"UserID Amnesia Syndrome" Strikes Obscure Blogger

Unable to log in or post new articles, this blog's author blew a "U-ASS" hole into his chronicles.

This post marks his serendipidous recovery of the blog's access information.

Still around, much to say

What the hell is this? Too much to say, no time to write. Just keeping the blog from being deleted.

Remembering Cory Lidle (and sparing the missile)

Perhaps Cory Lidle's tragic death was too much of a metaphor for the Yankees' early playoff exit, but suddenly NYers are blocking out Yankee discussions by focusing on the security of our airspace. Politicians, in particular, are wondering why it's so easy to fly a light plane into a Manhattan skyscraper.

Is it so hard to comprehend how, in the post-9/11 era, light planes, helicopters and blimps aren't shot out of the sky over Manhattan? Okay, that's not really the question -- but that is precisely the point.

Despite the guys who broke into the cockpits and executed the pilots on 9/11, there aren't that many people in America lining up for suicide missions on US soil. Small planes and helicopters have been reasonably good about ditching into the rivers when possible, and it is because pilots around here want to live. Accidents happen, whether mechanical or pilot error, but if it's really so hazardous then we'd have a lot more than the errant blimp a few years back to show for it.

Protecting ourselves against maniacs in fuel-laden jets has nothing to do with stopping them at the river. Arrangements for flying light aircraft and dropping chemical or biological agents over the city are far more difficult and expensive than executing a pedestrian-borne gas attack.

What we really need is a pro-active "sting" approach. The sting first identifies the most serious candidates for local suicide missions, and then Homeland Security deports them to the sub-surface offshore bunker near Virginia where they are housed in cells are filled with all imaginable creature comforts, plus spikes.

Or, the strategy could be incorporated into the reef-building program that is so popular with environmentalists. Heck, each detainee could simply get behind the wheel of their favorite pre-owned vehicle moments before its volume is reduced to the size of a portable television set.

As Americans, we have the right to compress our cars against bridge abuttments and oncoming school buses as long as we do it without the use of performance-impairing substances. Our system works even now because, as Americans, we choose not to.

Accidents are going to happen, and they can happen to anyone. Lidle's flight was, unfortunately and tragically, his last wild pitch.

Lighten up, the original tag line was worse.

Hunger Strike in Pakistan, S. Asia

That cosmic hunger for human souls struck mercilessly yesterday in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, killing more than 20,000 and rising. It's been an unspeakably efficient 12-months for natural disaster in South Asia.

Standouts this time include several schools collapsing on hundreds of schoolchildren preparing for lives now pulverized by concrete and debris, their parents shattered with grief. Whole groups of soldiers, large and small, Pakistani and Indian, patrolling the mountains or guarding the border were wiped out. Favorite dishes, taken in big bites.

It's easy to get numb with international news being 24/7, and our being as pathetically helpless as we are against these forces. But when that beast bursts through the thin illusions that permit us to live our daily lives and grabs so many of us in its teeth, shredding and grinding us before we have time to cry out, the survivors must still look up and shake our fists. Go not gently, be angry, protest, never give in to the slaughter and injustice, whatever its source. It will be all too soon that we put this behind us and go back to our lives until the next time.

Bon appetit, Mr. Death.

The Times: Catholic Church no longer swears by the truth of Bible

At a time when some U.S. politicians and communities want to teach public school children that the Bible's explanation for Creation holds as much water as mainstream science, no less than the Roman Catholic Church is telling its members that not everything in the Bible is historically true.

The fresh air is staggering. Just breathe it in for a few blank lines.





The tales defrocked in a teaching guide issued by the Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland, include the vandalism of Adam to build Eve, descriptions of both the beginning and end of the world, and the particularly vicious claim of Jewish responsibility in the execution of Jesus.

Those who don't care much for, or about, the Catholic Church should take notice. While many liberals and progressives have long viewed the institutional Catholic Church in this country as backward, reactionary, and irrelevant at the top, the Vatican is deeply concerned about the inroads that the Evangelicals have been making among Catholics.

To its credit, the Big V has not chosen to outrun the Evangelicals on fundamentalism -- a good decision because the sex scandals have seriously discredited the priesthood among non-Catholics in this country, and at least embarassed a significant number of Catholic regulars. Going the "hotline to God" claim for Papal authority would not be a credible strategy.

