This recipe is from Brody and Apter
I followed the recipe without deviations or alterations, carefully measuring out exactly 5 ounces of goat cheese (interesting that Brody and Apter call for 5 ounces, when goat cheese is usually sold in 4 ounce packages in my neck of the woods), using my on-going sourdough starter, and yes, even using the powdered goats milk.
How did it turn out?
The Duluth News Tribune is replacing “Blondie” with “Pearls Before Swine” starting February 6th.
I’ve pretty much given up newspaper comics, but I did kind of like “Pearls Before Swine”. As for “Blondie”, it was always one of those strips that took less effort to read than it did to skip; kind of banal, but not as offensive as “The Amazing Glacial Spider-Man”. (“This week: Spider-Man crosses the street! And we flash back to his origin yet again!”)
What makes this story noteworthy to me, though, is the paper’s reasoning for dropping “Blondie”:
(“King” is King Features Syndicate. They also syndicate “Spider-Man”, and a small number of actually decent comics.)
(Wow. “Mandrake the Magician” is still being syndicated?)
It appears that the News-Tribune has a paid circulation of just under 30,000, based on the most current information I can find. Let’s be generous and call it 30,000 even: if I did the math right, that means they’re being charged about 0.2 cents per subscriber per week, or about 10.75 cents per subscriber per year. This is kind of an interesting insight into the business. King Features certainly does not make this information available online (they want you to call their sales weasels), and I can’t turn up current information for other syndicates either.
(Hattip: Jimbo.)
The verdict stands.
Former Culpeper Police Department officer Daniel Harmon-Wright will serve three years in prison. (Edited to add: Well, technically, jail. “…in Virginia, sentences measured in months, like in his client’s case, the person convicted serves their imprisonment in a county jail.” This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, though: if I’m sentenced to 99 years, I go to prison, but if I’m sentenced to 1,188 months, I go to jail? I’d always thought the dividing line was: a year or less, jail. More than a year, prison.)
Ah, yes, his mother. That would be the woman charged with “uttering” for allegedly aaltering her son’s police department personnel records.
Yesterday’s development from the Bell trial: patented Rizzo confuse-o-vision!
Lourdes Garcia, the $422,000 a year “former director of administrative services” went on to testify that “former City Manager Robert Rizzo regarded council members as unsophisticated and easily manipulated”. And the things “Ratso” Rizzo did were “all justifiable because ‘it was for the greater good of the organization.'”
It gets even better.
The NYT would like for you to know that there’s illegal gambling going on in New Orleans.
I am absolutely mind croggled. Utterly speechless.
The “Beautiful Soup Theater Collective” did a revival of “Moose Murders” by Arthur Bicknell.
Why does this leave me stunned? Because “Moose Murders” is a legendary fiasco, one that opened and closed on the same night. Here’s the original Frank Rich review from the NYT.
And here’s Charles Isherwood’s review of the revival:
(By the way, the producers of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” say they’ve “re-shuffled” funds and are going ahead. Previously.)
Lourdes Garcia, Bell’s former “director of administrative services”, who was paid $422,000 a year in that job, is on the stand now.
Remember former councilman Victor Bello? The guy who was paid a six-figure salary in his job as “assistant to the food bank coordinator”?
Garcia
Garcia also testified that Robert “Ratso” Rizzo
I’m worried about the way things are going. So far, it seems to be “all Rizzo, all the time”, and there’s been very little discussion of what the indicted council members actually did (or did not) do. Of course, we’ve only heard from two witnesses so far. But if this keeps up, I’m concerned that the council members are going to get off by throwing Rizzo and Spaccia under the bus. And then I can see Rizzo and Spaccia getting off by, in turn, stating that they were following the directions given to them by the city council members, who would be free to testify for Rizzo and Spaccia.
Nobody needs a high-capacity assault snowmobile. Actually, I’m not even sure the general public should be allowed snowmobiles; perhaps we need to limit those to the police and military, people who have had special snowmobile training.
This is intended to enrage you:
The request is based on three factors:
Previously. I am still unable to find an execution date for Antoinette Frank.
“C’est un Nagra. C’est suisse, et tres, tres precis.” (I’m surprised that quote, or the English translation, isn’t on the IMDB page for “Diva”.)
