--The other night,  I watched on Netflix the Miami Vice episode "Bushido" (Season 2, episode 8). Best television that the 1980s ever brought us.




--The star PSR J1748-2446ad spins a thousand times every 1.39595482 seconds. It's outer surface moves at 24% of the speed of light. It orbits another star every 26 hours.


I want a pocket steam engine.




--My wife went to Corpus Christi last Tuesday night, and flew back Thursday morning. She grew up there, but said that it felt nothing like the town that she grew up in.


--Sports Illustrated put out a casting call for people that were at the bombing at the Boston Marathon last year. Here's their cover picture. For some reason, that puts a lump in my throat. I hope that Boston doesn't overreact to their terrorism incident like New York did to theirs.


--I've responded to two structure fires in the past month while doing my police gig. At one, I attached a 5" supply hose to the engine and got water started before digging our my PD thermal imaging camera and helping by telling firefighters where the real heat was on the roof. The other one, I just did a size-up and emptied a 15 pound dry chemical fire extinguisher onto peripherals that were burning, and got people out of the way as the apparatus arrived. In both fires, the most important thing that anyone seems to care that I did was to get initial scene pictures. 


--It's amazing the good that the American Red Cross does when there is a residential structure fire. When one A.R.C. lady arrived in the cold windy night and handed out cups of fresh hot coffee and granola bars, I restrained myself from kissing her (and her crusty male partner) on the mouth. They put the family up for the night, and provided other services. Support the American Red Cross.


--The Red River border dispute yet rages, but this time in the new light of the Bureau of Land Management making claim to private lands along the river. Here you see a news story which pivots on the definition of "accretion" and "avulsion" with regard to erosion and deposits.


--I am attending the NRA convention in Indianapolis on the weekend of the 25th of April. I purchased the tickets to go, before learning that this was also the weekend of the family reunion. The family reunion is always the Sunday following Easter. I never can remember when that is. The  First Council of Nicaea (325 AD) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the March equinox. But there can be disputes. Check out this table of possible dates for Easter. Moveable feasts make little sense to me. Pick a date, and stick to it!

The beginning of 2014.

--This day-by-day map depiction of World War II in seven minutes is fascinating. I knew that the Axis started to really begin falling in early 1944, but this map shows how the Allies stopped their forward momentum in November of 1942.

--A friend and hunting buddy this morning announced that it was 6 times warmer than it was yesterday, by virtue of the fact that his thermometer showed 12 degrees Fahrenheit today, and just 2°F yesterday. Thinking that he was joking, I mentioned that his quantities might be off. He asked why. (This guy is VERY smart. He's a paramedic and a computer whiz. So no slamming him.) I responded:
 "Well, degrees Fahrenheit don't actually measure absolute heat. However, degrees Kelvin *DO*. Fahrenheit set "zero" on his scale of temperature as being the lowest temperature that he could achieve, using ice and salt. He set 100 at what he thought was the human body temperature. (Look, it was the late 17th century. Cut him some slack.) Kelvin uses centigrade units above absolute zero. Zero degrees Fahrenheit is actually 255.37K. When it was 2 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, it was 256.483 Kelvin yesterday. At 12 Fahrenheit today, it is actually 262.039 Kelvin, which is 1.004358... times warmer than yesterday, relative to Absolute Zero."

My buddy made a rude noise.

--It staggered me, the first time that I found out that there was a temperature below which nothing could go.

--And I didn't know until today that the Triple Point of water is used as part of the scientific definition of the Kelvin unit. ("The kelvin is defined as the fraction 1⁄273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water (exactly 0.01 °C or 32.018 °F).")

--Every year, my wife and I hold off on giving each other Christmas gifts, and then agree together to buy something that we both want in January or February. Well, this year, she broke the agreement, and surprised me by unilaterally purchasing a Rancilio Sylvia espresso machine. I've owned small consumer espresso machines before, but they were the sub-$100 sheet metal stamped variety that turned out indifferent results. This thing is superb.

When you turn it on, it will build up the pressure, and then turn out the light like a waffle iron to tell you that you're good to go. You then punch the switch for espresso, and the double spouts will begin to push out dark rich espresso with a bit of crema atop it. Hit the switch for foam, and open the valve and vigorous foam makes milk magical. Flip the switch to hot water, and you get water perfect for tea or to add to your espresso for an Americano. 

