“‘It is like French-kissing a rattlesnake: it’s never fun and usually fatal,’ said Larry Barcella [on the retrial of Frank Quattrone], a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Paul Hastings, repeating a line he has used about retrials for years.”
From The Kicker
Yahoo! News: “Sponsored by a local woman known for wearing hats made of tree bark and newspaper, Measure G won 314 to 152 in the town of 1,200, where residents are so protective of their isolated way of life that they regularly remove highway signs pointing into town.”
Once again, the complete text of the winning proposition: “Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful.”
FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: “Somehow, somewhere, Tuesday Morning Quarterback will return to the Web on November 11th. Keep checking Football Outsiders for more details.”
TMQ also has some things to say about Dobby the Elf (Steve Spurrier).
Thomas Boswell on the owner of the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons:
The ringleader of this circus is Snyder, 38, who wants to own the Redskins for many years. He wants to learn. He’ll pick any brain. That’s admirable. But he’s learning on our time. Even more scary, there’s plenty of precedent that, despite his brains, energy and good intentions, he’ll never be a “football man.”
To see the problem more clearly, use that old principle from high school algebra: invert. Imagine a great football executive who wakes up one day and inherits a controlling interest in Intel. So, he quits football and makes himself CEO of Intel. Why? “Because I’ve always loved computers. And I’m a quick learner.” What would you do with your Intel shares?
Two-time Academy Award winner Vivien Leigh was born on this date in — can you believe it — 1913. She’d be 90.
From the HistoryChannel.com
At about midnight on the night of November 4-5, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes lurking in a cellar under the Parliament building and ordered the premises searched. Some 20 barrels of gunpowder were found, and Fawkes was taken into custody. During a torture session on the rack, Fawkes revealed that he was a participant in an English Catholic conspiracy to annihilate England’s Protestant government and replace it with Catholic leadership….
By torturing Fawkes, King James’ government learned of the identities of his co-conspirators. During the next few weeks, English authorities killed or captured all the plotters and put the survivors on trial, along with a few innocent English Catholics.
Guy Fawkes himself was sentenced, along with the other surviving chief conspirators, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in London. Moments before the start of his gruesome execution, on January 31, 1606, he jumped from a ladder while climbing to the hanging platform, breaking his neck and dying instantly.
In 1606, Parliament established November 5 as a day of public thanksgiving. Today, Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated across Great Britain every year on November 5 in remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot. As dusk falls, villagers and city dwellers across Britain light bonfires, set off fireworks, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, celebrating his failure to blow Parliament and James I to kingdom come.
The guy was a terrorist and 398 years later he still has a day named after him.
From the Arizona Daily Star:
“A rolling gunbattle erupted on Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix Tuesday morning as one group of people-smugglers apparently tried to hijack the human cargo officials said was stolen from them by another group of smugglers earlier in the morning.”
“Voters soundly defeated a proposal to combine the Albuquerque and Bernalillo County governments Tuesday in the county’s first-ever mail-in election, according to unofficial results.
Returns released by the county clerk’s office showed 66,794 votes against and 41,863 votes in favor of the charter.”
From the Albuquerque Journal
Measure G: “Shall the following language constitute a policy of the Bolinas Community Public Utility District? Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful.”
Yes 314 No 152
According to the Chile Pepper Institute chile is “anything consisting of the Capsicum plant or the fruit from the plant” and chili is “a culinary dish consisting of chile powder, beans, tomato and ground beef.”
Everything you need to know about Home Computer Security from the Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute.
CNN.com: “The lawyer for a man convicted of shooting and killing a policeman apologized for singing the Bob Marley hit ‘I Shot The Sheriff’ as he was leaving the courtroom.”
New photo added to Halloween 2003
From OpinionJournal:
There’s yet another installment in the saga of thedrunkensailor and his Beanie Babies, stuffed animals purportedly left by his ex-wife. It appears the sailor may have taken some liberties with the truth when he sold the toys. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s Ralph De La Cruz reports:
I eventually tracked down thedrunkensailor. In keeping with the well-recognized canon that all things bizarre must have roots in South Florida, it turns out he’s a neighbor.And get this. He’s not divorced. Happily married, in fact. No affairs.
