When seconds count.

February 18th, 2011

Two stories from the NYT that make for an interesting contrast.

Story #1 involves Anthony Spinelli, who owns a jewelry store on Arthur Avenue in NYC, and is the neighborhood hero of the moment. Why?

On Wednesday, Mr. Spinelli pulled one of two licensed guns in the store, and shot one of the three people suspected of trying to rob his Arthur Avenue jewelry store at gunpoint.

Yes, in NYC. Yes, a licensed gun.

However, Mr. Spinelli was given a summons on an administrative code violation related to the gun he fired; it was licensed in Westchester County, not in New York City.

Story number 2:

A Tucson firefighter refused to respond to the Jan. 8 shooting rampage that wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords because of political differences with his crew, delaying his unit’s arrival at the scene, according to internal department records.

To be clear about this: the gentleman’s unit wasn’t part of the first response, his unit was called out after all the victims had been transported, and the gentleman in question “retired after the rampage as department officials considered disciplinary action”. Here’s a better article from the Arizona Daily Star.

Edited to add: I was kind of hoping for this, so I’ve got to link it: a take on the Arizona story from the guy what drives the ‘bolance.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Miscellaneous stuff.

February 17th, 2011

I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I’ll be covering various topics. Short answer: probably not, if you haven’t seen it here. Longer answers:

Posted in Books, Clippings, GPS, Guns, Stupid | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: February 15, 2011.

February 16th, 2011

And so we’ve come to the end of our first season doing the TMQ Watch, with the final TMQ of this season: the annual bad predictions review.

No, we said the bad predictions review. After the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Guns, Neuroscience, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 1 Comment »

Loser note.

February 16th, 2011

I’ve not been covering the Cleveland Cavaliers for several reasons. One, I don’t much like basketball. Two, the Cavaliers fall is kind of painful for me. (I have family in the Cleveland area.) Three, I don’t much like basketball. Four, I’ve been kind of distracted by other things.

However, Lawrence pointed out this interesting SI article on the worst season-to-season declines in sports history, which covers not just the NBA, but also the NFL, MLB, and the NHL. There’s some surprising stuff in there; I didn’t realize the Houston Oilers dropped that much from 1993 to 1994, but I also really don’t remember the Cody Carlson/Billy Joe Tolliver era.

Posted in Clippings, Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Does the United States have an extradition treaty with Neptune?

February 16th, 2011

We have previously mentioned the odd case of Triton Financial.

Yesterday, the former head of Triton was indicted on charges of money laundering, wire fraud, and securities fraud.

If convicted of the most serious charges against him, Barton could face up to 30 years in prison.

(I love how the Statesman says he was indicted on “nearly three dozen criminal charges”. Because it’s too much trouble to provide an exact number, like 33.)

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Crankery.

February 16th, 2011

This doesn’t really count as “gun crankery”, though guns are somewhat involved.

This 37 Signals essay on the 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog in turn led me to this NYT piece (from 2008, but I hadn’t seen it before) on George Herter, with particular concentration on his book, “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices“.

Every now and then a copy of Bull Cook shows up at Half-Price Books; so far, I’ve managed to snap up two (one for myself, one as a gift). Collins has it right about what makes the book so fascinating; you’re reading along, and you come to an assertion such as the Virgin Mary’s fondness for creamed spinach, and you say to yourself, “What?”. (Herter was not a big fan of sourcing his material.)

I haven’t been able to obtain any of his other books: I’ve never seen How To Live With a B—-h (though here’s a review of it from someone who found a copy), and the one copy I’ve seen of Herter’s safari guide was priced too high for my tastes. Bull Cook seems to be the easiest Herter book to find; if you run across a copy, I’d recommend picking it up.

(Field and Stream also published a longer history of Herter sometime back; if I can find a working link to their profile, I’ll add it here.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Food, Guns | Comments Closed

Science!

February 15th, 2011

Three quick links that appeal to my somewhat geeky side. The first two are from Derek Lowe:

A recent case of thallium poisoning in Jersey.

Top 200 drugs (by various measures), in poster form from the University of Arizona. Including chemical structures (at least, for those “drugs” that have chemical structures: check out numbers #130 and #187 on this chart for examples of “drugs” that don’t): some of these structures, like Sevorane, are fascinating, while others like Xolair and Novoseven make you go “What the heck is that?”

Remember the berserk squid? LabRat over at the Atomic Nerds site picked up on that post, and offers an excellent dissection of the article, including some possible directions for additional research. Thanks, LabRat!

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Squid | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 15, 2011.

February 15th, 2011

David F. Friedman, film producer. You may remember him from such classic films as “Blood Feast”, “Two Thousand Maniacs”, “Trader Hornee”, and his masterpiece: “Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S.”.

Kenneth Mars, actor. You may remember him from the original version of “The Producers”. If not:

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Important safety tip. (#4 in a series)

February 14th, 2011

It has been said before, but apparently it needs to be said again.

Don’t put anything into an email that you would not want to see on the front page of your local newspaper.

This is especially true if your local newspaper is the LAT.

You may ask, what brings this on? I’m glad you did.

Remember Randy Adams? Former police chief of Glendale, California, who took a job as police chief of the city of Bell, at a much higher salary, while at the same time negotiating his disability pay from the city of Bell?

