Antonia Frasier’s Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot
Edited to add: Speaking of revolt against established government, I was totally unaware that College Station voted out traffic enforcement cameras until I read about it in…the Washington Post?
Last Sunday, a blood relative of mine was rear-ended while driving their Toyota Avalon; the force of the collision was sufficient to total the Avalon.
This Sunday, I was rear-ended while driving my mother back from San Antonio in her Toyota Avalon. Fortunately, it does not look like this Avalon is a total loss.
If you drive a Toyota Avalon, or are related to me by blood or marriage, please be careful on the highway until further notice.
(As a side note, Trooper Seth Fry of the Texas DPS was kind, polite, sympathetic, and made a stressful situation somewhat easier to deal with. My thanks to him.)
WTF?
That’s just a hair under one billion dollars.
WTFF?
Pulitzer-prize winning automotive writer Dan Neil has a good piece in the LAT on “Which of today’s clunkers will become tomorrow’s classic cars?“. It gets especially funny when he talks about a 1971 Monte Carlo going at auction for $60,000. (“…Spot-welded together with the craftsmanship one might expect of unsupervised political prisoners…”) There’s also a followup here with some more classic candidates.
I’m with Neil on many of these choices. I’ve poked my share of fun at the Aztec, but if I could pick a used one in good shape up cheap, I’d consider it (especially with the tent). Likewise, I’d be willing to consider the Volvo or the S320 (but I’d worry that upkeep on the S320 would eat me alive).
Two more interesting stories by way of Overlawyered: a WSJ story on the Nicaraguan banana pesticide lawsuit fraud mentioned here previously, and a Fortune story about alleged massive medical fraud in Las Vegas involving both doctors and trial lawyers:
According to government evidence, the group coordinated their testimony as expert witnesses, lied under oath, protected one another from malpractice lawsuits — even after the surgeries left a few patients paralyzed — and ate away at the plaintiffs’ settlement money with kickbacks disguised as contingency fees.
One of the problems, however, is that the government has failed to actually prove their case so far.