The term “Chewbacca defense” refers to a legal strategy in which a defense lawyer attempts to confuse the jury with irrelevant or misleading information, rather than attempting to refute the prosecution’s case.
The term comes from a 1998 epsiode of South Park, which satirized the O.J. Simpson murder trial; in that episode, Johnnie Cochran defended Chef with a nonsense argument about the Star Wars chararcter Chewbacca.
To quote conservepedia:
White’s lawyers insisted that his eating Twinkies instead of his usual health food diet was a sign of his depression, not a cause of his depression. Of course, the site uses any excuse they can think of or fabricate to prove that no crime has ever commuted against a homosexual because they were gay.
Byron “Whizzer” White was a college football star who later went to law school, served on John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign staff in Colorado, and then joined the U.S. Justice Department. JFK named him to the Supreme Court, where he served from 1962-1993. He died in 2002.
Alan Page was a star defensive tackle at Notre Dame, then with the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears in the NFL. A cornerstone of the Vikings’ “Purple People Eaters” defense in the 1970s, Page was a six-time NFL All-Pro, two-time Defensive Player of the Year, and won the 1971 Most Valuable Player award.
While playing for the Vikings, Page earned his law degree from the University of Minnesota. After retiring from football, Page served as Assistant Attorney General for the state of Minnesota, then served as an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court from 1993 until 2015.
The Viking name for Constantinople was Miklagarðr, in modern script, Miklagård, meaning the large city. In 1964, experts studying the Hagia Sophia found that what was long thought to be just cracks in the marble was actually Viking graffiti in runic letters meaning: “Halvdan was here.” A decade later, another message reading “Ári was here” was found. There is debate over whether Halvdan and Ári were members of the Varangian Guard (which consisted of Vikings protecting the Byzantine Emperor Basil II and later emperors) or were just traders visiting Constantinople.
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1923, the new Republic of Turkey officially changed the name of Constantinople to Istanbul. However, many people, businesses, and even governments continued to call the city by its historical name. That, however, changed in 1930, when mail addressed to Constantinople—including paychecks and other legal documents—stopped being delivered to any home or business in Istanbul.
I’d forgotten he had played a few years at Chicago.
In play… with Thanksgiving next week… The heaviest turkey on record was 86 pounds. The giant gobbler was reared in Peterborough, United Kingdom, and won the “Heaviest Turkey” competition in London in 1989. It has held the record ever since.
The city of Peterborough, Ontario, is in a location which had previously been known as Scott’s Plain. In 1825, a group of roughly 2000 Irish immigrants were brought to the area to settle, by a Canadian legislator and businessman, named Peter Robinson. The area was renamed Peterborough in honor of Robinson.
Daniel Defoe’s tale Robinson Crusoe is one of the best known tales of a lone individual stranded on an island. Others include Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Stephen King’s short story Survivor Type.
According to Google Maps, Robinson, Washington 99158 (gMap Lat-Long 47.090474, -117.224915) is about 100 miles NE of Robinson, Washington 99348 (gMap; Lat-Long 46.299026, -118.293825).
The Swiss Family Robinson, an 1812 novel by Swiss pastor Johann Wyss, is not about a family named Robinson, even though later adaptations for film and TV used that surname for the characters. Wyss’s title, Der Schweizerische Robinson, could be more accurately translated as “The Swiss Robinson”. The family’s surname is not given and the name Robinson is used to compare them to Robinson Crusoe.
In the 1960 movie Swiss Family Robinson, the family is on its way to New Guinea when they are shipwrecked and make their way onto an uninhabited island. This island contains an impressive array of wildlife, including an Asian elephant, a zebra foal, a spider monkey, an ostrich, and a python.
WWII’s Operation Vengeance was an American op aimed at killing Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 18 Apr 1943, Yamamoto was killed on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, when his transport bomber aircraft was shot down by a squadron of 18 P-38G Lockheed Lightnings from Kukum Field on Guadalcanal.
