I kind of half-assed my post about gun related bills in the Texas Legislature this morning. I blame the vertical integration of the broiler industry and the fact that I had to rush out the door for an appointment.
Over at Battleswarm, Lawrence has given my post a full ass, with a quick overview of the various bills and their individual statuses, complete with links. I commend his post to your attention.
Lawrence linked to an amusing list from USA Today of ten California cities most likely to file for bankruptcy.
The list includes such banana republican favorites as the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon, Compton, and Mammoth Lakes (which, as previously noted, already filed for bankruptcy, but USA Today reports they withdrew that petition).
Not on the list, but should be: Bell. You may recall that one of Bell’s many issues was the collection of illegal taxes from residents. The city has to refund the illegally collected tax dollars to residents…
And by the way:
Back in October, I wrote about the defunct art gallery Knoedler & Company and their troubled relationship with a dealer named Glafira Rosales. Many of the works Ms. Rosales supplied to Knoedler are now considered fakes.
Yesterday, Ms. Rosales was charged with tax fraud.
And:
In other news: the LA County DA plans to retry the Bell city council members. As you may recall, the jury in the first trial completely acquitted one council member (Luis Artiga), convicted the other five members on some charges, acquitted them on other charges, and ultimately hung on the remaining charges.
Texas gun legislation update: things are getting interesting. The concealed carry on campus bill, and the ban on enforcing any new Federal gun laws, are tied up in the Senate. However, the Senate has approved…
This same bill also prevents local governments from outlawing BB guns and Airsoft guns.
My understanding is that the bill to cut back the number of hours of class time required for a concealed carry permit has also passed both houses, and is awaiting the governor’s signature.
More here. I was previously unaware of the TSRA PAC site; the front page summary of legislative events is very useful.
Ray Manzarek. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.
Mentioned by Lawrence last night: Manzarek wrote a horror novel (the A/V Club calls it “a Civil War ghost story”), Snake Moon
Lawrence sent over a link to an interesting article at Grantland: “The Joy of Tanking: Hoarding prospects and being horrible with the Houston Astros”.
But the main point of the article is that the Astros actually have a chance to be good several years from now:
Currently, Houston and Miami are tied for the worst record in baseball: 12-32, with a .273 winning percentage. That puts both teams at a projected 117 losses.
But why does the National PTA have an “official e-reader”? And what other “official” products does the National PTA have? “Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy: Official beer of the National PTA”? “Leica: Official camera of the National PTA”?
I know, I know, but does anyone have a better answer than “M-O-N-E-Y”?
Last night’s movie was Alphaville
Lawrence has said he’s not sure he wants to write a review of it, so I guess the duty of commentary falls to me. The problem is, I’m not sure what to say about it. I get the idea that Jean-Luc Godard is an important director, and Alphaville is an important film in the history of the French New Wave.
And the movie does have some things going for it:
Beyond those things, though…wow, this is one hot pretentious mess. Alphaville is the kind of movie that is great to be able to say you have seen, but not all that great to actually sit through.
(I have a feeling this is going to make it much harder to talk Lawrence and everyone else into seeing Made in U.S.A.
(And no great shock here, but my guess was right: you can buy Alphaville buttons online. However:
Maybe if there’s a button maker at Worldcon I’ll get some done. Goddard won’t mind me infringing his copyright, will he? If he does, it isn’t like he has any room to complain.)
My initial reaction when I saw this NYT article was, “Pakistan has problems because they’re ruled by a kleptocracy? Stop the freakin’ presses, Batman!” If that was a hot news flash to you, well, welcome to the 21st Century; we hope you enjoy your time here.
Having clicked through to the article and read it, my reaction is somewhat different: it is actually an interesting survey of Pakistan’s problems, as reflected by the state of the national rail system. That state is dysfunctional.
One thing towards the end of the article lept out at me: “Nazir Ahmed Jan, a burly 30-year-old and an unlikely Pakistani patriot” lives in Karachi. He migrated to the city in 2009, and makes a living…
So? Mr. Jan also writes patriotic Pakistani poetry. Still “so?”
His Facebook page?
Wow. So even desperately poor people in a desperately poor kleptocracy can get Internet access and have Facebook pages? Not really a shocker, but worth noting next time someone starts talking about the technology gap between rich and poor.