The Vatican has a longer view of its business, and has noticed that the Evangelicals have trotted past them on the weakest limb of Christianity. Catholics have spent a lot of time on that limb and learned a thing or two. Faith is critical to religion, and people are willing to believe many things in its name, but DO NOT expect educated people to believe things that can be proven false.

The man who was charged with steering the Church through the sex scandals is displaying the "Candor" card. Priests are people, and the Bible is not all true. Mindless fundamentalism is wrong.

That said, of course, the document goes on to affirm the Virgin Birth and the proof of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Not to worry though, they may be betting that science just hasn't caught up to proving Mary was a functional hermaphrodite.

Implied concessions can include:

• God didn't write the Bible, or at least all of it.

• The author, authors, or whoever, did not want or expect the Bible to be used for purposes for it was not intended.

• There were human editors with not-so-benign intentions.

If you've got more, feel free to add a comment!.

Maybe some religious info in schools won't hurt

Also in The Times, Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every primary school in Britain. Steve Legg, head of the The Breakout Trust, said: “There are over 12 million children in the UK and only 756,000 of them go to church regularly.

That may be the problem. It's hard not to sympathize, though: The effort was prompted by hearing that a young boy had asked his primary school teacher why Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word.

Pope wants proof of celibacy from new gay priests

It's not a pretty picture.

Later this month, instructions are issuing from the Vatican aimed at the heads of Catholic semenaries around the world requiring that gay candidates demonstrate that they have been celibate for three years. Jesus Christ!

The Vatican knows better than anyone that it's nearly impossible to prove a negative, so there must be an electronic chastity belt available similar to the electronic shackles that Martha Stewart learned to remove.

No fools, the Vatican, the tighter strictures state that would-be priests will also be excluded if they declare homosexuality publicly, take part in gay rallies, frequent gay associations, show an interest in homosexuality through the use of the internet, books and films, or maintain a music collection that includes Ricky Martin or Barbra Streisand. Cable television may not be explicitly banned -- stay tuned!

Cuckoo's Nest, Pt.2: No Fetus Left Behind

George W. Bush may be in trouble with his employer again, so it might be worthwhile to extend my last entry's analysis of his potential avian flu response.

President Bush’s first term was defined by 9/11 and his bold response to it, his vow to track down the terrorists wherever they were and do them in, to make sure the America (and he) would never again be caught unaware by anti-freedom America-hating killers sneaking in our back door. The pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein and Iraq was a no-brainer for him, 9/11 being a warning to him (and message from Him) that all was not well and that he had to go well beyond rooting out the thugs who actually carried out the attacks. Even if Saddam Hussein hadn’t been involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it wasn’t for lack of desire.

Right now, there is a significant and vocal group of anti-abortion Republican politicians suggesting that his nomination of Harriet E. Miers is a betrayal of 30 to 40 years of hard work by the very people who elected him as an opponent of Roe v. Wade. An opportunity to put a bullet behind the ear of the baby-killing judicial decision was handed to him, and he shied away. An extraordinary failure to fulfill his mission as God’s President would weigh very heavily on him if the criticism became more vocal at the grass-roots level and he came face-to-face with angry Christians carrying placards calling his faith into question.

If Ms. Miers passes the confirmation process but dissatisfies the Right-to-Lifers to the degree that they start pulling their support, be prepared for Bush’s characteristic overcorrection. He does not want his legacy to be that he failed to protect Americans from terrorists, incompetent bureaucrats, and murderers of the unborn.

That whole "the Education President" image he had initially wanted wasn't working out anyhow. Educating the underclasses in math and reading could just deliver them into the hands of Empirical Science and Satan, and he certainly doesn't want to be remembered for THAT.

One Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest

It is not Bush-bashing to consider the ramifications of President Bush’s remarks earlier this week that he is considering using the military to enforce quarantines in the event an avian flu breaks out in the United States. All of those escaped-virus/bacteria-from-space flicks could play out as news on CNN: the Army ringing a metropolitan area, tanks firing shells into speeding SUV’s, a rocket vaporizing a traffic helicopter that strays out of the quarantined airspace, families caught in razor wire or cut down by automatic weapons fire while trying to slip through the cordon to safety even though they are already doomed by exposure to the deadly virus. Meanwhile, chemical-dusting aircraft crisscross the skies to kill every insect and bird within the quarantine and beyond.