His real name is Steve (he asked that his last name not be used because he worries he’ll be harassed by critics). Steve, 32, and wife Mary, 28, found the box of beanies when they packed to move from Coral Springs to Margate. They had picked them up over the years and really didn’t know their worth. Steve said they would have been happy to get the $10.
The story was just Steve goofing around.
“I made the story amusing for myself, more than anything else,” he said over the phone.
According to TraderList.com, Steve’s last name is Kaye. The buyer, a woman who sometimes goes by Taisha and whose real name is apparently J. O’Buck or Pat O’Buck, has relisted the collection–for which she paid $860–on eBay:
Up for sale with an opening minimum bid of $9.99 are 26 beanie babies formerly owned by a sailor’s ex-wife. Well, actually, five are teenies of five of them. I’m keeping Beanies Royal Blue Peanut, Humphrey, Web, Steg, and Britannia ’cause they don’t look too pretty with big black-marker “F’s” (FOR “FAKE”) on their derrieres. No need to elucidate about that previous ownership. A half million people around the world were directed to the auction. The “shot heard around the world” blanches compared with the “beanies seen around the world.”Please, no questions about these beanies. The information of their history was covered very well in a sailor’s late auction and there is no need to repeat it other than to say I acquired them intact. Gosh, a bid of only $9.99 for 26 beanies. Wow! What a deal! And to think they were once held in the hands of a world-famous–what’s the word? It escapes me.
The 1500+ beanies in my collection have insisted that I get rid of these interloping buggers because they smell and the rank odor of stale beer upsets their fragile tummies. I figured with all the interest in them that some of the half million readers who thought a sailor’s listing hysterical might like to have them as a trophy of sorts. Can any other beanies make the claim to have been around the world and entered into a half million homes? What a conversation piece they would be poised at the end of the bar or in a rec room. The cost of a sign proclaiming “Look What I’ve Got” and their history found in the original listing would not be expensive to have crafted. You’d be the hit of your neighborhood and you possibly could charge admission. I might even provide a photo of “the stupid one.” Darts anyone?…
I have no interest in tools or beer so whatever the beanies bring on this auction will be donated to a local animal shelter. Most animal shelters and sanctuaries have seen their donations drop to all-time low levels since 9/11.
The current bPOSTID: $34. Meanwhile, thedrunkensailor himself came up with a new money-making scheme, selling “certificates of liquid appreciation” He explains that “your offering of $1.50 will buy me a cold frosty mug of malted barley and hops at my favorite local watering hole. I will have a list with me at all times and I will toast each of you individually over time with each brewsky you buy me.”
He also says he used the proceeds from his Beanie Baby sale to buy a power saw. Just remember, Steve: Drinking and sawing don’t mix.
“Not counting its biennial home game against Arizona State, the Wildcats have sold out (attendance of 56,000 or more) a mere 15 home games since it joined the Pac-10 in 1978. That is 15 games out of 152, barely 10 percent.”
Actually it’s less than 10 percent.
A new documentary suggests that Jesus might not have been celibate after all: “Was Jesus married?”
“The Senate gave final approval Monday night to a deal, hustled through Congress in a spending bill, delaying for at least a year a judge’s order that the federal government conduct a full accounting of botched records of Indians dating back to 1887. Norton has estimated the accounting will cost between $6 billion and $12 billion….”
“The deal angered the plaintiffs, who have fought the Interior Department through two presidential administrations. They called it an end-run around a court decision in their favor, but they said that’s exactly why it won’t work.
Attorney Dennis Gingold said constitutional separation of powers prevents Congress from interfering in a lawsuit.
“It’s unconstitutional,” Gingold said. ‘It has about as much effect as a cup of Starbucks coffee.'”
Mickey Kaus: “Caen wrote a long column six days a week–i.e., he was practically doing it 24/7, just like a blogger. … Caen’s product looked like a blog. It mixed personal tidbits with gossip with serious politics, like a blog. It just came on paper. … Sometimes it even had on-rushing velocity!”
From The Saint Paul Pioneer Press
“How do you get teens to crave milk? Load it with caffeine.
Hyper Cow, a new brand from Maplewood-based milk producer Schroeder Co., wins the dubious distinction of being the first caffeinated milk beverage.”
Easterbrook: “A friend who longs to vote moderate recently told Easterblogg that if the 2004 contest pits George W. Bush against Howard Dean, ‘I will spend the day in my room banging my head against the wall.'”