On a tangentially related note, something else that should not have surprised me but did. Last night’s SDC was at one of the growing breed of “fast casual” Indian places. (Review to come.) The big screen TV on the wall was showing Indian cricket.
That wasn’t the surprise. I think you’re hard pressed to find that on US television, even if you have DirectTV, but I know there are satellite TV providers that target the Indian population in the US.
What surprised me, and, in retrospect, shouldn’t have, was: discovering that there is such a thing as “fantasy cricket“. After all, there’s fantasy football, fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball, and cricket really isn’t that far from baseball, so why not fantasy cricket? I guess it surprises me because I hadn’t really considered the idea until it was thrust in my face; now that I have, well, it is interesting, but I won’t be assembling a fantasy cricket team this year.
Not news: New York State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez (D-Brooklyn) has been accused of sexually harassing several women.
News: Assemblyman Lopez is resigning rather than fighting the charges.
FARK: Soon to be former Assemblyman Lopez plans to run for a seat on the NYC City Council.
The Assembly has not expelled anyone since it ejected five socialists in the early 1920s.
About a month ago, I noted the money laundering and gambling charges against Hillel Nahmad, a prominent member of the NYC art scene. Over the past two days, the NYT has run two longish articles going into more detail about the Nahmad accusations:
Meanwhile in Utah, the West Valley City Police Department has problems.
It all started when two undercover officers shot and killed a 21-year-old woman.
More:
And:
HEB Central Market: the place to go for all your Juggalo needs.
I have a three-year old nephew who loves his “trucks”. So whenever I’m at the HEB, I check the toy aisle and try to pick up a Hot Wheels car or something for him. I noticed this at the HEB yesterday:
I don’t know who the target audience for this is. Little kids shouldn’t be watching NCIS, and I doubt adults are big into toy cars. (Collectors are an exception, but is there really a big audience of NCIS collectors, as opposed to Star Trek or Star Wars ones?)
No, I didn’t buy it: the three-year-old is not a big NCIS fan, and it was $5. The Hot Wheels were 97 cents.
(To answer another question: this was the only NCIS branded car they had, though there were also some “Greenlight Hollywood” vehicles with branding tied to one of those auto auction shows on some cable channel. I don’t remember which one; sorry.)
As Say Uncle once said, it is my damn blog and I can have more than one quote of the day if I want.
-Ken @ Popehat
If I ever take a class where I have write my own operating system, it will be comma-based and called “Ken”.
Why do Android podcast clients suck?
I’ve written previously about my experience with the awful Pocket Casts application.
I dumped that and started using Google Listen. Google Listen frequently fails to completely download all of a podcast (so you end up with one in the queue that’s cut short, without any warning), frequently hangs up when trying to add a new podcast, and is no longer supported or maintained by Google. (Edited to add: Also, my phone frequently reboots while Google Listen is running, but I’m not sure if that is a Google Listen problem or a problem with some other application.)
I downloaded BeyondPod for my Kindle Fire. The free version (which I am using) has some limitations: you can’t set up automatic updates to your podcast feeds, nor can you download more than one podcast at a time. In order to activate those features, you have to pay $6.99 for an unlock code. Personally, I think that’s a bit steep for a podcast client, but if BeyondPod actually did what I wanted it to do, I’d pay that.
However, BeyondPod has a couple of what I consider to be crippling issues:
All I want out of a podcast client is a few basic, simple things:
That’s pretty much it. There are some other features that would be nice (ability to sync across multiple platforms, for example) but not essential to me. So why is this so hard?
Android fans constantly bash Apple and iTunes. Yes, iTunes has problems, most of which involve trying to put too many functions into one piece of software. But for all the problems iTunes has, it is at least capable of doing all of the things on my minimum list. I can’t say that for any Android client I’ve tried so far.
, that was little more than a therapy exercise masquerading as fiction, in which a Jim Morrison-type rock star known as “The Snake Man” fakes his own death, reunites with his keyboard player “Roy,” apologizes for how he treated him, then thanks him profusely for keeping his legacy alive. As of 2011, Manzarek was still trying to turn it into a movie, convinced, as always, that this story needed to be told… by Ray Manzarek.