Perhaps this is an alarmist vision, silly and naïve, an overreaction to the kind of media hysteria that tabloids have turned mundane. Maybe not. What makes the President’s remarks so interesting, however, is the swiftness with which he has absorbed the public lashing from his Katrina leadership failure and transformed it into his “We will do better” policy.

Say what you will about the men who surround him, but Bush is frighteningly sincere about his duty to the American people when it comes to life and death. Regardless the wisdom of his objectives and strategies, when caught flat-footed he treats the event as if he'd dozed off on his God-given guard duty. God has shined his flashlight into his eyes and all around him is disarray. He's stunned at first, not quite free of the fog of sleep, but he realizes he has fucked up big time. As his wits return, and the burn of guilt sears his heart [yes, I mean that], he vows “never again” and applies himself, or perhaps overcompensates, with a vengeance.

Perhaps he really did need to visit New Orleans several times a week after all of the bad press to micromanage efforts in order to convince everyone there that his Administration was really there finally and that he’d make sure they were taken care of, and could they now please shut up. He was all over Hurricane Rita after it passed over the Keys, so he was able to show right away that it was Michael Brown’s fault that New Orleans turned out so badly.

By now it is well-documented that after 9/11 and quick fall of the Taliban government, GWB jumped the gun on invading Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Saddam had bragged that he had the weapons, even if he denied having them now, and waiting any longer for additional intelligence was just playing into the hands of a known liar. The rubble at Ground Zero was proof enough that waiting was a fool’s game.

“The best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins,” President Bush explained during the news conference.

I’m much less prone toward praying than I used to be, but I’m praying for a mild flu season this year. These days one never knows the weight of an ounce of prevention.

Science and Fire, Religion and Hell-Fire

It struck me last week when I caught the tail-end of the brouhaha surrounding the hiring of the New York City Fire Department's new Islamic chaplain, or rather, the remarks he made to Newsday about the 9/11 WTC collapse, that it was a perfect illustration of why we teach science in public schools but not religion.

In case you were out of town or have simply learned to ignore sheer stupidity, Imam Intikab Habib told Newsday in a phone interview that he doubted the U.S. government's official story blaming 19 hijackers associated with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for the 9/11 terror attacks , and suggested a broader conspiracy may have been responsible for destroying the World Trade Center and killing more than 2,700 people.

Such opinions are apparently common in the Muslim community, as the imam cited widely disseminated video and news reports. "I've heard professionals say that nowhere ever in history did a steel building come down with fire alone," he said. "It takes two or three weeks to demolish a building like that. But it was pulled down in a couple of hours. Was it 19 hijackers who brought it down, or was it a conspiracy?"

Did I say something about "sheer stupidity"? This kind of thinking is as American as apple pie.

Habib's remarks are perfectly consistent with a somewhat rational belief system in that community that Westerners are at least suspicious if not downright hostile to the Muslim world and that Western news reports are likely to be slanted against them before there is a fair presentation of facts, if ever. Such a belief system has undoubtedly been built from some previous cultural experience and reinforced by the instinct for self-preservation -- as is the West's suspicion and hostility toward the Muslim world. Let's face it, there's some pretty serious history between the two.

When not being used to construct evermore devastating weapons for annihilating Humanity, Science has extraordinary opportunity to promote understanding and peace. This is because "belief" is not a component of Science. It is based on measurable, repeatable observation. You don't believe someone's explanation, you do the experiment yourself and observe the outcome. It works in all languages regardless of religion. People ignore it at their peril, and employ it to put their enemies at THEIR peril. Superstition always yields to demonstrated science.

We teach science so that our children learn to look to the verifiable facts of the physical world before turning to an unprovable, non-objective world of religion for explanations. We should encourage other cultures to do the same. There is plenty of room for God outside of the lesson plan. "Intelligent Design" is not new, just its promotion as "alternative science." Promoting the practice of supporting beliefs over empirical evidence feeds into the cultural groupthink caused by the repetition of unobjective media reports flashed around the world.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said once he heard about Habib's remarks he couldn't see how the imam could become a chaplain in a department that lost 343 firefighters on 9/11. I don't see how he could let that guy back out on the street without showing him at least some of the information and video we've got on different kinds of fire, of accelerants and arson. I even recall that maybe ten years ago there were arson fires being reported nationwide that were suspected of using rocket propellant because they were so hot that metal actually burned -- and with it all evidence of arson.

Instead, we've got another Muslim community leader who's going back with a story about being forced out of his job because of his beliefs. "He was recommended to us by our Islamic Society," said Scoppetta. "He was interviewed by one of our senior chaplains. He has quite an education, and that seemed to qualify him."

