Random notes: March 4, 2013.

March 4th, 2013

At various times over the last year, Olbermann and his representatives have expressed interest in his return to the employer that made him famous: ESPN.

The drop in deaths from firearms and in slayings overall — over the past two decades, homicide declined by 80 percent in the District and overall crime fell by 75 percent in New York City — has come even as the economy has tanked, the number of guns owned by Americans has soared and the number of young people in the prime crime demographic has peaked.

Well, you don’t say. More guns. Less crime. And the WP admits it. Interesting.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Tales to make you cry. (#X in an ongoing series)

March 3rd, 2013

On October 5, 1973, a four year old boy named Josh Miele was horribly burned when his next-door neighbor poured acid on him.

Colonel Pruitt ran the Brooke Army Medical Center from 1968 until 1995, and still practices today in Texas. He had thousands of patients in those years but remembers Josh and his family quite vividly. “For such a devastating injury, they were very realistic about what to expect,” he said. Josh was burned over 17 percent of his body, with 11 percent third-degree burns, mostly to his face. Colonel Pruitt said his chief goal was to save the boy’s sight. But he knew right away that this was hopeless.

Wendell Jamieson was 7 at the time, and lived just around the corner from the Miele family in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn. He vividly remembered his mother’s warnings after the incident. Nearly 40 years later, Mr. Jamieson is a writer for the NYT: he decided to track down Josh Miele.

Josh Miele is now Dr. Josh Miele. He’s married and has two kids.

Josh has a degree in physics and a Ph.D. in psychoacoustics from the University of California at Berkeley. He took several breaks, years long, while getting his undergraduate degree, and worked full time for the technology company Berkeley Systems on software to help blind people navigate graphics-based computer programs.
He worked for NASA on software for the Mars Observer. He is the president of the board of directors of the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind. He plays bass in a band. And he works as an associate scientist at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, a nonprofit research center.

He’s also designed maps of the BART system for blind people. His latest project is the “Descriptive Video Exchange”…

…It’s a kind of crowd-sourced service that would allow, for example, a Trekkie to describe a “Star Trek” episode in a way that other devotees would appreciate. The first version, out this month, will work for any video on YouTube.

Nuts:

“It’s not that I don’t want to be written about,” he said. “I’d like to be as famous as the next person would, but I want to be famous for the right reasons, for the work I’ve done, and not for some stupid thing that happened to me 40 years ago.”

And:

“I never doubted that it was all going to work out,” he said. “It was a foregone conclusion that it was going to be O.K.”

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

“Free” booze!

March 3rd, 2013

It seems that there is a “bar” called the White House in downtown Austin. I’d never heard of the White House before today; it opened “late last year” according to the paper.

I put “bar” in quotes because they don’t have a liquor license. So how do they sell alcohol?

They don’t. They give it away.

Signs on the walls of the bar, in an old frame house at 95 Rainey St., provide instructions to customers. They are directed to contribute money in exchange for tokens that they drop into a box to vote for one of 108 charities.

How do they make money if they are giving booze away? Volume, volume, volume! Actually, individual “setups” (which I assume consist of ice, cups and mixers) go for $5-$7 each, or as much as your average mixed drink goes for around here, and a “bottomless cup” is $20-$30.

More:

Thomas said she didn’t need a permit because White House sold only the cup, mixer and ice. The bar provided the liquor, wine and beer for free, she said.

TABC, of course, disagrees with this position, and has raided the White House. But they can’t shut it down:

Thomas “does not hold a TABC permit, so we don’t have any specific authority to shut down the location like we might with other TABC-permitted business,” Beck said in an email. “There is a legal way to conduct that business: by giving the drinks away for free without a required donation. For that reason, we can’t assume that because it’s still open means she is still violating the law.”

Mad props to the people behind the White House for figuring out a clever loophole, but I’m not sure I’d want to drink there.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Deep fried.

March 2nd, 2013

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo kind of snuck up on me this year.

I actually don’t care that much about the musical acts at the rodeo, or the rodeo itself. But with the rodeo comes…rodeo food. I’ve been waiting for the HouChron‘s yearly slideshow of rodeo food items.

Turns out they published it a few days ago, but didn’t link it from anyplace I could find it until today. Here you go. Note that there’s a handy “View All” link, too: thanks, HouChron!

(I found out my nephews are going down to Houston for the Rodeo. I’ve made them promise to try the rodeo food; I already have a funnel cake commitment from one of them.)

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

Banana republicans on trial: March 1, 2013.

