Old Bailey Online – The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 – Central Criminal Court
[courtesy of Auntie K. Thanks, K!]
First thing I did, of course, was pop /towse/ into the search to see what the Towses were up to from 1674-1913.
April 29, 2008
April 28, 2008
I miss sunsets
We face east toward Oakland and Berkeley and get sunshiney wakeups in the morning, but our location means the sun sets behind the hill directly behind us so we never see sunsets unless we’re out and about.
I was talking with a nabe the other day who told me he takes the stairs to Pioneer Park (AKA Coit Tower to most) to watch the sun set. Sounds like a plan.
We were out and about yesterday …
April 26, 2008
Recent Earthquakes – Map for 120-40
Recent Earthquakes – Map for 120-40
Reno’s rocking. …
[ref] nineteen shakes >= 3.0 in the last five days. …
3.5 2008/04/26 08:20:40 39.543N 119.936W 1.1 4 km ( 2 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.4 2008/04/26 02:11:59 39.525N 119.927W 2.1 3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.7 2008/04/26 00:29:20 39.527N 119.927W 2.7 3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.4 2008/04/25 23:43:50 39.521N 119.924W 1.4 3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
4.7 2008/04/25 23:40:10 39.520N 119.930W 1.4 2 km ( 1 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.3 2008/04/25 23:39:59 39.516N 119.924W 1.7 3 km ( 2 mi) E of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.6 2008/04/25 18:13:20 39.529N 119.918W 1.6 4 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.3 2008/04/25 10:30:10 39.531N 119.928W 1.4 3 km ( 2 mi) NE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.3 2008/04/25 01:42:58 39.521N 119.922W 2.6 3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.3 2008/04/24 18:00:33 39.531N 119.929W 2.2 3 km ( 2 mi) NE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.6 2008/04/24 17:47:52 40.375N 115.374W 0.0 6 km ( 4 mi) ENE of Ruby Valley, NV
4.2 2008/04/24 15:55:49 39.527N 119.929W 2.8 3 km ( 2 mi) ENE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.0 2008/04/24 15:51:06 39.539N 119.938W 1.8 3 km ( 2 mi) NNE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
4.1 2008/04/24 15:47:04 39.533N 119.932W 1.1 3 km ( 2 mi) NE of Verdi-Mogul, NV
3.0 2008/04/24 00:33:15 37.891N 118.097W 5.5 42 km (26 mi) S of Tonopah
Junction, NV
3.0 2008/04/23 14:21:39 37.377N 114.696W 9.9 14 km ( 8 mi) SSE of Helene, NV
3.2 2008/04/22 19:06:54 37.992N 118.681W 5.6 38 km (23 mi) SSW of Qualeys Camp, NV
3.8 2008/04/22 13:40:09 41.221N 114.806W 7.7 18 km (11 mi) NE of Wells, NV
3.1 2008/04/21 12:14:10 39.517N 119.922W 2.6 3 km ( 2 mi) E of Verdi-Mogul, NV
Update: Earthquake wizards say the increasing 4.1->4.2->4.7 quakes don’t follow the standard pattern of large shake followed by decreasing intensity aftershocks. They don’t know quite what to make of it. CNN update
Highland bagpipe is a recent invention for nostalgic Scotish émigrés, expert claims
By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 3:04am BST 21/04/2008
[telegraph.co.uk]
Whisper it if you dare, but the age-old Highland bagpipe – beloved of sentimental Scots and American tourists in search of their Highland roots – is in fact a recent invention.
A controversial new study has claimed that far from being the time-honoured instrument which led the clans into battle against the Auld Enemy, the bagpipe as we know it was developed in the early 1800s.
It now seems that, like the kilt and most tartans, the tradition of the great Highland bagpipe was something manufactured for the benefit of nostalgic Scottish émigrés.
[via Funky Plaid at Swirling Vortex of Verisimilitude]
April 24, 2008
Home again, home again, and wilted spinach salad and garlic bread for dinner
We got back from our flying visit to Obama country late Tuesday.
(One of the reasons we visit Obama country. …)Weather when we landed was spitting. (Oh, please give us more rain before the dry summer months kick in.)
We caught the Super Shuttle in from the airport. His nibs had signed and paid online (cheaper that way) before we left home. There were two other guys in the van before us and we wondered where we’d be taken on our way home. Super Shuttle is a fantastic random way to see parts of the City that we don’t usually see.
Both guys — turned out — lived in the Sunset, just a few blocks from each other. One was like at 26th and Noriega, the other at 27th and Judah, maybe?
After dropping the second guy off, the driver drove like a bat outta hell to get from the Sunset to Telegraph Hill, through the park, up Park Presidio to 101 to Lombard then over on Larkin and up Union, down Montgomery.