It weighs a young ton. 

It takes up very little counter space. 

There is a bit of a learning curve to pulling a perfect shot. 

It's the nicest thing that I've been given in a long, long time. 

We're going through about a gallon of milk a day in this house, now. 

--I have yet to have built a "Gay Cynic Special": 8 shots of espresso served over ice. Even in Seattle, the barrista's eyes widened at that order. 

--In terms of style and distinctiveness, I think that the other states envy the Texas flag. Well, Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska don't. And probably not Tennessee.

--What's the deal with the crescent moon on the SC flag? 

--One of our cats two went missing 6 days ago. We've since had several sub-20 degree nights. I suspect that the neighbor shot it. I have not approached him; I cannot be objective. He told my colleagues that he threw out a firecracker to make the cats stop fighting at night. Semi-outdoor cats run a risk, and we knew that.  My younger daughter, who had a serious cat crush on that animal, wakes up crying and saying that she dreamt that he was on her bed. I've had offers of a new cat. I can't. I don't need another creature in my heart, or in my daughter's heart. I need a break.  

--One of these days, some boy will make my daughter this sad. And I'll have to deal with my initial reaction there, too. 

--Here's a well-rendered map of the contiguous continental United States yesterday, showing that the average temperature was 14 degrees Fahrenheit. I like how they put clear delineations at the freezing point of water and at zero degrees F. 

Dallas for the day.

Things are going missing around the G household.
Probably I'm just disorganized, but for the past month I can't find my most favorite Kindle, which I bought from Marko Kloos, and my most favorite flashlight, the PolyStinger D.S.

So it was time to get new.

I found on Craig's List that a lady had a NIB Kindle Paperwhite Touch for $40. I negotiated the sale, and went to the area of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn to pick it up from her husband, a recent graduate of business school who explained that she had gotten the device as a work gift, and already had an iPad.

We shook hands, and, being in the area, I went to EatZi's for lunch. I hit the bakery, and was saddened that they no longer bake the prosciutto and black pepper loaf. But they still make the Kalamata Olive Loaf, and I got one, along with a 4 Cheese And Chili Boule, and had them run them through the slicer. Then I gawked at the cakes and stuff:

For scale, that's about a 10" wide cake under that buttercreme.
 

I've eaten their stuff. Given the quality, these prices are actually downright reasonable.

I had the deli man slice me some very thin Molinari Finocchiona Picolocini, which has fennel in it. Paper thin slices made you think that you had taken a mouthful. Economy of flavor, even at $13/lb. I also got a quarter pound of Citterio Spresata Salami, and a quarter pound of Molinari Capacolla Hot (Only $15/lb). I had them ring me up for these, along with the salad that I had them make to my specs, with lots of rare roast beef and stuff.  Then I sat at a broken tile mosaic wall-side bar on a stool, and drank good coffee with my salad as I listened to some Italian tenor. Not a bad lunch.

I then went by GT Police Supply, and bought me a Stinger DS LED HL. This thing puts out 640 lumens, in the same size as my old 360 lumen Stinger. I can't convey here how much light this little rechargeable flashlight puts out. It's enough to note on the sidewalk at midday in Texas summer.  Sadly, I grabbed a box with a metal, rather than poly, stinger. I'll be getting a new plastic one, soon. I need another flashlight, anyway.

I then fought traffic on the way back home. What should have been about an hour and a quarter was extended significantly, because two cars had a fender bender and waited in the left lane for the police to arrive, blocking one of the three lanes, and causing an unforeseen bottleneck which caused merging that did not, as one would expect, slow the traffic by 1/3, but actually slowed the drive-time traffic to less than 1/3 of its normal slow pace. As I passed the two vehicles, I noticed that both drivers were sitting in their cars with the windows up, so that they could enjoy their air conditioning on this 94 degree day. The BMW and the Land Rover neither had incapacitating damage. I'm afraid that I (in my un-air-conditioned old beater car) may have hollered at them to move their car, as they were in violation of Texas Transportation Code section 550.022(b), which states:

 If an accident occurs on a main lane, ramp, shoulder, median, or adjacent area of a freeway in a metropolitan area and each vehicle involved can be normally and safely driven, each operator shall move the operator's vehicle as soon as possible to a designated accident investigation site, if available, a location on the frontage road, the nearest suitable cross street, or other suitable location to complete the requirements of Section 550.023 and minimize interference with freeway traffic.