There is a controversy over which pilot shot down Yamamoto’s plane. Capt. Thomas G. Lanphier, Jr. was initially credited with the kill, but none of the remaining pilots were debriefed after the mission because no formal interrogation procedures existed on Guadalcanal at that time. Likewise, Lanphier’s claim of the kill was never officially witnessed. But after the war, testimony by Japanese Zero pilot Kenji Yanagiya, who had been in Yamamoto’s fighter escort, corroborated Lt. Rex T. Barber‘s account of the attack.
In the end, both Lanphier and Barber were each credited with half a kill.
Except…, Barber’s home state of Oregon. On April 18, 2003, the 60th anniversary of the mission, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski proclaimed the day “Rex T. Barber Day.” Oregon credits Barber alone with the sole kill of Yamamoto. The Oregon State Legislature declared that the new bridge on U.S. Highway 97 over the Crooked River be named the Rex T. Barber Veterans Memorial Bridge in his honor. (This bridge replaced the Crooked River High Bridge.) The new bridge, plaque and kiosk honoring Barber were dedicated on August 9, 2003 at Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint.
*Comment: next week I plan to drive north to Oregon on US-97 and stop at the Rex T. Barber Veterans Memorial Bridge. I’ll look for that plaque and kiosk at the Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint.
gMap >> Google Maps << using my old San Francisco address
*
Author Ken Kesey was arrested in La Honda, California, for possession of marijuana in 1965. In an attempt to mislead police, he faked suicide by having friends leave his truck on a cliffside road near Eureka, along with an elaborate suicide note, written by his counter-culture group The Merry Pranksters. Kesey fled to Mexico in the back of a friend’s car. He returned to the United States eight months later. On January 17, 1966, Kesey was sentenced to six months to be served at the San Mateo County jail in Redwood City, California. Two nights later, he was arrested again, this time with Carolyn Adams, while smoking marijuana on the rooftop of Stewart Brand’s Telegraph Hill home in San Francisco. On his release, he moved back to the family farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley, where he spent the rest of his life.
Ken Kesey’s second novel, published in 1964, is entitled Sometimes a Great Notion. The novel is about an Oregon logging family who deliver trees to a local mill despite a strike by unionized workers. The book was made into a movie which was released in 1971 and called Never Give An Inch. The movie, directed by Paul Newman, starred Newman, Henry Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Lee Remick, and Richard Jaeckel. Jaeckel was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film.
Actor Paul Newman trained as a race car driver in prepartion for his 1969 film Winning, which sparked an interest in racing that lasted for the rest of his life.
Newman regularly competed as a driver in the 1970s and 1980s, and was successful in the SCCA and Trans Am series, winning three SCAA national championships; he continued racing into his 80s, and won a race at the Lime Rock track in Connecticut at age 81.
He also sponsored several racing teams, which competed in a range of events, including Can-Am and Indy Car races.
Seinfeld’s arch nemesis Newman claimed that he once worked the same postal route as American serial killer David Berkowitz, otherwise known as the “Son of Sam”, who was working for the Postal Service at the time of his 1977 capture; Newman claims “we once double-dated”. When asked what Berkowitz’s postal route was like, Newman commented the route had “a lot of dogs”, but joked that they only told him “to lay off the snacks” (a reference to Berkowitz’s claim that talking dogs possessed him to go on a killing spree). Newman retains Berkowitz’s mailbag as a valuable collector’s item. When the police come to arrest him in “The Engagement”, his first words to them are, “What took you so long?”, the same words Berkowitz used when arrested. In real life, however, Berkowitz did not have a mail route while employed at the Postal Service. At the time of his capture he worked as a letter-sorter.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines serial killing as “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone”. The most prolific serial killer in the US is believed to be a man named Samuel Little, who is currently serving 3 Life sentences without the possibility of parole for murders committed in 1987, 1989, and 1994. While he claims to have killed as many as 93 people,the FBI has confirmed his involvement in the murder of at least 50 women, which occurred in 19 states during the period of 1970 to 2005.
While Little may have been the most prolific, arguably the most notorious were the Manson murders, committed in 1969 by several members of the Manson “family” against a pregnant Sharon Tate, her friends, and others.
“Little Boy” was the first atomic bomb used in war, on 06 August 1945, when it was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Weighing about 5 tons, its explosive force was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. And yet its ‘weapon efficiency’ is rated as poor. Approx. 1.38% of the uranium fuel actually fissioned.