Obit watch: former LAPD chief Daryl F. Gates.
Plus: Invisible Siegfrieds.
Edited to add: And thanks to the Chron for reminding me that the Texas City disaster was 63 years ago today.
Random notes: April 16, 2010.
April 16th, 2010Random notes: April 15, 2010.
April 15th, 2010Happy National Buy a Gun Day. I usually extend this out to the weekend, just because it is almost impossible to get out to the gun stores during the workweek.
Lawrence suggested I blog this: guy gets 20 years in prison for selling community service hours to people on probation. The coke they found in his pocket didn’t help much, either: he got 15 years for that. (The Chron doesn’t say if the sentence runs consecutively or concurrently.)
The Astros are now 0-8. I was holding out on blogging again until they reached 0-10 (if that happened) but noting the Astros record gives me an excuse to link to this article about the 1983 team, which started out 0-9.
Edited to add 2: Darn, they finally won a game. At 1-8, that puts their winning percentage at .111, which projects out to 17.982 games over the 162 game season.
Edited to add: Tragic news out of Louisana. Production on “Steven Seagal: Lawman” has been shut down. Apparently, the sex slave charges are just too much of a distraction for the department.
Flash! (A-ah!) Savior of the universe!
April 13th, 2010Lawrence pointed me to this article over at /dev/why!?! about possible reasons why Apple doesn’t want to support Flash on the iPhone.
Meanwhile, Sebastian has a good post up on the NRA’s crappy Flash-heavy website.
And Other Brian sent me a link to this Downfall parody.
Consumer tip.
April 13th, 2010The UT Students for Concealed Carry on Campus are offering a CHL class this Saturday, April 17th.
The cost is $45, including your DPS packet, gun and ammo, range fee, notary, photo, fingerprints, and lunch.
I support and endorse KR Training; I encourage everyone to take classes from them, especially concealed carry classes. However, I realize some people are cost sensitive, so I’m passing this information along. I don’t know anything about the classes or instruction beyond what’s on the website, and you should contact them with questions.
(Hattip: Howard Nemerov.)
Edited to add: Digging a little deeper into the registration page, it looks like this offer is only open to UT facility or UT students, not the general public. (It isn’t clear to me if it also applies to non-facility staff.)
Pullet surprise.
April 12th, 2010The 2010 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today. Jimbo has a good list, with links.
I’m not as obsessed with the Pulitzers as I was in a past life, but I do want to single out two from this year that I think are particularly noteworthy.
The Pulitzer board, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give a special citation to Hank Williams
for his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.
Now, I like Hank, and I can’t argue too much with this decision. But to steal a line from Lawrence, “Fat lot of good that does him now.”
The other prize I think is noteworthy is Gene Weingarten’s prize in the Feature Writing category. I have a complicated relationship with Weingarten and his writing. He’s sort of the WP answer to Dave Barry, the go-to guy for funny skewed humor (Barry and Weingarten are close friends). I used to read him pretty regularly, until he made a statement in one of his online chats that I found completely stupid and unforgivable. After that, I tried to quit him cold turkey.
The problem is, Weingarten isn’t just a funny humor guy. Sometimes, he writes stuff that tears your heart out. In 2008, he won the Pulitzer for a story in which he had the great classical violinist Josh Bell play in a subway station, and wrote about the reactions of commuters. That’s not even one of his best works. In 2005, he talked the WP into sending him and a photographer to the small Alaskan village of Savoonga, which is about as far away from everything as you can get. Weingarten figured he’d get a funny cover story out of the deal. What he got was a cover story; a sad and heartbreaking cover story about a remote community that turns out beautiful works of art, and that’s being devastated by alcohol.
The story he won for this year is just as good, and even more devastating; a piece about the grief and agony of parents who accidentally leave their kids in cars. It raises fundamental questions about what justice means in cases like this, and how these incidents might be prevented. Weingarten’s story represents journalism at its best.
Also, Sheri Fink’s story about one hospital during Katrina (which I noted back in September) shared a Pulitzer for investigative reporting with the Philadelphia Daily News. Interestingly, Fink’s story was moved out of the feature writing category into investigative reporting by the board.
Edited to add: The Reason “Hit and Run” discussion of Mark Fiore’s Pulitzer for editorial cartooning is amusing to follow.
Um, seriously, this guy got a Pulitzer and Homestar Runner didn’t?
Edited to add 2: Weingarten’s post-win chat session on the WP website. Radley Balko approves.
Random notes: April 11, 2010.
April 11th, 2010This weekend has been rather busy, so I’m a little behind in blogging.
Friday was the annual barbecue roadtrip, in which a group of us rent a nice car and drive out into the Hill Country in search of barbecue.
After the jump, photos and commentary from the roadtrip, as well as the Texas Linux Fest:
Random notes and followups: April 8, 2010.
April 8th, 2010The NYT finally got around to publishing an obit for “Coots” Matthews.
Also among the dead: Morris Jeppson, one of the two men who armed the atomic bomb on board the Enola Gay.
By the way, “new” copies of The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back
Here’s the Statesman summary of the first day of the Billy Joe Shaver trial. It is hard to judge from just the prosecution’s side of the case, but I’m not thinking it looks good for Mr. Shaver; all the testimony so far is from people stating the shooting was unprovoked.
Edited to add: The LAT is reporting the death of Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols.
SDC update.
April 7th, 2010February 2010 added.
