Actually, that wasn’t the part I wanted to single out. This was:
To be honest, I’m not sure I’d want to marry a woman who found “a romantic wading experience” with “the beluga as a de facto chaperon” a good idea. I can live with strawberries (though I think they’re the most overrated fruit) and there’s nothing wrong with champagne, but adding a beluga whale to the equation is not romantic.
The problem is that Think Progress, Huffington Post, and BoingBoing are full of shit.
—Ken @ Popehat
I commend this post to your attention, as not only does it masterfully dissect the idea that the law should be what we feel it should be, rather than what it actually is, but it also points out gross misconduct by Antinous, a Boing Boing moderator.
More from Ken:
(It is probably worth pointing out that this has some relevance to the Mirkarimi situation. Yes, he thumped his woman. Yes, he was convicted of a crime. But the arguments of the people who opposed his firings are that the mayor doesn’t have the authority to fire Mirkarimi, and that his crime took place before he was in office, so it shouldn’t count. I don’t much like these arguments, but I’m having trouble sorting out whether I don’t like them because that’s the way I feel the law should be, rather than the way it actually is, even if “the way it is” is stupid in my opinion.)
I’ve written previously about San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who has been convicted of domestic violence.
The mayor of San Francisco needed nine out of eleven votes from the city’s Board of Supervisors to fire Sheriff Mirkarimi.
There is a quote, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, (but probably apocryphal, at least in this form) “Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
There is another quote, commonly attributed to an anonymous actor in a commercial, “I’m not a doctor. But I play one on TV.”
What do those have to do with this week’s TMQ? After the jump…
An episode of “Seinfeld”:
Remember the rapist HPD cop? The jury handed down his sentence: life in prison.
And the latest update on the “Rebecca” front: those four investors, including the one who supposedly died of malaria, never existed. At least, according to the producer’s lawyer. Still unclear: what was the motivation to make these people up?
(Darn shame that “Law and Order” isn’t on any longer. This story is starting to read like an episode of that series. And I can’t really see how you’d fit this into “Kinky Sex Crimes” – er, I mean, “Special Victims Unit”.)
“Commander Squirrel”?
Wow. If you’re a cartel boss:
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
I had the Cleveland game going on the background while I puttered around the kitchen and read FARK and Briarpatch
Speaking of playing smarter, I think I’m going to have to add the Chargers to my list of “most consistently overrated teams in the NFL”. Seriously, how do you lose to the Saints, even with the whole Brees record thing?
Our pals at the NYT have an interesting update on the “Rebecca” front. (Previously. Previously.)
It is starting to look like a certain gentleman basically invented four investors, and the $4.5 million they were supposed to put into the show, from scratch. This gentleman has not been charged with a crime as of yet, but has a colorful history that includes bankruptcy, civil suits, and an unrelated federal investigation.
But why would he do this? What’s his motivation?
In other news, the Pine Ridge reservation is considering legalizing alcohol, because prohibition isn’t working. I missed the fact that the reservation’s suit against the beer dealers in Whiteclay had been dismissed. (Previously.)
Noted:
Abraham Joseph, 28, was found guilty of two counts of aggravated sexual assault.
Mr. Joseph was a Houston police department officer at the time he raped the woman, who was a waitress (and, for the record, was an illegal alien at the time; she since has been granted asylum).
I’m not convinced the Austin nightclub trial is going well for the prosecution, though I only have the Statesman‘s account to rely on. The government’s primary witness is a cousin of the two brothers who are on trial. The feds have paid him $340,000 to date, and he seems to be having memory troubles.
The Houston Astros played their last game of the baseball season yesterday.
As you may recall, in 2011, the Astros finished 56-106, for a .346 winning percentage.
This year…it came right down to the wire, but the Astros finished 55-107, losing their last game to the Chicago Cubs, finishing with a .340 winning percentage, and setting a new record for losses in a single season.
Oh, well. There’s always next year; and with the team changing leagues, maybe the 120 loss mark is within reach.
From last week’s TMQ:
“Revolution” has “canceled by Christmas” written all over it.
From Deadline Hollywood Daily:
This should not be interpreted as implying that we think “Revolution” is a good show. To be perfectly honest, we haven’t watched it, and have no plans to: this comic sums up our reasons why pretty well.
(“The laws of smashing things into other things WENT CRAZY?!” We cannot lie: that’s an awesome line.)
(And a tip of the Hatlo hat to Erin Palette over at “Lurking Rhythmically”, both for the pointer to “Hijinks Ensue” and for this post outlining some of the logic flaws in the show.)
(There’s a much better SF story based on the idea of electricity not working; in that story, it appears to be an alien presence that’s capable of discriminating between machines and, say, human brain impulses. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title and author of that story at the moment. It is in an Asimov-curated anthology that I have at home somewhere. I know it wasn’t an S.M. Stirling story, but one from the pulp era. If I figure out the title and author, I’ll update here.)
Edited to add: I’m pretty sure it was “The Waveries” by Frederic Brown.