You gotta fight…for your right…to declare bankruptcy.
The strange story of David Webb, fake DEA agent. Doug Swanson
Stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.
May 30th, 2012Random observation.
May 30th, 2012At least 90% of the time (if not more), when someone tells me “you shouldn’t burn bridges”, that person has just finished pouring gasoline all over the structure in question, and is now standing in the middle of the bridge flicking their Zippo.
Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
May 30th, 2012I don’t want to mock the death of Mack Wolford. I was not raised in the Pentecostal snake-handling tradition, nor does it fit in with my personal religious beliefs. (As I recall, there is a Bible verse that says something to the effect of “Don’t test God.”) But I do respect folks who have those beliefs and act on them; I don’t think they are crazy, but are trying to relate to God in their own way, and more power to them.
However, I do think his death is worth noting, not just for the odd factor, but also because it gives me a chance to talk about Jeremy Seal’s The Snakebite Survivors’ Club: Travels Among Serpents
This had the potential to be an interesting book, and about half of it is. The chapters on snake hunting and snake bite survivor hunting in Africa and Australia are quite good. Unfortunately, his chapters set in India seem oddly disengaged from the rest of the book; I’m not sure why, but they don’t seem to fit.
And while he has an interesting story to tell as his through line through the chapters in America (backsliding snake-handling minister decides to end his marriage through rattlesnake; unfortunately, his wife survived her bites, and he’s doing time), he has a typically British condescending attitude towards America (and especially the American South) that I found annoying.
If you find a copy of this for $3 or less, I think you might get that much entertainment out of it. Otherwise, I’d suggest skipping it. I haven’t read it, but this Whit Gibbons
Edited to add: Added a link to a review of Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
Obit watch: May 30, 2012.
May 30th, 2012Leo Dillon. Leo and his wife Diane won two Caldecott medals back to back for their work as illustrators. They also worked on many SF books during the “New Wave” era, including doing illustrations for many of Harlan Ellison’s works.
“You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!” watch.
May 30th, 2012I thought I’d start a thread covering results of last night’s primaries. Specifically, the ones that amuse me.
To start (hattip Lawrence) Harris County DA Pat Lykos, who you may remember from such hits as the BAT vans and the grand jury investigation, lost the primary election to Mike Anderson.
(If you don’t remember Ms. Lykos and her antics, the “HCDA” tag will provide you with a summary.)
I am getting a slow start to the morning, so watch this space for possible updates as I wade through the coverage.
Edited to add: I did not know this, but the winner of the Democratic primary election for HCDA was “once indicted for illegal lawyering”. To which I say: Huh?
ETA2: “In 2010, he ran as a Democrat while under indictment for barratry, a charge that later was dropped.” Ah, barratry.
Insert Monty Python reference here.
May 29th, 2012…
The 6-year-old was “severely stomped on the arm and had hoof marks on her back,” Parker said.
The 6-year-old’s sister was also slightly injured when the moose knocked over a piece of “playground equipment”.
Barbecue watch.
May 27th, 2012Grandy at Popehat observed a week or so ago, in response to an observation of mine about Southern Living‘s “Top Ten Pitmasters” piece, “Because people like BBQ.”
In that vein, I wanted to point out the lengthy Statesman profile of John Mueller, grandson of the legendary Louie Mueller. This is pretty much your standard “scion leaves the family business, strikes out on his own, struggles for a while, and starts making a comeback” story. Also, a considerable amount of this story was already covered in Texas Monthly’s “Of Meat and Men” (which also covers the story of Aaron Franklin of Franklin’s Barbecue), but I think both articles are worth reading. Ideally, with about a pound of good brisket and maybe some sausage and beef ribs.
(I checked BugMeNot: the “tx@bugmenot.com”, “texas” user ID/password combo works fine.)
The butler did it.
May 26th, 2012No. Really. Even stranger, it was the pope’s butler.
Random notes: May 24, 2012.
May 24th, 2012Ever been to Niagara Falls? Did you take the boat tour? (I know we visited the falls when I was a child, and I’m pretty sure we took the boat tour, but I honestly do not remember very much about it.)
Those boats have been run by the same company, Maid of the Mist Corporation, since 1971. But now that company has lost the contract to run boat tours on the Canadian side of the falls. And this is a problem because they need a place to fuel and store their boats during the winter: the current site is on the Canadian side, and will be taken over by the new tour operators. There’s no easy place to put a new location on the New York side, at least not without going through a minimum of two years worth of environmental reviews, permitting, and construction.
Obit watch: noted author and critic Paul Fussell. I probably should have read The Great War and Modern Memory
Curious George and the bankruptcy lawyers.
May 21st, 2012Of all the books published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the history of the company, the LAT highlights the “Curious George” books?
1.21 gigawatts!
May 21st, 2012Last week, my great and good friend Chris sent me a link to this Oatmeal comic.