March 1st, 2013

I know I haven’t been posting updates on the Bell trial, but there’s a reason for that: the jury has been deliberating for the better part of a week.

Yesterday morning, the jury sent a note to the judge stating they were deadlocked. And another juror sent a note to the judge stating that one of the jurors had been doing “outside research” on the case. This is a Bad Thing.

The same juror made a tearful request Monday to be removed from the panel because she felt others were picking on her. Kennedy told the woman that although discussions can get heated, it was important to continue deliberating.
On Thursday, however, the juror again broke into tears and said she had spoken with her daughter about “the abuse I have suffered.” She said her daughter told her, “Mom, they’re trying to find the weak link.”
The woman said she had turned to the Internet to better understand the rules about jury deliberations and came across the word “coercion.” After her daughter helped her look up the word’s definition, she wrote it down on a piece of paper and brought it with her to court. When the judge asked to see the paper she went into the jury room to retrieve it.

That juror, known as “Juror #3”, has been dismissed and replaced with an alternate juror. The judge has told the jury to restart deliberations, and to pretend that the earlier deliberations never happened.

It kind of sounds like #3 was leaning towards acquittal, but nobody knows for sure.

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

Random notes: March 1, 2013.

March 1st, 2013

Obit watch: Bruce Reynolds, the man who planned the Great Train Robbery.

In the early morning of Aug. 8, 1963, a gang of 15 men stopped a Glasgow-to-London mail train about 45 miles short of its destination by tampering with a signal. The train, which usually carried large quantities of money in the second car behind the locomotive, was loaded even more heavily than normal because of a just-completed bank holiday in Scotland, and the thieves escaped with about 120 bags of cash, mostly in small bills, totaling about £2.6 million, or about $7 million at the time — the equivalent of about $60.5 million today.

I remember the murder of Jonathan Levin: it was a big deal at the time, mostly because his father was the chairman of Time Warner. Instead of going into business, Levin chose to teach high school:

The killing of Mr. Levin (pronounced luh-VIN) on May 30, 1997, sent his students and colleagues into waves of grief. His body was discovered, bound with duct tape, in his apartment on the Upper West Side. The police said he had been tortured with a knife for his bank card number and shot in the back of his head. At his funeral, some of his students propped a cardboard sign atop his plain wooden coffin with the words: “We are his kids.”

The Department of Education created the…

…Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications in the same South Bronx building where he had taught, declaring it “a living tribute” to the English teacher’s “spirit, values, commitment and impassioned belief” that every child has a right to a quality education.

Sadly, things haven’t worked out:

But in the past few years, a quality education at Levin High School became harder to come by. Money for a college scholarship in Mr. Levin’s name dried up. A ball field that a Mets official helped pay for fell into disrepair. Computers sat untouched, applications to the school fell and the graduation rate sank to 31 percent, the fifth-lowest in the city.
Now, just a decade after it opened, New York has deemed Levin High School a failure, and is preparing to close it down.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 28, 2013.

February 28th, 2013

Continuing our N.C.A.A. coverage:

In the past month, the N.C.A.A. and its president, Mark Emmert, have been sued, criticized and ridiculed — and more than usual. They were embarrassed by admitted mistakes in a high-profile investigation. Their critics, growing louder and in number, included a governor, state senators, lawyers, academics and university presidents.

Meanwhile, Joel Bauman is a wrestler on scholarship at the University of Minnesota. He’s also a musician, and wants to inspire people through his music.

His most recent song video, “Ones in the Sky,” which has a positive message and urges people to pursue their dreams, has drawn more than 47,000 hits on YouTube. It can also be downloaded for 99 cents on iTunes.

So?

Because Bauman performed under his own name and identified himself as a Minnesota wrestler, the N.C.A.A. ruled him ineligible for the remainder of the season. J. T. Bruett, Minnesota’s compliance director, said Bauman violated an N.C.A.A. bylaw prohibiting student-athletes from using their name, image or status as an athlete to promote the sale of a commercial product.

(I wonder: if he wasn’t selling the video on iTunes, would the N.C.A.A. still have an issue?)

In other news: your dog wants steak. Your dog does not want rodent poison. Your dog does not want people feeding it rodent poison, especially if it is in competition at Westminster.

A necropsy was not performed on Cruz, 3, who died in Lakewood, Colo., where he was competing in another show. The cause of death remains unclear, but he had symptoms that strongly resembled those of dogs that had ingested rodent poison, the veterinarian who treated him said. She said she felt it was unlikely that Cruz had been deliberately poisoned.

