Archive for July 16th, 2012

Olympic watch: July 16, 2012.

Monday, July 16th, 2012

The LAT would like for you to know that the United States is not fielding teams in all the Olympic sports. Notable exceptions: soccer (the US team was eliminated), men’s field hockey, and team handball.

Interesting aspects:

  1. “Team handball” is apparently a thing.
  2. “…in 2006, the sport’s governing body was decertified by the USOC”.
  3. There is apparently such a thing as “professional handball”, at least in Germany.
  4. “…imagine LeBron [James] and [Derrick] Rose and others like him playing handball. It wouldn’t take long, with proper coaching and funding, to get those guys competing at a level needed to earn a trip to the Olympics.” Maybe, guy, but I’m not sure the skill set that makes you good at basketball translates to being Olympic level at handball, team or solo.
  5. The guy who currently runs USA Team Handball is David Gascon. Perhaps you know him better as LAPD Cmdr. David Gascon, former second-in-command of the department, and the guy who went on TV to announce O.J. was a fugitive. (I wanted to embed video, but I can’t find any on YouTube.)

The WP would like for you to consider what happens to athletes who don’t make the team. Do they defer their dreams until 2016? (Not if you’re a baseball or softball player; those sports ain’t coming back in 2016.) Do you go pro on the woman’s boxing circuit?

“Yeah, I won a gold medal. Big deal,” [Decathlete Bryan] Clay said. “I still have to pay rent, still have to change diapers, still have to mow the lawn. In the grand scheme of things, the gold medal is awesome, but to live a full life, you need a lot more.”

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Spiders | 1 Comment »

Claw shrimp!

Monday, July 16th, 2012

Things I did not know until now:

Darn it. I’m not planning a trip to New England anytime soon, so there goes my chance to make a dent in the glut…

(Hattip: The Price Hike.)

(Hattip 2: Penny Arcade.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Lobsters | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: July 16, 2012.

Monday, July 16th, 2012

Ah, San Bernardino. You may remember that the city filed for bankruptcy, and that city officials say the budget figures were falsified for 13 out of 16 years.

Yeah. Well.

Officials in San Bernardino, which announced last week that it intended to file for bankruptcy, had known for years that the city’s finances were becoming critical.

More:

“I told the council two years in a row that, if this continues, we’re going to be looking at bankruptcy. I got criticized for bringing up the word ‘bankruptcy.’ They called it scare tactics,” said former City Manager Charles McNeely, who resigned unexpectedly in May. “The politics of that place are just impossible to deal with.”

And the county sheriff is looking into “allegations of ‘possible criminal activity within departments of the San Bernardino city government”, just for the record.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

“History can be well written only in a free country.”

Monday, July 16th, 2012

(Quote attributed to Voltaire.)

A while back, there was a meme going around the gun blogs, asking “Why do you carry?” Answers to that generally fell into a couple of categories: “to protect myself/my family”, “because I can”, “because f–k you, that’s why”.

A kind of related question that I haven’t seen talked about is “why do you own guns in the first place?” Many of the answers are the same: self defense, because we don’t like people telling us what we can and can’t do, and so on. But one answer I haven’t really seen people talk much about is “history”.

Since I got back from the S&W Collector’s Association convention in Boise, I’ve been thinking about history and guns, both together and separate. There were a lot of intersections in Boise with areas of my own personal history, and there are some other things are just simply curious or interesting.

I believe an argument can be made that weapons are actually one of the cheapest ways to establish a connection to history for the common man. You can collect cars, for example, but it takes a millionaire’s pocket to collect anything historically significant. If you’re lucky, you might see a vintage warbird at an air show two or three times a year, but good luck touching one, let alone sitting in the cockpit. And flying one, again, requires a millionaire’s budget.

But I think there’s more going on than just the money element.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Photography | Comments Closed

The mimes are food for the bums underground…

Monday, July 16th, 2012

New York, New York!

Several of the city’s most troubled hospitals are partially or completely uninsured for malpractice, state records show, forgoing what is considered a standard safeguard across the country.

This list includes Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, about which we have written previously.

In 2009, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, in Bushwick, had $50,000 in its malpractice fund; in 2010, the amount put aside to cover claims had dwindled to “0,” according to its financial statements. Yet the hospital listed professional liabilities of $37 million. Ramon Rodriguez, the chief executive, declined to comment.

On the other hand, are these hospitals better off without insurance?

“Malpractice insurance is a lawsuit magnet,” said a former hospital administrator who did not want to be named to avoid upsetting potential employers. Malpractice lawyers said that underinsured hospitals put them in a tricky position.
“There is some arm-twisting,” said Alan Fuchsberg, a personal injury lawyer in Manhattan, as plaintiffs are told that they will end up with nothing and push the hospitals into bankruptcy if they do not “just take the little bit” that is offered to them.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the murder of Herman Rosenthal. Mr. Rosenthal was a small time crook who ran several gambling dens, and was allegedly paying off politicians and cops. One of the cops he was alleged to be bribing was Lieutenant Charles Becker of the vice squad; Lt. Becker raided Rosenthal’s establishment anyway, leading to a heated dispute between the two gentlemen.

This dispute ended with Mr. Rosenthal being shot outside a Manhattan hotel. Lt. Becker was tried, convicted, had his conviction overturned on appeal (due to alleged bias by the judge in the case), retried, convicted again, and finally executed. Lt. Becker is one of a very few police officers to face the death penalty for crimes committed while a police officer. (Incidentally, I still have not found an execution date for Antoinette Frank.)

The NYT has a retrospective article summarizing the case, and suggesting that Lt. Becker may have been innocent of ordering the Rosenthal murder. (There does not seem to be any question that Lt. Becker was a crooked cop; the main question is, did he order the murder, or were the killers acting independently?)

Historical note: one of the men who pinned the murder on Lt. Becker was Jack Rose. Yeah, that Jack Rose.

(Subject line hattip. Can I just mention that it is awesome that WikiQuote has an entire section of “Sam and Max: Freelance Police” quotes?)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Mixology | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#30 in a series).

Monday, July 16th, 2012

Jeremy Larner is the “business manager” for someone named Rob Dyrdek; as I understand it, Mr. Dyrdek is a skateboarder who has a show on MTV.

Point is, Mr. Larner is apparently fairly well-to-do, and describes himself as an “art geek”. Mr. Larner has several works by Shepard Fairey in his collection.

About 15 months ago, Mr. Larner won an auction for the right to sponsor a Fairey mural in the children’s wing at L.A. County-USC Medical Center, paying $30,000 for the privilege.

Mr. Larner is unhappy with the outcome and the way he was treated, and is suing for his money back.

I could snark on Mr. Fairey, or on the wisdom of paying $30,000 for his work, but it actually sounds like Mr. Larner has some legitimate gripes.

In a timeline in his lawsuit, Larner contended that he repeatedly reached out to the charity for updates on the mural but received no firm information for months. He said that after numerous queries to project manager Eli Consilvio, he received a prank phone call in November from a mutual friend and fellow art collector.

Part of Mr. Larner’s sponsorship included watching Mr. Fairey paint the mural. Unfortunately, Mr. Larner was “on vacation and unable to attend” when the mural was painted. It isn’t clear to me if this was a big deal to Mr. Larner. But:

As the months wore on, Larner grew frustrated that no dedication ceremony had occurred. [Project manager Eli] Consilvio said he told Larner that the administrative issues with the hospital were causing the delays and thought Larner understood. Larner filed a fraud and breach-of-contract suit in L.A. County Superior Court on June 25, detailing the delays and the prank call.

Posted in Art, California Über Alles, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed