Looks like that sportsmanship initiative paid off.
Steelers Open Thread
Caught Lily in the middle of a solid pre-game scratch:
You may not recognize it yet, but that is her game face.
*** Update ***
I forgot all about the menu:
Unnamed Pasta Dish
Loaf of Bread
Apple & Blackberry Crisp
I’ve never had unnamed pasta before- sounds exotic. Lots of carbs in this meal, though.
*** Update #2 ***
By popular request, proof of life:
And for the haters, here is another one, with nothing but him bitching:
It’s cute for about a minute.
The Cameron Todd Willingham execution
Many of you have probably already read the excellent New Yorker piece on the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. Briefly, Willingham was convicted largely on the basis of deeply flawed pseudo-science about the nature of fires.
The Coriscana Daily Sun has dueling opinion pieces from the prosecutor who convicted him and someone from the Innocence Project.
Reading over the New Yorker description of the trial and the prosecutor’s piece, it’s hard to believe this all took place a decade ago and not a century ago.
TNC has several good posts about this (here; here; here).
Update. Commenter EconWatcher relates a first-hand story about the Texas justice system:
Years ago I worked pro bono on a Texas death penalty case. The judicial system there is medieval. You literally cannot beleive it. In the case I worked on, the prosecutor quoted from the Bible to argue to the jury that Holy Scripture required them to render the death penalty. He specifically quoted St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (“He is the wrath of God, to execute God’s vengenance on the wrongdoer.”)
Then I did some research and found out that this was standard practice for Texas prosecutors in death cases (at least in the 1980s). They were actually trained to use the same quote, apparently because it was market-tested as effective with Baptist juries.
(By the way, after years of struggle, my client was executed in July 1997. There is no feeling of defeat that can compare to it.)
In for a Schilling?
I actually sort of like Curt Schilling, even though he’s a winger. Anyone who hates Boston Globe sportswriters that much can’t be all bad. I just hope he knows what when Republican Senators talk about “pitching” and “catching”, they may not be talking about baseball.
Late Night Open Thread
Our new foster papillon “Gloria” got turfed from her last home because she made the dog-logical mistake of attacking their tiny, elderly Queen Bee girl dog. In the three-days-and-counting she’s been here with us, Gloria has given our elderly, imperious (and much larger, tho still smaller than Gloria) Princess Buta-Hime-Sama a very wide berth, even while scrumming cautiously with our two boy dogs. This is good news for readers of the Media Village Courtiers, because it proves that a born lapdog can learn from its mistakes, given sufficient impetus.
On the other hand, Gloria doesn’t drink out of the toilet bowl, even though she’s physically capable of doing so (and let me state for the record that when I fell in love with papillons, I never expected to meet one tall enough to achieve this). So it’s possible that she’s just got more naturally discerning tastes than Dean Broder, Dick Cohen, or David Brooks…
Random question
You seem like a pretty literary group to me, so maybe you can help me with this question. I have a friend who is a first-time author. He just got an offer from a publisher for his book, which is seen as a regional book but probably has some national potential (in my opinion and his). The plan is for an initial print run of 10,000 copies.
What would be a reasonable advance and royalties? I’ve seen enough episodes of “Behind the Music” to know you have to careful with contracts?
Thanks!
Update. The book is nonfiction. And my friend’s fear is that getting an agent will somehow scare the publisher off. Any possibility of that?
Wednesday Night Open Thread
Day two and a half of a cold that started a couple days ago when I foolishly slept with my windows open and the temperature dropped 40 degrees and I woke up freezing at 6 am. No fever, but a sinus headache and a sore throat- the sinuses are so clogged my neti pot hanged itself in the towel closet. Love it when the weather changes.
Here is a picture for you, though:
I’m going to go swill green death Nyquil and watch four hours of NCIS, because that is about what I can handle while smacked up on Nyquil.