Oh, why not?

March 14th, 2018

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Obit watch: March 14, 2018.

March 14th, 2018

Stephen Hawking.

I don’t feel like I need to say much more than that, but I like this quote:

On another occasion, [Leonard Susskind] characterized Dr. Hawking to his face as “one of the most obstinate people in the world; no, he is the most infuriating person in the universe.” Dr. Hawking grinned.

Posted in Books, Geek, Obits | Comments Closed

Ollie Ollie Ollie get your pink slip here…

March 10th, 2018

Kevin Ollie out as men’s basketball coach at the University of Connecticut.

Even better: the university is claiming “just cause” for the firing. Apparently, it’s not just that the team had a non-so-great season, but there’s also a possible recruting scandal simmering.

Possibly more later on.

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Another one I missed.

March 8th, 2018

Seriously, for the past few days, I’ve had crud oozing out of my eyes and nose continuously. Up until today, I could just barely stand to look at a computer monitor.

But that’s a digression. Remember the Fyre Festival? Wasn’t that a hoot?

On Tuesday afternoon the festival’s main organizer, William McFarland, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud related to the festival and to his media company that prosecutors said had cost investors $26 million in losses.

…

He told the judge, Naomi Reice Buchwald, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, that he had begun organizing the festival with good intentions but had “greatly underestimated the resources” it would take.

But that’s not fraud. Poor judgment, maybe, but not outright fraud.

Charging documents filed by prosecutors said that Mr. McFarland, 26, had provided investors with false financial reports, including one that listed millions of dollars in talent-booking revenue for Fyre Media. In reality, the documents said, the company had earned only about $57,000 in bookings in the year leading up to the festival.
Mr. McFarland was also charged with showing investors bogus financial documents to claim that he owned more stock than he actually did so that it would appear he was in a position to personally guarantee an investment. And, prosecutors said, he used inflated revenue numbers to induce a ticket vendor to pay $2 million for a block of advance tickets for future festivals.

Oh. That’s different. (And it sounds like this is just what the government claimed: we don’t know what he actually admitted to in his plea.)

Both counts that Mr. McFarland pleaded guilty to carry maximum penalties of 20 years in prison, though a sentence of that length seems unlikely.

My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, Ken White thanks you, and I thank you.

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Random.

March 8th, 2018

He died doing what he loved: drinking whiskey and complaining about the Oscars.

“Ironically, he was giving his opinion of what someone was wearing that he thought was ugly, then asked (his wife) Patti to refill his whiskey,” Michael Solomon, former chief executive of Tower, said.
He died by the time his wife came back with his drink.

I’m not clear on what was “ironic” about that, and the obit is useless: who was wearing the “ugly” clothes?

Kevin Stallings out as basketball coach of the Pittsburgh Panthers after two seasons.

The Panthers went 16-17 (4-14 ACC) in Stallings’ first season and were 8-24 this season — including 0-19 in ACC games.

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Obit watch: March 8, 2018.

March 8th, 2018

Alan Gershwin.

I bet you didn’t know George Gershwin had a son. That’s okay: apparently, George didn’t know either.

I kid a little bit. But this is a long, fascinating, and kind of sad obituary:

For 70 years or so, Alan Gershwin insisted he was George Gershwin’s long-lost son. And with his death on Feb. 27 at 91 in a Bronx hospital, the curtain came down on what was surely the Gershwins’ most bizarre show ever, revolving around whether this affable but monomaniacal man was one of the greatest victims in American musical history, or a grifter running a long-term con, or someone suffering decades of delusion.

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Flames, hyenas, etc. (#48)

March 8th, 2018

Apologies for being a little behind on these. I’ve been having some issues the past few days and am slowly getting back up to speed.

Hyena number one: Dawnna Dukes got curb-stomped in Tuesday’s primary.

Tuesday, Dukes picked up just 10 percent of the vote and finished a distant third among the three candidates who were believed to have had realistic paths to victory. Dukes will remain on the job through the end of the year before she’s replaced by the winner of the May 22 runoff between Jose “Chito” Vela and Sheryl Cole.

(Previously.)

Hyena number two: the mayor of Nashville resigned on Tuesday. This was part of her guilty plea to charges of felony theft.

Nashville isn’t my usual beat, but I’ve been sort of following this story from the edges. In brief: the mayor was having an affair with her “head of security”, and the felony theft charges apparently involve payments for overtime and travel expenses to her partner (who also pled guilty to felony theft charges).