Sanctioning "belief" or "faith" over science is anti-education, perhaps even anti-social. Science doesn't run roughshod over religion where religion and faith have exclusive domain, so Religion is hardly inferior to Science. Teachers should make a point of expressing that, and if a child finds it confusing, that's okay and a good sign. Creation is not a quick study.

The Lessons of Katrina

I have to confess that I was far too appalled by the mismanagement of the Katrina relief efforts, and the conditions under which her victims had to struggle to survive, to comment on the thrill of tracking a Class 5 hurricane bearing down on unprotected low-land populations with nowhere to flee, hearing the mayor call it the one they've always feared and run-for-your-lives, and oh God won't you please spare these poor people's lives without weakening the media value of yet another natural catastrophe, unless you have no other choice that is, and the TV reporters gleefully relating the breakthrough story that will surely help them get the big network or anchor job.

And then falling for the mayor's and media's assessment that they'd escaped the worst and that only one or two levees may have breached, not realizing that breaching a single levee is like slashing an artery, feeling assured that loss of life was minimal and half-secretly disappointed that it was not more. Although I did recall that the Mississippi coastline was not some unpopulated wasteland and that plenty of retirees moved there.

Katrina turned out to be far worse within hours, and while cannibilistic gangs did not rape, pillage and gorge, my media lust was clearly a factor in the following chaos and the subsequent inducement for Rita to pile on. For this, there is only one course of action I can take to mitigate the damage to my karma.

Yes, I take full responsibility for the destructiveness of the hurricanes and for the incompetence and ineffectiveness of the rescue and relief efforts at all levels of government. The suck stops here.

Some people may say, "Too little, too late." To those unwilling to put aside the partisan Blame Game and focus on getting it right despite my previous lapses, I can only add that there is peril to their souls and hell to pay for the economy in the upcoming corporate bankruptcies, federal deficits and insurance bailouts/copouts, and that boy-did-this-come-at-an-inconvenient-time war. The shit is hitting the fan and it's too late to duck.

The least I can do is help identify the lessons to be learned from the Katrina experience. Which reminds me:

1. Michael Brown: If you're going to exaggerate your experience and credentials, at least stay at a Holiday Inn Express.

2. The results of Bush's "No Guardsmen Left Behind" policy are in, and like his education initiative it has been grossly underfunded.

3. A rising tide lifts all boats. Cardboard is right out.

4. The poor will always be with us. I mean on Earth, not literally "with" us -- unless you have relatives visiting from New Orleans.

5. Take a Chevy to the levee, at the levee you'll drown.

6. Make sure your attic is at least 20 feet above sea level. Make sure it stays that way in the next decade.

7. God will provide. You just never know what.

8. Shotguns and ammo, potable water, shotguns and ammo, canned goods, shotguns and ammo, and bodybag-sized ziplock bags. It's a hard rain.

Stealth from the MTA

They that is Evil have tried to slip one beneath the shadows of the intense media coverage of Tom DeLay's indictment, Judith Miller's prison release ('bout time on both counts) and John Roberts’ Supreme Court confirmation. The MTA is now enforcing its “no beverage” policy on the subway trains, although they relented and now permit beverages on the platform. “If you have a steaming hot coffee on the 5 or 4 train at 8:30 a.m., I hope to hell a cop gives you a summons, you have no right to do that,” said MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow according to Chuck Bennett at amNewYork.

I’m all for fluid-exchange safety, but abstinence is definitely the wrong way to go. Let them outlaw the real problem, which is the unenforced backpack rule. Chest- or belly-high, they swing around from left or right mercilessly, flinging molten java onto the seated, elderly woman who is accompanying her ferocious-looking son to his sentencing hearing with the hope of leniency because she has no one else to look after her.

And the headphones. Not only does everyone else have to hear bad music in low-fidelity despite laws to the contrary, the noise contributes to the din that keeps the PA announcements unintelligible.

Besides, the MTA is missing an extraordinary marketing opportunity. “MTA-Approved” containers offer additional licensing monies for the notoriously cash-strapped and underfunded agency (results may vary according to the context of the financial report). Selling beverage hats through Starbucks is a natural alliance, since they were expected to introduce a mainlining system early next year anyway.

