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I’ve had a few to drink – so, I’m in a fairly charitable mood. Unfortunately, when in one of these “charitable” moods, I really don’t have any othe recourse but to miss people. Said people are coming to visit next week – that makes me happy. It’s actually the highlight of my semester.

It’s sad that I have to get moderately drunk (2 screwdrivers – try it with Absolut Vanilla – it’s like an orange creamsicle, 1 glass of wine, 3 beers) before I feel anything. I guess it bothers me that to say, “person A makes me happy” takes several drinks.

Well, I had fun playing Chez Geek is really fun. I ended up playing a few rounds of that with Big Geoff and Trygve. It was a good time. I may have to pick up Chez Geek (from Cheapass Games) – they’re really good. I’m pondering placing an order from them).

Also, Scooby Doo, Where Are You? is a great tv show.

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Salon recently published an opinion piece on recent happenings in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP). The author is a newly retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who worked in the OSP from May 2002 to February 2003

Salon is making the article free to viewers, because they “thought this story was just too important.” Indeed, the article is particularly damning of the administration, and well-known officials in the OSP.

Unfortunately, the article is published on Salon – and not as a news story, but as an opinion piece. I’d guess this is because no editor worth his salt (or, for that matter, integrity) would be willing to publish the article as genuine news. This is not to say that the story is not accurate, it may very well be. Unfortunately, it is the point of view of one person who is clearly biased, and published on a site with a similar bias (the article starts with an “editor’s note” that welcomes MoveOn.org members).

There was an article in The New Yorker recently that mentioned that one of the problems with journalism today is that journalists are less likely to seek out independent confirmation of their sources, and would likely publish a story based on a single source of information (The allegation is actually from Andrew Card, Bush’s chief of staff – in an article entitled “Fortress Bush,” from 19 January 2004).

If anything fits the title of ill-researched, this Salon article does – nothing the author says is verified via a third party. I find that a little annoying. Granted, the article is an opinion piece (and is labelled as such), but it’s not presented as one.

This isn’t the only article that smacks of this however. Media coverage of Haiti was similarly bad. News coverage continually repeated the same thing over and over again: “Aristide was a democratically elected leader who the administration allowed to be ousted” (with the clear subtext that Aristide was therefore popular). Not being familiar with Haiti’s history, I had to do a fair bit of hunting around to find more information than that: For instance, Aristide was a catholic priest. He was forced to resign, in part, because he was an outspoken advocate of class warfare in Haiti. He has also been accused of corruption (either allowing it, or outright supporting it).

This is not to say that Aristide was a complete bastard – an interview on NPR noted that he was apparently extremely popular with the poor. My complaint is that none of these nuances are being presented in the media. We’re given a one dimensional view of an issue (sometimes, if it’s a hot topic, 2) and left to digest that. This is insulting – either the reader doesn’t have the mental acuity to process multiple streams of information, or the journalists are too lazy to seek them out. Neither is good.

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Waiting for the bus today, I was reminded of my third grade teacher. At the time (in third grade, not waiting for the bus), I was living in Miami (Florida) and attending St. Joseph’s Catholic School.

Anywho, I only have a few strong memories of my 3rd grade teacher. On the first, she had a thing for a particular time of day: 11:11 (AM or PM, though AM was the only one applicable to us). We’d take a one minute break everyday at 11:11. The second was that my best friend and I were totally the teacher’s pets. Thirdly, she got hit by a car.

We had a substitute teacher for the latter half of my third grade year (Mrs. Bell, who was really old, hard of hearing, and bit slow on the uptake if I recall correctly). Right. We saw a picture of Miss Summers a week or two after she’d been in the hospital. In the picture (which was apparently taken shortly after the accident) she was crying. We learned that she wasn’t crying due to pain, but because her tear ducts were damaged by shards of her windshield.

So, I’ve always carried around this image of someone crying, but oddly knowing that it wasn’t a symptom of what had happened to her.

Upon finally boarding the bus, I realized that several years later, my friend Alex (the aforementioned partner in teacher’s petness) lost his brother to a drunk driver. We’d already moved several hours north, but we drove down to console them. It hit their father especially hard, since he was a police officer. I don’t think they ever caught the guy.

Of course, it’s hard to forget that my own mother got hit by a car. The three together make kind of an interesting line on a graph. Like, as I get older, a new person gets hit by a car – and they’re always closer to me than the last person.

