…the Texas Department of Public Safety is, once again, encouraging folks to get liquored up and drive like maniacs this holiday season.
Archive for December, 2010
In other news…
Monday, December 20th, 2010Special fast and bulbous obit watch.
Monday, December 20th, 2010Don Van Vliet, aka “Captain Beefheart”, has passed away.
A long, long time ago, the actor we’ve hired to play my good friend Karl gave me a mixtape with parts of Trout Mask Replica on it. (I want to say this same mixtape had the legendary “Get That Screaming B—h Out of My Ear!” on it, but I’m not sure, and I don’t know where that tape is now.) I was always rather struck by “Well“.
Oddly, neither Amazon nor iTunes seem to have Trout Mask Replica, and what Beefheart they have is limited (mostly later works). I’ve also never been able to find the legendary “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” video; it doesn’t turn up on YouTube.
Argh.
Friday, December 17th, 2010Headline in the LAT: “Wine and online sales: It’s easier to buy a gun than merlot”.
First paragraph of the article:
Okay. Let’s take a close look at that. Yes, in “most states”, you can order a gun online. Unless you, yourself, have a Federal Firearms License, the gun has to be shipped from a registered dealer to another dealer who also has a FFL. (You can order from a private party; however, that person has to find an FFL near them to process the transaction.) Once the gun arrives at the dealer you’ve selected, you have to go in and fill out a Form 4473. For the benefit of my readers who have never purchased a gun, here’s what a Form 4473 looks like. The purchaser has to fill out everything in section A.
Once you’ve filled out the Form 4473, the dealer then still has to call in to the National Instant Check System (NICS) to determine if you’re allowed to go through with the purchase, denied, or delayed. (There are some exceptions to that; for example, because I have a Texas CHL permit, dealers are not required to make the NICS call, because I’ve already been vetted by the State of Texas. I still have to make arrangements with a FFL to receive the gun for me; the only thing my Texas CHL permit allows me to bypass is the NICS call.)
In addition, you’ll typically end up paying shipping on the gun you ordered. Dealers also don’t generally do these transfers for free. Depending on how good a negotiator you are, you may end up paying the seller’s transfer fee to their FFL (if the gun comes from a private party and not a dealer); for sure, you’ll end up paying a transfer fee to the dealer who receives the gun for you, has you fill out the 4473, and does the background check. $25-$30 is what these fees average in the Austin area.
As far as ordering pornography; who does that these days? As far as cigarettes, I think the author needs to do a bit more research on that particular subject. Here’s a hint: you may not go to jail, but you’re likely to end up being billed for taxes. And as I recall, New York and several other states were attempting to ban credit card companies from processing online cigarette orders, and trying to persuade the Postal Service and other carriers to ban cigarette shipments.
I don’t, as a matter of fact, disagree with the author’s general argument; online wine sales are excessively complicated, largely due to laws that were put in place to protect liquor wholesalers. However, neither his argument nor the credibility of the LAT are helped by misrepresenting facts.
Speaking of books.
Friday, December 17th, 2010I’m finishing up The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents
I’m a bit hesitant about posting a review before I’m done (though right now I’m just reading the endnotes and bibliography). However, Reason did a pretty good review of the book in their January issue: here’s the link. I agree with Brian Doherty that is annoying to see Butterworth play up the anarchist movement/radical Islam angle in the introduction, and then drop it for the rest of the book. The connection is worth considering, but I think there are reasons why it breaks down. For starters, the anarchist movement was never a movement that involved state actors, while radical Islam is. I’ll leave further discussion of that point up to the jihad correspondent…
The Decline of Western Civilization. (Part #N of a continuing series.)
Friday, December 17th, 2010FarmVille For Dummies
Random notes: December 17, 2010.
Friday, December 17th, 2010I’ve already sent this to Jay G. so he can up the Dead Goblin Count (Edited to add: yeah, me and about 11 other people), but I think it is worth noting here: bad guys try to hold up a jewelry store.
Adding to yesterday’s discussion of Bob Feller, Daring Fireball had a couple of good tributes: here, and here. (Edited to add: even more from Gruber.)
There was a story I wanted to link yesterday, but forgot about: I previously mentioned the case of General John D. Lavelle, and the presidential decision to grant him a posthumous restoration of the star he lost. Unfortunately, that decision seems to have become bogged down in politics. Worse yet, Kissinger seems to be behind this.
Might not hurt to give your Senator a call.
The Strange Case of Anthony Graves.
Thursday, December 16th, 2010Today’s HouChron has an interesting article about prosecutor Kelly Siegler, investigator Otto Hanak, and how the case against Anthony Graves fell apart.
For those unfamiliar with the case, Graves was convicted of murdering six people (a grandmother and five children) in Somerville, Texas in 1992. The major evidence against Graves was the testimony of Robert Carter, who was also convicted of the crime and executed in 2000. There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence against Carter, as well as Carter’s own confession; Carter had motive and opportunity, while Graves had neither. Only Carter’s testimony, which he recanted before being executed, ties Graves to the crime, and there appears to be evidence that the local prosecutors made a deal with Carter; if he implicated Graves, they would not pursue Carter’s wife, who was believed to be involved in the crime as well.
(I’m glossing over a lot of detail here. The best account I’ve seen, albeit one that’s been overtaken by events, is Pamela Colloff’s “Innocence Lost”, in the October 2010 Texas Monthly.)