(It strikes me as odd that a necropsy wasn’t done. “[Lynette] Blue [one of the owners] declined for Cruz to have a necropsy because she was confident that he swallowed poison, she said.” But wouldn’t it be better to have a necropsy done and to be sure, as well as having evidence for a possible criminal case?)

(Gee, wouldn’t this make a good episode of “Law and Order”, if that show was still on the air.)

Obit watch: Van Cliburn. LAT account of his 1994 appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. A/V Club.

Dale Robertson. No A/V Club obit yet.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Time to pick up the phone, folks.

February 27th, 2013

A friend of mine tipped me off to item #35 on the Austin City Council’s agenda for tomorrow night’s meeting:

Approve a resolution signifying the City Council’s intent to endorse efforts to develop a comprehensive approach to reducing gun crime.

You can find the agenda and supporting materials here. “Supporting materials” includes a draft resolution:

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF AUSTIN
That the City Council strongly supports Mayor Lee Leffingwell’s membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns, endorses the statement and efforts of the organization, and supports President Obama’s effort to develop a comprehensive approach to reducing gun crime.
The Council urges leaders at the state and federal level to enact legislation that requires background checks for all gun sales, provides for prosecution of straw purchasers and gun traffickers, limits the size of ammunition magazines, puts reasonable restrictions on public ownership of military-style guns, and
improves the accuracy and completeness of background check databases to ensure the safety of our citizens.

The only thing on that list that would “ensure the safety of our citizens” is “prosecution of straw purchasers and gun traffickers”. The rest of the council’s proposals are the usual “what you do instead of doing something noise”, and none of those proposals will make the public any safer.

Fortunately, this is just a resolution:

WHEREAS, due to prohibitions in the Texas Local Government Code Austin, unlike cities in other states, must rely on legislative action at the state or federal level to effect changes related to firearm and ammunition sales…

In other words, the city council can’t do anything except pass resolutions. Think they’d like some cheese with that whine?

The listed sponsor is Kathie Tovo, with Laura Morrison and William Spelman listed as co-sponsors. You can find contact information for the council here. My suggestion is: be polite, be professional, and make it clear you have a plan to vote out every single one of the SOBs.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Ah, boondoggle.

February 26th, 2013

Ever hear of the “Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program”? BTOP “passed out several billion dollars to help upgrade broadband networks across America as part of President Obama’s initial stimulus package in 2009”.

Let’s set aside the question of where the government’s constitutional authority to pass out that kind of money for that purpose comes from. Some of that money went to West Virginia.

West Virginia’s cash was meant to wire up the many “community anchor institutions” such as libraries, schools, police, and hospitals across the state with Internet access delivered over fiber-optic lines. As part of the project, the state also had to purchase some sort of router for each institution.

So they needed routers. Not a problem, right? Except the State of West Virginia and Cisco decided that, instead of purchasing routers for each location that were appropriate for current and projected needs, they’d buy one specific Cisco router for everyone.

Consider, for instance, how routers were purchased for the state police. When the West Virginia State Police purchased their own routers a few years earlier, they chose Cisco model 2xxx machines at a cost of only $5,000 or so apiece, with only a single Cisco 3xxx model purchased for the largest deployment. In 2010, when the state received its grant money, no one asked the State Police what they wanted or needed; indeed, the police were “never contacted” at all by the Grant Implementation Team. (This was a widespread problem; the report notes no capacity or user needs surveys were ever done before the money was spent). Instead, the team simply ordered 77 Cisco 3945 routers at a cost of $20,661 apiece—that’s one $20,000 router for every 13.7 state police employees—and sent them off to the police. (Each router can handle several hundred concurrent users.)

But, hey, they can use these routers to run VOIP, right?

…the legislative auditor notes that each of the 3945 routers can handle 700 to 1,200 VoIP lines, which means that the 1,164 routers purchased by the state could support up to 1.39 million lines. As the auditor’s report dryly notes, only a single library in the entire state has more than eight phone lines; most have one or two. (None use a VoIP system anyway.)

And those $20,000 Cisco routers didn’t “come with ‘the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules’ to work with the system.”

The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can’t use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)

And it isn’t just the state police. There’s a one-room library in Marmet (population 1,500), open three days a week, with one internet connection. And they run it through a Cisco 3945.

The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people… and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000.

But how bad could it be? Surely Cisco was the low bidder, right?

