List of fatal cougar attacks in North America.
(You know, I have categories for reptiles, horses, primates, and spiders. Do I need a “cat” category? If so, should I have a “dog” category too? Perhaps “mammals” and make horses, cats, dogs, and primates subsets of that?)
(Explained.)
I’d been sort of vaguely following the LA arson case. I knew that they had arrested some German guy driving a van with Canadian license plates, and apparently he was somehow upset over his mother’s immigration issues or something. I didn’t realize how messed up things were until this morning: not only is Mom an illegal alien, but she’s wanted in Germany on 19 counts of fraud (and apparently Germany has requested extradition). It appears that she ripped off a bunch of renters and landlords (I think the NYT said something about her pocketing security deposits), and failed to pay for her breast augmentation surgery in 2004. And the LAT hints that she may have been in business as a “sensual Tantric masseuse”.
Obit watch: Ronald Searle.
Firing watch: Bears offensive coordinator Mike Martz and quarterbacks coach Shane Day. The Sun-Times seems to be spinning this as “resignations”, but I’ve seen reporting elsewhere that puts it more in the “you can’t fire me, I quit” category.
NYT headline: “Rangers Coach a Conspiracy Theorist“. Awesome. Does he believe the towers were brought down by the burning mind control agents on the airliners? Sadly, no. His conspiracy theory is much more boring: the officials made bad calls in order to make the game go into overtime.
The New Year has begun. Our grand vacation from daily cares is over. And once again, we go back to the TMQ well…
Reports indicate that Jerry Angelo is out as general manager.
If Pro Football Talk is to be believed, Lovie Smith is next out the door.
ETA: Nope, looks like the Bears love Lovie.
If you apply for a concealed handgun license in the great state of Texas, you can do most of the work online. You still have to take a class, and you still have to submit certain things (certificate of class completion, fingerprints, photo) offline for understandable reasons, but most of the process can be done online.
So why in the name of all that is holy is it impossible for me to do a DBA search and file for an assumed name online? No, I’ve got to take time off work and go down to the county office. Or apparently, I can pay someone $99 to do this for me. No, I can’t even mail this s–t in.
(My amazing psychic powers tell me that Lawrence is going to come back with a one word answer: “Money.”)
You folks in other states: can you file DBAs online, or do you have to physically trek down to some county office?
(Ha. I clicked on a link I found at another site: “The Official Website of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Forming a Business, Step-by-Step”. Yeah, that would be a 404 error. Is this what we call “ironic”?)
I had a pretty good day. Bad news: I had to work. Good news: nobody else apparently did. Better news: since nobody else was working, they started letting people (including myself) leave for the day at 11 AM. Even better news: because I left at 11 AM, I was able to spend much of the rest of the day leading my nephews on my sister’s side of the family on a grand expedition. (Slightly bad news: guns were not involved in this expedition. But we had fun anyway.)
The only drawback was that, being on a grand expedition, I wasn’t able to blog the NFL firing news beyond the Rams. Most of these have made FARK, but just for the record:
We have our first sports firings of 2012: Steve Spagnuolo and Billy Devaney of the St. Louis Rams.
2-14 this season, and they didn’t even get the first pick in the draft. Spagnuolo was 10-38 over three years.
If you’ve got a week off, and you live in a relatively free state, why not schedule a range day?
And if you’re doing that, why not bring the middle nephew:
especially since he got a pair of Say Uncle endorsed active muffs for Christmas?
(I wanted to bring the two older boys, too, but for logistical and other reasons I wasn’t able to make that work.)
So we went out to Best of the West in Liberty Hill. I had not shot there before (though I’d been there once for LaRue’s Range Day). I was actually pretty happy with the range; everyone we dealt with was polite and friendly, and we managed to get an entire 50 yard bay to ourselves. (I only felt like we needed 50 yards, since all I brought with me was .22LR stuff for the novice shooter.)
That’s what the District of Columbia owes Richard Heller and his attorneys, including Alan Gura, in legal fees over District of Columbia v. Heller.
Actually, the figure is $1,137,072.27. The Honorable Mr. Gura and the other members of the legal team were asking for $3.1 million, while the city was arguing for $840,000.
I mentioned this in passing in this week’s TMQ thread, but for all of those who don’t read it: my sister has a new post up at the Park City Snowmamas site.
Of course, that’s just my paraphrase of what she’s actually saying. My sister never uses the word “f–k” in conversation. Except for maybe when one of her boys tries to sneak a box of Pop-Tarts or a case of Monster energy drink into the house….
We might as well get down to it. This week: the 2011 TMQ All-Unwanted All-Pros. After the jump…
Don’t we all pretty much want to live our lives like that? Doesn’t that explain the appeal of “House”?
Edited to add: The Cheetah that died may not have been the real Cheetah.
The University of California and Dr. Patrick Harran, a chemistry professor at UCLA, have been charged with three felony counts of “willfully violating occupational health and safety standards”. Yes, you read that right: the University itself is being charged with felonies.
The charges stem from the death of Sheri Sangji in December of 2008. Ms. Sangji was employed in Dr. Harran’s lab:
She died 18 days after the incident.
I’m kind of hoping Derek Lowe will have some comment on this, and I’m willing to listen to arguments on the subject. My gut feeling is that the felony indictments are appropriate: Ms. Sangji should not have been working without a flame-resistant lab coat, and it isn’t clear to me that she was provided with appropriate equipment, training, or supervision. This is what trials are for, of course, and details may come out during the trial that will change my mind. But:
But the required corrective actions were not taken before the fatal fire, the records showed.
Edited to add: Many thanks to Chemjobber both for pointing us to Derek Lowe’s commentary, and for providing a link to an article from Chemical and Engineering News summarizing the incident in more detail.
Also, thanks to Lawrence for a somewhat related link, which we had missed: the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board report on the Texas Tech lab explosion in January of 2010. I swear that I covered the explosion at the time, or shortly afterwards, but I can’t find the link now. In any case, the report is pretty much what you’d expect: “the physical hazard risks inherent in the research were not effectively assessed, planned for, or mitigated; the university lacked safety management accountability and oversight; and previous incidents with preventative lessons were not documented, tracked, and formally communicated”.
(Short summary: the lab was working on a government project involving detection of explosives. Part of their work involved making something called nickel hydrazine perchlorate, which goes bang rather easily. The lab had been making small amounts (100 milligrams) but the students involved in the production of NHP that day decided, for various reasons, to scale things up and produce about 10 grams. The NHP went bang while one of the students was trying to break up “clumps” in a mortar and pestle.)