Film director David R. Ellis. (NYT. A/V Club for all your “Snakes on a Plane” needs.)
Reporter and Pulitzer winner Richard Ben Cramer. Cramer may have been most famous for one of the greatest Esquire stories, “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?“
Obit watch: January 9, 2013.
January 9th, 2013TMQ Watch: January 8, 2013.
January 8th, 2013Yeah, we know. We got caught up in a bunch of stuff around January 1st, and last week’s TMQ totally slipped away from us. We figure we’ll do this week’s TMQ tonight, loop back and catch up with last week’s TMQ tomorrow (we’re doing them out of order because there’s some stuff we want to address in last week’s column), and then we should be in good shape all the way through to the end of the season.
At least, we hope so.
After the jump…
Gun show update.
January 8th, 2013Austin Rifle Club sent out an email late last night stating that the Travis County Commissioners Court was considering the gun show ban today. I didn’t see that email until this morning, otherwise I would have considered going down to report.
According to the Statesman, the commissioners “discussed” the proposal, and heard testimony from residents, but did not take a vote. So you still have time to contact them.
So Judge Biscoe thinks gun shows are a threat to public safety, but not one that we need to act on immediately? One that can wait “three or four months”? Option two is that Judge Biscoe is a political hack who wants to be seen as “doing something” when he’s really doing nothing. But that can’t be true: political hackery on the commissioners court? Why, that’s unheard of! (Option three is that Judge Biscoe figures things will blow over in “three or four months”, we can return to the current status quo, and voters will forget his actions. My message to Judge Biscoe: “He’d seen how ‘civilized’ men behaved. He never forgot and he never forgave.”)
And, again, I’ll make the points that:
- Any dealer with an Federal Firearms License who sells guns at a gun show has to do a check, just as if they were selling guns in a physical store.
- Any person who regularly sells guns at a gun show, or any place else, is required to get a FFL. Not getting one is a Federal crime, if you engage in the business of selling guns. If a relative dies and you engage in a private sale of a few of his guns, that’s not a crime. But if you sell guns regularly at the gun show without a license, the BATFE will come after you, and you may do time.
- Those same private sales will take place in supermarket parking lots, subdivision driveways, and other places even if the county restricts gun shows. There’s nothing the county can do to stop that.
The Statesman does not give a breakdown of how many people spoke at the meeting, nor does it give any indication how many supported or opposed the measure.
And, once again, I’ll mention that Judge Biscoe is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! Here’s some legal precedent from the 5th Circuit for you, Judge Biscoe. The tl;dr version: the city of Houston tried something similar and ended up paying $50,000+ in legal fees to a gun show operator.
Keep that in mind. The opposition managed to get 200 people to support their illegal proposal. I think we can do much better.
Edited to add: Forgot something else I was going to mention: I updated the .CSV files of the county commissioners and the city council members with fax numbers, just in case anyone finds that useful. Someone yesterday (and I forget who it was) made the comment that they can ignore emails, but they have to answer the phone and they have to put paper in the fax machine. I am slightly dubious about the latter, what with modern technology and all, but the fax numbers are there if you can use them.
Edited to add 2: Updated story from the Statesman:
You don’t say?
And edited to add again: by way of Lawrence over at Battleswarm, ““If Austin or Travis Co. try to ban gun shows they better be ready for a double-barreled lawsuit.” Click through to find out who said that. Hint: it wasn’t someone who runs gun shows. Hint 2: it was someone who can unleash hell on the city and county.
Random notes: January 8, 2013.
January 8th, 2013Those of you who have been following Radley Balko and The Agitator know that Balko’s been on the story of Mississippi forensic pathologist Dr. Steven T. Hayne like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition.
For those of you who don’t follow Balko (I don’t click through as regularly since he moved to the Huffington Post), the NYT summarizes the story:
More:
Worth noting for the record: the Innocence Project has also been involved with Dr. Hayne. Dr. Hayne and the project settled a lawsuit out of court last year, and the project paid him $100,000. The NYT article touches on this some: one key point is that, in the process of preparing their defense, the project claims to have discovered new evidence that contradicts Dr. Hayne’s sworn testimony in various cases.
Bob Dylan: The Copyright Extension Collection, Vol. 1. No, that’s the real title.
Fun. Nasty fun.
January 7th, 2013Just finished calling all the Austin City Council members (none were available to talk to me, so I left messages with their staff), and sending emails through the forms on the city website.
My message was short and simple:
- The Martinez proposal is a bad idea that will do nothing to solve any real problem.
- It will expose the city to legal action under section 229 of the Texas local government code.
- If the council member votes for this proposal, I will not only vote against them in the next election, but I will also give money to, and actively work for, their opponent.
- It only takes 38,000 signatures to get a recall election going.
I can be a real mean SOB if I want to be. (“Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great.”)
I plan to back this up with physical letters, which will probably go out tomorrow (assuming I can get my printer working).