...which they were violating.

I'd've written 'em each a citation for it, were I the Dallas County Traffic Enforcement deputy.
The whole business of "I can't move my car, because the officer needs to see the crash scene as it occurred" is only applicable to crashes involving injury or fatality.

Last night, I fed the family with open-faced sammiches made from the high-end bread lightly-toasted with butter on cookie sheets, then broiled with paper-thin slices of the meats and some white cheddar and smoked gouda, with thin slices of onion atop them. The kids picked off the onion, and ate heartily. The wife added spiced mustard, and ate heartily. I just ate it as it was, and was happy to find two left this morning when I got up late (I work evenings today.). You could claim that your breakfast was better than mine, reheated with a cup of black coffee, but I would not believe your claim.

Success!

We took off in a Pilatus PC-12/45.

And we hunted in the southern part of the Texas Panhandle.

We saw some weather, but got little.

We hiked through some country.

What you can only get a hint of is that there are some steep canyons all through that area.

And Dad killed a good-sized hog (~200 to 225 lbs), finally blooding the new .45-70 Guide Gun that I'd given him for his 60th birthday,  a decade ago.

I have pork on ice to tend to. A good time, with good camaraderie.

One does not simply walk into Moscow...

...and kick the Russians' butts, playing their own music, during the Cold War.

But that's just what a modest gay kid from Louisiana and Texas did. A graduate of Julliard, Van Cliburn had always wanted to go to Russia. In 1958, the 24 year old went there to compete in the first International Tchaikovsky Competition.

Consider the era. The Soviets had just launched Sputnik, and felt that they were on a roll. They started this competition to show the world that the U.S.S.R. was not only technically advanced, but culturally the world leaders, as well. And, frankly, when it comes to virtuoso pianists, the Russians have a long and proud history.

Cliburn played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3.

And he blew them away.
He won first prize, in an upset that in some ways was akin to Jesse Owens excelling at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics.

Give the Soviets this: They reportedly applauded him for eight minutes, and then gave him the prize. He came home to a ticker tape parade, and a family friend presented a check for $10,000 to begin a piano competition in Fort Worth, TX, named in Van Cliburn's honor.  This was one of the things that has made Fort Worth a significant artistic destination.

Cliburn quit performing publicly in the '70s, when he felt that he couldn't give the quality that he believed that he should, anymore. But he continued to act as a cultural ambassador, acting as a servant of music. He lived in Fort Worth, TX until he passed away at 78.

We lost an icon, yesterday.

Record blizzard

No, it's not a big deal for Amarillo to get a blizzard. It's just that this one is particularly heavy, and for the second time in two weeks.

Meanwhile, in Corpus Christi, TX, it's only getting up to 72, and might be too chilly to swim. 15 years ago this week, I swam on the beach at Corpus Christi. The water was warmer than the air around me.

And if I hear the term "blizzard-like conditions" again, I'm going to make some noise. (That's a blizzard.)

"It's okay, he's with us."

A lot of people don't know that, until 1995, Texas had a rather stiff law against carrying pistols. Oh, long guns were okay, but to carry a handgun within one's scope of reach, one had better have been engaged in or en route to or returning from a lawful sporting activity, or had to be a cop or military, or, strangely, had to be "traveling."

Traveling was not defined in the Texas Penal Code. One judge would choose to interpret it as crossing county lines. Another would say that it was crossing three county lines. Still another would say that it was crossing three counties, with intent to stay the night. All the while, the charge of Unlawful Carrying Of A Weapon (or "UCW") bore a Class B, and later a Class A (up to one year in jail!) penalty.

There was no such thing as a license to carry a pistol in public, concealed or otherwise. That didn't come until 1995.*

But throughout the nation, Texas had a reputation for being a bastion of the gun-toters. And our gun culture was in fact quite strong.

How does one resolve this? No one could legally carry?!?

Well....

Remember that "Traveling" exemption? It's here, at 46.15(b)(2). It wasn't until September 1, 2007 (12 years after concealed carry was adopted in Texas) that we finally changed the law to permit one to carry a concealed weapon while operating a vehicle, regardless of the distance one went. A couple of years before, the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot had surprised many by issuing an opinion that Travelling should be regarded as any legal transportation by a motor vehicle by a person not a member of a street gang, who is carrying concealed and not committing a crime greater than a Class C misdemeanor. The new law basically adopted that opinion, built right into Sec. 46.02. (Making the Nonapplicability statute kind of redundant, actually.)

