I will be darned. Baltimore no longer has the worst record in baseball. (40-75, .348 winning percentage, projected 56.376 wins.)
That honor just barely belongs to Pittsburgh. (39-75, .342 winning percentage, projected 55.404 wins.)
And Houston is still holding on to fourth place in the division. (48-67, .425 winning percentage, projected 68.85 wins.)
Answer: the First District Court of Appeal.
We have previously noted the ongoing legal battle between the SF Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly (owned by Village Voice Media) over alleged predatory price-cutting by the latter. A jury awarded the Bay Guardian $21 million, but the Weekly appealed the decision.
That decision has now been upheld by the appellate court.
There is a claim in the linked article that the two parties have “reached a settlement”. Apparently, this settlement came after the SFBG was told they could seize and sell the Weekly‘s delivery trucks.
Everyone and his brother is on this already, but I have to get my kicks in: “Cathy“. (Chicago Tribune.)
The best commentary I’ve seen so far is from Josh and his gang over at the Comics Curmudgeon website.
With “Cathy” gone, that takes care of one of the comics on my top ten hit list. Now if we could only do something about “The Amazing (Glacial) Spider-Man”, “Gasoline Alley”, “Funky Winkerbean”, and “Crankshaft”, I’d be a very happy man.
Edited to add: Lawrence was on my case because I didn’t mention “Dinette Set” in the above list. I pointed out that I didn’t intend for that to be a complete list. Then I went and clicked on the Chron link for today’s “Dinette Set”, just to make sure the damn thing was still being published.
Wow. This isn’t even just “not funny”. This doesn’t even approach “what’s the deal with airline food?” levels. There’s not even an attempt at humor here; this is just someone who can’t draw or write, recounting an event without giving us any clue as to why we should find this interesting or amusing.
Reddit’s “anti-joke” thread is funnier than this. Heck, your average NYT editorial is funnier than this.
Rob Balon wonders in his latest blog entry, “why so many Austinites seem to be either indifferent toward or uncomfortable with Thai food“. As Dr. Balon frequently does, he suggests that Austinites are so used to barbecue and TexMex that “something relatively unfamiliar has a hard time breaking through”.
Dr. Balon’s essay is curious for a few reasons. First of all, he’s talking about Thai food, yet completely omits the longest lived (as far as I know) and single most successful group of Thai restaurants in Austin. We could argue about the merits of Thai Kitchen versus Madam Mam’s all day long, but just simply ignoring the metaphorical 800-pound elephant in the room is…curious, to say the least.
Dr. Balon does mention Madam Mam’s, but I find his comments kind of dismissive. He doesn’t even note that there are actually three locations; the third one is near the Alamo Drafthouse in the Village, and to my untrained eye appears to be doing well.
“And yet just a few miles south on W 6th st. fine restaurants like Lemongrass and Thai Tara have languished and ultimately closed.” I would have to go back to the archives and do some research, but my recollection is that the closing of Lemongrass was a lot more complicated than that. As for Thai Tara, it stayed open much longer than I would have expected; I’d suggest that it closed almost entirely due to a bad location, and especially due to parking issues downtown.
Dr. Balon mentions relatively new places such as Chon Som and Titaya, but I see even more Thai places that he doesn’t mention popping up on street corners all over town. (For example, Pad Thai on Guadalupe, and Thai Cuisine at Parmer and I-35.) Thai Village seems to be doing much better than the shopping center it’s in. Bangkok Cuisine has stayed in business for many years (how, I don’t exactly know). Compared to the Thai situation in, say, 2007, we’re living in a golden age.
Could some of these places (like Satay) use more customers? Dr. Balon seems to know more about this than I do. But let’s say that they could use more customers; is that because they serve Thai food, or is that because of the economy in general? If we compared Thai places to TexMex places, or barbecue joints, would we see a similar trend towards a smaller customer base?
Dr. Balon may have a point, but I don’t think he’s mustered the evidence to back it up.
I’m putting this under the “Art, damn it, art!” watch because I haven’t made up my mind about this one.
Would you pay someone to sharpen your pencil for you? (This is not a metaphor for something else: when I say “sharpen your pencil”, I mean a regular #2 pencil, with graphite and an eraser.)
Would you pay someone $15 to sharpen your pencil for you?
Would you pay someone $15 to sharpen your pencil for you, using a “specially selected” implement that “suits your pencil best”?
Would you pay David “Get Your War On” Rees $15 to sharpen your pencil for you?
My first thought was: this is moronic.
But considering it some more, “artisanal pencil sharpening” could be a subtle and brilliant parody of the whole “artisanal” movement. Artisanal food, artisanal axes; why not “artisanal pencil sharpening”?
I’m actively going back and adding links to my original DEFCON 18 posts as they become available and/or I find them.
However, I know some people use RSS to read WCD, and don’t automatically get updated posts in their feed. So I’m also going to try posting lists of updates I’ve added, at least for the DEFCON 18 stuff.
If you’re aware of links I’ve missed so far (and by the way, thanks Gremlin), or if there’s a talk you saw that I haven’t covered, please feel free to leave comments.
The Seattle Mariners (43-70) fired Don Wakamatsu, their manager, yesterday. As the Seattle paper notes, this took place right before the Mariners’ celebration of Japanese heritage day, and Wakamatu’s firing was just the latest in a long string of odd incidents this year.
Missed this on Sunday, but the Pirates fired their pitching coach and bench coach.
And the city of Maywood (remember Maywood?) is considering firing the city of Bell, due to the ongoing salary scandal in Bell.
Not exactly a firing, but I’m going to throw this in anyway: LA County Sheriff Lee Baca is refusing to release records involving the death of Ruben Salazar. Salazar was a television journalist covering an anti-Vietnam war rally in East LA on August 29, 1970; he was killed when a sheriff’s deputy fired a tear-gas grenade into a bar and hit Salazar in the head.
The LAT doesn’t mention this aspect of Salazar’s life, but I will. I’ve been interested in Salazar ever since I read The Great Shark Hunt
Edited to add: Whoops, I was mistaken. I had Salazar confused with Oscar Zeta Acosta. That’s what I get for relying on my memory while I was at work, and not waiting until I got home to check my sources. HST did write about Salazar in The Great Shark Hunt, though.
It has been a while since I’ve done one of these, what with travel and all, but I did warn you I was laying off the Astros updates….
Anyway, Houston’s actually passed the Cubs to move into 4th place in the division. At .439, that works out to 71.118 projected wins.
Baltimore’s at 35-73, for a .324 winning percentage, and 52.488 projected wins.
Pittsburgh’s at 38-70, for a .352 winning percentage, and 57.024 projected wins.
But I believe President Obama has done something right.
Back during the Vietnam war, there was a four-star general in the Air Force named John D. Lavelle. In 1972, he was accused of ordering unauthorized bombing missions in North Vietnam, and of trying to cover up those missions. General Lavelle denied the charges, and claimed the missions were authorized; however, he was demoted and forced to resign anyway.
Lavelle died in 1979, but insisted in interviews that the missions were authorized, and that he was acting on the orders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Yesterday, President Obama asked the Senate to restore General Lavelle’s missing star, which would effectively (in my humble opinion, and in the opinion of the WP) restore General Lavelle’s honor.
The president’s decision is based on evidence uncovered by Aloysius Casey, a retired general, and his son, Patrick, who were researching a biography of another Air Force general. In the process of their research, they found documents showing that, yes, the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew of and authorized the missions.
Even more damning, they found audio recordings showing that President Nixon also ordered and knew of the missions, and actually dithered about whether or not to throw General Lavelle under the bus.
We have previously covered the strange events surrounding the sale of the Texas Rangers. Now, things appear to be at an end: Nolan Ryan’s group won the auction, beating out a group that included Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks).
Given how contentious the auction seems to have been (one of the lawyers for Ryan’s side apparently cursed out the lawyer for the court-appointed restructuring officer; remember, as part of this sale, the Rangers filed for Chapter 11), I would not be shocked to see additional legal action attempting to block the sale.
“Beauty and the Beast”.
(Photo credit: Mike the Musicologist.)
I covered a lot of stuff in my previous travel report, so this will mostly just be updates.
and am almost finished with Cisco Routers for the Desperate 2nd Edition
(also recommended). No Starch Press rocks. And the coupon code “DEFCON18” will get you a 30% discount. And they’re running a half-price sale on all e-books.My thanks to, in no particular order, the DEFCON 18 staff and presenters, No Starch Press, UNIX Surplus, SEREPick, Lotus of Siam, Shabu-Shabu Paradise, Sarah at the iBar in the Rio, and the unknown belly dancer at Marrakech.
Special thanks to my high-speed, low-drag travel companions in the primary, Mike the Musicologist and Andrew “Porous concrete? What were they thinking?” Wimsatt.