Sixteen years

This month marks 16 years since I first came to Raleigh. And my jury summons asked how many years I’ve lived in North Carolina which made me realize I’ve been in North Carolina a total of 20 years. That’s over half my life. Wow. Not exactly a native, but still impressive.

Dog-cloning lady: fact or fiction?

Does anyone else get the idea that Joyce McKinney, the dog-cloning lady, is playing the press? This just has to be some kind of publicity stunt.

McKinney gets worldwide press when she allegedly clones her dog, but provides reporters with a bogus address. Then word gets out that in the 1970s she allegedly kidnapped a Morman man to be her sex slave. Oh, and she’s wanted in Tennessee for allegedly talking a teenager into breaking into homes so she could use the loot to buy a leg for her three-legged horse.

Come on, this lady is a walking punchline! She can’t be for real. Somebody’s being played here, I tell you.

Media stickiness

The problem with deadline-driven media is that once one’s printed “all the news that fits” there is precious little room for follow-up stories. Media outlets will chase each others’ reporters around town, hoping to scoop each other on the next breaking story, while few newsrooms provide updates on the stories that aren’t breaking. There are exceptions, of course, such as the Duke Lacrosse case or a notorious murder trial. In general, though, once a story gets bumped off the front page (or the metaphorical front page for broadcast news organizations), it tends to be forgotten.
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New flag for the City of Raleigh

A few days with my toes in the sand made me realize the perfect new flag for the City of Raleigh was right under my nose. Or in my hand, more specifically. I held a water bottle from the Raleigh Parks and Recreation department, and on the side was Parks and Rec’s distinctive, cool logo:
Raleigh Parks and Recreation

Why not make this the official city flag? Imagine this oak tree logo emblazoned on a white-and-green flag (with no text, of course, as befitting a proper flag). It would be so much more attractive and distinctive than Raleigh’s current, tired old flag.

The Forgetting

Flipped on PBS last night and got sucked into watching The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s. Scary stuff.

There is Alzheimer’s in my family as well as Kelly’s. I figure I’d rather get hooked up to a suicide machine than become a burden on my family. Kelly says the same. That’s the only time I’d be willing to pull the plug on myself, I think.

In the words of Dan Quayle, “What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is very wasteful. How true that is.”

Olymsick

It just dawned on me that my respiratory distress is sympathy sickness for the upcoming Olympic games in polluted Beijing. This week, world-class Olympic athletes and I will be competing in the hacking-and-coughing competition.

Man, I wish I was in that hot, dangerous, overcrowded metropolis breathing shovels-full of that particulate-laden Chinese air right now. Or not.

(Note:Yeah, I know the picture in above link is of Shanghai. Beijing is just as dirty, trust me).

Raleigh 911!, part II

Here’s the second part of my Raleigh 911! post. When we left our intrepid hero, he was on the way to bust a murder suspect.

We approached the area and the two officers discussed their capture strategy.

Chris then turns to me. “If I get out to run or have to leave in a hurry, ” he said, “just sit tight in the car with the doors locked. No one will mess with you.”

Gulp. Ok, we’re not playing around anymore. I nodded and felt my pulse double in an instant.
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More mall musings

I was reading this article about other cities’ battles with teens loitering around malls and it got me thinking: do we want to discourage teens from going to malls – a place where they can be better supervised? Do we really want to disperse them elsewhere? That sounds like a bad idea.

I mean, while the mall melee was scary, no one was seriously hurt (a credit to our police agencies). And as far as I know, before the fight broke out these kids weren’t committing any serious crimes. Perhaps an occasional shoplifting, but not drug-dealing or shootings.

At the mall, the ways kids can get into trouble are limited. Perhaps the answer is simply to beef up mall security.