Here’s something that folks might find useful: a MSWord merge file of all the council members, with addresses and office phone numbers. The email addresses come off the copies of the emails I sent through the contact forms; the “PO Box 1088” physical address is the one they all list on their contact pages. The phone numbers come from their contact pages as well.
(I could add fax numbers, I guess. If anyone uses fax machines these days.)
Edited to add: At Lawrence’s instigation, here’s a CSV version of the Austin City Council members. And here’s a CSV version of the Travis County Commissioners Court, both commissioners and their executive assistants, including phone numbers and email addresses.
To hell with Best Buy.
January 6th, 2013Battery life on my Android phone has always been an issue.
Not too long ago (I think slightly more than a year) I bought a 1750 mAh hour battery from Best Buy. That worked okay for a while, but over the past few days, it has become clear that battery is dying.
“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll get another one from Best Buy.”
Went to Best Buy. Looked for batteries. Couldn’t find any. Got a clerk’s attention.
Best Buy no longer carries any cell phone batteries. At all. They’ve got car chargers. They’ve got cases out the wazoo. But no batteries for any cell phones, even the ones they currently sell.
The clerk told me “go to Batteries Plus”.
(Batteries Plus wanted $43 for a standard capacity Evo 4G battery, and didn’t have any 1750 mAh batteries. Screw that. I can get two 2000 mAh batteries from Newegg for $11.29. And I still have my original Evo 4G battery, plus a 3500 mAh battery that I paid $4.99 for a while back. I haven’t been using the 3500 mAh one because it is a physically larger battery that requires putting a custom back on the phone (included with the original purchase), which would in turn require removing the case I have on the phone. But it is there if I need it while I wait for the Newegg ones to come in.)
(Yes, I know it was CompUSA, not Best Buy, but this is still obligatory.)
Lampooned.
January 5th, 2013Back in March of 2011, I noted the arrest of Timothy Durham, the CEO of National Lampoon Inc., on fraud charges. Specifically, he was accused of running a giant Ponzi scheme.
I missed the followup on this; it doesn’t seem to have gotten a lot of play in the press, plus it took place shortly after things went south for the winter for me. Anyway, Durham was tried, convicted, and sentenced at the end of November:
Durham was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The prosecution was asking for up to 225 years.
Durham’s co-conspirators, James Cochran and Rick Snow, were also convicted. Cochran got 25 years (against 145 years requested by the prosecution) and Snow got 10 years (the prosecution was asking for 85).
And, hey, how about that governmental oversight?
January 5th, 2013But, apparently, nobody did. Including “representatives of the organization that was most closely connected to the Austin Police Department and had the easiest access to criminal records: Blue Santa.”
Way to go, APD.
Also interesting: the “board” (or the former board, depending on how you look at it) is remaining silent. One former president, and the guy who set up the organization’s PayPal account, “declined through his lawyer to comment due to the ongoing investigation.” A second former president, who allegedly brought Shon Washington into the organization, also declined to comment.
“Like a dolphin into a tuna net.” I cannot lie: I live for analogies like that.
(Previously. Previously.)
This is intended to enrage you. (#4 in a series)
January 5th, 2013What we do instead of doing something:
…
And:
Time to make some phone calls Monday morning.
Edited to add: Giving this some more thought, Charles Harris of Storied Firearms (who is quoted in the article) deserves some praise. He could easily have thrown the gun shows under the bus. After all, that’d drive business to his place. But no.
If you live in the greater Austin area, why not stop by Storied Firearms and pick up a little something? I visit there fairly regularly and find it to be a very nice shop. If you’re not in the Austin area, but support gun rights, there’s a contact form on their website that you could use to send a “thank you” to Mr. Harris.
The steer, the stall, the shade, the duke man, and the dip.
January 4th, 2013Picked this up from Insta, but I don’t care that he already linked it; this is one of those stories.
People who have been reading this blog regularly know that I’m fascinated by magic and the history of magic. You know that my admiration for Penn and Teller is like the universe itself; finite but unbounded.
Penn and Teller are only in this story as sort of peripheral figures, but I commend it to your attention: a New Yorker profile of Apollo Robins, the world’s greatest pickpocket.
Part of what makes this story so interesting to me, other than the magic angle, is that Robbins’ work, and the techniques he’s developed, reveal really interesting things about the mind and human perception.
This is the best thing I’ve read so far in 2013. It may be the best magazine article of the year; I expect it to be in contention if we’re all still here in December.
We must stop the killer Italian cars!
January 4th, 2013Nobody needs a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store! We have to do something about these killer assault cars! Two deaths this week! And that’s just in California!
Skulls for the skull throne!
January 4th, 2013Hey, remember Bloody Monday? Wasn’t that a time?
Remember how the Kansas City Chiefs fired Romeo Crennel as head coach, but didn’t fire Scott Pioli as general manager?
Well, about that…
And this is sportsfirings.com, not sportshirings.com, but we have to add this note:
The move clears the way for the Chiefs to hire…
Important safety tip. (#13 in a series)
January 4th, 2013For God’s sake, people, you’re adults. Act like it.
“Egging” someone’s house as a “prank” is just dumb.
Especially if that someone is your boss.
And especially if you’re a cop.
Resolved.
January 4th, 2013I think Calvin has the right idea.
But I was puttering around in the kitchen yesterday, putting together a loaf of sourdough beer bread, and a couple of thoughts occurred to me.
- There’s something kind of magical in the transformation of water, flour, and yeast to bread. I know some of the science, but it still kind of amazes me when I dump a bunch of stuff in one end, and get something I can eat (that tastes good!) out of the other.
- I have a really nice bread machine
that I haven’t been using as much as I should. I need to step that up, and I’ve already started working in that direction.
- I’ve been working through, or plan to start working through, several cookbooks: primarily Bread Machine Baking
, though I want to try adapting some of the ones from Breads from the La Brea Bakery
to bread machine use. Laurence Simon has some recipes on his site that I’d like to try as well.
- I’ve also been improvising some breads. For example, on Sunday I made a basic white bread from the cookbook that came with the machine, but I added a tablespoon of Penzeys Italian Herb mix and 1/2 cup of grated parmesan. It came out okay, but a little salty for my taste. (A major reason it came out that way is that I misread the recipe and added too much salt. If I had put in the correct amount, I think it would have been better, even with the added salt from the cheese.)
- But I haven’t been documenting the recipes I’ve tried, or my improvisations.
So I’m going to start keeping a bread journal of what I bake, where it came from, what changes/improvisations I’ve made, and how it came out.
I’m just using a simple notebook for this right now. But I’m thinking about posting these as regular entries (maybe once a week; as a single guy, a loaf a week is about what I go through) on a blog. Probably here; I thought about doing this on the SDC blog, but that’s more restaurant targeted than food in general. I don’t see that fitting in with the shared vision Lawrence and I have for that blog.
Would folks be interested in this? I don’t think there’s any danger of me turning into a foodie d’bag: TJIC would probably…well, maybe not sneer, but at least say something to me for using a bread machine rather than mixing and kneading by hand, for starters.
I’d also like to get some feedback on what I might be doing wrong. The sourdough beer bread tastes pretty good and has just about the right texture for my taste, but the top crust came out cracked and uneven. (The basic white bread+ I made came out distorted: one end rose to a normal level, but the other end just barely rose at all. I blame that on the salt problem. It was also pretty dense, but again, the salt problem, plus I kind of expect cheese breads to be dense.)
How about it, folks? Feel free to leave comments.
(I haven’t said this in a while, so let me drop this in here: if you buy stuff from Amazon using the links above or the search box to the side, I get a small kickback which I could use right now. Just saying; no obligation to buy.)
(Oh, and speaking of magic/science, I’ve started reading Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
(Note to self: look for good kitchen scale when out thrift-shopping again.)
(Note to self 2: they’re really not that much on Amazon
Random notes: January 4, 2013.
January 4th, 2013It looks like this is going to be a NYT heavy day. I apologize, but I go where the interesting stuff is.
This is a no-snark story. Even though I think the main idea is well known, and gets repeated by the NYT every few years, I still think it is worth noting,
According to the NYT, operators expect an average of one death per week. (There were 55 in 2012, and the system has already had the first death of 2013.)
“I was always seeing it, you know?” Ms. Moore, 45, from Staten Island, said. “I see him alive and….”
Also in the NYT, an interesting article about the investigation into the Indianapolis gas explosion.
I’ve heard more than once that family photos being missing, or obviously taken out of the house before the event, is a significant clue to investigators that they might be dealing with arson or some other deliberate act. But as we shift towards digital photos and storage in the cloud, how long is that going to remain a useful clue?
Conveniently, the people who owned the house were “at a casino 100 miles away”, their daughter was spending the night with friends, and they had boarded their cat.
This came to me by way of the NYT: I’m linking to the AZCentral web site, but both have about the same amount of detail. The jury in the trial of Erick Venola deadlocked on the second-degree murder charges against him. Mr. Venola is expected to be retried in late February; he was pleading self-defense in the shooting of his neighbor, James Patrick O’Neill.
Why is this worth noting? I don’t note every mistrial in Arizona. True that, but: Mr. Venola was a former editor of “Guns and Ammo” magazine, and I’ve seen absolutely no mention of this in the gun blog sphere (or anywhere else) before now. It may be that Mr. Venola is not exactly a sympathetic defendant: the prosecution claims he and Mr. O’Neill were both drunk at the time of the shooting.
Interesting set of stats from the NYT, by way of Jimbo: Arthur O. Sulzberger’s obit in the NYT was the fourth longest in the past 30 years. The top five: