This FARK thread and this post by Glen reminded me of another guilty pleasure of mine: Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.
More specifically, this version:
and this version:
Another guilty pleasure.
July 23rd, 2010I feel guilty, oh so guilty…
July 23rd, 2010All the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I’d throw my chapeau into the washing machine. Hence, a list of my guilty pleasures:
- “Cops” and “America’s Most Wanted”. I actually find AMW to be a kind of a amazing show in the sheer perfection of the idea; put a show on the air that’s impossible to cancel. If Fox ever did try to cancel it (and they did, once. Once.) the howls of outrage from law enforcement would be heard from coast to coast. John Walsh is right at the border of getting on my last nerve, though (especially given his ignorance about guns) so I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the show.
“Cops”, on the other hand…well, I can’t explain the strange attraction of that show to me. I’d like to think it isn’t a “there but for the grace of God go I” sort of thing; no matter how low my social circumstances go, I don’t think you’ll ever catch me wearing a wife-beater and drinking a Bud Light after thumping some on my woman. It may be that there’s just a dark part of my soul that enjoys seeing stupid people in trouble.
- The music of the not-so-late C.W. McCall. Especially “Convoy” and “Wolf Creek Pass”. I have fond memories of riding around in our old Chevy Suburban with the 8-track tape player, listening to a Radio Shack tape of trucking songs that included “Wolf Creek Pass”, “Phantom 309”, and “The White Knight”. (Anyone else remember those last two? I’m probably dating myself. But then, no one else will.)
As for “Convoy”, let’s just say that I used to have a 45-RPM record of that song that I literally wore the grooves smooth on. Yes, it is on my iPod.
- The “Dirty Harry” movies. At least “Dirty Harry”, “Magnum Force”, and “Sudden Impact”. I’ll actually defend “Dirty Harry” as being a lot more subtle and sophisticated than people like Roger Ebert think. I don’t see it as a fascist film; I see it as a movie about a good man, struggling to do a job, and dealing with a new set of obstacles society has put in his way. Indeed, I think it could be argued that “Dirty Harry” is a modern remake of “High Noon”, right down to the last scene. (I’m pretty sure Harry throwing his badge into the water is a direct homage by Don Siegel.)
“Magnum Force” I’ll also defend as an answer to the critics who claimed Harry was a vigilante, and the people who said “So what? Maybe we need vigilantes these days.” I see “Magnum Force” as a movie that’s explicitly about the rule of law, and the need for same.
“Sudden Impact”…well, I really can’t defend that as anything but fun. “Smith…and Wesson…and me.” “Go ahead, make my day.” The dogshit speech. (Another shameful confession: I also have Clint Eastwood and T.G. Sheppard’s duet, “Make My Day”, on the iPod.)
I won’t defend “The Enforcer”, and I’ve heard so many bad things about “The Dead Pool” that I haven’t watched it yet.
Important safety tip.
July 23rd, 2010If you’re going to cheat, don’t be stupid about it. Try to show at least a little intelligence.
I draw my example today from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office, which has a bit of a problem. LACSO wants deputies in the jail to check on the inmates regularly, just to make sure none of them have decided to hang themselves, or are getting beaten to death by Bubba. So they have a system of bar code scanners around the jail; deputies are supposed to use those scanners to scan their assigned bar code as they make their rounds.
How did they discover this? Well, one of the inmates killed himself, and records showed that a deputy had been making his regular rounds. When the investigators dug a little deeper into the records…
…they discovered that computer records showed the deputy scanned several parts of the jail in 35 seconds — a physical impossibility.
…
As they investigated further, officials found that the deputy who was on duty during the suicide also went to the staff gym and made a “chow run” to a nearby restaurant on the day of the suicide when he should have been making his rounds, the report says.
Ask not for whom the Bell tolls…
July 23rd, 2010The three top administrators of the city of Bell, California, agreed to resign yesterday.
These are:
- the city manager, Robert Rizzo, who was pulling down $787,637 a year (leaving at the end of August).
- the chief of police, Randy Adams, who was making $457,000 a year. (Adams also apparently will stay through August, “after completing an evaluation of the Police Department”.)
- assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, $376,288, leaving at the end of September. Spaccia was also serving as the acting city manager for the city of Maywood. Remember Maywood?
Yesterday’s LAT also had a survey of recent municipal corruption in the area around Bell. Some high points:
- the Lynwood City Council, which was indicted in 2007 for using city money for personal ends, including hiring strippers.
- South Gate, “a reign of governance so flamboyant in its nasty badness that ‘South Gate’ became shorthand for corruption and politicians gone wild.”
- Vernon, where the city administrator was pulling in $600,000 a year, got hit with a corruption indictment, and retired “with a record-high state pension of $500,000”.
Edited to add: Oh, look! Robert Rizzo also faces drunk driving charges! (Hattip: Reason “Hit and Run”.)
Steak!
