Of all the books published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the history of the company, the LAT highlights the “Curious George” books?
Archive for May, 2012
Curious George and the bankruptcy lawyers.
Monday, May 21st, 20121.21 gigawatts!
Monday, May 21st, 2012Last week, my great and good friend Chris sent me a link to this Oatmeal comic.
Now, I love Chris like a brother (especially since he and the lovely and talented Mrs. Chris took me out for a steak dinner last week as well, and thanks again, guys) but this comic bugged me for several reasons.
One that I pointed out to Chris is that “the only thing Edison truly pioneered was d’baggery” is wrong. Edison did a great deal of leading edge work on telegraph systems; the money to build Menlo Park came from that work. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet
Anyway, Chris is a great admirer of Telsa, and a great friend of mine, and I don’t like arguing with people who feed me, so I let sleeping dogs lie.
I was pretty surprised, though, when the Y Combinator newsfeed showed me this article from Forbes: “Nikola Tesla Wasn’t God And Thomas Edison Wasn’t The Devil”, which takes on the assertions in the Oatmeal comic and debunks many of them. Knapp’s comment “Because every narrative needs a villain, right?” particularly struck home with me, for reasons that have nothing to do with Edison and Tesla and everything to do with recent events in the blogosphere.
The Oatmeal has come back with a response to the Forbes article as well, should you care to follow the discussion that far down the rabbit hole.
Primary colors.
Monday, May 21st, 2012Over at Tam’s place, she asks the musical question: “What is a man’s favorite color for a gun?”
I thought I’d answer over here, since the comments there are kind of cluttered, and I want to see if there’s anyone out there that feels the same way I do.
Here’s the thing: I don’t like shiny guns. There’s a part of me that says I have tacticool ninja reasons for that: “O. M. G. The reflected sunlight off of my nickel plated Model 29 might give my position away!” But I think my reasons go deeper than that, though I can’t really articulate them beyond: shiny guns don’t look right to me.
That goes for stainless steel, too: I acknowledge the practicality of stainless, and can see good reasons for owning something like a Kit Gun in stainless. But it still doesn’t look right or feel right to me.
Make mine blued.
I think that has something to do with my upbringing. My dad didn’t own anything in nickel or stainless, I don’t think my grandfather on his side of the family did, and I want to say the same thing goes for at least one of my uncles on that side as well. I guess I didn’t grow up with an appreciation for shiny finishes, or with a practical need for stainless steel.
How about some of you other gun bloggers? If you’re a big nickel or stainless steel fan, do you think part of it may be your upbringing? Did you have a father or uncle or aunt who carried a nickel plated gun in the line of duty? Did you grow up on one of the coasts, or around water, where stainless steel was the most practical thing to own?
Art (Acevedo) damn it, Art! watch (#P of a series).
Monday, May 21st, 2012I apologize. I think I may have missed a firing or two along the way. I plead the pressures of various things and throw myself on the mercy of the court.
Today’s APD firing is a doozy.
Det. Richard Munoz worked in the burglary division. Apparently, back in December, someone brought up concerns about how he was handing their case. In the ensuing investigation:
- “Munoz told officials he had conducted an “interrogation” of a burglary suspect over the phone, but did not record it, and did not document other steps he had taken during his investigation, the memo said.”
- Munoz didn’t return calls from victims, didn’t properly document evidence, and didn’t follow up with witnesses.
- “During this investigation, Munoz said he was “running fast and loose doing investigations,” and also provided statements to officials that proved untrue when compared to statements from other officers, witnesses and documents on record, the memo said.”
Interestingly, former Det. Munoz (who can still appeal his firing) had been suspended six times since he started with APD (in 1995) and was actually fired in 2006 “for policy violations related to his honesty, use of force and documentation of incidents”. He was reinstated by an arbitrator, and suspended in 2008 for public intoxication. After that suspension, Chief Acevedo apparently told him “one more, and you’re out”.
Also:
Pardoning Porter.
Friday, May 18th, 2012Over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson has announced an interesting project: obtaining a pardon for William Sydney Porter, also known as “O. Henry”.
The project has a separate website: Pardon O. Henry.
I thought this blog entry, in particular, was interesting: Is it possible O. Henry was actually innocent? I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the short answer is that Porter was very probably a victim of shockingly poor banking practices and, had he not fled the country and returned, he probably would have walked. There’s an even more astonishing piece of information contained in Henson’s blog entry, but I encourage you to go read it for yourself.
Noted.
Thursday, May 17th, 2012I can get Wired for a buck an issue if I use the blow-in cards that come with the print edition. (I can also frequently get Wired for a buck an issue if I purchase it at Half-Price Books.)