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I’ve got a stack of papers currently sitting on my desk:

  • Renfro R. and Deckro R. A Social NetWork Analysis of the Iranian Government. 69th MORS Symposium.
  • Wu F. et al. Information Flow in Social Groups. CNLS conference on Networks (Santa Fe, NM, May 2003).
  • Newman, M.E.J. Fast Algorithm for detecting community structure in networks. Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan.
  • Union of Concerned Scientists. Scientific Integrity in Policymaking. February 2004.
  • Record, J. Bounding the global war on terrorism. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College.
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It was a dark and stormy night. Wait. No. It wasn’t stormy. It was dark, however. And a little snowy. Not actually stormy per se.

Right. Where was I? Oh, yes… It was a dark and not especially stormy night (I bet that killed the mood)

I was just returning from trygve’s (that would be a link, but someone doesn’t have website there anymore – I won’t mention any names, though). I was all set to go home and sleep early. Upon arriving I noticed my bike was not where it usually was. I did what any sane person would do: I walked around thinking “maybe somebody moved it” for about 20 minutes.

I finally realized I was right. Someone had moved my bike. Unfortunately, they moved it out of the building. Well, after using some impolite words for a bit (on AIM no less – not a family service, I guess), I called the police.

Eventually (actually, within like 15 minutes) an officer arrived at my place. He took my statement, and then I took him down to the garage so he could look at stuff. He found a bike which looked out of place (it was on the floor instead of hung on the wall, like the rest). On a hunch, he called in the serial number off of the bike. Lo and behold: it was stolen. The theory at this point is that he rode in on this brokeass stolen bike, and then stole my bike. Now, while my bike isn’t what I’d call “brokeass,” it is in need of some basic maintenance. You know, like air in the tires.

Then, the officer decides we should circle the building and see if we can find tracks. I go one way, he goes the other. We meet at the front of the building where we find (you guessed it!) tracks! Snow is a wonderful, wonderful thing. We start following them, since they’re right there (it’s like an online comic that way – you can’t stop – and then you’re all sad when there’s no more). We go for about a mile, when I have a sudden realization: It’s freezing outside. And me in my t-shirt and my soaked through dock martin’s are not so much enjoying it. The Officer called a squad car, which I then rode in as we followed the cop who was following the tracks (get that?).

Now, for those of you following along at home, this is the 2nd time I’ve ridden in the back of a squad car (though, only a few of my readers are able to guess when that was).

We tracked the bike to a gas station where apparently our quarry stopped to put air in the tires. An officer even saw him do it – maybe 20 minutes before we got there (hot on the trail!). By this point, we’ve involved more of the SHPD – we’ve got 3 cars and 6 cops as we cross from Shaker Heights into Cleveland. That’s when this became an interagency affair – Shaker Heights is communicating with Cleveland Police – officers are running amok (you think I’m kidding, I’m not!). We trace the bike trails all the way to a house. Which houses a guy with a criminal record. Some officers bang on the door. Others take pictures of the bike tracks.

After pounding on the door for like 30 minutes, we give up. a cleveland cop stakes out the house, though. The SHPD takes me back home, and tells me they’ll likely call in the morning.

The cops sent a guy out right before I went to bed – he was from S.W.A.T. and was there to take finger prints off of the other stolen bike. Unfortunately, his tape froze together, and he promised to send a forensics guy out in the morning.

Finally, I went to sleep.

This is where we put the commercial break. between the first half of Law & Order and the second. See, that was the police half. It continued while I slept, with the police getting a warrant, finding the bike, returning it, and getting a confession out of the perp.

I can only imagine what the second half is like. I imagine there was a court appearance where ADA Carmichael is arguing that the defendant be held without bail.

Also, former ADA Claire Kincaid returns to visit. Mostly because I like her too. Wait. Shit. Claire died in her last episode. OK… (thinkfast). umm. damn.

The defendant is a flight risk, your honor. He’s an admitted bicycle thief with a record. He may flee the country. On a bicycle. A stolen bicycle.

And then the defense attorney will be all, “Your Honor, my client is not a flight risk. He’s an upstanding member of society who… umm. cleans bikes. Yes.

Finally the judge puts the smack (or is that gavel?) down and says, “Bail is set at $100,000!”

During trial, the defense tries to say that I forced him to steal the bike by storing it in a locked garage. In the end, McCoy prevails and the remorseless bike thief is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

OK, well. Clearly at somepoint we deviated from reality. I leave where as an exercise to the reader.

Funny thing is, the week really didn’t get better after that.