Tommy Tuberville, head football coach at Texas Tech, is being sued for investment fraud:
The linked HouChron article doesn’t add much beyond that. As always, please keep in mind that these are just the plaintiff’s allegations in a law suit, and that there are two sides to any lawsuit. But this comes at a bad time for Tech, no matter what turns out to be true.
Lawrence has a pretty swell writeup on the Piper Alpha disaster. I’m a little surprised that NASA hasn’t covered that in their System Failure Case Studies series yet.
My sister’s latest post over at the Park City Snowmamas site: “8 Items To Pack In a First Aid Kit For Travel”. I think there’s some good stuff in there, even for non-skiers (you might want to think about throwing some of this stuff into a range bag, for example). However, I do have to throw the yellow flag and assess the standard 15-yard penalty for an over sharing violation. Unfortunately, I don’t make the rules; I’m just a neutral ref.
I’m sure folks have all sorts of questions, including: how do you move a 340-ton rock? The LAT story includes a nifty interactive graphic that shows how the transport works.
“shrink-wrapped for protection”? Protection from what? It’s a rock!
Other questions you may be wondering about: the total cost of the project, including the rock moving, is estimated at “up to $10 million” according to the LAT.
Other questions you may not be wondering about: the rock has a Twitter feed, and is currently following 235 people. That kind of sounds like a bad horror movie, doesn’t it? “I’m being followed by a 340-ton rock that’s moving at 5 MPH.”
I generally don’t blog recent book acquisitions. While doing so would probably give me fodder for at least one post every three days or so, most of what I purchase wouldn’t be of interest to other bloggers; I do buy some SF and mystery firsts, but not as many as other people I can name. Most of what I do buy is primarily of interest to me.
That being said, I did pick up a couple of books recently that might tickle the fancy (or the funny bones) of some folks; I’m thinking specifically of Lawrence and Tam here.
Yes, you are reading that correctly: the title of the book is They Were Murdered In France. This is a fairly old (1957) true crime book consisting of 15 vignettes involving British citizens who were….murdered in France. I haven’t started reading it yet (I just got it out of the PO Box) but judging from the jacket copy, it appears that Mr. Harry J. Greenwall did not have a high opinion of the French police, or of Interpol.
A few weeks ago, there was an interesting discussion over at Tam’s place about gun porn in adventure fiction. On the one hand, you have the guy carrying a generic revolver. On the other hand, you have Tam’s Jock Studright example. (Stephen Hunter falls in the “just right” position for me. For example, in Havana
Anyway, the two most notorious exemplars of the way over the top weapon description school of writing are Jerry Ahern in The Survivalist
The Executioner’s War Book
…and pretty much right in the middle, a catalog of Bolan’s weapons and equipment, including lovely line drawings of such things as his “War Wagon” and the scope-sighted Marlin 444 lever action, a paen to the AutoMag, exploded drawings of the M2 and the Uzi, and so on. This works out to about 45 pages of weapons porn in a 201 page book. I’ve never been a huge Bolan fan, but this was just so weird I had to pick it up.
We previously noted New York City’s “roll your own tobacco shops” which were not much more than a blatant attempt to get around cigarette taxes. (I thought I linked to this at the time, but I can’t find the link now; the shops reached a settlement with the city and closed down, last I heard.)
Well, now the Indian tribes have gotten into the act. You see, the tribes used to buy smokes wholesale from distributors and resell them, tax free. But the state of New York went to court, and got a ruling that requires the wholesalers to collect taxes.
Now the Indian tribes are making their own brands of cigarettes.
And there’s rent seeking:
There are two things that amuse me about the NYPD’s secret “Newark, New Jersey Demographics Report”:
Nothing to see here, just me being silly. And yes, it is true that I do my own stunts.
Barney Rosset, Grove Press publisher.
