Jack Davis, noted Mad magazine illustrator. There are some nice examples of his work in the NYT and also in the A/V Club’s.
Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series of books. I actually have a copy of the first book in the series, but have not yet read it.
I’ve also never seen an episode of Babylon 5, but I keep hearing that it is above average for televised SF, and people who I do respect seem fond of it. So, for the historical record: Jerry “Michael Garibaldi” Doyle.
Blogger, with occasional chief.
This reminds me that I owe you guys a longer post on the Citizen’s Police Academy: thoughts on the academy itself, and the aftermath. I’ve had that stewing for a while now, but various things have gotten in the way.
Remember Christopher Correa, the St. Louis Cardinals “director of baseball development” who plead guilty to hacking the Houston Astros player database? (Previously.)
46 months in prison. $279,038 in restitution.
In other news, Former LA County Sheriff Lee Baca was supposed to be sentenced yesterday. The former sheriff, as you may recall, plead guilty to lying to federal investigators. He had agreed to take a plea, and the prosecution, in turn, had agreed to seek a sentence somewhere between probation and a maximum of six months in prison.
Yesterday, the judge in the case threw out the plea agreement.
…
Former sheriff Baca has also been diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s disease, which may be one reason why the prosecution was so willing to agree to a relatively light sentence; if his condition gets worse, he may not be competent to participate in his defense, which could result in any trial being delayed.
Aujourd’hui, nous sommes tous les habitants de Nice.
Mike the Musicologist and I found ourselves at a Barnes and Noble the other day. (Criterion Collection 50% off sale through August 1st. You’re welcome.)
For various reasons, we were flipping through the new Dana Loesch book, Flyover Nation: You Can’t Run a Country You’ve Never Been To. The jacket contains this rather pithy line:
Both of us got a chuckle out of that, since we couldn’t think of anyone we knew who got a deer rifle for their thirteenth birthday. (I think I was 13 when I got my .22, but it was for Christmas. And for my readers who are not people of the gun, a .22 is way underpowered for deer. I want to say my sister’s boys were 16 and 14 when they got a deer rifle, but I’m not sure that technically qualifies as “theirs” as much as it is “Dad paid for it and loaned it to them so they could go on a youth hunting trip.”)
Anyway, I thought of that when I read this Statesman story:
Mr. Owens is now a deputy with the Bastrop County Sheriff’s office. And he just won a gold medal in the precision/sniper rifle category at the 2016 Texas Police Games.
Owens said he drove to San Angelo on a Tuesday after work, with his Mark 12 special-purpose rifle and no air conditioning. He slept about two hours the night before his competition, when he went in and shot at 1-inch laser points on a human silhouette, in a timed, 20-shot course aimed at precision. He was positioned 100 to 200 meters from his targets.
On a regular day at his ranch in La Grange, he can hit from 600 meters.
Owens also took home a third place prize in patrol rifle, a five-hour course where he ran from bay to bay shooting enemy targets and avoiding friendly fire.
Cool story. Cool guy. I’d love to meet him somewhere with air conditioning and buy him a couple/three frosty beverages of his choice.
Lawrence has been on the UT corruption scandal like flies over a cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation.
But I wanted to make note of this story, since I don’t think it has come to his attention yet, and it also sort of qualifies as a firing.
Backgroud: until a few years back, ticket sales for UT sports were handled by the Longhorn Foundation, “the official fundraising arm of Texas Athletics”.
More here on the audit, which was mostly completed by June 2013, but the report “was not sent to top university officials until two years later — after UT President Bill Powers and athletic director DeLoss Dodds, in office at the time of the ticket abuses, had moved on.”
I’m just going to give that one “well” for now, for reasons that should become apparent later.
Steve Patterson, who took over as athletic director after DeLoss Dodds, took ticket selling away from the Longhorn Foundation. The foundation still existed, but their fund-raising was charitable contributions – you know, donations from rich alumni who wanted good seats for football. Patterson hired a company called The Aspire Group to handle ticket sales, and they’ve apparently done a decent job: they exceeded goals for 2015. And they have a contract through August of 2017.
But. Steve Patterson isn’t the athletic directory any longer: he lasted two years. Mike Perrin is now the AD, and he wants to terminate Aspire’s contract by August 26th of this year.
Would you like to take a guess who Mike Perrin wants to handle ticket sales now?
“I believe the direction and tone of our relationships with our incredible donor and fan base needs to be adjusted, starting with the Longhorn Foundation once again leading those important relationships,” Perrin continued.
Perrin stated it was “my intention to come to an agreement to terminate our contract this summer. I am not interested in trying to figure out a way to keep this relationship active moving forward.”
So the new AD wants to turn ticket sales back over to the same crooked organization that had them previously.
And this is where we deploy the “Well. Well well well. Well.” Seriously, just how corrupt is the University of Texas these days?
No, I haven’t forgotten. I just had trouble finding anything to put here this year. Old jokes are old.
Enjoy your holiday. Be careful storming prisons. Don’t drink wine and drive: you might spill it and stain the seats. And please accept this rather interesting Weaponsman post on the Chauchat machine gun as our nod at history for this year’s holiday.
This story has everything: fire, an explosion, strippers (“Willow” and “Breonna”), and a potato.
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Yes, I’m going to make you click through to the WP if you want to find out how the potato came into play. Hint: Martin is the stripper, Garguilo is the boyfriend (she’s 19, he’s 28: isn’t love grand?) and neither one is terribly bright.
I have previously written about the strange case of Carolyn Barnes, the local lawyer who was accused of shooting at a census worker, sent to the state mental hospital (where she continued to represent at least one client), was later ruled competent to stand trial, tried, convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to three years in prison.
Ms. Barnes is out of prison now (she got credit for time served before the trial), but was appealing her conviction.
…I’ve never had to fill out a Form 4473 to purchase a book.
Even The Poor Man’s James Bond.
Come to think of it, I’ve also never had to show a permit to purchase a book. Nor has anyone ever called in to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Books to get my purchase approved.