There's nothing like a little ambiguity in the law, to see that it's applied differently to different people. I assure you that, in the Good Bad Old Days,  Tex and Good Ol' Joe weren't troubled with arrests for totin' their pistols. Nor was Grammaw, for carrying that old derringer in her purse. Also, pastor Brown? His proclivity for keeping a Woodsman in the glove box was just overlooked. They weren't Unlawfully Carrying Weapons! They, dear reader, were Traveling.

Because they were white.

Or belonged to the officer's church.

Or family.

Or a coach of the boys' baseball team.

But mostly, white.

Selective enforcement is a dirty way to apply a law, and friends, I'm afraid Texas had it pretty well institutionalized. I'm not proud of that era in Texas history, which went way back to the 19th century:

(Click to embiggen, and see what we passed in 1889. )

See, the law was applied to "those people," while the swarthier races, or even just those whom the officer didn't care for would be charged.

So think about how it would have gone down if Ice T, a black gun rights advocate, or Wayne LaPierre, a white gun rights advocate, had appeared on television, committing a felony possession of a high-capacity magazine.

But David Gregory is white, and is a gun control advocate, so let's let him go.

He didn't mean nothin'.

_________________________________________
*And the predictions were dire. "Blood in the streets!" "Armed showdowns over traffic disputes!" were forecast. Even as a cop, I've never (not once!) seen such, in over a dozen years in law enforcement.

Y'all might've gotten your wires crossed.

Some dude named Samuel Weigley wrote a nice little list story (people love lists) about where the economy is bestest, regarding employment. Problem is, he tried to flesh out why these places are lowest in the unemployment figures. He lists Midland, TX as the metropolitan area with the sixth lowest rate of unemployment in the nation, and explains it thus:

> Oct. 2012 unemployment rate: 3.3% (tied for 6th)> Total population:140,308> Median household income: $54,330In October Midland’s unemployment rate was just 3.3% — exactly half the 6.6% unemployment rate in the state. This is a solid improvement from 12 months prior, when Midland already had the eighth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, at just 4.1%. According to the BLS, the mining, logging and construction industry was the top employment sector in the metropolitan area as of October, growing 6.3% from the prior year. In addition, Midland’s median household income of $54,330 in 2011 was nearly $5,000 higher than the median income of Texas.

 

 I can believe that construction would be going strong in the Midland-Odessa area. Although I'm surprised to hear of it, I won't discount the possibility of mining in or around Midland. But logging?

Here's a good representation of the miles and miles of miles and miles around Midland, TX:

Photo credit: AirPhotona.com
Oh, here's a shot of a stand of timber in Midland:

(Ripped from NOAA's site.)

Is it just that they haven't found any unemployed lumberjacks hanging out around Midland?

Thunderhead

While talking on the phone with Northwestern Free Thinker this past afternoon, I snapped a picture of this nice thunderhead. I checked NOAA radar and found that it was about 50 miles away. I'm guessing about 30+ thousand feet high? Maybe 40k?  Pilots, help me out.

A time to kill.

Down in the wooded coastal plain of Lavaca County, TX, we're pretty proud of the Spoetzl Brewery that's been making Shiner beer for over 100 years. Also, there's a kind of old school wisdom that supports an interesting point in Texas law:

(a) A person is justified in using deadly force against another: (1) if the actor would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.31; and (2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary: (A) to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force; or (B) to prevent the other's imminent commission of aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robbery.

Texas Penal Code Section 9.32

I've always wondered if I would see such a case. Dad walks in, finds another man molesting his daughter, and kills that man. The especially compelling part about this new case in Shiner, TX is that the alleged molester (now deceased) was with a 4 year old girl, and that the father used his bare hands to kill the man.

They'll trot it before the grand jury to get the dad acquitted, but it looks like everyone is willing to sign off on it, due to the above Penal Code reading.

If it happened the way that it is alleged, I'm fine with it, too, in my heart. But you know, the story reads that the father "stopped him by striking him in the head several times." How many strikes to the head were rendered after the effective cessation of the aggravated sexual assault?

I think back to the 2009 case of OKC pharmacist Jerome Ersland, who shot and killed a robber that he had just incapacitated, and was convicted of murder. There was even video of the whole stick-up.  But this was a little girl being raped, and this is Texas, and there's no video of the father's final swings, so I guess it's his story to tell.