This is a disturbing case, and I find it even more disturbing that the original prosecutor is making threats against Siegler. Not that Ms. Siegler is a shirking violet: you may remember her from the Susan Wright case, where she tied up one of her fellow prosecutors in the courtroom and re-enacted Ms. Wright’s stabbing of her husband 193 times.
Bravo to her and to Mr. Hanak for acting out what should be the prosecutor’s motto: “Fiat justitia ruat caelum.“
What’s My Melodic Line?
Thursday, December 16th, 2010This little gem came across on a mailing list I subscribe to: a group of British musicians has gotten together as “Cage Against the Machine” and released their own recording of ” 4′ 33″ “ for charity.
(The recording does not appear to be available from iTunes, but you can go to Amazon and pick from the original or seven different remixes of ” 4’33”
What the article doesn’t mention, but the mailing list post does, is that “Cage Against the Machine” is also a deliberate attempt to keep the winner of “X Factor” in the UK from reaching #1 on the charts on Christmas weekend. (A similar attempt to do the same thing last year with an old “Rage Against the Machine” song actually worked.) When I mentioned this to Mike the Musicologist, he informed me that I was about 10 days late and a dollar short, and sent along a link to this thoughtful blog post.
Pretty much anything that sabotages one of Simon Cowell’s glorified karaoke competitions fills me with delight, and there have been times when I’ve wanted to walk up to musicians and slip them a few bucks to play ” 4’33” “. But I’ve got to give the blogger points; he’s right that there’s more to Cage than that one composition, and we run the risk of turning Cage into a joke by concentrating on that one piece.
Random notes: December 16, 2010.
Thursday, December 16th, 2010I was tempted to make some play on Bob Feller’s name in the headline, but I figure everyone’s going to be doing that. So here’s your NYT obit link, sans pun.
As I was in the process of composing this post, I found out about the death of Blake Edwards. I expect fuller obits in tomorrow’s papers.
Speaking of the NYT, there’s quite a bit of interesting stuff in today’s paper. Here’s a quick set of links:
Today is the 50th anniversary of the “Park Slope” plane crash: a United Airlines DC-8 and a Lockheed Constellation collided and fell to the ground in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, killing 134 people. The “City Room” blog has been doing retrospectives on this story for most of the week: the best place to start is probably here, with the “How It Happened” post, and then browse the list of related posts below. It would be nice if the NYT bloggers could tag all the posts on the subject for easy linking…
(Edited to add: for some reason, the tags were not showing up for me earlier in Firefox 3.6, but they are now: this link will show all the posts tagged “Park Slope Plane Crash”.)
There’s also a retrospective on the murder of Ken Rex McElroy in Skidmore, Missouri “nearly” 30 years ago. The hook here is that the county prosecutor, who was just starting the job at the time of the murder, is now leaving office, and there still haven’t been any prosecutions.
There’s also a pretty shallow article on the rise of home science labs. I say “shallow” because the article is basically “Oh, look at all this cool stuff computerization has made affordable” and doesn’t cover any of the issues around home labs and amateur science experimentation; the CPSIA and science kits for kids, laws in some states (like Texas) restricting the purchase of “chemical glassware”, BATFE and the war on high-power rocketry, or the CPSC’s attempt to shut down sales of chemicals for home experimentation, among other issues.
How bad is the California Institute of Technology basketball team?
In local news, I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for this conversation at the Hays County sheriff’s office: “So let me get this straight: you lost the interview with the victim.”
Jack Shafer on the nutmeg scare. I think many of the commenters are missing a key point: shouldn’t we be happy that kids these days are still reading the classics
Academic update: Fall, 2010.
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010Final grades are in.
Yes, straight A’s, thank you very much.
A couple of folks have requested this, so here you go: my final paper on the 1979 Iranian Revolution, in PDF format. Note that this is the submitted version; I would feel as if I am betraying a confidence if I uploaded the version with the professor’s annotations on it.
For those of you who may be considering ripping this off and submitting it as your own work: hey, guess what? St. Ed’s subscribes to the Turnitin system! My paper’s in the database! You’re going to get kicked out of school!
Edited to add: Just so everyone is clear, I welcome comments on the paper, even if they are of the “that’s what passes for ‘A’ quality work at a major university today?” ilk.
Edited to add 2: And we have our first critic, Dr. Rael S. Gabriel, who uses the phrase “a long-running, slow-motion train wreck”. Thanks, Dr. Gabriel; your prize is in the mail.
Edited to add 3: Dr. Gabriel has clarified his remarks to state that he was referring to The Situation, and not my paper specifically.
Edited to add 4: Dr. Gabriel has further clarified his remarks to state that he was referring to the situation in Iran prior to the 1979 revolution, and not the “Jersey Shore” idiot.
TMQ watch: December 14, 2010.
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010Jingle Bells!
Haynesworth smells!
Texans laid an egg!
Bears-mobile lost a wheel
and the Giants got away! Hey!
Let’s open the TMQ Tupperware and see what’s inside.
The Donald.
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010Not Trump. Westlake.
An annotated list covering “all of Donald E. Westlake’s major fiction, his lone book of reportage, and three important essays”. I’m a big Westlake fan, and there’s stuff in here I didn’t know about, like Under an English Heaven. (I’d place The Hook
Amusingly, Lame Excuse Books just delivered my copy of Hellcats and Honeygirls
Edited to add: Also amusingly, Lame Excuse Books is sending out a new catalog this week. Books from Lame Excuse Books make fine, fine Christmas presents for the SF, fantasy, or horror reader in your life.
(Hattip: Bill Crider.)