Archive for August 15th, 2012

Obit watch: August 15, 2012.

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

Various sources, including John Scalzi and the Onion A/V Club, are reporting the passing of noted SF writer and SFWA Grand Master Harry Harrison.

I never met Mr. Harrison (though I suspect we attended some of the same Worldcons) and I wasn’t well read in much of his work. I should probably get a copy of Make Room! Make Room!

But I was a big fan of the first five “Stainless Steel Rat” books, especially The Stainless Steel Rat for President, the first one I read in the series. What’s not to like about a super-competent intergalactic con man turned quasi-good guy (and who manages to pick up a little on the side in between saving the universe)?

There was a quote in the first book that I found rather striking at the time:

We are the rats in the wainscoting of society – we operate outside of their barriers and outside of their rules. Society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as the old wooden buildings had more rats than the concrete buildings that came later. But they still had rats. Now that society is all ferroconcrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps between the joints, and it takes a smart rat to find them. A stainless steel rat is right at home in this environment.
It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat – and it is the greatest experience in the galaxy if you can get away with it. The sociological experts can’t seem to agree why we exist, some even doubt that we do. The most widely accepted theory says that we are victims of delayed psychological disturbance that shows no evidence in child-hood when it can be detected and corrected and only appears later in life. I have naturally given a lot of thought to the topic and I don’t hold with that idea at all.
A few years back I wrote a small book on the subject – under a nom de plume of course – that was rather well received. My theory is that the aberration is a philosophical one, not a psychological one. At a certain stage the realisation striked through that one must either live outside of society’s bonds or die of absolute boredom. There is no future or freedom in the circumscribed life and the only other life is complete rejection of the rules. There is no longer room for the soldier of fortune or the gentleman adventurer who can live both within and outside of society. Today it is all or nothing. To save my own sanity I chose the nothing.

When I first started using BBS systems, back in the early 80s, I took my online pseudonym from Harrison’s character, for precisely those reasons.

Rest in peace, Mr. Harrison.

Posted in Books, Obits | 4 Comments »

Second chances?

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

At age 69, Betty Smithey learned that sometimes you really do get a second chance.

She’s 69 years old, she’s been in prison for 49 years, she needs a cane to walk. Is anybody going to hire her? Who is going to pay her medical bills? What kind of “second chance” is this?

And the reason she was in prison for 49 years is that she strangled a 15-month-old baby. I don’t see anyone giving Sandy Gerberick a “second chance”.

Honestly, I’m not sure what justice would be in this case. Should Ms. Smithey have died in prison? Maybe. I want to believe that people deserve a shot at redemption, though. My problem is less with the commutation of her sentence and the granting of parole by Arizona authorities (which I suspect was motivated at least in part by not wanting to pay the medical bills of an old woman), and more with the LAT‘s hopelessly optimistic characterization of releasing a woman who has spent the past half-century in prison as giving her “a second chance”.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

More things I did not know until now.

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

In the mid 1990s, a man in Germany was caught with up to $11,000,000 in counterfeit Canadian Tire money. It was recovered before he left for Canada to redeem it. An Armenian man from the country of Georgia also had similar ideas about counterfeit scrip, and was caught with over 45 million in counterfeit coupons.

I have no joke here, I just like saying “Eleven million dollars in counterfeit Canadian Tire money.”

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: August 15, 2012.

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

I think today is going to be a day for food writing. I have a longer post planned about last night. But in the meantime, here are some random things for you to chew on.

The NYT has made several discoveries:

  1. There are places outside of Manhattan, and even outside of New York state, with exotic names like “Iowa”.
  2. People in those exotic places sometimes gather during the summer, in what are called “state fairs”.
  3. At those “state fairs” you can purchase food items on sticks.

(Quote from the slide show attached to the article: “The fascination with food on a stick is difficult to explain, but it usually means a 30 to 40 percent increase in sales.”)

(I would really like to know how well the vegetarian corn dogs are selling.)

Speaking of food, today would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday. Expect festivities around the web, starting with the NYT.  I kind of like Julia Moskin’s “The Gifts She Gave” and Jacques Pépin’s “Memories of a Friend, Sidekick and Foil“.

(I note, with some bitterness, that our local PBS station is showing something called “Julia Childs [sic]  Memories: Bon Appetit” tonight. I say “some bitterness” because a) I expect this to not show any complete recipe preparations, from start to finish, and b) our local PBS station is in the middle of a pledge drive, so I expect constant “give us money” interruptions.)

Something I noticed over the weekend: the French Quarter Grille has opened a second location. In Round Rock. Specifically, in the old Gumbo’s location. Hmmmmm.

Obit watch for the record: Ron Palillo, “Horshack” on “Welcome Back, Kotter”.

The LAT has apparently discovered that used car dealers are…used car dealers.

From mid-2008 to this April, 862 licensed used-car dealers — about 1 in 8 statewide — sold at least one vehicle three or more times, The Times has found.

Posted in Cars, Clippings, Food, Law, Obits, On a stick, Politics, TV | Comments Closed