Heh. Heh. Heh.
The judges are being accused of pretty much what you’d expect: taking bribes to fix tickets.
You know, I like shrimp. I like crab cakes. I wouldn’t go to prison for them, though.
Obit watch: former mayor of New York City, and former judge on “The People’s Court”, Edward Koch.
For those who don’t understand the reference: as a member of Congress, Koch lobbied for increased aid to New York City during the 1970s, when the city was broke. President Ford turned down the city, leading to a famous NY Daily News headline:
Rebecca Valdez is still on the stand in the Bell corruption trial. Yesterday’s revelation:
Valdez states that she believes Theresa Diaz, the previous city clerk (who, as you may recall, moved out of the city in 2004, but allegedly continued to act as the city clerk until 2007) forged her name on the documents in question.
This exchange is also amusing:
Obit watch: Patty Andrews, the last surviving Andrews Sister. (NYT. A/V Club.)
If a publisher is reissuing a non-fiction book, do they have an obligation to go back and do fact checking? What if the facts have been called into question since the book was issued? What if the book is “38 Witnesses” by A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times?
What is there to correct?
This 2009 NPR interview goes into more detail about the many problems with the popular narrative of the case.
This lead made me giggle:
Hey, as long as we’re talking about crooked governors:
And lying politicians:
Back in May, I wrote about the case of Patricia Cook, the unarmed woman in Culpeper, Virginia who was killed by a police officer under suspicious circumstances; the officer, Daniel Harmon–Wright, was later charged with murder.
Things have moved faster than I expected: Harmon-Wright was convicted, but only of “voluntary manslaughter”, “shooting into an occupied vehicle”, and “shooting into an occupied vehicle resulting in death”.
And it is possible a mistrial will be declared: “a court’s clerk reported that she found two dictionaries and a thesaurus in the jury room”, which were brought in by the jury forewoman (according to another report) and were allegedly used by the jury to look up the definition of “malice”.
(Hattip: Balko.)
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies lost $109,206 in 2010.
They lost $3,815,144 during 2011, the same year their falling-out with Jim Romenesko began.
(Hattip: Jim Romenesko.)
Gun control works! Just ask Chicago!
More:
Uh, that’s not what a “straw buyer” is, Monica Davey. (Nor does Davey mention that “straw purchases” are also a violation of Federal law, though rarely prosecuted according to the WP. One wonders how much of a deterrent Chicago’s law is to people who are already violating federal law.)
(Likewise, purchasing guns in other states, bringing them across state lines, and selling them on the Chicago streets violates multiple existing federal laws. Davey ignores that fact as well.)
Edited to add: Just saw this, and found it appropriate.
Chicago pols blame rampant shootings on guns from Indiana and Iowa, which, mysteriously, don’t have rampant shootings.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 30, 2013
And I said, “What about ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”
He said, “I can’t afford a million dollars,
and as I recall, you’ve got plenty of money.”
And I said, “Well, that’s one thing we have not.”
The Bell trial picked up again yesterday. Rebecca Valdez, the former city clerk who wasn’t actually the city clerk at first, is still on the stand.
The defense is attacking her credibility, “seeking to show that record-keeping in Bell was in disarray. Valdez testified that she signed minutes for meetings she didn’t attend, was appointed to the job in name only and sometimes made mistakes marking the times that meetings began and ended.”
And what’s this about her being the city clerk but not being the city clerk?
Also interesting:
Not “food bank coordinator”, but “assistant to the food bank coordinator”, and pulling in at least $100,000 a year. How do I get this job?
Ah, the Texas Highway Patrol Museum. You do remember the Texas Highway Patrol Museum, don’t you? Shut down by the Attorney General last year? Assets, including the building, being sold off?
Well, about that…
The “procedural impropriety” seems to be that the high bidder says her bid was ignored. Also, the real estate broker would make a larger commission if the other bidder got the property. There’s some technical aspects that make it unclear which bid is best; that’s why the AG recommended that the building be listed again.
(Hattip on this to Grits for Breakfast. If Ms. Wong winds up getting the building, and we’re all still here, I want to do a road trip to Rosario’s Café y Cantina.)