I sincerely hope that, if it all went as he says, it all works out for the father and his daughter.

Random Wednesday thoughts.

--I went to visit a friend in Waxahachie (by-Gawd) Texas the last couple of days. We wondered around the Ellis Courthouse on the square. That's a beautiful courthouse, and I'm picky. Every time that I go to a Texas county that I've never visited before, I try to get a size-up of their courthouse. There are 254 Texas counties (many of which are ~30 miles square, but not all), and most of them have a courthouse, many of which are over 100 years old and still in service. Some have retired their old courthouses but still keep them for other uses. Some counties share their judicial district with another local county, and thus use their that county's courthouse.

I enjoyed the detail of the stonework over the porticos at the entrances:



I also dug the turrets:

Forgive my poor photography. I was using a crappy not-Smart phone at dusk.

--I'm still liking Sallie Ford And Sound Outside. They've got a rough retro sound that I enjoy.

--I went to a pub last night to get a (wife-approved*) pint with an old friend from high school. I enjoyed our chat. She's extremely liberal. I'm a bit right of center. We disagreed about gun control. We're still really good friends. It's not all about politics, friends.

--Pubs are nice places to get a drink and chat. I've hardly ever done that. However, at 9:00PM, the place basically turned into a club, and the music went all doosh-doosh-doosh-dooshdooshdoosh, doosh-doosh-doosh, making us old people find it hard to hear each other. These kids, with their techno music, these days. . .

--This past weekend, I borrowed a flatbed trailer and picked up 3 cubic yards of enriched compost  humus dirt. They said that it was about 1900 lbs when I picked it up.

 I had mediocre tarps, and the wind kicked up, to 50 mph gusts, which meant that I probably lost almost a half a yard. But given the sheets of rain that fell on it over the next couple of days, I'll bet that we shoveled 3000 pounds of the stuff into our raised beds. My wife had gotten out the nail gun and thrown together some 8'X4' beds with doubled 2"X6"s, and lined the sides with black plastic. We put down layers of newspaper under the beds, and shoveled in the compost dirt, mixed with cow manure, vermiculite, and peat moss. While it's organic, it's also basically not much like any soil found in nature. We should be able to grow some stuff in this. It was a dirty job that even my nine-year-old got into.

--We filled Mom's raised bed frame and her front yard flower beds with the stuff, too.

--After all that rain, there seem to be some ruts in my yard from where I backed the trailer onto the soft dirt, and then back out. At least I didn't get the van stuck. This time. I need a yard roller.

--I go in tonight to see how I did on my Homeland Security test in grad school. I'm not enthusiastic. Then again, I'm not really enthusiastic about the state of our nation's homeland security, either.

--I had my daughters do without TV or computer for two days. Given the results, I think I'm going to do this some more.

--My chickens are back to laying about an egg a day. Two of them are laying eggs the size of duck eggs.

--I got to take the weekend off from fire training. It was the first weekend off this year. It was very nice to have the weekend off from training, because I worked at my paying job all weekend. This stuff makes you tired, when you don't get any sleep on top of it.

_______________________________________
*You think that "wife approved" part is silly? Not me. I'm in this thing for the long haul, friends.

Shooting the kid.

The other day, Brownsville cops shot and killed a 15 year old boy who was brandishing a gun in a school with over 700 kids in it.

The family is upset, saying it was unnecessary use of force*. The boy was just an 8th grader. He was a Good Student**. He was a Good Boy. Active in his church. Not affiliated with gangs. It was only a pellet gun. They shouldn't have shot a minor and certainly not more than once, and DEFINITELY not in the back of the head. Tragic over-reaction, says the family.

Really? Let's listen to the 911 call.  Huh. People were bunkered down. The kid was roaming the halls of a school full of kids. He'd been told repeatedly to put the gun down. He was not in Taser range. He'd said that he was not afraid to die. He was displaying this:

I've posted my concerns about bullet magnets before, and written of an incident almost ten years ago with one. I recall how, at that time, when I presented the boy with his own Airsoft version of a CZ75 from my own holster, the kid didn't even recognize his own plastic gun:

In Brownsville:
The boy threatened people with the gun, which looked very realistic.
The boy talked about not being afraid to die.
The boy was mobile in a school full of potential victims and hostages.
The boy had been challenged, and refused to put the apparent weapon down.
Bullets from the gun of a juvenile kill people just as dead as those from the gun of an adult.
This was sadly a suicide by cop, performed by an unstable kid.

