Dr. Clyde Snow, legendary forensic anthropologist.
Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell
Also among the dead: Watergate figure Jeb Magruder.
Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category
Obit watch: May 17, 2014.
Saturday, May 17th, 2014Banana republicans watch: May 15, 2014.
Thursday, May 15th, 2014Back in June of last year, two LAPD officers were ambushed as they were returning to their station.
Neither man was seriously injured. I remember this being a pretty big deal at the time (though I don’t seem to have blogged it); it wasn’t just that they were cops being shot at, but also the sheer brazenness of shooting at cops basically in their own backyard.
Well. Well well well. Well.
Everybody seems to be avoiding the use of words like “staged” and “faked”, but that seems to be the unavoidable implication. The question in my mind is, “Why?”. One possible theory:
Could someone have been trying to cover up a negligent discharge by staging a gunfight? Stranger things have happened, though I’m having trouble thinking of many at the moment. Perhaps the drunk NYPD cop who shot his partner, but I’m not sure that rises to the same level as staging a gunfight.
Also worth noting: Det. Tovar has a history. He was fired as part of the Rafael Pérez scandal (and later reinstated).
Based on what I’ve read about Perez and Rampart, I’d take anything the man says with an entire lick of salt. But I do think it is worth mentioning in the context of what’s happening now.
News of the world.
Thursday, May 15th, 2014Random notes: May 14, 2014.
Wednesday, May 14th, 2014Obit watch: H. R. Giger. NYT. A/V Club. LAT. Lawrence.
Also: Malik Bendjelloul, who directed the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching For Sugar Man”. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.
I haven’t seen “Searching” yet, but Bendjelloul’s death is depressing; it was his first film, and he was only 36.
(Edited to add this. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.)
The history of red velvet cake.
You know, I’d try that. It might be something I’d only want to eat once, but I’d give it a try if I could travel to San Francisco. (I don’t currently have a passport, so I can’t go to places outside of the United States.)
Walter Olson has some good stuff up at Overlawyered and Cato about the bad Philadelphia cops. Interesting development:
About damn time. But let’s wait and see what the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police does.
Today in literary fraud.
Monday, May 12th, 2014When asked about questions about the story’s veracity by the Israeli newspaper Haaetz, the film’s director said, “That is exactly like the people who deny the existence of concentration camps. This is a true story. Everything that happened during the Holocaust is unbelievable and impossible to grasp, and people therefore also find it difficult to believe this story.”
Yeah, well, maybe. But I think you can ask questions about a story without being a Holocaust denier; the key is the phrasing. “What you’re saying happened doesn’t line up with what we know, historically, about the Holocaust, including the testimony of other survivors, Ms. Defonseca. Can you explain the differences?”
In related news, Misha Defonseca has been ordered to repay $22.5 million to her former publisher Mt. Ivy Press and Jane Daniel, who owns Mt. Ivy.
Misha who the what now? $22.5 million? That’s Steve King money!
Ms. Defonseca wrote a book called Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years. It didn’t sell well in the US, but was popular in Europe: it was adapted as an opera and as a French film, “Surviving With Wolves”.
…Misha Defonseca wrote of her experience of being a young Jewish girl on her own during World War II, fleeing into the woods where she was adopted by wolves, and killing a Nazi soldier.
The LAT is a little less clear on this next step than I would like, but apparently there was a dispute between Ms. Defonseca, Mt. Ivy, and Vera Lee (“a French speaker chosen to work with Defonseca”).
A judge found that Daniel and Mt. Ivy had withheld royalty payments, hidden money in offshore accounts and failed to market the book. Rights for the book reverted to Defonseca, and she was to be awarded damages of $32.4 million.
This now also becomes an excellent example of “Be careful what you wish for, because you may just get it.” Ms. Daniel, of course, appealed the verdict. And as part of the appeal, she hired people to take a closer look at Ms. Defonseca’s story.
Which turned out to be almost complete bullshit.
An American geneologist worked with Belgian counterparts to track down Defonseca’s true origins. She was born Monique De Wael in Brussels, where she attended Catholic school during the time she had claimed to be lost in the woods.
One part of the story was true: As a young girl, she lost her parents. Both had been members of the Resistance and were deported and killed. She was raised by relatives — not wolves.
And she’s admitted the fabrication:
“This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving.”
Interestingly, Wikipedia has a “Fake memoirs” page, but it does not break out Holocaust memoirs into a separate category.
And while we’re on the subject of bad cops…
Saturday, May 10th, 2014…I think this is kind of interesting.
A guy named Charley Armendariz used to be a deputy with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. (That’s Joe Arpaio’s outfit, if you don’t recognize it.)
Deputy Armendariz’s life seems to have gone sadly downhill. He engaged in what is described as “a series of standoffs with law enforcement in the last week”, and apparently killed himself; deputies serving an arrest warrant found him dead on Thursday.
But that’s not the interesting part. When they searched his home:
And they found many of these things stored in MCSO evidence bags.
The Arizona Republic report says that this appears to go as far back as seven years. And it is possible this will result in the dismissal of any criminal cases Armendariz was involved with as a deputy.
It’s just…bizarre, in addition to being sad. The only thing I can think of is that meth is a hell of a drug.
And speaking of obits…
Friday, May 9th, 2014I am sad that William Ash, a gentleman I was previously unfamiliar with, has died.
On the other hand, 96 years is a pretty good run, and his NYT obit is quite entertaining.
I suspect one reason he was always recaptured is that the Germans could hear him clanking as he walked from miles away.
Isn’t that interesting?
Friday, May 9th, 2014The NYT has an obituary specific Twitter feed. I did not know this.
Thanks, Popehat!
Obit watch: May 9, 2014.
Friday, May 9th, 2014Farley Mowat, perhaps most famous for his book Never Cry Wolf
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#12 in a series)
Thursday, May 8th, 2014Heh. Heh. Heh. The charity in question was “New York 4 Life”, which the paper of record describes as an “anti-obesity charity”.
On an unrelated note: former State Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin had his prison term reduced from ten years to six. I enjoy the NYT lead:
He stole from the Little League? He took money from kids? Why reduce his sentence?
Answer: because he flipped.
Obit watch: May 8, 2014.
Thursday, May 8th, 2014Bill Dana, legendary NASA test pilot.
That “sleek, black aircraft” was the X-15. Dana earned astronaut wings for two of his X-15 flights.
Hooray for Bollywood!
Wednesday, May 7th, 2014I haven’t paid much attention to Nate Silver or fivethirtyeight.com, but this story (by way of the Y Combinator Twitter) pushes a couple of buttons.
What’s the worst movie ever, according to IMDB? Not “Exterminator City“, Lawrence. IMDB’s bottom ranked movie is something called “Gunday“, which David Goldenberg describes as “a pretty silly, over-the-top Bollywood action flick about gun couriers that features a love triangle and lots of comical misunderstandings typical to the genre“.
Is it that bad? 1.4 bad? Worse than “The Hottie and the Nottie” bad?
(The RogerEbert.com review was written by Danny Bowes, for what it may be worth.)
So, if mainstream critics don’t think “Gunday” is so bad, how did it end up at the bottom of the IMDB rankings?
One word: crowd-sourcing.
Two words: Gonojagoron Moncho.
What? Gonojagoron Moncho is a “Bangladeshi nationalist movement” (the name translates to “National Awakening Stage”) that got very offended by “Gunday”. Specifically, they object to “Gunday”‘s depiction of the “Bangladesh Liberation War”:
So “Gunday”‘s low ranking is the result of a concerted political campaign, not because it actually is a crappy movie. And what does IMDB say about this?