Home again, home again. Drop the bags on the floor. Pick up the mail that’s sitting where it fell after the mail carrier stuffed it through the door slot.
By now it was past 7:30p and our usual behavior would’ve been to walk down to Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store and order a large carafe of cheap red wine and two orders of canneloni. Soul soothing food for tired people. Ymmm. But there was this drizz, see? and I was tired and … I can make dinner quicker than we could walk the four blocks down to Mario’s and wait for our order. Not to mention I didn’t feel like walking uphill home after dinner.
Dinner Tues
Preheat oven to 375dF or so. Set the rice cooker cooking rice. Fish from the freezer, thawed in the microwave. Place on aluminum foil. Sprinkle with mixed herbs. Squeeze half lemon on top. Wrap up and put in oven for 15min. (~$3)
Prep broccoli and put in microwave for 3min. (~$0.50)
Hmmm. Hmmm. Start sorting through mail. 15min up. Check fish. Put back in for another five minutes. Check broccoli. Zap for another minute.
Cost: maybe $4 for the two of us. ($0.50 for broccoli. $0.20 for rice, maybe? $0.20 for lemon. $3 for fish. … Cheaper than Mario’s, that’s for sure.)
Dinner Wedn
Last night I just wanted something simple. Still lagging from the trip. His nibs had stopped off in Chinatown on his way back from his doctor’s appointment and stocked up on fresh veggies and fruit. What sounded good?
Hardboil two eggs. Well, three eggs, really. Save one for an egg salad sandwich Thursday or Friday. Peel and chop two eggs.
[How to boil an egg. Place egg in small pot. Cover with cold water. Place pot on burner. When water boils, turn off heat, put lid on pot and wait ten minutes. After ten minutes, pour hot water from pot and cool egg(s) by filling pot with cold water.]
Rinse bag of spinach from Chinatown. Shake dry. Put in large heat-proof bowl. Cost: $0.50
Toss chopped egg on top. Cost: $0.40 +/- for two eggs.
Take about 1/3 lb bacon and cut into small bits. Fry. Cost: ~$0.70 (bacon 4lbs/$8 @ Costco)
While waiting for bacon to crisp, slice a chunk of sour batard in half, butter, sprinkle with garlic herb sprinkle, put back together, butterside<->butterside, wrap in aluminum foil and heat in 400dF oven. Cost: ~$0.60
Take fried bacon bits out of frying pan and toss onto spinach in bowl. Pour off all but 3T of bacon fat. (Save remainder of bacon fat in refrigerator dish with bacon fat already saved there for another day. …)
Add 2T olive oil to bacon fat in frypan. Heat. Add 1/2 onion, chopped. Brown. Add ~ 3T balsamic vinegar and scrape up bits from bottom of frypan. Cost olive oil/onion/vinegar ~ $0.50
When hot through, pour onion/vinegar/fat over spinach/egg/bacon and toss. Serve with garlic bread.
Cost for tasty, nutritious (well, except for the bacon and bacon fat) dinner for two: $3, if that.
Home again, home again. Let’s take a boat to Bermuda. Let’s grab a plane to Saint Paul. Let’s take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack. Let’s get away from it all.
But it’s oh. so. nice. to come home.
Chapter 1. Specimens of the American Vulgate
[The following is my own translation, but I have had the aid of suggestions from various other scholars. It must be obvious that more than one section of the original is now quite unintelligible to the average American of the sort using the Common Speech. What would he make, for example, of such a sentence as this one: "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures"? Or of this: "He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise." Such Johnsonian periods are quite beyond his comprehension, and no doubt the fact is at least partly to blame for the neglect upon which the Declaration has fallen in recent years. When, during the Wilson-Palmer saturnalia of oppressions, specialists in liberty began protesting that the Declaration plainly gave the people the right to alter the goverment under which they lived and even to abolish it altogether, they encountered the utmost incredulity. On more than one occasion, in fact, such an exegete was tarred and feathered by the shocked members of the American Legion, even after the Declaration had been read to them. What ailed them was that they could not understand its eighteenth century English. I make the suggestion that its circulation among such patriotic men, translated into the language they use every day, would serve to prevent, or, at all events, to diminish that sort of terrorism.]
When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.
All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man these rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter.
[via Archer]
April 16, 2008
Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice
Twitter Saves Man From Egyptian Justice
Way to get publicity for twitter, Ev.
This Is How We Lost to the White Man
‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’
Article in the May Atlantic about Bill Cosby’s activism and his path from I Spy and the Huxtables to his Pound Cake speech and on.
The Web article includes a link to a vid interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote the article. Both the article and the Coates interview are time well-spent.
Link: The Pound Cake Speech – Bill Cosby, speaking 17 May 2004 in Washington, DC, at the NAACP’s 50th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education (text and audio)