Archive for December, 2016

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Your NFL loser update: week 15, 2016

Sunday, December 18th, 2016

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland

That takes care of one of the two games I was most concerned about. Still to come:

  • San Diego in Cleveland
  • at Pittsburgh

I’m worried a little about the San Diego game, but I’m pretty confident in Pittsburgh’s ability to beat the Browns at home.

In semi-related news, ESPN is claiming that Rex Ryan is going to be shown the door in Buffalo. It sounds like this isn’t going to happen until Bloody Monday, though.

In other news, the Texans benched their starting quarterback, Brock Osweiler (seriosuly) in favor of Beat PunchBeef Tom Savage (also seriously). Also also seriously, Savage actually engineered a comeback for the Texans, who ended up winning 21-20 over Jacksonville. Granted, Jacksonville is 2-12. so it isn’t like the Texans were playing the first team here, but Brock turned the ball over twice and put Jacksonville up 13-0 before he was benched.

(Isn’t “Brock” one of the most preppy names you can think of? “Hi, Brock, it’s Biff. I was going down to the club with Muffy and Buffy, and wanted to know if you’d like to join us. Maybe we could play doubles and have some white wine spritzers after? Sure, that would be swell, Brock. See you there.” On the other hand, “Tom Savage” strikes me as the kind of name a quarterback should have. It’d also be a great name for a series of children’s books: “Tom Savage and the Improbable Comeback”, “Tom Savage and the New Offensive Coordinator”. “Tom Savage and the Contract Negotiation”…)

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

APD. DNA. FUBAR.

Friday, December 16th, 2016

The Austin Police Department has abandoned plans to reopen the DNA and forensic serology labs.

“We have failed in the area that is under question now with some of our DNA operations and some of the issues that came forward through the Forensic Science Commission audit,” [Police Chief Brian] Manley said. “For that I take responsibility and I am working with a team of leaders to push this forward so that our community has a system that works for them.”

Props to Chief Blast HardCheese for stepping up and taking responsibilty. But:

Since the DNA began operating in 2004, it has passed 17 audits and held national accreditation by the American Society of Crime Lab Directors.

Question number 1: how did the lab manage to pass 17 audits and get accreditation if it’s been badly run since the beginning?

Question number 1a: did the problems just start recently? If so, how and why?

Question numero dos: The lab opened in 2004. Chief HardCheese has been chief for about two weeks now: before that, he was an assistant chief, and I’m not sure how much day to day input he had into lab operations.

You know who did have a lot of input into lab operations? You know who was the HMFWIC when things went to hell in a handbasket? Yes, you do know, don’t you?

By the way, that’s not the only lab news today. The guy that was hired to run the lab? He’s no longer running the lab. And not just because the lab isn’t reopening:

Milne was hired to be Austin police’s chief forensic officer and earned $111,384 a year, police officials said. Manley said he has heard concerns from within the criminal justice community about Milne’s background and qualifications. Manley said he pulled Milne’s academic transcripts, which led him to conclude that Milne did not have adequate qualifications to run the functions of the lab.
“This individual has been removed from his role overseeing any functions at the lab and he is not associated with the lab at this time,” Manley said. “His future at this point is something we are working on determining how we will work through that.”

Perhaps I am a little biased here, but I’m starting to like Chief HardCheese more. I actually heard him speak last night, and he’s a pretty good speaker. He hasn’t done anything to irritate me yet. He hasn’t made any stupid public statements on guns. He’s a St. Ed’s graduate. (Hilltoppers represent!) And he actually seems to be making efforts to clean up this mess.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Cahiers du cinéma: The Library of Congress recommends…

Thursday, December 15th, 2016

Huh. I guess it is that time of year again.

Quick takes:

  • I think “Rushmore” is okay: I like the “plays” within the movie much more than I like much of the movie. Not one I would have chosen, personally.
  • “The Decline of Western Civilization”? That’s a bit of a surprise, but not one I’d necessarily dispute: I hear it’s actually a pretty good documentary about the LA punk scene, but have not seen it. (It wasn’t even available on home video until recently.) Will we get “Part 2: The Metal Years” next year?
  • I will admit to never having seen “The Atomic Cafe”, but how does a bunch of cut together clips from other sources make this list?
  • Evan Hunter represent!
  • Ditto “Richard Stark”! Seriously, both “Blackboard Jungle” and “Point Blank” are interesting choices. (Haven’t seen either one, but I love the Parker novels and McBain’s work. Need to fix that.)
  • Perhaps I am incapable of experiencing joy, but my memory tells me “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” was fun when I saw it, but not a timeless classic. Maybe it belongs on this list, but for technical achievement.
  • I love Hitchcock, but I’m not a huge fan of “The Birds”. It just seems kind of silly to me.

Edited to add: nothing to do with the LoC list, but I wonder: was one of the Simpsons writers a closet 87th Precinct fan?