The Brownsville cops did what they had to do.
And that's a damned shame.



____________________________________________
*In that ridiculous story, the reporter does his Live! stand-up in Dallas, TX. Even using Google Earth to stretch a line from Dallas to Brownsville, it's 475 miles, and that takes you over the Gulf of Mexico. Google Maps says that the short route to drive it (through Victoria) is actually 529 miles. Why the network thought that it means ANYTHING to have the reporter stand outside in Dallas, TX is beyond me. It would make about as much sense to have a reporter stand outside of a mobile van in New York City to report on a shooting in Hampstead, NC. (which is the same distance by air.)


** Nothing like getting it right the third time. My 8th grader is only 13, and actually started 8th grade when she was only 12. By age 15, I was about 6'4", 200+ lbs, and wore my first beard as a sophomore in high school. Physically, I was indistinguishable from a grown man.

BEP fail.

I am not superstitious. I don't eat black-eyed peas* on New Years Day because I believe that they're going to give me good luck. Heck, given the fact that I've very possibly consumed them every single New Year's Day of my life, I have thus probably eaten them on the first day of the worst year of my life.

But tradition sticks to you, like a steaming bowl from a Big Pot Of Black Eyed Peas sticks to your ribs. For what it's worth, Homesick Texan gets it exactly right; that's the (heretofore unwritten for me) recipe that I've always used, generally served with a double or triple batch of cornbread.

But some years, as with this one, I just don't have my ducks in a row, and I don't get my dried peas on to soak in time the night before, so I have to resort to a can of peas to keep my yearly tradition. Hey, some of y'all have undoubtedly resorted to expedient measures to get your dose of turkey on Thanksgiving, too.

This year, I bumped the shelf, and a can of Ranch Style brand Blackeye Peas (Seasoned With Bacon) fell into my shopping cart.  Well okay. I've always liked the Trappey's Jalapeño Black Eye Peas (Flavored With Slab Bacon), but I figured hey-- let's give Ranch Style a try. After all, aren't they the good people who brought us the ("Husband Appetite-Pleasin'")  Ranch Style Beans** of greatness? 

I tried them, and something was badly off about the taste. It was... too sweet. Way too sweet. Why are my black-eyed peas sweet??

I read the ingredients list on the can, and I have an announcement for one and all: avoid Ranch Style Blackeye Peas!  First ingredient: Blackeye Peas. Second ingredient: Water. Third ingredient: Sugar.  Sugar?!? 

Wrong.

Complete fail.

Choose the greatness of Trappey's for the safest bet.

Ranch Style/ConAgra: Get your act together, or omit the Blackeye Peas product altogether. It puts a black eye on the superb Ranch Style product line that you've built over the last century.

________________
*You will note that I say it three or more different ways here. I have always said it "black-eyed peas" or "black eyed peas," but I note that Ranch Style and Trappey's have their own ways of listing them, which I fathfully reproduce here when referring to their respective products.

**I notice in the comments at the bottom of that page, a comment made by "Homesick Texan" from back in 2008. I wonder if it could be the same one whose blog I referenced earlier in this post? Huh. What are the chances? I mean, there are a lot of Texans abroad out there, and a lot (most?) are given to homesick, but how many regularly post about legumes?

Liberally Lean In The Land Of Dairy Queen.

Barry Green is a former district attorney in Wise County By-Gawd, Texas. He still practices law there, and he just doesn't seem to give a damn what you think of him. You kind of have to admire that in a man. Funny stuff.

He also has some decent off-the-cuff local news updates and thoughts for north Texas.

"Hey, she said she was 18!"

North Texas attorney Richard Gladden is trying to get the statutory rape law repealed. His argument is that if an adult didn't know that the juvenile was under-aged, then it shouldn't be a crime for him to have consensual sex with that juvenile. The stories told by the reporter are very compelling*. Innocent servicemen, preyed upon by sexually-advanced teens with women's bodies who claim to be full adults. Their lives ruined by felony convictions and lifetime sex offender registration.

They showed some pictures of girls with developed figures and their faces blurred out, as evidence that you just can't tell. How were these men --properly the victims themselves-- to know that these little seductresses weren't adults?