If I go to their website to subscribe, the combined print/tablet issue costs $1.67 an issue. The tablet or print issues by themselves cost $1.25 an issue.
If I get the Wired app
(Current print subscribers apparently get the content for free. Which means that it makes more sense to go to Wired‘s web site and subscribe than it does to do an in-app purchase: $15 vs. $19.99. It makes even more sense to subscribe using the cards, but then I have to deal with the print editions.)
Look, Conde Nasties, I’d be happy to subscribe to the Kindle edition of Wired. But I want at least as good a deal as you give on those blow-in cards. One dollar an issue or bust!
Administrative note.
Thursday, May 17th, 2012Graduation is over. Back on your heads.
More seriously, the time for introspection has passed. (Also the time for action.) Expect a return to snark, guns, snark, cops, snark, pop culture, snark, art, and snark.
I still have a few things to finish up: thank you notes are being written and mailed, and I need to go through the photos and pull some out for posting.
In the meantime, frankly, things have been kind of slow. I’m not finding a lot of blog fodder; FARK has picked up most of the good stuff, including some “Art, damn it, art!” fodder.
Lawrence did send me an intriguing link yesterday about Rielle Hunter, equestrian, and how her father paid a hit man to kill one of her horses. That William Nack story rings a bell with me, like I’ve read it before, but I don’t remember where. Setting aside the John Edwards angle, it is a fascinating crime story. It reminds me of Skip Hollandsworth’s “The Killing of Alydar”, which was anthologized in one of the The Best American Crime Writing
I would also like to add one final note, for the record: I will put my family, friends, and coworkers up against any other group of people for sheer concentrated awesomeness. Thanks, gang.
Obit watch: Naked came the reporter.
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012Mike McGrady, reporter for Newsday.
Mr. McGrady was also somewhat famous for being one of the instigators behind the legendary Naked Came the Stranger:
The book is attributed to “Penelope Ashe” but was actually written by a group of 25 Newsday reporters, with McGrady and Harvey Aronson editing their work.
And there’s a punchline at the end of the obit which I won’t spoil for you.
It was perfectly innocent. Really. I swear.
Monday, May 14th, 2012I went over to Amazon because I wanted to see if S.W.A.T Magazine was available in a Kindle edition.
The answer is “No”, but I discovered something else.
S.W.A.T. themed romances. There appear to be two authors in this genre: Denise A. Agnew
- Within His Embrace
.
- Within His Sight
: “Women respond to a man’s testosterone without any thought…”
- In Her Defense
- and Under His Protection
: “SWAT sniper Trey MacGilvary likes his women wild and hot… “
and J.C. Wilder
- Tactical Pleasure
- Tactical Maneuver
- Kissing Cowboy: Men of S.W.A.T.
- Loving Ranger: A Men of S.W.A.T. Story
(I can’t tell for sure, but the latter two appear to be longer works in the “Men of S.W.A.T.” series. The first two are 70 and 79 pages long, the last two 100 and 96. The Agnew books appear to be closer to full on novels, coming in at about 250 pages. Except for Within His Sight, which clocks in at 81 pages.)
A little night music.
Thursday, May 10th, 2012Continuing with our theme of musical interludes, how about a little sherbet as a palate cleanser?
This is another song that I was listening to a lot in 2006 (along with “The Walls Came Down”: “It’s a song of assassins ringing in your ears/We got terrorist thinking playing on fears”). It still has a lot of resonance with me as a song about hope and faith and belief. Not necessarily in a religious sense; there’s not a whole lot of religion in this song, but the message is still clear.
“For people like us, in places like this, need all the hope that we can get…”
A long overdue thank you note.
Thursday, May 10th, 2012I want to write about someone I don’t know personally, but yet I feel an obligation to them.
This is hard to do. If you don’t carry it off right, you come across as a creepy stalker. Of course, I am not a creepy stalker. At least, not of this person; my creepy stalker exploits are reserved for Kate Winslet (I have been a proud member of the “Kate Winslet Creepy Obsessed Stalker Web Ring” since 1994). I also do hire out my services as a stalker to certain people I know personally. Writing about Marc Randazza made me feel strange and kind of stalkerish, but in his case I had some public accomplishments that I could point to.
More seriously, I’m not saying anything profound by pointing out that electronic interaction is weird. I can have friends I see rarely, and who I communicate with only through the Internet. (There’s a person I know who I would jump in front of a bullet for without hesitation. She lives in London, and the last time I saw her in person was in 1997. Much of our friendship has been mediated through electronic interaction; email, chats on the old Delphi network, and things of that ilk.) There are people I’ve come in contact with since I started this blog who I consider friends, but haven’t met – yet. (But the NRA convention is in Houston next year. Just saying.)
So. Anyway.