As part of her plea deal, Barry was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation and agreed to reimburse the city $11,000 in unlawful expenses. She paid the money Tuesday. She also was booked into the jail and had her mug shot taken.

…

Forrest also pleaded guilty Tuesday to property theft and was sentenced to three years of probation. As part of his plea agreement, he’s required to reimburse the city $45,000 paid to him as salary and/or overtime during times when he was not performing his duties as head of the mayor’s security detail. Forrest has not yet paid the money.

One thing I picked up elsewhere: apparently, the plea deals include deferred adjudication. Basically, if Barry and Forrest keep their noses clean (and, I assume, make restitution), they can have the felony conviction expunged from their records.

Open question: what’s going to happen to Forrest’s pension? He retired the day the affair was announced, and was approved for $74,000 a year. But that figure was based, in part, on the overtime payments Forrest collected while he was Barry’s lover…

Edited to add: I got to wondering, and I’m sure all of you were as well. According to this article from 2015, former mayor Barry was not a member of Crooked Mayors For Disarmed Citizens. But it wasn’t for lack of trying:

Megan Barry is among the nation’s mayors who support congressional action to close the so-called “gun show loophole,” and she also believes that local municipalities should be able to craft “reasonable restrictions” over guns and still protect Second Amendment rights.

…

Despite the push among some mayors demanding action on guns, Barry at this point isn’t part of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
…
Mayor’s office press secretary Sean Braisted said Barry has no plans to join Mayors Against Illegal Guns at this time.

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Obit watch: March 5, 2018.

March 5th, 2018

Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile under four minutes.

One of the things I always wondered: how does a medical student find time to become a record setting runner? Sort of an answer:

“Now that I am taking up a hospital appointment,” he said in an address to the English Sportswriters Association that December, “I shall have to give up international athletics. I shall not have sufficient time to put up a first-class performance. There would be little satisfaction for me in a second-rate performance, and it would be wrong to give one when representing my country.”

And I rather like this quote:

“He was running on 28 training miles a week,” Sebastian Coe, who set the world record in the mile three different times, once said. “He did it on limited scientific knowledge, with leather shoes in which the spikes alone probably weighed more than the tissue-thin shoes today, on tracks at which speedway riders would turn up their noses. So as far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great runs of all time.”

David Ogden Stiers. It is perhaps worth calling out that he was more than Major Charles Emerson Winchester III: he was the announcer in “THX-1138”, Cogsworth the clock in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” (and he had other roles in a lot of Disney films), and acted in four of Woody Allen’s movies.

In a statement after his death, Loretta Swit, who played Maj. Margaret (Hot Lips) Houlihan on “M*A*S*H,” called Mr. Stiers “my sweet, dear shy friend,” adding, “Working with him was an adventure.”

I’m throwing this in so I have an excuse to mention: over the weekend, I caught an episode of “Match Game” with Ms. Swit. She was wearing a very unfortunate yellow and black striped outfit: it made her look like a giant bumblebee.

Sometimes, I miss the 70s. Then I’m reminded of why I shouldn’t.

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Things you may have wondered about. (#6 in a series)

February 23rd, 2018

Okay, maybe not. But it’s been a while since I did one of these.

Whatever happened to Beanie Babies?

(Spoiler: they’re worthless.)

“If you bring Beanies to me and try to sell them to me in bulk, I’ll give you about 20 cents. That’s me telling you I don’t want them,” said Steve Johnston, the store’s owner. “Give them away.”

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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#47 in a series)

February 22nd, 2018

Very quick, because this is my CPA volunteer night and I’m down at the cop shop:

Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri was indicted on a felony invasion of privacy charge on Thursday by grand jurors in St. Louis.

Yes. FELONY invasion of privacy. Allegedly, he took nudes of someone without consent, and then “transmitted the photo in a way that allowed it to be seen on a computer, which prosecutors said made the crime a felony rather than a misdemeanor”.

More from the Post-Dispatch:

The woman said in the recording that, during a consensual sexual encounter in Greitens’ St. Louis home in which she was bound and partly undressed, Greitens took a photo of her without her consent and threatened her with it.

Also: two! Two in one day!

ETA 2/23: Now that I’m in front of a real computer, it looks like a double-hyena day isn’t unheard of (April of 2016). But it is rare enough to be noteworthy.

I’m looking forward to my first triple flaming hyena day.