Posted in Books, Movies | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 14, 2016.

Wednesday, December 14th, 2016

Alan Thicke. A/V Club.

Anyone remember “Thicke of the Night”? I do, but only as being synonymous with “legendary disaster”.

Posted in Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Lab watch.

Tuesday, December 13th, 2016

Lawrence forwarded a story from “Community Impact”, one of those free neighborhood papers, that I thought was worthy of note.

The gist of it is that the Capital Area Private Defender Service (CAPDS from this point forward because I don’t want to keep typing that) is willing to get involved with fixing the DNA testing issues in the APD forensics lab.

CAPDS is proposing a 5-year process to review the city’s DNA cases to determine how what happened with the lab will affect past and pending court cases, and to look forward at best practices for DNA testing, Strassburger said.

Well, that sounds great. But what do they need? Money. And what does Travis County not have a whole lot of? Money.

[county judge Sarah] Eckhardt said she has asked the city to take $1.4 million identified in the city’s budget process for additional personnel in the DNA lab and apply it toward these efforts.

Meanwhile, the Statesman is saying that fixing the DNA lab problems could cost…well…

According to records obtained by the Statesman, models for such reviews involve varying levels of expert input and use of appellate attorneys. The most expensive carries a $14.4 million estimated price tag while the least expensive is about $6 million.

More:

According to the organization, county officials could assign an attorney to each case that used DNA evidence analyzed by the lab to review it and “file appropriate motions” for a minimum cost of $13.2 million. Or it could choose a more expensive option in which attorneys would do a deeper review of cases using two attorneys from the outset to learn which might have potential issues — for $14.4 million.
The last option — at a cost of $6 million — would involve the county or city hiring new lawyers to handle the cases instead of using outside attorneys.

Oh, by the way, this doesn’t include the costs associated with actually getting the lab up and running again.

And, in an also related story: after the lab was closed, the APD asked the Texas DPS crime lab to do retraining of some of the DNA analysts.

But Monday, DPS officials told the department they had lost faith in most of the staffers they were working with — and wouldn’t be returning.
Instead, according to a one-page letter obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, only a select two from a staff of six DNA analysts are invited to a state facility to continue training in a “supportive environment.”

More:

In a letter to the Travis County district attorney’s office, Brady Mills, deputy assistant director of the DPS crime lab, wrote that the last four months of working together have shown that “there are significant challenges that impact confidence in the work product” of some of the lab’s DNA analysts.
“This has been demonstrated through our personal interactions with the group as well as the practical work product that has been completed and reviewed thus far,” Mills wrote. “Coupled with the expressed belief by your office that those senior analysts may no longer be utilized for expert testimony, APD and DPS plan to move forward with a new course of action.”

The position of DNA analyst (which requires a bachelor’s degree) in the APD lab starts at $23.44 an hour. I believe when I started doing enterprise tech support at Dell, I was making $22 an hour and that was in 2006: I would expect that by now, Dell’s paying closer to $23.44, if not more, and I also suspect enterprise tech support is easier than DNA analysis.

I want to be very very careful with what I say here. I don’t want to seem like I’m sneering at anyone. I couldn’t do this work, and I believe the people who do are motivated by things other than pay. But when DPS says 2/3rds of the people sent over for retraining, can’t be retrained? Is the DPS training that much more demanding than APD’s? Is there something else going on here? Or is the simple explanation also the correct one: APD’s been hiring people who are wrong for the job, and it finally caught up with them?

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics, Travis County | Comments Closed

Murum Aries Attigit.

Monday, December 12th, 2016

Jeff Fisher out as head coach of the Los Angeles Rams.

The Rams are 4-9 so far this season. Fisher was 31-45-1 overall with the Rams (including their pre-LA incarnation).

Fisher has a career record of 173-165-1. He is tied with Dan Reeves for the most losses by a coach in NFL history.

Actual headline on a column in the LAT:

Rams’ return to L.A. is officially an embarrassment. Coach Jeff Fisher needs to go — now

Hey, remember when all the NFL talk was about how LA desperately needed a NFL team, and how wonderful things would be when LA got a NFL team, and how much the league and the city would benefit from a NFL team? Wasn’t that a time.

(Hattop on the title to First Amendment badass Marc Randazza, who didn’t originate the term (as he makes clear) but is the person who introduced me to it. He would probably want to punch me in the face for using it in this context, but I couldn’t pass up a little bit of wordplay.)

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Your NFL loser update: week 14, 2016

Sunday, December 11th, 2016

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland

Three games left:

  • at Buffalo (currently 6-7)
  • San Diego (currently 5-8) in Cleveland
  • at Pittsburgh (currently 8-5, and already beat Cleveland in Cleveland earlier this season)

I still wouldn’t bet this way, but I think it is at least possible that Cleveland could win one or two of these games.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 9, 2016.