Now, I love Chris like a brother (especially since he and the lovely and talented Mrs. Chris took me out for a steak dinner last week as well, and thanks again, guys) but this comic bugged me for several reasons.
One that I pointed out to Chris is that “the only thing Edison truly pioneered was d’baggery” is wrong. Edison did a great deal of leading edge work on telegraph systems; the money to build Menlo Park came from that work. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet
Anyway, Chris is a great admirer of Telsa, and a great friend of mine, and I don’t like arguing with people who feed me, so I let sleeping dogs lie.
I was pretty surprised, though, when the Y Combinator newsfeed showed me this article from Forbes: “Nikola Tesla Wasn’t God And Thomas Edison Wasn’t The Devil”, which takes on the assertions in the Oatmeal comic and debunks many of them. Knapp’s comment “Because every narrative needs a villain, right?” particularly struck home with me, for reasons that have nothing to do with Edison and Tesla and everything to do with recent events in the blogosphere.
The Oatmeal has come back with a response to the Forbes article as well, should you care to follow the discussion that far down the rabbit hole.
Primary colors.
May 21st, 2012Over at Tam’s place, she asks the musical question: “What is a man’s favorite color for a gun?”
I thought I’d answer over here, since the comments there are kind of cluttered, and I want to see if there’s anyone out there that feels the same way I do.
Here’s the thing: I don’t like shiny guns. There’s a part of me that says I have tacticool ninja reasons for that: “O. M. G. The reflected sunlight off of my nickel plated Model 29 might give my position away!” But I think my reasons go deeper than that, though I can’t really articulate them beyond: shiny guns don’t look right to me.
That goes for stainless steel, too: I acknowledge the practicality of stainless, and can see good reasons for owning something like a Kit Gun in stainless. But it still doesn’t look right or feel right to me.
Make mine blued.
I think that has something to do with my upbringing. My dad didn’t own anything in nickel or stainless, I don’t think my grandfather on his side of the family did, and I want to say the same thing goes for at least one of my uncles on that side as well. I guess I didn’t grow up with an appreciation for shiny finishes, or with a practical need for stainless steel.
How about some of you other gun bloggers? If you’re a big nickel or stainless steel fan, do you think part of it may be your upbringing? Did you have a father or uncle or aunt who carried a nickel plated gun in the line of duty? Did you grow up on one of the coasts, or around water, where stainless steel was the most practical thing to own?
Art (Acevedo) damn it, Art! watch (#P of a series).
May 21st, 2012I apologize. I think I may have missed a firing or two along the way. I plead the pressures of various things and throw myself on the mercy of the court.
Today’s APD firing is a doozy.
Det. Richard Munoz worked in the burglary division. Apparently, back in December, someone brought up concerns about how he was handing their case. In the ensuing investigation:
- “Munoz told officials he had conducted an “interrogation” of a burglary suspect over the phone, but did not record it, and did not document other steps he had taken during his investigation, the memo said.”
- Munoz didn’t return calls from victims, didn’t properly document evidence, and didn’t follow up with witnesses.
- “During this investigation, Munoz said he was “running fast and loose doing investigations,” and also provided statements to officials that proved untrue when compared to statements from other officers, witnesses and documents on record, the memo said.”
Interestingly, former Det. Munoz (who can still appeal his firing) had been suspended six times since he started with APD (in 1995) and was actually fired in 2006 “for policy violations related to his honesty, use of force and documentation of incidents”. He was reinstated by an arbitrator, and suspended in 2008 for public intoxication. After that suspension, Chief Acevedo apparently told him “one more, and you’re out”.
Also:
Pardoning Porter.
May 18th, 2012Over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson has announced an interesting project: obtaining a pardon for William Sydney Porter, also known as “O. Henry”.
The project has a separate website: Pardon O. Henry.
I thought this blog entry, in particular, was interesting: Is it possible O. Henry was actually innocent? I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the short answer is that Porter was very probably a victim of shockingly poor banking practices and, had he not fled the country and returned, he probably would have walked. There’s an even more astonishing piece of information contained in Henson’s blog entry, but I encourage you to go read it for yourself.
Noted.
May 17th, 2012I can get Wired for a buck an issue if I use the blow-in cards that come with the print edition. (I can also frequently get Wired for a buck an issue if I purchase it at Half-Price Books.)
If I go to their website to subscribe, the combined print/tablet issue costs $1.67 an issue. The tablet or print issues by themselves cost $1.25 an issue.
If I get the Wired app
(Current print subscribers apparently get the content for free. Which means that it makes more sense to go to Wired‘s web site and subscribe than it does to do an in-app purchase: $15 vs. $19.99. It makes even more sense to subscribe using the cards, but then I have to deal with the print editions.)
Look, Conde Nasties, I’d be happy to subscribe to the Kindle edition of Wired. But I want at least as good a deal as you give on those blow-in cards. One dollar an issue or bust!