Rosset brought the court cases that allowed “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, “Tropic of Cancer”, and “Naked Lunch” to be published in the United States. He was also behind the distribution of “I Am Curious (Yellow)
Joe Bob Briggs’s write-up of “I Am Curious (Yellow)” in Profoundly Erotic: Sexy Movies that Changed History
And:
Sorry, folks. I had to go to the eye doctor this morning, so I’m getting off to a slow start.
In the latest Scott Henson news (previously) APD has released the video. You can find it at the Statesman‘s site, where it autoplays. (Idiots.)
I haven’t watched it yet, primarily because I got the full monty from my eye doctor, including the drops in my eyes. My pupils are now the size of Rhode Island; thank ghu for those silly sunglasses like things. In addition, work has me in a full-on “Hulk smash!” mode. More later. Maybe.
That would be the time I get to use my “On a stick” category.
Lots of things have snuck up on me in the past few weeks (wow, almost March already?), including the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
And with the rodeo comes rodeo food. The HouChron has a (warning! Slideshow!) 84 slide slideshow of food offerings (warning! Slideshow!) starting with the Rodeo Rib.
There seems to be a fair (ha!) amount of overlap from last year. I don’t remember fried frog legs or fried beef jerky, but the chocolate covered pickle rings a bell (and I still believe the inventors of that should be tarred and feathered). Same applies to the inventors of Bum’s Blue Ribbon Pulled Pork Sundae (back again, I see).
“Nachos made from hand-cooked potato chips.” Uh, isn’t that kind of subverting the very definition of nachos?
There’s some good stuff in the slideshow, too. Now I’m craving a barbecue stuffed baked potato for dinner.
And by “popcorn”, I mean “Popcorn Sutton’s Tennessee White Whiskey”.
Microdistilleries are now legal in Cocke County, Tennessee. And a guy named Jamey Grosser is making whiskey in the style of the late great Popcorn Sutton.
Interestingly, one of Grosser’s partners in the venture is Hank Williams, Jr.
Today’s Statesman reprints a lengthy AP article by Kristen Gelineau about the Azaria Chamberlain case, tied to a new coroner’s inquest starting Friday. (This will be inquest number four.)
You remember Azaria Chamberlain? And her mother Lindy Chamberlain? Right?
This one goes out to my friend A.T. Campbell, the world's biggest Meryl Streep fan.
Yes, this is the famous “Dingo ate my baby!” case. For the younger set and the non-true crime buffs: the Chamberlain family was camping at Ayers Rock when Azaria (who was nine weeks old) disappeared. Lindy Chamberlain said she heard a cry, went to check on Azaria, and saw a dingo leaving their tent. Azaria’s jumpsuit was found in the desert; dingo tracks and blood were found in and near the tent.
There was considerable doubt at the time (and for that matter, today) that a dingo could carry off a baby. There was also some forensic evidence that, at the time, suggested Lindy Chamberlain had killed her daughter. (That evidence has since been debunked; details are in the linked article.) Lindy was convicted of murder, and her husband Michael was convicted as an accessory.
Three years after the conviction, Azaria’s jacket was discovered near a dingo den. (Azaria’s body has never been found.) Lindy and her husband were released from prison days later.
This is a pretty complicated case, with strong elements of prejudice. (The Chamberlains were Seventh-day Adventists.) I’ll admit to not having read Evil Angels
I was busy much of the day yesterday (and chained to my desk doing schoolwork much of the day today) so this is the first chance I’ve had to blog the Statesman‘s followup to the Scott Henson story.
Basically, Chief Acevdeo showed a Statesman reporter video of the incident – video that hasn’t been released to the public – that he claims contradicts Henson’s story. As far as I can tell, the contradictions amount to:
I’m glad I waited, since Henson now has a response to Acevedo and the Statesman up at his own blog. In his response, Henson acknowledges the non-drawn Taser error, but disputes the handcuff issue.
Henson also makes another good point by way of an apology:
To me, that’s sort of the key issue: why did nine APD officers stop, detain, and handcuff someone the deputy constable had already spoken to and cleared?