Hey, I know that the average age of the onset of puberty has dropped remarkably in the last 100 years or so, but this sounds the same as those morons who whine, "How can you even tell if she wanted it? I mean, I was getting mixed signals from that bus driver..." The fact is, if you're grown up enough to have consensual sex, then you need to be grown up enough to know who you're potentially making a baby with, or trading your next infection with.


If you can't tell that this kid isn't 18, you're not doing any kind of due diligence between your ears.

The funny thing is, I think that we've got too many felonies, and I think that it's pretty dumb that there's no graduation between "illegal, but not a felony," and "wholesale felony."

Just this month, I had to turn down a complainant's case of Sexual Assault Of A Child, which the victim's mother had brought to me. It seems that her kid, at 15, was having sex with an actor who was 18. Sexual Assault, right? Well, Texas Penal Code provides an affirmative defense if the actor is not greater than 3 years older than the victim. In this case, the actor was 2 years and 9 months older than the complainant's kid. Had the kid been 4 months younger, then I would have had a third degree felony case to deal with. Just 100 days one way or the other made the difference between a felony and no crime at all in this state. Can't we graduate it a little bit, like Theft and Criminal Mischief?

What bugs me about this is that, should Counselor Gladden's proposed legal change be made, every dadgummed pedophile with a van, a bag of candy, and a map to the parks and elementary school bus routes in the state is going to claim "Hey, I didn't know! She said she was taking classes at State U when I complimented her tricycle and offered her some Jesus Juice!"

________________________

*You've got to laugh at the graphic, though. When they mention that the Marine was arrested with the girl in Yuma, AZ, the screen filled with a map showing the location of Yuma. Not that this had any real bearing on the story. They just thought that you might want to know where Yuma was, apparently.

Necessary evils.

Every once in a while you run across a piece of bureaucracy that is not only needed, but which does its job pretty well.

I called TCLEOSE today with a couple of questions about my peace officer's license, and was struck yet again by how courteous and helpful their small staff always is in helping me with finding out the information that I need. I've heard that their staff is around 20 people, managing the licensing, credentials, and certificates for:

74,913 Peace Officers
283 Reserve Licensees
24,047 Jailers
2,366 Temporary Jailers
8,843 Telecommunicators
940 Temporary Telecommunicators

By my calculator's count, that's 111,392 police, jailer, and telecommunicator licenses that they keep up with. (Note: many of those licenses are redundant. It's not uncommon for a jailer to go to police academy and get his peace officer's license carried, and then also to occasionally work as a telecommunicator as well.)

Every time that I've talked to those people, they were able to get me the information that I needed, and were pleasant. Not just "human," but genuinely pleasant to deal with.

Look, so long as we're going to be licensing peace officers and jailers and the ilk, we'd better have training requirements and such. And if we're going to do that, then we've got to have people administering the licensing. So isn't it nice that these people, paid by taxpayers' dollars and licensing fees, are actually doing a decent job of it?

I may actually send an attaboy letter to their director, I'm so impressed.

Blow you away.

We got a little bit of rain last night, but given the record-setting drought that this March was, it's not enough. Unfortunately, it's probably just enough to make it muddy for brush trucks trying to get out to fight the wildfires that are burning out of control in these winds (note that this weather station is nearest my house!): Yeah, you're reading it right; sustained winds in the mid-40's, with gusts approaching 60 mph. Probably not the very best day to go over to Fort Worth for their Main Street Arts Festival, but that's where we're headed. Y'all have fun going where ever the wind blows you.

It ain't haute cuisine, but....

When I was at Blogorado, I had a really simple appetizer that the Farm Fam prepared, that I loved. They took a large summer sausage, slit it to the center (that is to say, they made a single longitudinal sagital cut that went halfway through the width of the sausage), and stuffed the slit with canned pickled jalapeño slices. They then smoked it. What could be easier? Sliced transversely, and put on a cracker, it was Fan. Tas. Tic. A very flavorful way to feed a lot of visitors.

I mentioned this to a rather, um, heavyset friend of mine. He remarked that he likes to buy a cheap Armour summer sausage from Wal*Mart, cut it up into cubes, and put them into the left-over vinegar brine that he has when he finishes off his pickle jars of jalapeños*.

"That's it?" I asked. "You just dice the sausage into the brine?"

