Archive for March, 2011

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Truffle trouble.

Friday, March 4th, 2011

It would fill my heart with delight if someone managed to grow truffles reliably in the United States.

I know there are many people working on the problem (supposedly including one person out near Dripping Springs; this article is from 1984, and I haven’t been able to find anything more recent in Google) but it seems that the growing of truffles is more difficult than you might expect for something that’s basically a fungus.

All of this is by way of introducing today’s NYT article about two truffle growers in North Carolina who’ve been engaged in a lengthy legal battle.

Important safety tip:

Local chefs give North Carolina mixed reviews.

“They don’t seem to have a lot of quality control,” said Andrea Reusing, chef and owner of the Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill. And actually getting them can be maddening.

“We need to start calling them wacky truffles on the menu,” she said. “There is a certain kind of spaciness to whole thing.”

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Musical beg.

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Does anybody have a digital version, or a pointer to one, of “Throw Him Down, McCloskey”?

I can find the lyrics and even the sheet music online, but I’ve been unable to find a recording of someone actually performing the song. I will be happy to pay money for a recording, but I’ve been unable to find one in either the iTunes or Amazon stores.

Posted in Lazyweb, Music | Comments Closed

The lunatics are on the grass.

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Two things that made me chuckle, and one that didn’t.

Goodnight Dune, the children’s book.

Goodnight Keith Moon, which is probably not for children.

(Hattip: Robb Allen.)

This is an old story, but I don’t think I’ve linked it before: Margaret Wise Brown left the rights and royalties from her books to her neighbor Albert Clarke. Clarke was nine years old when she died in 1952. So what’s happened since then? (I know this was published in 2000. I haven’t been able to turn up anything more recent on Albert Clarke, except a rather mean article on an obscure website calling him a drug addict and suggesting that nobody should ever buy a new copy of Goodnight Moon.)

Posted in Books, Clippings | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 3, 2011.

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

I went to the fights last night, and a case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy broke out.

Sirhan Sirhan has been turned down for parole for the 13th time. What’s interesting about this article is that it focuses almost as much on Sirhan’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, and Pepper’s previous efforts:

Pepper says [James Earl] Ray, who was convicted of killing King two months before Kennedy was slain, was framed by the federal government and that King was killed in a conspiracy involving the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis.

This gives me an excuse to plug Hampton Sides’ excellent (and Edgar-nominated) book Hellhound on His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, about the killing of King and the manhunt for Ray. I picked it up about two weeks ago, and read the first 300 pages in one night. The only reason I stopped there was because I was dozing off. Sides’ book has an amazingly strong narrative drive for a true crime work; it reads very much like a good novel.

I’m not going to say it deserves the Edgar;  I haven’t read any of the other nominated books (I did pick up The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science last weekend, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet.) but I do commend Hellhound to your attention.

This is not a strategy I had considered for driving up page views, but good for the Austin Bulldog.

Edited to add: This is the closest thing I’ve found to a discussion of food items at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year. No photos. I’d apologize, but I don’t want a photo of the “Pulled Pork Sundae”, which frankly sounds disgusting.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Law, Neuroscience, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

For you see I’m on the legal beat…

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

I love a good heist. But it has to be a good one; that is, there has to be an element of panache to it, not just a random smash and grab. Something like this:

Los Angeles police detectives sought help from the public Tuesday to identify two armed burglars who stole several million of dollars in jewels after tunneling into a downtown jewelry store.

From a second LAT article about the heist:

Investigators said the burglars dug the tunnel at a key point that avoided structural obstacles, allowing them to get in and out quickly.

I’ve previously mentioned Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World in this space. Chapter four, “The Hole in the Ground Gang” discusses a group of bank robbers who pulled off a series of robberies by digging tunnels from the sewer system under and into bank vaults. That group was never caught, and apparently retired from the business. I wonder, though…

A nearly unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the First Amendment protects even hurtful speech about public issues and upheld the right of a fringe church to protest near military funerals.

Right decision. Westboro is still a bunch of jackasses.

This decision got a lot of press yesterday. I’m kind of hoping one of my legal readers can explain why:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a shooting victim’s statement to the police at a crime scene can be used in court, even if the victim later dies and cannot testify at a trial.

I’m confused because I’ve always understood “dying words” to be an exception to the hearsay rule. (Wikipedia is not a lawyer. Wikipedia is not your lawyer. Neither am I. Contents may settle in shipping.) What exactly does this decision change?

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, IANAL, Law | 2 Comments »

Quote of the day.

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

“This is a substantial amount of iguana meat, well beyond what would be considered as personal use, it lacked the necessary permits for lawful importation and further it was found hidden in masa,” said Joe Uribe, Acting CBP Port Director in Laredo.

I think the lessons here are:

  1. Always make sure you have the proper permits for your iguana meat.
  2. If you have the proper permits, you don’t need to hide your iguana meat in masa. Or anything else for that matter.
  3. Small amounts of iguana meat for “personal use” are apparently okay with Customs.
  4. You can find recipes for iguana online.
  5. At the moment, I very much wish that I was in Tijuana.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Lizards, Music, Radio, Reptiles | 3 Comments »

Here. Have some crap.

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Sorry. I’ve been a little tied up, and there hasn’t been much to write about. Frank Buckles pretty much got covered everywhere in the known universe, and I don’t have terribly much to say about Jane Russell (well, not here anyway).

Part of what’s been tying me up is the “Introduction to Literary Studies” class I’ve been taking. This weekend was crunch time, with revisions to one essay and a second essay due. So for filler purposes, and to let you all laugh at me, I’ve decided to throw up essay two and essay three.

I wanted to post essay two in particular because Andrew “Shut. Down. Everything.” Wimsatt and I were talking about it one recent Sunday afternoon on our way to Momji; I was describing the subject of this essay to Andrew, and he was laughing hysterically as I talked about rotting buffalo and the cry of the whippoorwill. I don’t think the story is all that amusing, but reasonable people can differ…

The Chief Seattle Problem.

Here’s essay three. I doubt that Andrew will find it quite as funny as the other one, but you never know.

Orwell’s 1984 and the “Elephant” In the Room.

Both of these have been graded, so do your worst in the comments. And remember, St. Edward’s uses TurnItIn; plagiarists will be caught.

Posted in Clippings, School | Comments Closed

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