The LAT reprints some choice quotes from emails between Chief Adams and assistant city administrator Angela Spaccia. Quotes such as:

“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money”.

and

“LOL … well you can take your share of the pie … just like us!!! We will all get fat together … Bob [Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occassion … Pigs get Fat ….. Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So long as we’re not Hogs…All is well!?“

As the LAT notes, the “Bob” in the above quote is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator.

Speaking of Ratso, I meant to note this last week, but it got past me: Bell’s city clerk says that Ratso ordered her to give out false information about his salary, and the salaries of the city council members. Also worthy of note: the clerk testified under a grant of limited immunity. (“Use immunity”, which prevents the DA from using her testimony against her. That doesn’t mean she can’t be prosecuted if the DA finds evidence other than her testimony to use against her. I am not your lawyer, and neither is Wikipedia, but here’s a link that explains the difference between “use immunity” and “transactional immunity”.)

Edited to add: Slightly longer version of the story here.

Posted in Clippings, Politics, Safety | Comments Closed

Public service announcement #2.

February 14th, 2011

TXDOT states that they’re planning to close I-35 at Ben White Boulevard again the weekend of February 25th.

Does anyone have any first-hand reports from this weekend’s closure they’d care to post? I tried to stay as far away from I-35 as I could; I saw one report in the Statesman of 15-minute delays at that intersection, but someone close to WCD stated they’d heard the delay was more like an hour.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Roads | 1 Comment »

Quote of the day.

February 14th, 2011

“Hell yes. We have hundreds of people coming.”

—Danny Payne of III Forks, a steakhouse in downtown Austin, responding to the Statesman asking if he was going to be open tonight, after someone drove a car into the front entrance last night.

Posted in Beef, Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Failure analysis.

February 14th, 2011

I have previously written about my interest in failure and failure analysis, so I feel compelled to link to this fine example of failure analysis:

Kirk Bohls and Randy Riggs on why the Texas Longhorns went 5-7 last season.

Some key points of failure:

  • the team was consumed with a sense of entitlement.
  • they lacked talent (or “on-field competence” as the Statesman puts it), and over-estimated the talent of the players they’d brought in.
  • divisions within the coaching ranks.
  • a head coach who withdrew from daily coaching.

(Speaking of bad Longhorn seasons, the question came up over the weekend: “What’s John Mackovic doing these days?” The answer to that is…weird, and kind of contradictory. His Wikipedia entry says he’s the head coach of “United States national American football team”, which apparently competes in something called the “American Football World Cup”. However, the Wikipedia entry for the “United States national American football team” shows Mackovic as the head coach for the 2007 team, and Mel Tjeerdsma as the coach for the 2011 team.)

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Dear Sven Alstrom…

February 14th, 2011

…I live in Austin, Texas.

Spamming the comments in my blog with posts about your campaign for a City Commission seat in Lawrence, Kansas is a bad idea for the following reasons:

  1. I’m not going to vote for you, since I don’t live in Lawrence, Kansas.
  2. The vast majority of my readers aren’t going to vote for you, since they don’t live in Lawrence, Kansas.
  3. Any of my readers who do live in Lawrence, Kansas won’t vote for you anyway because you are a spamming scumbag. Let me repeat that: Sven Alstrom is a spamming scumbag.
  4. If you keep spamming my blog comments, I will be going to your ISP, Hostgator, and I will be asking them to shut your site down.
  5. Is there any word in what I just said that you have trouble understanding?

Hugs, kisses, and die in a fire Sven Alstrom you spamming scumbag. Sincerely, your friends at sportsfirings.com.

P.S. Strongly worded message follows.

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »

Notes on Lucky J’s Chicken and Waffles.

February 13th, 2011
Lucky J's menu.

Lucky J's menu.

I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I was going to do a review of Lucky J’s once I’d had a chance to eat there. Here you go:

  • This wasn’t what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.
  • The “2×2” is actually a pretty hefty plate of food for $9; two waffles and two large-ish pieces of fried chicken. In retrospect, the “1×1” or one of the tacos would have met my needs.
  • Not having coffee is a serious strike against any place I’d consider going for breakfast. The selection of non-coffee drinks didn’t impress me much, either.
  • I’m not a big fried chicken person, but I thought Lucky J’s chicken was pretty decent, with a dark, slightly peppery batter.
  • On the other hand, the waffles are a little thinner than I was expecting. I think I was looking for something more along the lines of a Belgian waffle, thick and with a slightly crackling crust, rather than the thinner waffles Lucky J’s serves.
  • Being “out of turkey” when half the sandwiches on your menu have turkey in them is a bad thing.
  • I could have lived without the loud 101x on the boombox in the dining room. Also, you damn kids need to get off my lawn.
  • There’s not a lot of seating, maybe four tables total. On the other hand, we were the only people there. (Except for one guy who got a to-go order, and one woman who walked in while we were eating, and walked back out after discovering the lack of turkey.)

Would I go back? I think I would, but they need a month or two or three to settle into a groove. It would help some if they had less of an Austin slacker vibe. I’d like to try some of the waffle tacos, but the lack of coffee and the weird 11 AM – 4 PM schedule are drawbacks for me.

Posted in Food | 2 Comments »

Hey! I resemble that remark!

February 11th, 2011

…trouble spots they are still apparently unaware of, despite the fact that even people in, say, Texas who haven’t actually seen the show could make light of them on their blog for months now.

Posted in Clippings, Music, Theatre | Comments Closed

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