July 2010

There were 50 posts published in July 2010 (this is page 2 of 5).

The Libya Investment Firm and the release of the Lockerbie bomber

The Telegraph has more dirt on the Libya-BP terrorist-for-oil deal. There’s certainly lots of smoke here. Could fire be far behind?

The name reads Dalia Advisory Limited, a company established by Libyan businessmen just a week after the country’s officials were told the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was being considered for release on compassionate grounds.

Dalia Advisory is in fact a “front” for the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), a sovereign wealth fund with £80 billion, to invest in Britain and beyond. The Georgian town house, bought for £6 million, is, ironically, only a few yards from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Senior business sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that had Megrahi died in a British jail, the LIA would have taken its vast sums elsewhere. “If Megrahi had perished in Scotland, we would have become a pariah state as far as the Libyans were concerned,” said one source.

via Special report: the Libya investment firm and the release of the Lockerbie bomber – Telegraph.

This tough cop knows how to reach tough kids

After I wondered where the good guys are who might have steered Reggie Gemeille to the right path, I read about James Johnson. Thank goodness there are men out there like him:

Retired police officer James Johnson spent 20 years dealing with gangs in New York City and is now sharing his wisdom with Raleigh children at the J.T. Locke Resource Center’s summer camp.

Johnson uses the same speeches he gave to members of New York’s Crips and Bloods gangs, urging youths ages 9 to 17 to cultivate their talents to better society and to value themselves over fitting in.

The talks have proven successful; Johnson says the youth program he participated in helped reduce gang violence 62 percent in New York City.

“Every child is reachable,” Johnson said. “Children’s strength is in their motivation for life.”

via This tough cop knows how to reach tough kids – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

N.C. Wanted interview

N.C. Wanted

Thursday, I was interviewed by the WRAL show, N.C. Wanted. I’d gotten the referral from the Raleigh Police Department when N.C. Wanted called them seeking to speak with people involved with community watches. I told the producer that I’d be at a morning meeting with neighborhood stakeholders and they were welcome to tag along. They thought it was a great idea.

I arrived at the meeting and met the N.C. Wanted crew: Bill, Bridget, and Jay. They miked me and our Community Officer, James Kryskowiak, and filmed most of the meeting. Then I excused myself and went with them to areas around the East CAC to talk about the successes we’ve had in cleaning up the crime problems. I took them to the area where I witnessed a suspect leaving a breaking and entering, showed them the local shopping center that is far safer than it was just a year ago, and talked about the troubled apartment complex that has really cleaned up its act. Bill apparently is a retired police officer and could attest that the neighborhood was markedly different when he was on duty.

Unlike the other interviews that I’ve done that covered breaking news, this interview isn’t time-sensitive. Thus, there’s no telling when it will actually air. I hope I don’t seem like too much of an idiot when it airs!

Shirley Sherrod, Thrown to the Wolves

Bob Herbert of the New York Times sums up the Shirley Sherrod episode. The Obama Administration is far too focused on perception and playing it safe. Where’s the bold leadership, Mr. Obama?

Why didn’t President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden or Rahm call me Rahmbo Emanuel, or somebody somewhere in the upper echelon say, “Hey, what the heck are you doing? You can’t fire a person without hearing her side of the story. This is not the Kremlin. Are you nuts?”

via Op-Ed Columnist – Shirley Sherrod, Thrown to the Wolves – NYTimes.com.

TestDisk for undeleting files

My son Travis accidentally deleted a digital movie he took with his camera. He was so disappointed, so I took up the task of trying to undelete the file. If his camera’s SD card was formatted with Linux’s ext3 filesystem his file would be impossible to retrieve.

Fortunately, all digital camera cards are formatted with the tried-and-true MS-DOS vfat filesystem, which makes undeleting files trivial. I even found a Linux tool called TestDisk that can easily retrieve deleted files. In seconds, I had fetched Travis’s deleted file.

If you are a Linux-head like me and need to bring a file back from the dead, try TestDisk!

Slipping through the cracks

Reggie Gemeille, then and now

I scanned the news stories at lunch the other day when I found one about a beating death of Pier Munoz-Chinos. Police arrested a kid named Wedjunald “Reggie” Gemeille who is 18 years old. He looks pretty “hard” in his booking photo, doesn’t he?

