplanes.
- Expensive cars.
- Government vehicles, including police cars.
- School buses that carry children.
That’s just a partial list. I’m sure others can think of more examples, but those should suffice for the crackheads in my audience.)
Important safety tips (#15 and #16 in a series)
March 8th, 2013Three in one day? I know. But there’s a story in the NYT that offers some instructive lessons.
Chris Huhne was a British political figure. The NYT describes him as “a fast-rising politician with fashionably left-of-center views on social issues and a background in high finance that had yielded a multimillion-dollar fortune“.
He also had a lead foot. He was caught speeding by a roadside camera back in 2003, and he had three previous convictions prior to that. If he had been convicted on the 2003 charge, he would have been banned from driving and fined.
So he got his wife to say she was driving instead.
Safety tip #15: the cover-up is always worse than the crime.
Huhne pled guilty to a charge of “perverting the course of justice”. He hasn’t been sentenced yet, but the judge in his case has indicated Huhne will probably serve time.
Vicky Pryce, Mr. Huhne’s wife at the time, was convicted of the same charge, and will probably serve time as well.
How did things fall apart?
Tip #16: if you’re going to ask your wife to cover-up your crime, treat her well. Don’t plan on divorcing her, unless you’re sure the statute of limitations has run out. And I’d check with a lawyer first, just to make sure you haven’t overlooked some crime that you could possibly be charged with.
Be careful out there.
March 8th, 2013Chris Bucchere, the man who hit Mr. Hui, is being charged with felony gross vehicular manslaughter.
People get hit by cars every day, and the drivers sometimes face charges, yes? So why am I picking out this case?
Because Mr. Bucchere wasn’t driving a car: he was riding his bicycle when he hit Mr. Hui.
Important safety tip (#14 in a series)
March 8th, 2013I don’t care how good looking you are, or how handsome you think you are.
I don’t care how lonely you are after your divorce.
I don’t care how beautiful the bikini model is, or what her cup size is.
Don’t check luggage that belongs to other people.
Because the best thing that can happen to you is that they’ll find the cocaine hidden in the suitcase, and you’ll wind up doing hard time in an Argentinian prison.
All local, all the time.
March 7th, 2013A Round Rock police officer shot himself in the right foot Tuesday. I’ve avoided blogging this until now because the Statesman didn’t have much detail beyond that. But this is interesting:
Also, it gives me an excuse to embed this video, which never gets old:
The Statesman does not report a judicial ruling on the question of “how does it smell?”.
Old Man Yells At Cloud.
March 7th, 2013This has come up in conversation twice in the past seven days. I believe that is a sign that I have to make a blog post out of it.
“Django Unchained” is currently number 41 on the IMDB list of top 250 movies.
Here are some movies that the IMDB top 250 voters think “Django Unchained” is better than:
- “Citizen Kane” (#46)
- “Lawrence of Arabia” (#69)
- “Return of the Jedi” (#80)
- “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (#86)
- “Heat” (#120)
- “The Maltese Falcon” (#122)
- “Fargo” (#129)
- “The Wizard of Oz” (#151)
- “Network” (#169)
- “The Exorcist” (#204)
Feel free to go through the list and post your own “Django Unchained is better than…WTF?” moments in the comments. I, personally, promise not to refer to you as Grandpa Simpson, though I can’t say the same for other people.
Is it just me?
March 7th, 2013…or are there other folks out there who see the Pocket Hose commercial and say to themselves “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn“? (I can’t get the video to start where I want it to, even with YouTube’s embed link, so fast-forward to about 56 seconds in to see what I’m talking about.)
(And how have I gotten by for this long without a “Cthulhu” tag? Fixed now.)
Right turn, Clyde.
March 7th, 2013One of FARK’s ongoing tropes is the idea that NASCAR is the sport of white male rednecks. So the story of Tia Norfleet should push some buttons: she’s not just a woman, but she’s the first African-Amercian woman to race in NASCAR, or so she says on her website.
Her website also says that she plans to run a “full schedule” in the NASCAR Nationwide series, “one rung below the top-tier Sprint Cup series”. At least, that’s what the NYT says: I can’t find this claim on her actual website. She does have a schedule, but the schedule appears to be just a list of NASCAR races this year, with links going back to the race pages on NASCAR.com. She does not appear in the results for the Dollar General 200, or the DRIVE4COPD 300. I am unable to find any mention of Tia Norfleet on the NASCAR Nationwide drivers page.
You see where this is going, don’t you?
More:
And more:
In addition, Ms. Norfleet may have a bit of a criminal record for assault and “crossing a guard line at a jail with contraband and possession of marijuana“. That’s not necessarily a disqualifying factor, in my humble opinion: I’d certainly be willing to give someone a shot at redemption in NASCAR with that kind of record. But when you put that together with the other pieces, it raises alarm bells.
Noted without comment:
Edited to add: Ms. Norfleet has posted an Instagram photo purporting to prove she does have a license. I am not a NASCAR expert, but there are three things I wonder about:
- Is there anyone out there who has seen an actual NASCAR license and can vouch for the fact that the photo looks correct? There’s no driver picture on it. I’ve never seen a NASCAR license and Google Image Search isn’t helpful.
- If I am reading it right, the license is for the “Whelen All-American” series, which I am not familiar with, but which looks (from NASCAR’s website) to be a step or two down from the K&N Pro Series (which, in turn, is below the Nationwide series). I wonder if this is one of those series where you can purchase a license from an individual racetrack.
- Ms. Norfleet does not show up in the top 500 drivers in that series through last September.
The Spiders from Cleveland.
March 7th, 2013By way of Borepatch, I found this rather amusing post on the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.
For those who don’t follow baseball history (or loser history) the Spiders were a major league baseball team. But you would have been hard pressed to tell in 1899: the team went 20-134, the worst record ever in baseball history. (That’s a .130 winning percentage.)
They finished 84 games out of first place. They lost 40 of their last 41 games.
(I would actually kind of like one of the hats, but I’m not sure it is a $49 hat. And the J. Thomas Hetrick book MISFITS! Baseball’s Worst Ever Team
Random notes: March 6, 2013.
March 6th, 2013My two favorite tributes to the late Hugo Chavez: here and here.
Both the NYT and the LAT are reporting arrests and confessions in the Bolshoi acid attack. (Previously.)
The NYT says one of the men has confessed: the LAT says both men and Dmitrichenko have confessed.
Roy Brown Jr. has died. Mr. Brown was a car designer for Ford. This was one of his designs:
Come all without, come all within. you’ll not see nothing like Mighty Quinn’s.
(Sorry.)
Your loser update.
March 5th, 2013With the exception of my yearly $5 bet with Lawrence on Gonzaga, I don’t give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about college basketball.
However, the remarkable achievement of the Grambling men’s basketball team must be noted here: “…at 0-27, they became the only men’s basketball team in Division I to finish the regular season without a victory.”
How bad is Grambling?
To be fair, Grambling has been hit hard by NCAA penalties tied to their low academic progress rate. Grambling also has funding issues, which have lead the team to adopt the role of “cupcake opponent” for hire:
And this is amusing:
At least, it’s amusing to Lawrence and I and anyone else who remembers the “Charlie Tuna Oceanographic University” series of strips from “Tank McNamara”. (CTOU ended up playing in the Rose Bowl because every other team in the conference had been sanctioned by the NCAA.)