There can be only one.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ. If it isn’t Scottish, it’s crap!
TMQ Watch: October 30, 2018.
October 31st, 2018Whitey.
October 31st, 2018If you go back to yesterday’s post, it looks like both the Boston outlets and the NYT did updates (and corrections) in place instead of posting new links. Which saves me some effort…
The big piece of news since the story broke seems to be:
The Patriarca family, maybe? Kind of makes sense…
Howie Carr. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I thought The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century was a terrific book.
Firings watch.
October 30th, 2018I think this counts.
Izaia Bullock, a linebacker for the Rutgers football team, has been dismissed.
“For violating team rules?” I guess you could say that…
…I do believe most teams have rules against murder plots.
Bullock, 22, “initiated a plot to murder the family members of an acquaintance” earlier in the week, according to a statement from the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Bullock was charged Tuesday with two counts of attempted murder in the first degree and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree.
I wonder if this was one of those situations you see played out so often on the Justice Network: rich child hires patsy to whack his parents while rich kid is off somewhere setting up an alibi…
Obit watch: October 30, 2018.
October 30th, 2018Wow.
My brother and Mike the Musicologist sent this to me literally within seconds of each other, which goes to show you how well they know me:
Details are kind of sketchy right now. Here’s the Boston Herald coverage: apparently he had just been moved to the WV facility from one in Florida.
This is still a developing story, and I’m not finding much coverage outside of the Boston papers: it may be best to wait and post an update tomorrow.
Also among the dead: Victor Marchetti, former CIA agent and author who challenged the agency’s prior approval rule.
Ntozake Shange, noted playwright.
Edited to add: preliminary NYT coverage of Whitey Bulger, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.
…was found beaten to death on Tuesday in a West Virginia prison. He was 89.
Two Federal Bureau of Prisons employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public, said Mr. Bulger had been beaten unrecognizable by inmates. No other details were immediately available.
Interesting. The anonymous sources are saying he was beaten to death, not stabbed. But…
Ah, Cleveland.
October 29th, 2018Well. Well well well. Well.
The Cleveland Browns just fired head coach Hue Jackson.
(waits for the deafening cries of “What took them so long?” to subside)
Really, what took them so long? The man was 3-36-1 over two and a half seasons.
Also shown the door: offensive coordinator Todd Haley.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Loser update with bonus firing: October 29, 2018.
October 29th, 2018NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
Cleveland
On a totally related note, Cleveland fired head coach Tyronn Lue on Sunday. I believe this is the first firing of the NBA regular season.
He was 128-83 over three years, and had one NBA championship and three finals appearances to his credit. But…the team is 0-6 for the first time since 1995.
Obit watch: October 26, 2018.
October 26th, 2018James Karen, prolific actor.
I’ve never lived in an area served by Pathmark, but the man appeared on almost everything: “Quincy, M.E.”, “Jake and the Fatman”, “Magnum, P.I.”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “The Rockford Files”, the good “Hawaii Five-O”…
…except he never did a spot on “Mannix”.
Update from the shoe beat.
October 25th, 2018We have our first convictions in the great NCAA Basketball shoe scandal of 2017. (Previously.)
There’s a little more editorial commentary mixed in with the reporting than I’d like, but this is noteworthy:
Though the verdicts’ larger impact on college basketball was not immediately clear, after Wednesday the following may be safely said: There is precedent that cheating N.C.A.A. bylaws can have consequences beyond collegiate infractions.
“Now you don’t just have to worry about what the N.C.A.A. does to you — you have to worry about going to jail,” said Dan Beebe, a former Big 12 commissioner who consults with conferences.
Personally, I’d like to see the N.C.A.A forcibly disbanded, but sending people to prison is a good alternative.
Also worth noting, but with a grain of salt: one of the defense attorneys claims that Rick Pitino and Bill Self (Kansas basketball coach, who is still employed) knew what was going on.
…
The three men charged in the case had pleaded not guilty, and none of them took the stand. Their primary defense was that their behavior may have violated N.C.A.A. bylaws, but that it was not a federal crime.
“N.C.A.A. rules were broken,” Michael Schachter, one of Gatto’s attorneys, said in his opening argument. “Jim and Adidas helped out financially a few families whose sons are among the most talented athletes in America. That happened.”
However, he added: “The N.C.A.A.’s rules are not the laws of this country. The N.C.A.A. is not the U.S. Congress.”
As the flaming hyena turns.
October 25th, 2018Remember Dawnna Dukes? Remember what an enormous nothing-burger that whole thing turned out to be?