"That's it," assured my rotund friend. "Leave it overnight, if you can. I hurt myself, I eat so much."

I gave it a shot.

Mental note: listen to the fat man.**

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*A word of explanation here: it is a common tradition, in Texas, to save your mayonnaise and pickle jars when you are done with them, to be cleaned and stored until the next time you bring home a gallon can of pickled jalapeños. The jalapeños almost always come packed in an escabeche, which is a vinegar brine, with vegetables-- usually carrots and onions, but occasionally also with bay, oregano, and even cauliflower. The contents of the gallon can are then distributed to the various quart and pint jars, which are then sealed and stored. The empty can is then used for target practice.

**Make sure the meat is covered with the brine if you're going to leave it out. I put mine in the refrigerator, but it needs heating before eating, because cold fat doesn't feel right in the mouth. Lightly pan-fried, it's quite good.

Pardon me while I get a little defensive for our state.

You know who we see moving here in Texas? Californians. They marvel at the low (read: realistic) cost of housing. They like the lack of state income taxes. They buy a house here, enroll their kid into our schools, and then get busy complaining.

Not enough services. Our schools are rated too low. Texas is made up of a bunch of hicks. (That last one's pretty general, and, to a great extent, true. But we hear the complaint a lot.)

Funny thing, though. You Californians and other immigrants to our state seem to be complaining about our state at the end of a conversation that started with "Where's the nearest U-Haul dealership? I need to turn in my moving van."

I can't blame you for fleeing Cali. If it weren't for Miami, you guys would have "top five crappiest towns in the U.S." locked up.

As for schools, I have often wondered how anyone could miss that 1254 miles of our 2000 mile border with Mexico is the Rio Grande River. In my personal experience, the Rio Grande averages about a foot or two deep, most places. So we get a few international immigrants, too. It is estimated that we have 70,000 undocumented aliens in the Texas school system. In the college system, most of the 12,000 aliens in Texas receiving in-state tuition are illegal.

We educate about 700,000 ESL kids a year, at an average cost of around $7500 per kid per year. Count the zeros. That's a good five billion bucks. Which we come a lot closer to paying than the folks in California do.


Hey, your revenue is welcome. And if you'll give it a shot, you might just find that you like our redneck ways. But if you're running down your new home as soon as you get here, that's just foolish.

You incoming folks have already run up the number of digits on our license plates to seven, just like you had it back home. Maybe that'll feel more homey to you.

Our nation.

Our President said today that we can't do much about the immigration problem until we have done something about the illegal employment problem. I happen to agree. We need to do something about the large pile of sugar that's sitting out.

Well, it appears that our President says that he wants to hold our estimated 11M illegal immigrants accountable. Okay. I agree there, too.

Barack Obama says that deporting them all would be untenable. As much as this irritates me, it's probably partially true, though exporting illegal border-crossers would certainly decrease the work taken to document them. Okay.

He says that we should make them "get right with the law" before they can get in line to apply for citizenship. Okay.

He says that they should be fined* (for a felony), and admit that they did wrong, and lean English, before they can apply for citizenship. Okay. (Side question: When are we ever going to push for English as a national language? Until this is done, frankly, the English language requirement to be a citizen seems unwarranted.)

He claims that this puts them in at the BACK of the line. I wonder.

He also claims that "there are, right now, more boots on the ground on the SouthWest border, than ever before." He also claims that crime on the SW border is down to less than it has been in 20 years. This is clearly a set-up to deny further funding to border security.

So it would appear that the President's answer to Border Security is to largely to make the illegal citizens legal.

As a guy who's constantly dealing with undocumented aliens, I'm actually not quite as disgusted with this as you might suspect.

Understand: I'm NOT anti-Mexican. I'm NOT anti-Hispanic. I'm NOT anti-immigrant. I wish to hell that the race/ethnicity/xenophobe argument was gone, frankly; it's a red herring. I'm first and foremost unhappy that the documented citizen has to pay taxes and answer for violations of the law, which the undocumented alien does not. So I'll admit that our President managed to actually speak to my interests in this speech.

But I suspect that he'll hold border security hostage until the Republican votes for the new immigration bill are in. Mark me on this one.

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By way of Tamara, I read of a little girl who insists that her mama keep her promises to be patriotic. I had to wipe my eyes to see to type a response.
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*How much? Set the price point too high, and no one is buying. Set it too low, and everyone will buy.