Occasionally I like to see what I can find out about suspects, so I did a quick Internet search on Reggie. As he has a pretty uncommon name it turns out it wasn’t difficult to track him down. Soon I found his MySpace page and his Facebook page, including photos and his self-provided bio.

The photos on these pages show a very different Reggie Gemeille than the one depicted in his booking photo. Here I see a kid trying to figure out who he is. In some, he’s dressing up and posing for the camera. In others, he’s clowning around with his younger cousins. He doesn’t look like a bad kid at all. He looks like any other kid with big dreams.
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Making sense of a dog and scents

Speaking of brain activity and addictions, my morning walks with my dog never cease to fascinate me. My Labrador, Rocket, goes berserk when he catches a whiff of something on the ground along the way. These smells are like crack to my dog. He is totally focused on inhaling these smells, and if you know Labradors you know that focusing is typically not their strong suit!

I would love to know what goes on in his doggy brain while he’s lost in this scent-induced rapture. What are those scents telling him? What parts of his brain are active? How do dogs really use these scents, and is there much more to this than simply marking territory?

All I can find online about doggy brain activity is an episode of NOVA that looks good, an interesting post about how dog’s dream, and a hilarious YouTube video of Bizkit, the sleepwalking dog, running into a wall. I would hope there would be more research on this. Anyone have anything else?

Consuming and delivering

I cringe every time I hear someone say “consumer” when one could say “citizen” or “customer” instead. It irks me when the FCC issues a press release about how something they did was good for “consumers.” I hate being treated like I’m simply one side of a business transaction, especially when a government agency thinks I am. How about “the public?” I’d even settle for “the taxpayers,” though I am quite considerably more than simply someone who forks over my money to the government, too.

My online buddy Doc Searls takes on the label of consumer, and also touches on “content” and “delivering information” themes, too. Reading it, I realized that information never really gets delivered, it gets shared. When you share something, both of you are better for it or are changed by it. That’s quite different from delivering information, which is more of a one-way transaction.

When you meet your neighbor for an impromptu chat, you may mention something you heard or learned. Your neighbor will likely comment on it, and instantly your neighbor’s thoughts will change the information you provided into something slightly (or radically) different.

information isn’t delivered, in the sense that it made the journey from A to B completely intact. Information is always affected by those who perceive it. It can only be shared, not delivered.

Highway patrol not getting ‘er done?

Photo by Ildar Sagdejev

After seeing this white utility van sitting the shoulder of NC540 near the Highway 55 exit for a week, I finally decided to call it in. Wednesday morning I made the call to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol (*47), tangling a bit with the dispatcher in an effort to make sure she knew where the van was. Now it’s true that earlier that morning there was an accident on I-40W near Wade that tied up traffic considerably, but that accident was almost cleared when I called and the van wasn’t going anywhere. And let’s face it: all the HP needs to do with an abandoned car is look it over and put a sticker on it for it to be towed. Takes 10 minutes at most, right?

This morning I rode by the van and it was still there, only now I noticed the driver’s side window was gone. It’s been two days and no one has taken the 10 minutes it takes to tag it and move on.

I called again this morning and spoke with a dispatcher who didn’t know NC540 had a mile marker 66.8. “What county is it in?” she asked me. While it’s true this is close to the Wake/Durham border, that information really shouldn’t have been necessary.

The patrol needs to get its act together. The leadership vacuum at the top is clearly affecting the whole organization and the cracks are beginning to show. Governor Perdue needs to show some leadership and step up efforts to stabilize this once-vaunted organization.

The peculiar siren song of coffee

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with coffee. During my Navy days I would drink multiple cups a day, which usually led to my being agitated. I often point to my coffee-drinking friends’ near-homicidal behavior during Hurricane Fran as reason enough to give up coffee.

I’ve mostly given up drinking caffeinated coffee. I’ve speculated to myself that the years of drinking coffee have carved canyons through my brain which can only be filled by the next cup of Joe. As with any addiction, each cup never seems to reach the level the prior one did.
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