She’s suing the Statesman, Margaret Moore (the current Travis County DA) and Rosemary Lehmberg (the previous DA), “an investigator with the state auditor’s office”, and three former aides.
The fact that she’s proceeding pro se with a defamation suit is not a good sign. But I Am Not A Lawyer: I’d ask Ken White for his take, but he’s pretty busy these days.
On the other hand, she’s probably proceeding without a lawyer because she’s broke:
The 12-term Austin Democrat said investigative stories by the Statesman, followed by corruption charges that were eventually dismissed, left her financially ruined — saddled with a $187,000 legal bill, deprived of consulting contracts and unable to find additional work.
As a result, her lawsuit said, Dukes’ credit cards were canceled, her car was repossessed and her home and East Austin commercial properties were foreclosed upon.
“The trauma due to financial hardships and loss of reputation aggravated (Dukes’) health issues and, to this day, there is still a lingering inconsolable grief caused by her substantial loss,” the lawsuit said.
Dukes also blamed her legal trouble for her defeat in the Democratic primary in March.
I’ll try to keep an eye on this one. Especially the discovery portion of it: that should be a lot of fun.
TMQ Watch: October 23, 2018.
October 24th, 2018Oddly enough, the subject of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies came up at dinner Saturday night. We have a couple of folks who are big fans of those movies – though it seems like they are fans in sort of a post-ironic hipster kind of way, if we may say so.
Anyway, after the jump, this week’s TMQ…
No stars, no bucks.
October 24th, 2018In case you haven’t heard, customers who get water from the City of Austin are under a boil water notice. The water treatment plants are overwhelmed by the volume of silt and organic matter that’s being stirred up by the release of water from the dams, as a result of the continuing rain in the area.
At my office, the water fountains, water dispensers, and coffee makers are completely shut down. (Even though the fountains and dispensers have their own filtering systems.) I’m lucky: the MUD that services our house in Lakeway is not impacted by this, we don’t have to boil our water, and I can put coffee in my Yeti cup (thanks to my beloved and indulgent sister) before I leave in the morning and keep it hot until I finish it off.
But I digress. I tried going over to the Dunkin’ Doughnuts near my office yesterday to see if they could do one of those big coffee boxes for the office. They just laughed at me. (Hey, I figured these places had their own water filtration systems.)
I just called over to the Starbucks nearest our office to see what their status was. (Again: Starbucks brags about their water filtration system.)
Not only was that Starbucks not doing the big coffee boxes, they were not brewing coffee at all. The guy who answered the phone told me none of the Austin Starbucks (79 of them, I think he said) were brewing coffee: if I wanted coffee, I’d have to go to Cedar Park, Georgetown, or Round Rock.
What does a Starbucks do if they can’t make coffee? I guess you could boil water (or heat bottled water) and do tea from teabags. Maybe serve pastries?
One of my cow-orkers said earlier that they expect this to go on for another twelve days. I can’t find any news or official government source that’s reporting an expected duration for this boil water notice, though, so I’m taking that with a grain of salt.
I swear, you people are going to make a prepper out of me yet.
Obit watch: October 24, 2018.
October 24th, 2018Joachim Ronneberg, certified Norwegian badass.
Mr. Ronneberg led the commando raid that blew up the Nazi heavy water plant at Telemark. He was also the last survivor of that raid.
Your loser update: October 23, 2018.
October 23rd, 2018NBA teams that still have a shot at going 0-82:
Chicago
Cleveland
Lakers
Oklahoma City
===============
I wanted to do some analytics on the NFL losers. Specifically, I wanted to get an idea (and perhaps express it in graphical form) of how many losers there were at various points in the season. Week 1 isn’t very interesting: there’s generally 16 losers out of 32 teams1. But week 2 and the weeks following are the ones where things become more interesting.
This is an HTML file containing the loser data from 2009-2018. Year’s on the left, week is across the top. So for example, in week 1 of 2018, there were 15 teams that had a chance to go 0-16.
I tried graphing this in Excel, but wasn’t totally happy with the results I was getting. Perhaps someone with more experience in data visualization can do something better.
1 I say “generally” because there are exceptions. There was a tie in week 1 of 2018, which knocked two teams out of loser contention. In week 1 of 2017, one of the games was postponed due to a hurricane, which left those two teams at 0-0 and with the potential to go 0-16 that week, for a total of 17 possible losers.
Noted without (much) comment.
October 22nd, 2018TMQ Watch: October 16, 2018.
October 18th, 2018Apropos of nothing in particular, a musical interlude:
There. Feel better?
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…