Archive for December, 2013

« Older Entries

Bloody Monday.

Monday, December 30th, 2013

This is your official Monday after the end of the season coach firings post. I’ll try to update this during the day as coaches are let go.

Starting at the beginning: the Browns didn’t even wait for Monday. Rob Chudzinski was fired last night after one season.

Yeah, they finished 4-12, but I kind of feel like Chud was being used as the scapegoat for years of bad decision making by the previous management of the Browns. Really, one season? A season in which you traded away a previous first round draft choice (who turned out to be a bust)? I smell a scapegoat cooking.

Edited to add 1: Looks like Mike Shanahan’s firing as head coach of the Redskins is now official, as opposed to merely speculative.

Edited to add 2: Leslie Frazier out in Minnesota. 21-33-1, and the Vikings were actually a playoff team last year. It does seem like most of their games this year were competitive until near the end, and I don’t think Frazier was the problem with this team. You know, the Texans could probably do a lot worse than Frazier…

Edited to add 3: Stepped away for a little while to run some errands. While I was out:

Greg Schiano out as head coach at Tampa Bay, along with general manager Mark Dominik. Schiano was 11-21 over two seasons. Perhaps now he can return to what he really loves; beating up middle school children for their lunch money.

Jim Schwartz out in Detroit. Also out: offensive coordinator Scott Linehan and recievers coach Tim Lappano. Schwartz was 29-51 over five seasons, and actually took Detroit to the playoffs once. Once.

Also, it looks like the Redskins are engaged in a major housecleaning: eight of Shanahan’s assistants are gone as well, including offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Does this count as a “firing”?

Saturday, December 28th, 2013

I’m going to say “yes”.

Cavaliers coach Mike Brown declined to specify the reasons for the team’s indefinite suspension of center Andrew Bynum for conduct detrimental to the team, but it appears his tenure with the Cavs could be at an end.

I’ve seen rumblings that Cleveland plans to trade Bynum, but:

…no other team besides the Cavs was interested in signing him last summer after he missed an entire season in Philadelphia with ongoing knee problems.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 28, 2013.

Saturday, December 28th, 2013

Desert Hot Springs, California is in trouble.

Turn north, and you make your way up an arid stretch of road to a battered city where empty storefronts outnumber shops, the Fire Department has been closed, City Hall is on a four-day week and the dwindling coffers may be empty by spring.

Why? I’ll give you one guess.

Here, under the budget enacted last spring, about $7 million of the city’s $10.6 million annual payroll went to the 39-member police force. The situation was so dire that an audit, compiled weeks before municipal elections in November but not made public until later, showed that Desert Hot Springs was $4 million short for the year and would run out of money as early as April 2014.

Last week, the city cut all municipal salaries, including those of the police, by 22 percent. The city also capped “incentive pay” and cut back on holiday and vacation days. Naturally, the police officer’s association is stating these cuts are illegal.

Police officers here, as in many California cities, can retire as young as 50 with 30 years of service and receive 90 percent of their final salary every year — drawing those pensions for decades. Police unions say the fault lies with state and local politicians who failed to adequately fund the pension system over the years, and inflated benefits during boom years. Others wonder whether such salaries and pensions were ever affordable, particularly in cities as small and struggling as this. In Desert Hot Springs, for example, for every dollar that the city pays its police officers, another 36 cents must be sent to Calpers to fund their pensions.

Desert Hot Springs has a current population of around 27,000.

The average pay and benefits package for a police officer here had been worth $177,203 per year, in a city where the median household income was $31,356 in 2011, according to the Census Bureau. All of this had gone largely unnoticed until becoming the center of debate during the recent municipal election.

Oh, and by the way: Desert Hot Springs filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and is still making payments on a $10 million civil judgment against the city.

But, you know, the police aren’t the only people who get large salaries.

An examination of tax records, contracts and other documents by The New York Times found that hefty stagehand salaries at many New York nonprofit performance institutions are more widespread than was previously known.

You don’t say.

At nine top such institutions that have contracts with Local 1, stagehands make up 36 of the 98 most highly compensated employees, or about 37 percent. The average annual total salary and benefits of those highest-paid stagehands, at places from the Metropolitan Opera to the Roundabout Theater Company, is nearly $310,000, according to the nonprofits’ most recent tax filings.

That’s good money. I wonder when they can put in for retirement.

Backstage workers can earn more than the onstage talent. Five stagehands at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center were each paid more in total compensation in 2011 than the highest-paid dancer at New York City Ballet, filings showed. And, in 2010, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” paid its stagehands a total of $138,000 a week, while the principals and members of the ensemble earned slightly less than $100,000 put together, according to documents submitted to the state attorney general’s office.