I shot a man in Lorena, just to watch him die…
April 7th, 2010The aggravated assault trial of musician Billy Joe Shaver began today.
Shaver is accused of shooting a man outside a roadhouse in Lorena, near Waco.
“Until yesterday, I didn’t know who you are, and I couldn’t care less,” one female prospective juror told Shaver while being questioned by prosecutor Mark Parker.
“Ditto,” said Shaver, who has been called the poet laureate of Texas music and has penned tunes such as “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train” and “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal.”
It amuses me that Mr. Shaver and Willie Nelson are scheduled to play at my parent’s church on April 25th. (I’m not going. The cheapest ticket is $30.50 including service charges.)
Noted.
April 6th, 2010While browsing Wikipedia for unrelated reasons, I discovered that today is the 40th anniversary of the Newhall incident, which was a contributing factor in the start of the officer survival movement.
Ayoob’s summary of the incident doesn’t seem to be available online, but can be found in Ayoob Files: The Book
Edited to add: Obit watch: Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Mankiller met snide remarks about her surname — a Cherokee military title — with humor, often delivering a straight-faced, “Mankiller is actually a well-earned nickname.”
Obligatory baseball post.
April 6th, 2010Yesterday’s HouChron had an article (that I can’t find now Here we go.) stating that the Astros will win 81 games. As Lawrence put it, “Where can I bet the ‘under’ line on that prediction?”
Here’s the line on the Astros this season.
Meanwhile, the Astros lost the first game of the season at Minute Maid Park. The bad thing about this is the Astros won’t be able to sell beer at the games this year…because they lost the opener.
(Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Try the veal, and remember to tip your waitress.)
(And the Cubs lost to the Braves: 16-5. I’m still optimistic, even though FARK claims the Cubs have been mathematically eliminated.
Edited to add: I was kidding when I posted that comment, but now…)
“I’ve got blisters on my fingers!”
April 4th, 2010…”Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,” he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.”
—James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
Back when I was a teenager in the suburbs of Houston and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I would practice “practical shooting” in my back yard. I’d spend a hour a day, two or three days a week, practicing drawing from a holster and trying to hit shotgun shells from 25 feet away. These were the glory days of the Second Chance matches
I hadn’t met Karl yet, so my ambition was to be as fast as Jeff Cooper. Or as fast as this guy:
(The curly haired guy with the shotgun is Jim Zubiena, actor and IPSC shooter. That’s not visual trickery; the fast draw is for real. And, yes, I was out of high school by the time Miami Vice came on the air. What of it?)
Anyway, stuff happens. I didn’t get my first pistol until November 7, 2000. (I remember that date for a reason.) And I didn’t shoot a formal sanctioned match until this past Saturday.
The gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
April 2nd, 2010The NYT “At War” blog gives a rundown of some reasons why the Taliban are poor rifle shots.
Short summary:
- Poor fundamentals.
- Excessive use of full-auto fire. (Timeless wisdom: “Aim low and keep your bursts short.”)
- Weapons in crappy condition.
- Ammo in crappy condition.
- Bad and uncorrected vision.
- Limited training.
(Hattip: Say Uncle.)
Food and drink notes: April 2, 2010.
April 2nd, 2010There’s a interesting article in the LAT about why everyone hates Alice Waters. I exaggerate a bit, but there does seem to be substantial and increasing animosity to Ms. Waters.
The Caitlin Flanagan article in the Atlantic can be found here.
My own feelings about Ms. Waters and her movement are…complex, and I haven’t sorted all the way through them yet. But I do want to pull this quote for comment:
…she takes a dim view of In-N-Out, though it touts fresh ingredients and hand-cut French fries. “It’s probably better than any other chain,” she said, “but it’s not real or authentic. I’d rather eat from a street vendor in Sicily.”
- What does she mean by “real or authentic” in this case? What is the thing that she feels In-N-Out is trying, and failing, to replicate?
- My response to the “authentic” complaint is to quote Calvin Trillin in American Fried
:
When a reviewer starts explaining how the preparation of a quiche Lorraine at the restaurant he has visited differs from the way one prepares a true quiche Lorraine, I always want to interrupt. “But did you like it?” I want to shout. “Did it make you happy? Did you clean your plate?” Any chance that I might someday acquire a serious interest in how closely what I ate resembled the true article disappeared one day at a block party near our house while I was eating some homemade gazpacho and talking about how it differed from the authentic gazpacho one got in Seville. The more I talked about the difference, the faster I wolfed down the gazpacho—until I realized that one way what I was eating differed from authentic gazpacho was that it tasted better.
Lawrence suggested that I might want to link to this Reason piece on the cocktail crackdown.
The makers of Tito’s Handmade Vodka have taken a plea in their pollution case.
Obit watch: April 2, 2010.
April 2nd, 2010Matthews worked closely with the legendary Paul “Red” Adair and Asger “Boots” Hansen in the oil well firefighting industry. Matthews and Hansen later left Adair and founded the Boots and Coots well control firm.
…Adair, Matthews and Hansen worked some of the industry’s most notorious blowouts, including a fire in Algeria in 1961 known as the “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter.” Experts thought the fire, which billowed 450 feet in the air, would take years to extinguish. They did the job in just a few weeks.
Edited to add: John Forsythe. The LAT fails to mention his lead role in “Kitten With a Whip“, which Joe Bob Briggs argues is a vastly under-appreciated film. (If you haven’t read them yet, let me recommend Profoundly Erotic: Sexy Movies that Changed History