Friday, December 9th, 2016

John Glenn roundup: NYT. Lawrence. WP. Sweet story about Mrs. Glenn: they were married for 73 years. LAT. NASA Glenn Research Center.

(My dad worked at the Glenn Research Center a long time ago; so long ago, it wasn’t called the Glenn Research Center back then.)

Edited to add: Borepatch on Glenn. NYT obit for Greg Lake.

Posted in Geek, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes, Politics | Comments Closed

Meta obit watch.

Thursday, December 8th, 2016

John Glenn obits to come tomorrow, after everyone has had a chance to write and correct them. I’m sure the NYT obit has been in the can for a while now – it wouldn’t surprise me if at least one of the credited writers has died or left the paper – but sure as god made little green apples, there will be at least one correction.

Posted in Admin, History, Obits | Comments Closed

More weird intersections.

Thursday, December 8th, 2016

This is kind of a weird three-fer. Sort of one of those triangle intersections.

A woman bought “$23,000” worth of “Hatchimals” which I am given to understand is this year’s hot Christmas toy. (Personally, they sound stupid to me, but I am not a small child.)

…purchased 156 of the in-demand toys at an average price of $151— spending more than $23,000 — with the goal of reselling them at a further marked-up price.

Interestingly, eBay has apparently imposed limits on “Hatchimals” sales.

“I have a fortune invested, only one venue to offload them, and in only three weeks they will magically transform into useless pumpkins that will take up space in my office FOREVER, and have caused my financial ruin,” [she] wrote. “Oh, and I’ll still owe the lawyers.”

…

…she paid $23,595.31 to buy 156 of the toys before realizing she wouldn’t be allowed to resell them on EBay. The site only lets users post three Hatchimals auctions per week.

So why is some random woman’s attempt to profit on the backs of hard-working parents who just want to get their children a toy for Christmas interesting?

Intersection number 1: the random woman is author Sara “Water for Elephants” Gruen.

This raises questions: namely, why would Ms. Gruen, who is surely rolling in all that sweet Oprah’s Book Club and movie money, embark on this quest to profit on the backs yadda yadda? And why wouldn’t she have checked eBay polices before spending $23,000?

I don’t have an answer for the second question. As for the first, that’s intersection number 2:

On her Shopify site, Gruen wrote that the mission of her store is “to get justice for a wrongfully convicted man who was sentenced to LWOP(Life Without Parole) 23 years ago, and who has been incarcerated since.”

More:

Gruen has declined to offer any details about the man she says she’s trying to help by selling the toys. She told the Philly Voice she’s working on documentary series about the case, and that his identity will be revealed soon.

Curious. I might watch that series, if shows up anyplace I have access to, mostly because I wonder how she got involved in this case.

Edited to add: Got to remember. Always, always do the math.

She’s selling the toys, which come with an autographed copy of one of her five books, for $189 each. Batteries — for the Hatchimal — are included.

$189 times 156 is $29,484. Subtract the $23,595.31 she paid, and that leaves a gross profit of $5888.69. And that’s before the cost of the batteries, whatever she’s paying for the copies of her books (unless she just has 156 copies lying around the house), and assuming she sells all of them. (The article says she’s given four away to “needy kids”, which reduces her gross that much more.)

Doesn’t $5,000 seem like a relatively paltry amount to fund a documentary? Heck, couldn’t she have raised that on Kickstarter without the whole exploiting parents yadda yadda angle?

Posted in Books, Christmas, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 8, 2016.

Thursday, December 8th, 2016

Greg Lake, noted prog-rock guy. (King Crimson, Emerson Lake and Palmer)

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

We don’t need no education…

Thursday, December 8th, 2016

Hoping to reduce violent confrontations during traffic stops and other encounters with police, an influential Texas senator filed a bill Wednesday to require all public high school freshmen to take a course in how to interact with law officers.

Show your children the classic Chris Rock video, “How To Not Get Your Ass Kicked By the Police”. Problem solved in five minutes. No need for a course. As a public service to those of you who have children, I’ll even embed it here for you.

I’m really about 80% serious when I say that: there’s actually a lot of really sound advice in that video.

And I wouldn’t mind a class that taught “how to interact with law officers”, but I think that should just be part of a larger class. I’d also teach how the DA’s office works and how crimes are prosecuted, how civil court works, and I’d bring in defense attorneys (maybe even someone from the ACLU) to go over what your rights as a suspect are. I almost want to say that they used to call this “Civics”.

But I’d probably teach this as part of a larger year-long class for high school students which I’ve been calling “S–t You Need To Know”. I’d also want to cover things like basic car maintenance (how to check fluid levels and change a flat), basic gun safety, strategies for avoiding being a crime victim, statistical fallacies and how to recognize them, bad science and how to recognize it…there’s a whole bunch of things that I think graduating seniors need to know, but aren’t getting taught unless they have exceptional parents.

Feel free to leave your proposed curriculum item in the comments.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics, Texas | 4 Comments »

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