Randi Shade’s first ethics complaint was dismissed on Friday; somehow I managed to miss that. (Previously.)
Ms. Shade has responded by filing a second ethics complaint against her opponent, Kathie Tovo. We’ll see how that works for her.
Archive for May, 2011
33 in the Shade.
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011Links to make Lawrence happy.
Monday, May 23rd, 2011Because I live for his happiness.
- The 75 MPH speed limit bill has passed both houses and is headed to the Governor’s desk for his signature. (Previously, and not 100% related.)
- Dennis Kucinich is losing his district due to redistricting, and is considering making a run for a seat in Washington State. This is not at all a transparent attempt to justify linking to this post. Not at all. We have standards here.
- Kelly Clarkson will be performing live at the new Microsoft store in the Houston Galleria on June 25th. This actually doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything Lawrence cares about, except possibly the phrases “epic failure” and “you’re doing it wrong”.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang.
Monday, May 23rd, 2011I meant to blog this on Friday, but I got distracted by shiny objects.
“What’s Blippy?” you cry. Blippy was the “social website” that allowed you to “share” your credit card purchases with other people in your “social network”.
There are things that would interest me less than that, but I am hard pressed to think of many.
The shocking thing, at least to me, is that Philip Kaplan (aka “Pud”, aka “the guy behind F—edCompany.com”) apparently thought this was a good idea. I suppose even Homer nods from time to time.
Celtic Women Sing Do-Wop Hits of the 1950s.
Monday, May 23rd, 2011By way of Jimbo, we found this amusing article in today’s NYT:
Of course, the first thing we were reminded of is the old joke about the end of the world and how it is reported by the various papers. (We’d always heard “World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit” attached to the WP; the canonical NYT hed was something like “End of the World Strikes Manhattan: Also Outer Bouroughs. <subhed>Midwest, Other States Afffected As Well.”)
But the key point of the article isn’t how happy PBS execs are with their new series. No, they’re worried because PBS stations are in financial trouble. WMFE terminated their PBS affiliation and sold the station to a religious programmer because they couldn’t pay PBS dues of “just under $1 million annually”.
KCET in Los Angeles went independent at the first of this year, also due to a messy dues dispute with PBS. We were previously unaware that Waco’s PBS station shut down last year. And the more stations that leave, the more dues go up for the remaining stations.
We don’t give money to PBS. We do watch a fair amount of PBS programming: “American Experience”, “Nova”, “Secrets of the Dead”. But when our local PBS station begs for money every other month, they don’t ask for money by presenting stuff we”d actually watch. Instead, they beg for money with multiple reruns of Dr. Wayne Dyer, the Three Tenors On Ice, “How to Learn to Play the Piano in Five Minutes Using Only Common Household Materials”, and other old warhorses that come out of the stable only during pledge time.
We’d suggest that this may be part of the problem for PBS. If they feel they deserve funding, show folks why. Instead of Nicholas Perricone, run a NOVA marathon. Bring out the old episodes of Julia Child. Do “American Experience” and “Nova” marathons. Have the courage to embrace who and what you are. Stop trying to fool people.
I’ve got a Nikon camera, I love to take photographs…
Monday, May 23rd, 2011Les Jones recently upgraded from a Nikon D40 to a D7000, and he’s done some posts I find particularly interesting.
This post actually predates his upgrade, but it contains an interesting link to SD card performance testing on the D7000. I’ve been swearing by Kingston SD cards in my D40X and other SD capable devices, but I may have to pick up at least one of the SanDisk Extreme III cards. This is a good companion post which summarizes what cards Nikon recommends, and breaks down the differences between Class 4, Class 6, Class 10, and UHS-1.
I haven’t had a chance to try StolenCameraFinder.com yet, but it’s good to know about.
I’ve been using the D40X in RAW+JPEG mode, and doing all of my work in iPhoto using just the RAW version of the file. I’m happy to know I have some support for this. (At least the shooting RAW part: see the linked piece from Thom Hogan about the drawbacks of shooting RAW+JPEG. In my case, I can’t count on iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom or Photoshop being part of my workflow, so I feel better sticking with RAW+JPEG.)
And I’ve been looking for a F1.8 50mm lens, so this is kind of exciting.
The saga of Maurice Pierce.
Monday, May 23rd, 2011The long-awaited Statesman profile of Maurice Pierce finally ran on Sunday.
My feeling is that the Statesman glosses over a few things. Yes, Pierce may not have been guilty of the murders, but what was a 16-year-old doing carrying a pistol at the mall?
And why did Pierce react so violently to traffic stops? He was arrested in 2006 for not paying three minor traffic tickets issued in 2003, he punched someone in a traffic altercation in 2007 (and was fined $200 on a disorderly conduct charge), he got into an altercation with a cop in Plano after being pulled over for doing 70 in a 40 (this led to charges of aggravated assault on a public servant and evading arrest), and the final incident that led to his death started as a traffic stop for running a stop sign.
“Maurice stated that he hates cops and that he did not want to go to prison,” the report said.