In total, $24 million was spent on the routers through a not-very-open bidding process under which non-Cisco router manufacturers such as Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were not “given notice or any opportunity to bid.” As for Cisco, which helped put the massive package together, the legislative auditor concluded that the company “had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco’s own engineering standards” but that instead “Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers.”

I hate to say “I saw this coming” when the Feds first started talking about expanding broadband access. But then again, Hellen Keller would have seen this coming.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

Random notes: February 26, 2013.

February 26th, 2013

Obit watch: C. Everett Koop. (True story: I used to live a stone’s throw away from the DrKoop.com headquarters. I didn’t move; DrKoop.com did.)

The NYT has discovered NFA trusts.

But because of a loophole in federal regulations

Ever notice how the NYT, LAT, and other media outlets refer to things they don’t like as a “loophole”?

…buying restricted firearms through a trust also exempts the trust’s members from requirements that apply to individual buyers, including being fingerprinted, obtaining the approval of a chief local law enforcement officer and undergoing a background check.
Lawyers who handle the trusts and gun owners who have used them say that a majority of customers who buy restricted firearms through trusts do not do so to avoid such requirements. And most gun dealers continue to require background checks for the representative of the trust who picks up the firearm. But not all do.

Frankly, I don’t believe the NYT‘s claims here. I suspect they’re being dishonest with the readers. However, I haven’t looked into NFA trusts; I’m not at the point in my life where I’m ready to purchase automatic weapons. (However, my brother and I had a discussion last night, prompted by the existence of “The Sliencer Store” near the movie theater I went to. A silencer for some of my .22LR guns is becoming more tempting.) Are there any readers out there who know more about NFA trusts and are willing to comment?

The LAT, meanwhile, is pre-occupied with the non-existant “gun show loophole”.

Speaking of movies, I considered live-blogging the Oscars on Sunday, but I figured my live blog would go something like this:

7:30 PM: Ceremony finally starts.
7.45 PM: First call by a celebrity for “reasonable gun control”. Sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to bed.

The one nice thing to come out of the Oscars, in my humble opinion, was that “Argo” started playing at the Alamo Drafthouses again, and at reasonable times. I ended up seeing a matinee showing yesterday.

Yes, it is very much a “Hollywood saves the world” movie, as well as a “heroic Federal employees” movie. Yes, “based on a true story” means that some of the facts have been fudged.

And I don’t care: “Argo” is a good story, well acted, well directed, and just the right length. Of the nominees I’ve seen, I liked it more than “Django Unchained” and (sorry, Mom) “Lincoln”. (I still want to see “Zero Dark Thirty”, but haven’t gotten to it yet. The other movie from last year I was excited about and didn’t get to see is “The Master”, which I think is going to have to wait for DVD.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Guns, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Halt! Hammer-Zeit!

February 25th, 2013

…Jones returned to the apartment about 7 p.m. He attacked the resident with a hammer, hitting him several times in the head.
The resident wrapped Jones in a bear hug and the pair fell onto the floor. Jones hit the man with the hammer again. The man choked Jones.

Spoiler: things did not end well for the guy with the hammer. And no guns were involved.

This also gives me a chance to note the arrest of M.C. Hammer, who “became very argumentative” when the police asked him to get out of the car he was driving (“…that had expired registration and that was not registered to him”).

Every time I hear “U Can’t Touch This” on the radio, I want to call the station’s request line and ask them to play Rick James’ “Super Freak”. Then I want to say, “Oh, wait. You just did”, cackle maniacally, and hang up the phone.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music | Comments Closed

We’re the only ones competent enough to have radios.

February 25th, 2013

Ever since police officers started carrying radios, there have been radio related problems. One problem is “keying the microphone”: basically, pushing the talk button on the microphone and blocking other people from using the channel, or stepping on other people’s transmissions.

Sometimes this is an accident; you shift a little in the seat of your squad car and accidentally hit the button. Sometimes, though, especially in the New York Police Department, it isn’t an accident:

At least six officers have been punished since 2012 for such conduct. The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, described one case in Brooklyn in which two officers “who keyed over their sergeant” in the last year were each docked 30 vacation days and put on disciplinary probation. “That got their attention and others’ too.”

Officers have also been known to “whistle or quack like a duck to show their disdain for whoever preceded them on the airwaves.”

The NYPD’s radios are assigned to individual officers, and transmissions can be associated with a specific radio, but this hasn’t deterred the conduct. To be fair, some of it could, possibly, maybe be user interface issues:

“I showed them my memo book,” Mr. Padilla said. “I was in traffic court. Maybe it happened while I was turning the radio off. Sometimes you press the key while turning it off.”

