Random notes: September 6, 2013.

September 6th, 2013

How long is forever?

If you bought a memorial stone at the former Crystal Cathedral, forever ends soon:

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, which bought the enormous glass and steel church last year, has begun ripping out the memorial stones as it begins major renovations to modernize the campus and convert the nondenominational megachurch to a Catholic place of worship. Over the next several years, most of the 1,800 stones will be removed, diocese officials said, and there are no plans to reinstall them. Instead, digital photos of the stones are now on display at a diocese-sponsored Web site.

By the way, Robert Schuller has been diagnosed with cancer.

There’s a new update in the case of Bruce Malkenhorst, former city administrator of the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon: the California legislature is considering a new bill…

Under the bill, to be introduced Friday, executives convicted of felonies could appeal the reduction of retirement benefits only to the public retirement system that cuts the checks. They could sue that agency but not their former employer.
Cities would be responsible only for benefits approved by officials of the appropriate retirement system. In the case of Malkenhorst, that is CalPERS.

My first thought on this: aren’t we talking about an ex post facto law?

“They might be able to say, ‘You are a crook, so you are not entitled to that income in the first place,’ ” said Edward McCaffery, a USC professor of law, economics and political science. “But to do that by passing a law that cuts off his ability to sue the city — I think that looks like a retroactive messing with a contract,” he said.

A better argument comes later in the article:

“Malkenhorst’s contract is with CalPERS,” Reeves said. “They are the payor and he needs to sue them.”

I’ve written previously about Louis Scarcella, the former NYPD detective whose cases are being re-investigated. The NYT asks a fair question: where were the prosecutors when all this was going on?

Answer: la la la la I can’t hear you…

But even some of those who were suspicious of Mr. Scarcella acknowledged that they mostly kept their concerns to themselves, saying that his ability to clear cases had made him popular with the bosses.
“Some prosecutors were leery; they didn’t trust it,” said one former investigator, who did not want to be identified publicly while criticizing his former supervisors. “He was one of the best detectives in the city. He’s turning over all these cases, and the bosses loved him. You’re going to go to the boss and say, ‘This doesn’t look right’?’”

More:

Jeffrey I. Ginsberg, a former assistant district attorney who also prosecuted two of the convictions under review, said the cases might look bad in retrospect, but they needed to be considered in the context of the 1980s and ’90s, when the crack epidemic was helping fuel a crime wave.
“The witnesses often came in orange jumpsuits,” said Mr. Ginsberg, referring to the outfit worn by inmates. “I was not afraid to go to trial on a weak case. I was not afraid to lose. I was not lying and cheating to get a conviction.”

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

The economics of selling hot dogs.

September 5th, 2013

And other things, at least in NYC. Have you ever wondered about those pushcarts?

The guy who owns the cart at the entrance to the Central Park Zoo (“Fifth Avenue and East 62nd Street”) pays $289,500 a year to the city parks department.

The zoo entrance drew the highest bid among the 150 pushcart sites in public parks, but the operators of four other carts in and around Central Park also pay the city more than $200,000 a year each. In fact, the 20 highest license fees, each exceeding $100,000, are all for Central Park carts.

Can you make money doing this? Apparently so: “…while vendors are adamant about not divulging details about what they make, most pushcart sites presumably turn a profit or they would not attract such high bids.”

More:

A decade ago, the fee paid for the pushcart at the Central Park Zoo entrance was $120,000, less than half what Mr. Mastafa paid most recently. The second most expensive cart is on the West Drive at West 67th Street near Tavern on the Green, where the fee is $266,850.
For many other parks, especially those in parks outside Manhattan, the fees are much lower — $14,000 in Astoria Park in Queens, $3,200 in Maria Hernandez Park in Brooklyn and $1,100 in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. The lowest fee, $700, is paid by the owner of a pushcart near the soccer fields in Inwood Hill Park in Upper Manhattan.

The biggest selling item? Apparently, $3 bottled water. That sounds surprisingly reasonable for NYC, but:

Maximum prices for snacks and beverages are set by the department.

Posted in Clippings, Economics, Food | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 4, 2013.

September 4th, 2013

Frederik Pohl: a nice long obit in the NYT. LAT/AP.

(Edited to add: A/V Club, which I really didn’t expect. And it isn’t up to their usual standard.)

(Edited to add 2: Patterico.)

Also: Ronald Coase, winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. LAT.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Economics, Obits | Comments Closed

Toes in the water.

September 3rd, 2013

Sorry about the short blogging quasi-hiatus there.

After work on Friday, I drove down to San Antonio for LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention. It was a swell time. I got to hang out with several friends, including Mike the Musicologist, Andrew the Colossus of Roads, RoadRich, and Lawrence, who was doing a land office business in books. (Who says people don’t read any more? I covered the table for him a little bit, and by Ghu the books were flying off the table like snow crab legs at an all you can eat Chinese buffet.)

I haven’t been down to San Antonio for reasons other than medical for years, and hadn’t been on the RiverWalk since LoneStarCon2. I’d forgotten how nice the RiverWalk is, even though the vendors make things a bit crowded. (I don’t remember there being as many sidewalk vendors there last time I was down. But I’m getting old, and memory fades.)

Mike the Musicologist did most of the meal planning. Breakfast for two out of three of the days we were there was in the Marriott Rivercenter, mostly for reasons of timing. However, it is a pretty good buffet; I’d go so far as to say, with the custom omelets and made-to-order waffles, it comes close to being worth $20+tax and tip. Especially since I really didn’t see any breakfast places near the hotels or along the Riverwalk. (McDonalds and Whataburger excepted. There was also a Denny’s across the street from the Rivercenter; but literally the first thing I heard when I got to the hotel was that a mutual acquaintance of ours got food poisoning from the Denny’s bacon.)

The one non-Marriott breakfast was at the Magnolia Pancake Haus on Embassy Oaks, which was packed to the gills. We waited 40 minutes for a table, but the Munchener Apfel Pfannekuchen was worth it. I’d love to go back (and maybe try the wild mushroom hash) but I’d make sure I brought a good book.

(At some point in the near future, I want to do a post on how tablets, and especially the iPad, are transforming the restaurant industry, with Magnolia being one of my examples.)

We also had an excellent meal at Moroccan Bites (I loved the lamb shank and the chicken bites) and a pretty good meal at a place called Charlie Wants a Burger. (I had the pulled pork sandwich. And wings.) Sunday night we went to Fogo de Chao…which, you know, is Fogo de Chao. If you want huge amounts of roasted meat, you know what you’re getting into. For reasons I won’t discuss here (think Tim Cahill’s rule #6, corollary 1), I just had the salad bar. Which is actually a reasonable thing to do at Fogo de Chao (especially since you also get to eat the fried polenta, bananas, and cheese rolls), and I didn’t feel ripped off at $22.50. (I did feel gouged by the $3.25 iced tea. Note to self: water next time.)

(If you think you detected a trend, you may be right: Moroccan Bites and Magnolia have both been on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Guy Fieri may have problems running a place of his own, but as far as recommendations go, he’s batting 100% with me.)

Oddly enough, I bought more t-shirts (three) than I did books (two). Of course, one of those shirts is a gift for my brother. And one of those shirts I don’t actually have yet (they’re shipping it). And one of those books I bought mostly so I could support my friends. (I would have bought more books, but nobody had any Robert Frezza. “The Whistling Pig” was the theme to my last few months at 4LCC.)

I do want to say a few words about the best thing that happened at the convention. I don’t like bragging about famous people I know, mostly because I’m always afraid someone will ask them about me and they’ll say “Dwight who?” (Or, if they’re talking to Gardner Dozois, “That a–hole Dwight?!”)

(If you’ve never met Gardner in person, let’s just say he has a puckish sense of humor.)

But I digress. The best thing that happened at the convention is that one of my closest friends in the world won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. That put the cap on a pretty swell weekend.

Congrats, again, Pat.

Posted in Admin, Apple, Books, Clothing, Food, Geek, Shirts | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 3, 2013.

September 3rd, 2013

There are some things you can always count on as the seasons change:

Now that we’ve nodded in the general direction of the eternal verities of the universe, let’s get started after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Neuroscience, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 3, 2013.

September 3rd, 2013

Several sources, including SF Signal, are reporting the death yesterday of noted SF writer Frederik Pohl. I hope to have more on this later.

Paul Poberezny, founder of the Experimental Aircraft Association, passed away on August 22nd, though the NYT didn’t get around to mentioning it until today. He was 91 years old, and his life “spanned more than 70 years of flight at the controls of more than 500 different types of aircraft“.

Damn. What a ride.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 1, 2013.

September 1st, 2013

Harris County DA Mike Anderson.

I don’t have any thoughts about how this is going to play out. I’m out of town, WiFi is catch as catch can, and I’m blogging from the Kindle. Check in tomorrow or Tuesday.

David Frost, of Nixon interview fame.

Posted in Clippings, HCDA, Law, Nixon, Obits | Comments Closed

Quote(s) of the day.

August 30th, 2013

I probably would have posted these even if Lawrence hadn’t done a quote of the day, because: Derek Lowe! More “Things I Won’t Work With“!

But I can’t decide which one I like more:

Explosions are definitely underappreciated as a mixing technique…

Or:

The hyenas will have to remain unspayed, because it’s time to add fresh azide to the horrible mercury prep.

“Spaying hyenas” has so many possible uses.

“How was work today, honey?”
“Spaying hyenas.”

(“Spaying Hyenas” is also the name of my next band. We do Daft Punk covers.)

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Geek | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: August 30, 2013.

August 30th, 2013

About a month ago, I noted the case of Bruce Malkenhorst, former city administrator of the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon (later convicted of misappropriation of public funds) who was suing Vernon for the difference between the pension Vernon said they’d give him and the actual pension that he was given by the state.

Vernon has taken the gloves off. You see, back in 2002 or thereabouts, people were starting to become suspicious of Malkenhorst. The LAT was tailing him:

Although time sheets routinely showed Malkenhorst working between 40 and 52 hours a week, he sometimes kept a far more abbreviated schedule at City Hall.

And the city attorney at the time, Eduardo Olivo, started investigating Malkenhorst as well.

In the report, Olivo wrote that the city reimbursed Malkenhorst for golfing, including participation in the Bob Hope Classic. The report also alleged that the city reimbursed him for $21,000 in property taxes he paid on land he owned in Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles counties.

There’s more. The full report ran to 85 pages. And of course the city responded by firing Malkenhorst.

Wait, did I say Malkenhorst? I meant Olivo, the city attorney that prepared the report. They also sued Olivo for “breach of contract”. And Vernon has gone to great efforts to keep the report and supporting data secret:

Greg Tsujiuchi, a former assistant to the city administrator, told a district attorney’s investigator about a particularly bizarre instance in which Fresch insisted that he burn magnetic tapes that were an important backup for original hard copies of city records.
Tsujiuchi said he took the tapes to one of Vernon’s fire stations and had baffled firefighters set them ablaze. He regretted doing so and told Olivo, who told Tsujiuchi about the report. Not long afterward, Tsujiuchi resigned.

“Fresch” is Eric T. Fresch, who replaced Olivo as city attorney, and later replaced Malkenhorst as city administrator. By the way, Fresch died last year.

Anyway, the gist of the story is: now that Malkenhorst is suing, all of the sudden, the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon is being very open about Olivo’s report, even providing copies of it to the LAT. I wish the paper would post the whole report as a PDF, but you can’t have everything. Otherwise, where would you put it?

(Side note: no change of venue for Robert “Ratso” Rizzo.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Pete and Repeat.

August 30th, 2013

I’ve quoted these lines from Ian Frazier’s On the Rez before. For reasons I can’t really explain, they have a special resonance for me. It seems appropriate to quote them again now.

If I had a film of SuAnne at Lead (as far as I know, no such film exists) I would study it in slow motion frame by frame. There’s a magic in what she did, along with the promise that public acts of courage are still alive out there somewhere. Mostly, I would run the film of SuAnne again and again for my own braveheart song. I refer to her, as I do to Crazy Horse, for proof that it’s a public service to be brave.

It’s a public service to be brave. Even if you don’t believe you are.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

DEFCON 21 updates in my pocket like grains of sand: August 30, 2013.

August 30th, 2013

Posted in DEFCON 21 | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: August 27, 2013.

August 28th, 2013

This week’s TMQ, after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Food, Music, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#39 in a series)

August 27th, 2013

I have written previously about the performance artist Marina Abramovic.

I was not aware of this, but she had a Kickstarter campaign going. She was trying to raise $600,000 for a “long durational” performance art center.

Well, she did it. She raised $661,452 from 4,765 backers.

And she’s promised every one of them (yes, even the $1 backers) a hug.

Marina will personally thank all those who contribute to the creation of MAI by hugging every backer of this Kickstarter at a live event called THE EMBRACE. This event will be held in two undisclosed locations, one in New York City and one in Europe, with exact dates and times to be announced. MAI Founders who are unable to attend these events will be offered a special reward in lieu of a hug from Marina.

And if you’ve ever wanted to see a performance artist tell a light bulb joke, go here.

Posted in Art, Clippings | Comments Closed

Random notes: August 27, 2013.

August 27th, 2013

Back in July, I noted the rhythmic gymnastics scandal. There’s a new development:

The governing body for rhythmic gymnastics has cleared dozens of judges who were suspected of cheating on qualifying tests last year, despite an investigation that concluded some of the test scores “could only have occurred by cheating.”

More updates, this time on “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”. It took in $966,952 last week. This is not good, as the cost of running the show is over $1 million a week.

The producers have also been optimistic about earning back the show’s $75 million capitalization, but that feat would require weekly box office grosses in the $1.5 million range for several years.

Only the police should have guns department:

An apparent booze-fueled dispute over loud music between two groups at a Chino campground over the weekend escalated to the point where men from both sides drew guns and opened fire.

There were no deaths or injuries, as both sides “did not fire at each other, he said, but into the air”. Of course, what goes up must come down, somewhere…

It turns out that the rival gun-toting campers were both Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Sports, Theatre | Comments Closed

Photography is not a crime.

August 27th, 2013

But official misconduct and filing false records are.

A New York City police officer who had arrested a photographer working for The New York Times has been indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors accusing him of fabricating the reasons for the arrest, the Bronx district attorney announced on Monday.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Photography | Comments Closed

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