With the possible exception of the Plano incident, which Pierce escalated, nothing on his rap sheet would have led to prison.
So what was his major malfunction?
Robert “Ratso” Rizzo…
Friday, May 20th, 2011‘Tis a mystery indeed.
Friday, May 20th, 2011To paraphrase something Hunter S. Thompson never said, “The restaurant business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
Take, for example, the strange case of Eric Farber.
Mr. Farber owns (owned?) a place called Plus Four Dining in Georgetown (now closed). Plus Four was on the first floor of a building; the second floor of the building is occupied by the Landmark Tavern, and Landmark’s owner also owns the building itself.
The owner was also trying to evict Mr. Farber, charging default of the lease, insufficient property insurance, and breach of an agreement not to disrupt Landmark’s business…
Farber was appealing the eviction, claiming that Landmark’s customers were too loud for his customers and that the ceiling insulation was inadequate, as well as water leaks and drainage problems in the building. Farber also claims that the owner refused to make repairs and “fabricated the claim that Tenant owed Landlord money for the electric bill.” Farber also apparently filed complaints against the Landmark with TABC.
Sounds like a fairly standard dispute, right? Up until 3:30 AM last week, when Farber was found on the street with a bloody face and no pants.
In a curious coincidence, the police were also called out to a criminal complaint at the Landmark…
Curious. Curious, indeed.
(Hattip: Mom.)
Random notes: May 19, 2011.
Thursday, May 19th, 2011Things have been kind of slow the past couple of days. Please accept this random collection of crap in lieu of actual content.
Today’s update from our “the street finds its own uses for things” file: “Mexican organized crime groups are using ultralight aircraft to drop marijuana bundles in agricultural fields and desert scrub across the U.S. border.”
Speaking of Neuromancer
Back at the ranch, the City of Austin
I’m a little surprised that they had over 2,000 applicants in this most recent batch. I’m also wondering exactly what those questions were…
I also wanted to touch briefly on our fun city council elections. Yes, we had city council elections last weekend. Three seats (out of a total of six) were up this year. Two of those seats were retained by the incumbents (Chris Riley in place 1, and Laura Morrison in place 4) by pretty large percentages (66 and 73 percent of the votes, respectively.)
Place 3 is held by Randi Shade, who is finishing up her first term on the city council. Shade was initially a favorite to win re-election, but there was a controversy over some emails she sent, one thing led to another…and Shade got her butt kicked, badly, finishing second in a four-way race. Shade just barely managed to get into a runoff with the first-place candiate, Kathie Tovo; Tovo pulled in 46 percent of the vote, and it seems unlikely that the supporters of the other two candidates (former city council member Max Nofziger and Kris Bailey) are going to throw their votes to Shade.
(Tovo was also endorsed by the local alternative weekly; the way I read their endorsement, though, it was a close decision between Tovo and Shade. I’ve been unable to find endorsements from the last election on the alt-weekly’s crummy web site, so I don’t know if they endorsed Shade last time around.)
Tovo’s supporters are already calling on Shade to concede and spare everyone the cost of a runoff. Shade’s response? She’s filed an ethics complaint against Tovo. I’m looking forward to watching this one play out. Note to self: vote early.
This just in: remember the SWAT officer who flipped his cop car and was charged with drunk driving? Yeah, he’s out, pending the decision of the arbitrator. Our buddy Art also suspended six other cops who were supposedly at the party with him. Unclear from the current Statesman article is what the grounds for suspension were, or how long the suspensions were for.
Edited to add 5/20: Here’s a better Statesman article with more details on who was suspended for how long and why.
Chutzpah.
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011The classic definition is, of course, the guy who murders his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he’s an orphan.
I think we may have a new one: the Fiesta Bowl wants their illegal campaign contributions refunded.
Man, that’s hardcore.
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011Writing about this makes me a little uncomfortable, but the weird factor supersedes. I’m not mocking the crucifixion of Christ here, for those of my readers of a religious bent.
Now, you’re probably asking yourself the same question I did (and the same question that came up during a recent dinner). I can see how you’d nail your feet, assuming you’re sufficiently limber, and one hand, but how do you get the other hand?
Uh, yeah.
I’m reminded of a story a certain individual used to tell when he was doing stand-up comedy about the late Henry Marshall. Mr. Marshall was a peripheral figure in the Billie Sol Estes scandal who was found dead one day next to his pickup truck. He’d been shot. Five times. In the chest. With a bolt-action .22 rifle. His death was ruled a suicide.
You’ve really got to want to kill yourself to shoot yourself five times in the chest with a bolt-action .22, or to drill holes in your hands and slip them over nails you’ve already put into the cross. I’d probably be rethinking my strategy shortly after driving a freaking nail through my feet, and certainly long before running a power drill through my hand.
The end of the Sahara.
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011Covered by the Las Vegas Sun. (To the best of my knowledge, it is only the Las Vegas Review-Journal that’s a Righthaven paper. If I’m mistaken, please correct me in comments.)
Hattip: Daring Fireball.