Apropos of nothing in particular.
Archive for June 29th, 2018
Musical interlude.
Friday, June 29th, 2018Harlan Ellison.
Friday, June 29th, 2018LAT. LAT tribute by John Scalzi. Appreciations. The WP just reprinted the AP obit, but they did also run a nice retrospective. Lawrence.
The paper of record has not yet seen fit to publish an obit for Mr. Ellison (or, for that matter, Gardner Dozois.)
Edited to add: NYT partial obit. “A complete obituary will appear soon.”
Other people knew him better and probably have smarter things to say. This one is hard for me, because his stories and essays and criticism have been a huge part of my life for about 40 years now.
It is sometimes said that everyone in science fiction has their own Harlan Ellison story, which they will be glad to tell you anytime his name comes up. Here’s mine: I worked on a couple of Ellison projects a while back. (Basically, I was just retyping his manuscripts into a computer for later typesetting, etc.) While working on those projects, I talked to him a couple of times on the phone. I think he knew that I was nervous talking to him, but he never treated me with anything but respect and courtesy.
I think we would have disagreed on most major issues of the day, but he was a great and underappreciated writer, and I will miss him.
Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.
— Christine Valada, J.D. (@mcvalada) June 28, 2018
Quick update from the police beat.
Friday, June 29th, 2018Remember the fentanyl laced flyers from earlier this week?
Turns out it wasn’t fentanyl after all:
More than a dozen flyers placed on Harris County Sheriff’s Office vehicles have tested negative for fentanyl after a sergeant was hospitalized earlier this week from touching a paper originally believed to be laced with the sometimes-deadly opioid.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences tested 13 flyers, as well as clothing items and blood and urine samples from the sergeant who had symptoms related to drug-exposure. Those tests were all negative.
Apparently the initial positive was from a field test. This raises some questions that I just don’t have time to discuss right now, but which I sort of alluded to in the first post, and which I’d like to come back to later.
Edited to add: Well well well. Since I posted this update, the HouChron article has itself been updated with quotes from the sheriff’s office about the field test kits.
The Houston Chronicle reported in July 2016 that 298 people had been convicted of drug possession, even though complete lab tests later found no controlled substances in the samples tested at the scene.
All 298 people pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanors before the field samples had been tested in the county’s forensic laboratory. Many of those people pleaded guilty based on the initial testing kits indicated the substance recovered at the scene was positive for drugs. Those test kits cannot be used in trial as evidence under Texas law.