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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#46 in a series)

February 22nd, 2018

This is how out of it I’ve been: I didn’t even know Democratic state Senator Carlos Uresti was actually on trial until Mike the Musicologist texted me the verdict. (Previously on WCD.)

And that verdict?

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

Texas state Sen. Carlos Uresti and co-defendant Gary Cain were found guilty on all charges in San Antonio federal court today in a criminal fraud trial that has stunned the city and state capitol.

That’s “all charges”. And what were those charges again?

As to State Sen. Carlos Uresti:
Count 1, wire fraud: Guilty
Count 2, wire fraud: Guilty
Count 3, conspiracy to commit wire fraud: Guilty
Count 4, wire fraud: Guilty
Count 5, wire fraud: Guilty
Count 6, wire fraud: Guilty
Count 8, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments: Guilty
Count 11, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 20, securities fraud: Guilty
Count 21, securities fraud: Guilty
Count 22, unregistered securities broker: Guilty

As to Gary Cain:
Count 3, conspiracy to commit wire fraud: Guilty
Count 8, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments: Guilty
Count 13, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 14, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 15, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 16, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 17, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 18, engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty
Count 19: engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity: Guilty

…

Each wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud count carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $250,000 fine. The conspiracy to launder monetary charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Each securities fraud charge and the unregistered securities broker count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. Each of Uresti’s counts also is punishable by up to three years of federal supervision to be served after release from prison.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that he’ll get 200 years in prison. My prediction: I’ll be surprised if he gets more than 10 years.

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Obit watch: February 22, 2018.

February 22nd, 2018

For the historical record: Billy Graham.

Posted in Obits, Religion | 2 Comments »

There are many beautiful words in the English language.

February 20th, 2018

Here are four of them:

“permanently enjoined from enforcing“.

Posted in Bagatelle, California Über Alles, Law | Comments Closed

World’s Most Corrupt Police Departments.

February 16th, 2018

Coming up on the Justice Network.

(Well, they need to do something, now that those jerks have dropped the midnight Sunday “Most Shocking”.)

(Seriously, Justice Network: was anyone asking for a three hour block of “Rescue 911”? And why are you also airing another three hour block of “psychic” frauds?)

(But I digress.)

I’ve written before about the criminal Philadelphia police department. Latest development:

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office last year secretly compiled a list of Philadelphia police officers with a history of lying, racial bias, or brutality, in a move to block them from testifying in court.

Of course the list is secret.

The list was intended only for internal use, as a guide to determine when a potentially tainted officer’s testimony should be used. Under the office’s policy, front-line prosecutors were instructed to get top-level permission before calling such an officer. Prosecutors, according to sources, did not want to release the list out of concern for the officers’ privacy rights and the broad impact it might have on past convictions involving the officers.

As the article notes, this isn’t unheard of: Seattle is cited as an example, and I seem to recall hearing that the LA district attorney’s office had a similar list. (Edited to add: link to recent coverage of the LADA list. Additional. Denton County has a list, too.) It seems to me, though (and if there are any legal experts out there, please correct me if I’m wrong) that the places that have these lists of problem officers also have a lot of other police related issues, too.

And as a by the way, you know who created the list? Seth Williams.

(Hattip.)

I’ve been sort of negligent in covering the ongoing Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force cases. To be honest, I’ve been a little busy, things have me down, and the most recent trial got pretty widespread national coverage. (Spoiler: two detectives were convicted on Monday.)

As you would expect, now that there’s convictions, there’s also weeping and wailing from the politicians. Which usually isn’t interesting, but:

State Del. Bilal Ali of Baltimore called for disbanding the police department entirely, citing Camden, N.J., as an example where the police force was rebuilt. He said the corruption and wrongdoing highlighted in the trial is an “ongoing experience” for many residents, and have not been sufficiently addressed by the consent decree or other efforts at reforms.

(Previously on Camden.)

My first thought: if you disband the Baltimore PD, where is David Simon going to get material for season six of “The Wire”?

My second thought: if you were going to disband a police department for being corrupt and out of control, B’more would not be my first choice. In order, I think I’d take Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia before Charm City.

Posted in Cops, Law, TV | Comments Closed

Accidentally like a machine.

February 15th, 2018

By way of the Hacker News Twitter:

A list of things that were not intended to be “Turing Complete”, but are.

(For the non-initiated, “Turing Completeness” sort of explained here.)

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