No, the reason the MTA chooses to punish the addict has nothing to do with safety or even carryover from the Rockefeller drug laws. Nobody wants to be held responsible for the obvious negligence in the subway car design, the failure to include adequate cupholders for an increasingly mobile commuter population. They’re willing to pander to the noise-generators and the noise-impaired by installing LED displays for announcements, but try and juice up for a morning of tax-revenue-generating activity and you deserve a summons. Someone in this city has got to get their priorities straight.

And yes, Tom DeLay sucks too.

Too Many Indians, One Too Many Chiefs

It's not hard to imagine why New York's senators voted against Roberts' confirmation as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But could they have been seriously attacked from the Left if they'd voted to confirm? With confirmation a foregone conclusion, there was an opportunity to give him a full pass and then at least claim that W owes them greater consideration on the next nomination -- with the unveiled threat that they'll really go after the nominee if the Democrats' cooperation in the Roberts confirmation goes unrewarded.

As it is, everyone knows that whoever Bush II nominates will be opposed by the Democrats just out of mindless reflex unless it is someone the Democrats propose. Given that laughable idea, the Democrats should have recognized that Roberts is absolutely the best they could have ever hoped for as the nominee for chief justice from this administration. At the very least, he has proven willing to give uncredited advice to a cause he does not relish, and he talks consistently and passionately about the integrity of the legal process and the roles therein. There is a very good chance that as chief justice he won't be strong-arming anyone toward his views. That he emphasized the importance of precedent was a signal that he was not Clarence Thomas. For that matter, you've got to allow the possibility that the decisions he makes will be mostly determined by the facts in the cases as they are presented instead of his views on larger issues.

Now all the senators get is the right to say they fought the good fight and opposed the right-wing assault on women's rights and liberalism in general. They achieved nothing except to prove their causes more irrelevant. Perhaps they can reflect on the experience and muster enough backbone and savvy to do what they were supposed to do in the first place.

Next time, try winning the fucking election so you determine the short list.

"They hate us for our freedom..." This is no time for the Lame Game.

Wrong: NYT's Editorial "Leveling the Freedom Center"

The NYTimes thinks that the Freedom Center should not have been kicked out of the WTC, and that the memorial is a great place to celebrate free speech and consider the lessons we can derive from 9/11. And I was under the impression that the NYTimes itself is that place, but I'm pretty sure there is little agreement about those lessons except the one about the unthinkable.

The memory of 9/11 is not about freedom. It is about going to work on a beautiful day and stepping into a mass murder. Nobody can actually get their mind and heart around that twisted day, but as often as they need to they must try. If we can be strong enough, our best selves do not want to be anaesthetized to the notion that every day may begin our last walk. Changing the focus may not dishonor the dead, but it dishonors the living.

Hijacking the memorial to promote the discussion and inevitable debate of the meaning of freedom is tasteless. Worse, it would be hypocritical to deny voice at the site to those who claim terrorism is simply one of very few weapons available to poor populations who are fighting for self-determination -- just one big Tea Party.

If it was really necessary to seal our grief and horror into a happy public monument, why didn't we solicit a proposal from Disney? Because a half-million square feet of retail space will work for those who want it, as it always has. Everyone could use a new pair of shoes.

NYT's Judith Miller Released from Prison!!!

I hope the next time Judith Miller considers offering confidentiality to anyone in a viciously assertive self-serving Administration such as the current one, she'll remember how long it took her source to release her after the cat was out of the bag. I've got to figure that a hidden camera with live images of a New York Times reporter in lockup was way too effective a fund-raising tool to put it aside out of conscience.

BREAKING NEWS -- Someone Is Killing New York State's Lottery Winners

It sounds like a movie script, but it's deadly serious. It seems that a disproportionate number of New York State Lottery grand-prize winners (including the multistate "MegaMillions") have been dying unexpectedly or even mysteriously. Investigators are still gathering data, but an unidentified source says that the pattern emerged while the FBI was tracing deposits that had been funneled into bank accounts suspected of being conduits for terror financing.

Gov. George Pataki issued a statement declaring that winning the NY Lottery does not raise the risk of accidentalal death or dismemberment any more than the grand prizes of other states' lottery games.

Attempts to reach previous lottery winners by telephone went unanswered except in one instance of a gurgling sound that was abruptedly disconnected.

