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**tomt** · April 26th, 2018, 03:52 PM

Man sentenced to 50 years for stealing $1.2 million in fajitas
Posted: Oct 16, 2017 1:38 PM PDT
Updated: Apr 23, 2018 9:38 AM PDT
Meredith Digital StaffCONNECT

By JENNIFER SHRUM

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS (KDAF) -- A former Texas county employee has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for stealing $1.2 million worth of fajitas over nine years.

Gilberto Escaramilla was fired from his Cameron County Juvenile Justice Department job in August. He was arrested for felony theft after a search warrant turned up packages of county-funded fajitas inside his refrigerator, according to Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz.

Escaramilla has acknowledged stealing packages of the food for nine years. An audit of vendor invoices showed Escaramilla intercepted food deliveries being made to the department.

“He would literally, on the day he ordered them, deliver them to customers he already had lined up,” Saenz told The Brownsville Herald. “We’ve been able to uncover two of his purchasers, and they are cooperating with the investigation.”

How’d Escaramilla get caught after a nine-year run? He had a medical appointment and missed a day of work in August, and a delivery driver called about the 800 lbs. of fajitas he needed to deliver.

Thing is, the Juvenile Department doesn’t serve Tex-Mex. A woman told the driver they don’t serve fajitas, but the driver insisted he’d been delivering them there for nine years.

So…Escaramilla showed up for work the next day, was confronted, and admitted what he’d been doing.

“If it wasn’t so serious, you’d think it was a Saturday Night Live skit,” Saenz said. “But this is the real thing.”

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Escamilla is charged with a first-degree felony for theft of the fajitas, which totaled around $1,251,578.

**tomt** · April 27th, 2018, 10:15 PM

**tomt** · April 28th, 2018, 02:26 AM

Russia in RSA ��
Russia in RSA ��
@EmbassyofRussia
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2m
On 28 April 1969 legendary Soviet comedy "Diamond Arm" by Gaidai premiered - 77 mln viewers in wide theatrical release alone - many quotes from the film gained such popularity they became part of the Russian language. Available online with English subs:

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**tomt** · April 29th, 2018, 12:34 AM

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Now that yr gone....

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**tomt** · May 1st, 2018, 06:30 AM

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e?er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher?s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ?mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ?twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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**tomt** · May 2nd, 2018, 02:09 AM

"After so much hard reasoning, may one play with a fantasy? Imagine a large hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries go right round through the space usually occupied by the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress circle and the Antarctic in the pit.

A myriad computers are at work upon the weather of the part of the map where each sits, but each computer attends only to one equation or part of an equation. The work of each region is coordinated by an official of higher rank. Numerous little "night signs" display the instantaneous values so that neighbouring computers can read them. Each number is thus displayed in three adjacent zones so as to maintain communication to the North and South on the map.

From the floor of the pit a tall pillar rises to half the height of the hall. It carries a large pulpit on its top. In this sits the man in charge of the whole theatre; he is surrounded by several assistants and messengers. One of his duties is to maintain a uniform speed of progress in all parts of the globe. In this respect he is like the conductor of an orchestra in which the instruments are slide-rules and calculating machines. But instead of waving a baton he turns a beam of rosy light upon any region that is running ahead of the rest, and a beam of blue light upon those who are behindhand.

Four senior clerks in the central pulpit are collecting the future weather as fast as it is being computed, and despatching it by pneumatic carrier to a quiet room. There it will be coded and telephoned to the radio transmitting station. Messengers carry piles of used computing forms down to a storehouse in the cellar.

In a neighbouring building there is a research department, where they invent improvements. But there is much experimenting on a small scale before any change is made in the complex routine of the computing theatre. In a basement an enthusiast is observing eddies in the liquid lining of a huge spinning bowl, but so far the arithmetic proves the better way. In another building are all the usual financial, correspondence and administrative offices. Outside are playing fields, houses, mountains and lakes, for it was thought that those who compute the weather should breathe of it freely." (Richardson 1922)

(The word "computers" is used here in its original sense ? people who did computations, not machines. "Calculator" also referred to people at this time.)

Lewis Fry Richardson

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