July 22nd, 2010The LAT writes about the closing of Edward’s Steak House, a 64-year old steak house in El Monte. I’ve never eaten there, but it sounds like a place I would have enjoyed trying.
By way of Marginal Revolution, I found out about a fairly new book that’s relevant to my interests: Steak: One Man’s Search for the World’s Tastiest Piece of Beef
Remember the Titans.
July 21st, 2010
Titan II Launch Control Center, level 2.
Best. Post title. EVER.
July 21st, 2010Here.
After action report: Tucson, AZ.
July 21st, 2010My regular readers (and my irregular readers, too; come to think of it, “Whipped Cream Irregulars” would be a good name for a band) may have figured out by now that I’ve spent much of the past week on the road. Specifically, I was in Tucson for the annual convention of the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association. (You might have been able to guess that I also made a brief trip to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area so I could visit Taliesin West.)
I’m not going to talk much about what went on at that convention here, since it is a closed private convention, and I’m not comfortable discussing the organization’s affairs on a public blog. (Jay G. and the rest of the Vicious Circle gang might be amused to know that there was an actual S&W police bike, manufactured in Springfield, MA and complete with lights and siren, on display at the convention. I didn’t get a chance to take a photo.) I will say I had a great time at the convention, and in Tucson in general. Sadly, I didn’t have time to hit any used bookstores or gun stores in the area, but maybe next time.
This is the first extended road trip I’ve taken since last year’s DEFCON, so I thought it might be interesting to do some notes about what worked and didn’t work on this trip.
Maywood update.
July 20th, 2010The NYT would like for you to know that Maywood, California has not descended into anarchy after disbanding the city government and outsourcing services. Indeed, things seem to be going along pretty much as normal, at least in part because many of the city workers have apparently been rehired on a contract basis by those hired to run the city.
That’s putting it mildly.
Edited to add: One thing I didn’t pick up on, since I was on the road when the LAT reported this, is that many of Maywood’s functions have been outsourced to the city of Bell. It turns out that Bell has some issues as well:
Some thoughts on drugs and the management of risk.
July 19th, 2010There’s an interesting article in today’s LAT about one possible solution to the problem of antibiotic resistance; doctors are pulling older antibiotics out of the drug closet.
The nice thing about this is that many bacteria, such as the one that causes MRSA, haven’t had a chance to develop a resistance to these older drugs. The trade-off, though, is that there’s a reason many of these drugs went out of common use. For example, chloramphenicol, the centerpiece drug in the article, went out of favor because it carried a risk of triggering aplastic anaemia. The Wikipedia article on chloramphenicol gives the risk at 1 out of every 24,000 to 40,000 people (for oral dosage). (Please do not get your medical advice from Wikipedia. This has been a public service announcement.) That’s pretty high by modern standards, but a lot better than dying of MRSA; at least, that’s the point of view of the doctors quoted by the LAT.
This is just the most current example of a topic that fascinates and frustrates me; the trade-off between safe and effective in drug design. You say the word “thalidomide” to people and they’re horrified; rightfully so. But it turns out that thalidomide is effective for treating multiple myeloma and complications of leprosy. Are the benefits of thalidomide worth the risks of birth defects? Who gets to decide?
We saw much the same thing with Vioxx; there were (and are) people who were willing to trade a relatively small risk of cardiac complications for effective pain relief, especially since many of these people were unable to tolerate aspirin or other pain relievers.
Now we’re seeing this with Avandia, too; an effective drug for managing blood sugar and reducing the chances of diabetes complications. But, once again, it appears to carry a relatively small risk of cardiac complications, and that’s leading to calls for it to be pulled from the market.
We’re letting the FDA make the decisions for us on how much risk we’re willing to tolerate in order to get results. Is that the best way to do it? Would we be better off if the FDA was only responsible for making sure doctors had all the information? Once they do have all the relevant information, shouldn’t the risk/reward trade-off be an informed decision by the doctor and patient?
Propellers in the dawn.
July 19th, 2010Travel day. Light blogging.
This one’s for Mike.
July 18th, 2010
I promised photos…
July 15th, 2010I took a lot more photos than these, but I want to wait until I get back to the MacBook and iPhoto before I post too many. Some of them will need cleanup, I’m sure, and I would prefer to be able to work with the RAW versions.
Here are two high points of the day, though.
Under the radar we crept on.
July 15th, 2010Bag found and delivered to hotel.
Blogger awake, biological clock mostly reset, soon to shower and go forth in search of bagels and coffee.
More later, including photos, I hope.
(Subject line hattip. Much much thanks to TJIC for the pointer; Abney Park’s “Under the Radar” is the official theme song for this trip.)
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!
July 14th, 2010I generally recommend to folks that they observe the holiday in the traditional way; get drunk and storm a prison.
Apologies for the lack of other content. Today is a travel day. And a certain bag-loving airline has temporarily misplaced my bag.
More later.