Boy Scouts, Campers and The Summer of Sudden Death

There must be something more than coincidence to explain the recent spate of high voltage tragedies befalling the Boy Scouts. Rather than picking off the stray child or reckless teenager, the usual M.O. for Nature and the summertime elements, horrifyingly spectacular death has targeted the adult volunteer leadership and incinerated them with the speed of, well, lightening. Still, that organization has won the legal right to exclude homosexuals from their leadership, so God couldn’t possibly be angry with them.

If you’ve been out of the country and somehow missed these events, google “Boy Scouts” with “tragedy” yourself. Even though I can sound glib talking about them, describing the scenes themselves will just burn images into my brain, and there has been way too much smoking-brain smell lately.

I can’t ignore the 13-year-old who also caught enough of the lightening bolt that he was brain-dead by evening. Provenance may have problems making precision strikes, but it is worth noting the boy was kept alive for a day so his organs could be harvested for donation. I hope his parents can hold on to the thoughts of all the lives that were saved because their son had lived long enough to die doing what he loved. Me, I can’t stop thinking that someone up there loves hunting human flesh.

Ironically, the heat wave sickened dozens of scouts who were waiting for God’s hand-picked leader in America, President Bush, to arrive. Apparently the situation would have gotten lethal if someone in the Administration hadn’t realized they needed to get those boys out of harm’s way – proof that at least one person in the Administration has learning from being burned. I suspect it was a closeted homosexual who knows when macho stops being fun, and who’s also learned a thing or two about skin cancer. The problem was probably made worse because the last guys that tried to put up a large tent for shade were resting comfortably in cold storage, or at least in peace.

No, I don’t think that God has it in for the Boy Scouts, and I’m sure he loves America and all of its inhabitants albeit somewhat unequally. I do think that once in awhile He gets pissed off enough at the quality of our leadership that He let’s us see who we are and what we’re up against. Leadership should not come to those simply willing to take the job, but to those with the ability to take the job and to take the job seriously.

The facts aren’t all in about the dance camp counselor who drove herself and five teenagers 100mph into and under a dump truck on a two-lane highway in the Catskills, but Irina Mironova was a poor choice for a driver considering her license had been suspended by the state of Florida two months earlier. License or not: Anyone who drives such a road at that speed at anytime, let alone with someone else’s children in the car, is someone you want to steer clear of [intended] and not someone you hire. That is usually not an isolated behavior and is something that ordinary hiring prudence could have uncovered if the camp’s owner had thought it important.

I am probably being unfair however, since the camp owner’s 16-year-old son was also minced in the car. No, I’m afraid that I stuck this onto the Boy Scout story because I had to mention it (it’s the local horror of the week) and because I didn’t want think about it longer than necessary. Listen, can’t you hear it? The sound that seems to come from upstairs saying, “Bring me human flesh. Just make it look like an accident.”

Dave Itzkoff, Do You Know Where Your Father Is?

When I'm in the mood to be horrified by a coke-fiend father's depravity I can always google Joel and Lisa Steinberg. That's why reading Dave Itzkoff's morbidly unflinching grievances against his father ("Cocaine's Kid", New York Magazine 8/1/2005) is not merely for my uneasy voyeuristic pleasure, but because nobody else is this good and peculiarly honest when writing about themselves.

What at first glance appears to be a self-serving "tell-all" not worthy of the writer's skills is in fact a crime story replete with a murdered childhood, a zealous cop (adult Dave) whose efforts at justice have so far been thwarted, and a detective (author Dave) who is just unable to close the file and walk away.

To his credit, Mr. Itzkoff does not rig his writing to keep us from wondering what kind of person writes such material without changing the names, and he concedes his narcissism possibly as a caveat to the reader that all may not be what it seems. He does not waste his words, so when they don't resonate with the others they are potential clues, evidence out of place at a crime scene. Contemplating a name change and unlisted number in response to a bad therapy session whimpers next to the sound and velocity of his father's totaling the car after the same session due to one self-destructive behavior or another.

While the son is unwilling to see past his own experiences, it wasn't always so. Relating what seemed to be his last moment of unspoiled childhood, the boy asks his mother why his father did drugs. The writer's weak treatment of her response deserved exclusion of the Q&A from the article, but he suspects some truth to be found there. "If I knew that, maybe I'd be on drugs myself." Now at an age of responsibility, the son does not have the stones to ask the question again.

Mr. Itzkoff ends the article without resolution, more desperate about his father's mortality when his father seems happier than at any time in Dave's lifetime. He should re-check the witness list for new information before the case gets suddenly and permanently cold.