Mr. Padilla works in the 33rd Precinct, under Inspector Joseph Dowling.

The inspector has a reputation of being a hands-on boss who is a frequent presence on the radio, often directing resources from the streets himself.
“He comes on the radio and people start clicking,” Mr. Padilla said.

But other than open disrespect for commanding officers, does this matter? Yes, it does:

Sometimes it happens during car chases, when officers have been known to try to drown out any supervisor who might call off the pursuit after concluding it is too dangerous. A number of microphones were keyed on an April night in 2008, for instance, as police officers chased a gunman in a stolen Consolidated Edison van near Yankee Stadium, one police officer recalled.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Radio | Comments Closed

The most dangerous job.

February 23rd, 2013

Any bets on when “aspiring rapper” is going to pass “commercial fisherman” as the most dangerous job in America?

And, by the way, you shouldn’t assert facts that can easily be checked, unless you know they’re true:

“He didn’t have a [criminal] record or a history. He was just a good kid trying to make it and be a good father.” Cherry had two children, [Vicki Greco, attorney for the aspiring rapper in question] said.

….

The [Oakland Tribune] reported that [Kenneth] Cherry [aka “Kenny Clutch”, the aspiring rapper] had several arrests in Oakland and Berkeley, many for gun charges. He was convicted on a gun charge in 2007, stemming from an arrest in Berkeley, sources told the Tribune, although details on that conviction weren’t immediately available.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: February 22, 2013.

February 22nd, 2013

It isn’t that I’ve gotten bored with the Bell trial. It’s just that things have been slow and repetitive over the past few days.

The defense has wrapped up closing arguments. I’d go into detail, but you’ve heard it before: it was all “Ratso” Rizzo’s fault.

“We’re here for Mr. Rizzo’s sins, ladies and gentlemen,” [George] Mgdesyan [attorney for councilman Luis Artiga] said. “We’re here because Mr. Rizzo became financially greedy.”

Also, the prosecution failed to prove their case, why wasn’t the city attorney called, and the whole case is political anyway:

[Leo] Moriarty [attorney for councilman Victor Bello] also hinted that the case against the council members was brought because then-Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley was running for attorney general. He said that if the prosecution put a mirror in front of itself, nothing would appear.

(Isn’t Moriarty a great name for a defense lawyer?)

“Almost like being a vampire, almost like being an evil — they can’t see the reflection because there’s nothing there.”
Moriarty likened himself to Don Quixote, “a man who wanted to fight injustice,” and his client to Sancho Panza.

Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think defending the right of city council members to pillage the city treasury is the kind of windmill Don Quixote would charge at.

And Bello does not strike me as being a convincing Sancho Panza. But he might be able to carry off Don Quixote. Terry Gilliam, call your office, please.

At this point, the case is in the hands of the jury, and we’re just waiting on a verdict.

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

Things you might want to think about.

February 22nd, 2013

Today’s LAT has a longish article on the decline and fall of the Jewish deli.

The article gives some reasons why the traditional deli is disappearing: health concerns, growing popularity and availability of ethnic food, the recession, and rising rents.

Art’s Deli owner Harold Ginsburg, 52, said he’s had to cut back on non-food items at the Studio City store: having fewer employees on call, trimming insurance costs and sending delivery cars to the cheapest gas stations.

What, was he sending cars to the most expensive gas stations when business was good?

But here’s what gets me: the second and third paragraphs of the article, describing customers lining up at the now closed Junior’s Deli:

…Brian Won’s main reaction was “meh.”
“The food was unremarkable,” said the West Los Angeles IT specialist, 32, who visited to use up a Groupon voucher. “Given that there are so many good places to eat in L.A., I have a really hard time saying yes to that.”

Wow, who would have thought selling unremarkable food in 2013 is no longer a license to print money?

And there’s a previous article about Junior’s linked from the sidebar of today’s:

The imminent closure of Junior’s Deli, a longtime Jewish eatery on the Westside, was the result of inexperienced ownership that exacerbated a rent dispute, according to the business’ landlord.

Apparently, the original owner died in 2011, and left the business to his two sons. The landlord claims that they had a good relationship with the original owner, and gave the deli ” several rent concessions during the recession”, even after the owner’s death.

The attorney said negotiations ground to a halt after the brothers made a “well-below market proposal” lower than their father’s rate.

Wow, who would have thought that wouldn’t be a successful negotiating strategy?

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

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