The paper of record seems to want readers to be shocked and appalled at how much stagehands are paid. Personally, I’m glad to hear that they’re making big money; I think they have every right to negotiate lucrative contracts with their employers, and I don’t see any reason to be indignant that “the four top stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera earned more than $500,000 each in total compensation (including retirement and other benefits), tax filings showed.“

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Theatre | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: December 24, 2013.

Friday, December 27th, 2013

The heck with it. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in Geek, Kindleing, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Holmes for the Holidays.

Friday, December 27th, 2013

Here’s a nice little Christmas present – slightly late, but who cares? (I celebrate Christmas through January 6th, anyway.)

A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Words have meanings.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013

This is how Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary on Project Gutenberg defines the word “infamous”:

INFAMOUS
In”fa*mous, a. Etym: [Pref. in- not + famous: cf. L. infamis. See
Infamy.]

1. Of very bad report; having a reputation of the worst kind; held in abhorrence; guilty of something that exposes to infamy; base; notoriously vile; detestable; as, an infamous traitor; an infamous perjurer. False errant knight, infamous, and forsworn. Spenser.

2. Causing or producing infamy; deserving detestation; scandalous to the last degree; as, an infamous act; infamous vices; infamous corruption. Macaulay.

3. (Law)

Defn: Branded with infamy by conviction of a crime; as, at common law, an infamous person can not be a witness.

4. Having a bad name as being the place where an odious crime was committed, or as being associated with something detestable; hence, unlucky; perilous; dangerous. “Infamous woods.” P. Fletcher. Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds. Milton. The piny shade More infamous by cursed Lycaon made. Dryden.

Syn. — Detestable; odious; scandalous; disgraceful; base; vile; shameful; ignominious.

I quote this here because it is in the public domain. More modern sources, such as the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, agree with the definition, especially the “having a reputation of the worst kind”.

So what?

words

That’s part of the front page of today’s HouChron. The 1993 Houston Oilers had “a reputation of the worst kind”? They were “held in abhorrence”? They were “base; notoriously vile; detestable”? That’s really not how I remember things.

After a 28-3 halftime lead against the Buffalo Bills, the Oilers eventually lost 41-38 in one of the most infamous comebacks in NFL history.

Same thing here. Guys, “inflammable” and “flammable” mean the same thing, yes. But “infamous” and “famous” do not.

They may have been “dysfunctional”. But they went 12-4. I’d be more inclined to refer to the 2013 Houston Texans as “infamous” instead of the 1993 Oilers.

That is, if I was going to use the word to refer to a football team. Which I’m not, because I feel like I have a grasp of what the word means, unlike the HouChron headline writers. (Brian T. Smith, the author of the linked article, avoids using “infamous”. Kudos to him; I’d like to read the piece that’s coming on Sunday, but it looks like it will be behind the paywall.)

Posted in Clippings, NFL, Sports, Wordplay | Comments Closed

You. Don’t. Say.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013

Gun facts and terminology can be complicated for those not intimately familiar with the topic. But many readers are knowledgeable, and lapses like these hurt our credibility with them.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | Comments Closed

Mao mix.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013

Mao Mao Mao, Mao Mao Mao, Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao.

(Sorry. But when was I going to get another chance to do this?)

Posted in Clippings, History | Comments Closed

Merry Christmas. (Part II)

Wednesday, December 25th, 2013

reindeer

Blogger, with occasional reindeer.

(Why, yes, that reindeer’s nose is red.)

(Why, yes, as a matter of fact, you might even say it glows.)

Posted in Christmas, Photography | 1 Comment »

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Wednesday, December 25th, 2013

Posted in Christmas, Music | 1 Comment »

Merry Christmas from the Los Angeles Times.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2013

If you’re like me, and just a wee bit tired of Virginia, here’s a Christmas story you might enjoy (reprinted: it originally ran on Christmas Day in 1986).

This is a story that has everything: a dying child, an impossible request, and a gruff but kind hearted hard-drinking city editor. It is almost as if someone took many of the cliches of 1950s journalism and rolled them into a single morality tale.

He listened to the problem and told me to telephone the Secretary of Agriculture and have him clear the peaches when they arrived.
“It’s close to midnight,” I argued. “His office is closed.”
“Take this number down,” Reck said. “It’s his home. Tell him I told you to call.”

Posted in Christmas, Media | Comments Closed

Merry Christmas from Doge.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2013

“Shaming the Pets — Does It Work?“, from Larry Harnisch at The Daily Mirror. Featuring two cute doggies and a sworn enemy of WCD.

Yeah, he was asking for it.

Posted in Christmas | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries