funeral for man entombed for 27 years in chimney
Daryl, did you write this?
Darcus Howe on the London Riots
It’s true, they’ll never replay this.
more on the D.B. Cooper hijacking case
Since I posted the latest speculation in the D.B. Cooper hijacking case, a mother and daughter have come forward with what they say, and the FBI believes, is credible information about who Cooper really was.
Marla Cooper recently came forward to the FBI with evidence that she believes proves that her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper is the famed D.B. Cooper, the man hijacked and threatened to blow up a commercial plane flying to Seattle in 1971, then parachuted to the ground with $200,000 in hand.
Her mother, Grace Hailey, told ABC News that she doesn’t remember much about that Thanksgiving in 1971 where her brother-in-law returned to the house in Sisters, Oregon, but she believes he could be the hijacker. Hailey’s statements are one reason why the FBI thinks the tip from Marla Cooper is credible.
“I’ve always had a gut feeling it was L.D.,” Hailey told ABC News. “I think it was more what I didn’t know is what made me suspicious than what I did know, because whenever the topic came up it immediately got cut off again.”
Update: Amanda posted on the case a year ago.
A Detailed Account of the Raid on bin Ladin
On the morning of Sunday, May 1st, White House officials cancelled scheduled visits, ordered sandwich platters from Costco, and transformed the Situation Room into a war room. At eleven o’clock, Obama’s top advisers began gathering around a large conference table. A video link connected them to Panetta, at C.I.A. headquarters, and McRaven, in Afghanistan.
Brigadier General Marshall Webb, an assistant commander of JSOC, took a seat at the end of a lacquered table in a small adjoining office and turned on his laptop. He opened multiple chat windows that kept him, and the White House, connected with the other command teams. The office where Webb sat had the only video feed in the White House showing real-time footage of the target, which was being shot by an unarmed RQ 170 drone flying more than fifteen thousand feet above Abbottabad.
It’s the most detailed account of the raid I’ve seen, and includes the months of preparation that went into the mission. Plus, the surveillance details, like those above, add some technological flavor, but don’t seem to confirm the suspicion of real-time helmet cameras.
video out of context
It was a little scary in the Driftless Region last night.
This is more than you’d possibly care to hear about an area where you don’t live, but I tell you last night was something. And most of this morning.
Unofficial reports suggest that we got even more rain in Galena than the folks did in Dubuque.
Screw it, we’re doing a music festival too.
The Onion’s A.V. Club just announced that they’re holding their own music festival. They’re calling it A.V. Fest and, true to their ethos, they seem to have slapped the plan together over the weekend:
We hope to see you there. I’m going to try and convince my co-workers to have a “nerding booth,” which is like a kissing booth, but you get to come nerd out with us instead.
The announcement mentions a 12 band line-up, including Archers of Loaf, Tokyo Police Club and Eef Barzelay (of Clem Snide) playing the music of Journey. If I were Texan, I’d be all over this.
pieface (not the record label)
That’s a lot of points
To mark the resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson as head of the Metropolitan Police, the London Times used a record-breaking 164-point bold headline:
via Ben Schott and Jon Hill.
headline of the day, II
Denver Newspaper Hires Professional Pot Critic
headline of the day, III
It’s totally worth reading the actual article, too. (via jim ray)
Spotify launches in US
If you haven’t heard, Spotify just opened up in the US. There’s an invitation wait list, or you can just pay to sign up. I think I’m going to pay.
headline of the day
Man gets sick benefits for heavy metal addiction
Tilapia and environmental issues
Dr. McCrary has spent the past decade studying how a small, short-lived tilapia farm degraded Lake Apoyo in Nicaragua. “One small cage screwed up the entire lake — the entire lake!” …
Waste from the cages polluted the pristine ecosystem, and some tilapia escaped.
I thought this was interesting, and also felt sorry for some of the lesser-used categories. Working on “tits” now. Just kidding.
Also, doesn’t fish farming like this (engineered to have small heads and tails, and large “loins”) sound remarkably close to lab-grown synthetic meats? Getting people to accept synthetic meats might be easier than I thought.
spam name
Quincy Newman.
Anthony Weiner resigns/gets heckled
I feel bad for laughing…
headline of the day
Bald eagles attack post office customers
headline of the day
More teens are having . . .
Seven seconds is all it takes.
(via @mattyglesias)
Dallas Bike Plan
Have any of the Dallas flockers been following the Dallas Bike Plan project? What are your thoughts on it?
Dateline Paris
I was on temporary assignment, holding a postcard or photo of a belly dancer. Which seemed appropriate for the time and the place, somehow.
Journalists start out wanting to save the world and after a while get jaded. You write and write and write. You’re accused of having a secret agenda when really you don’t. Then, in the middle of the night you examine your motives for one that maybe you’ve hidden from yourself. At least having accusers is better than people who don’t read you at all.
Everyone is tired. Stressed. People with strong opinions aren’t likely to change them after a certain point. Back then, lots of folks would get their notions from television and it is hard to explain a complicated issue in a sound bite. Now, I’ll sometimes hear people citing as fact opinion pieces or blogs or the things coming out of talking head yelling matches. And it has gotten completely confusing, I admit.
I talk about the difference between fact and opinion. I say it is difficult to isolate a fact, but I’ve been told that statement makes no sense. Let’s see, try to isolate an actual fact from opinion or something made up or slanted or spun. How’s that.
And on and on and on it goes.
headline of the day, II
2-D Glasses Remove Nausea from 3-D Movies
My phone just buzzed
Dallas
Carrollton man crashes, undresses, dies in second of two accidents in Far North Dallas
Man found dead in South Dallas pond after using drugs, talking about walking on water
(thanks, Patrick)
Adam Curtis, It Felt Like a Kiss
Sheila suggested I check out documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’s found footage montage, It Felt Like a Kiss. A collaboration between Curtis and improvised theater company Punchdrunk, I’m not quite sure what the immersive experience would have been like, but I have rounded up the various pieces of it available on YouTube, and if you are interested — you’ll only need to watch a few minutes to know if it’s right for you — you can take a look.
Here is what the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker had to say:
One particular segment, set to River Deep, Mountain High, feels like being repeatedly stung on the mind by a hallucinogenic jellyfish while inhaling huge clouds of history through a pipe. The marriage of Phil Spector’s wall of sound and Curtis’s wall of images is so perfect, so strange and striking, it jangled around my head for hours afterward. And I only saw it in a tiny window on an Apple Mac, in a corner of Curtis’s tape-strewn “lair” at BBC Television Centre. God knows what it’ll be like on a big screen as part of a live-action, funhouse-style experience. It’ll probably kill people.
