Saturday, January 18, 2014

What would you do?

Here's the situation.  You are a professional journalist (meaning you earn your living from reporting).  You encounter a story about what seems like a breakthrough.  You locate the person who is behind this technological leap forward and ask if you can do a story about their work.  They agree, but only if you agree to keep the focus of the story on the work and not them.  You agree and begin to interview the person while trying to fact-check what you're told.  Turns out this person is not who they claim to be.  Their claimed educational and work achievements are false.  There are other falsehoods in the information they've given you.  So you dig further.  You discover that they are a transgender person who has transitioned completely (including surgery) to the gender they identify as.

When you write the story, is it alright for you to make mention of their sex change?

This is a link to the story that has led to Twitter and other social media spending a large amount of time discussing it:  http://grantland.com/features/a-mysterious-physicist-golf-club-dr-v/  It is about a woman who invented an amazing putter that apparently can make a big difference in a person's golf game.  Caleb Hannan, the author of this piece is being accused of direct responsibility in the suicide of Dr. V. 

I don't think he is.  She'd attempted suicide before, was clearly a troubled person, and if she didn't want to become the subject of a news story should have declined to participate.  Not all journalists are going to keep promises to keep a narrow focus on one part of a story when there are other facets that seem to be more "newsworthy" in their eyes.  I won't speculate on Mr. Hannan's thought process in deciding to go back on his promises to Dr. V.

I've been in this position before and so I have the benefit of hindsight.  I was doing a story and had a source who happened to be involved in the story.  I promised to keep the focus off of them and on the events in the story itself, IF AND ONLY IF, everything they told me was true.  My source knew that if they lied to me about the events of the story, their involvement would become fair game.

To out a transgender person just because you want to, or think it will help attract readers to your story is wrong.  There is an argument to be made that Dr. V was a fraudster, lied about her background, her education and her achievements, and therefore her entire life was fair game.  So how would you tell the story, given the facts you have here?  Would your story include Dr. V being transgender?

* * *

Richard Cebull is a retired federal judge who had been serving as a district judge in Montana.  He gained notoriety when he was found to have sent a racist email about President Obama from his federal email account.

Now it has been disclosed that he actually sent out hundreds of emails using that account that were "inappropriate", showing disdain for African-Americans and Hispanics, especially those who are here illegally.

Cebull says that his emails were intended to be private communications.  Now I may not be a federal judge, or even a law school graduate, but I know that every federal email system, as well as almost every other email system provided by an employer, requires acknowledgement of terms of service that clearly disclose that none of the communications sent on the system are truly private.

He's foolish for doing this at all.  But he's really dumb if he thinks there was any expectation of privacy regarding those emails.

* * *

We've seen them portrayed in movies.  Missile launch control officers in the United States Air Force.  They work in pairs, because of something known as the "two-person concept" as outlined in an Air Force instruction.  The purpose of this concept is to prevent one person from launching a nuclear missile, either intentionally or accidentally. 

These people are commissioned officers.  They are assigned to one of three bases near the silos where the 450 or so ICBMs in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are kept.  Now it's been revealed that 34 of them were involved in cheating on a proficiency test.  Actually 16 of them cheated and the other 18 were aware of the cheating and failed to report it.  That's viewed as being just as serious a violation. 

This is a more serious matter than some think.  We can't afford accidents in the handling of nuclear weapons.  The Air Force runs a program known as the Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) and all of the officers involved in this scandal had been PRP certified as having "...demonstrated the highest degree of individual reliability for allegiance, trustworthiness, conduct, behavior, and responsibility..." and yet they cheated on an exam.

The timing of this revelation is kind of ironic.  48 years ago yesterday, two Air Force planes collided over Palomares, Spain and that resulted in the non-nuclear detonation of a hydrogen bomb.  Two square kilometers of land was contaminated by plutonium.

What happened that caused these officers to cheat is something that must be determined so it can be prevented.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

The Dodgers did not pay too much for Clayton Kershaw.  Time will validate this claim.

Dennis Rodman has checked into rehab.  How many times is this?  Learning I'm older than he makes me feel really old and tired.

I'm not sure which is worse.  Having to wait an extra year for "Batman versus Superman" or that yet another "Peter Pan" is replacing it next year.

I am not a fan of the San Diego Padres, but give them props for a very nice memorial service for Jerry Coleman.

There is apparently enough money in even a small ($650) buy-in poker tournament to get people to make counterfeit chips.  Sad.

A psychologist claims that women who insist on wearing very high heels feel they are "inept" for some reason.  Either a lot of the women in L.A. are feeling inept or this psychologist is way off base.

There is a McDonald's in Queens that is trying to get a group of elderly Korean men who loiter there from early morning until late at night to go elsewhere.  Buying fries and coffee, even large fries and a large coffee, doesn't entitle you to take up a seat for hours on end. 

The idea (being advanced in Colorado by a legislator) that allowing bars to remain open until 7 a.m. rather than closing at 2 a.m. will prevent crowds of drunks from getting into altercations is just plain silly.

That people need service dogs is clear.  That there is an absence of laws regarding the licensing and use of service dogs is also clear.  I think this could be easily fixed by requiring the owners of service dogs to provide a certificate of need, signed by a physician.

* * *

January 18th in History:

350 – General Magnentius deposes Roman Emperor Constans and proclaims himself Emperor.
474 – Seven-year-old Leo II succeeds his maternal grandfather Leo I as Byzantine emperor. He died ten months later.
532 – Nika riots in Constantinople fail.
1126 – Emperor Huizong abdicates the Chinese throne in favour of his son Emperor Qinzong.
1486 – King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV.
1535 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founds Lima, the capital of Peru.
1562 – Pope Pius IV reopens the Council of Trent for its third and final session.
1591 – King Naresuan of Siam kills Crown Prince Minchit Sra of Burma in single combat, for which this date is now observed as Royal Thai Armed Forces day.
1670 – Henry Morgan captures Panama.
1701 – Frederick I crowns himself King of Prussia in Königsberg.
1778 – James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands".
1788 – The first elements of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia arrive at Botany Bay.
1866 – Wesley College, Melbourne is established.
1871 – Wilhelm I of Germany is proclaimed the first German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles (France) towards the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The empire is known as the Second Reich to Germans.
1884 – Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom.
1886 – Modern hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England.
1896 – An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H.L. Smith.
1903 – President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII: the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.[citation needed]
1911 – Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania stationed in San Francisco Bay, the first time an aircraft landed on a ship.
1913 – First Balkan War: A Greek flotilla defeats the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece.
1915 – Japan issues the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China in a bid to increase its power in East Asia.
1916 – A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite strikes a house near the village of Baxter in Stone County, Missouri.
1919 – World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.
1919 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland.
1919 – Bentley Motors Limited is founded.
1941 – World War II: British troops launch a general counter-offensive against Italian East Africa.
1943 – Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: The first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
1944 – The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City hosts a jazz concert for the first time. The performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden.
1944 – World War II: Soviet forces liberate Leningrad, effectively ending a three-year Nazi siege, known as the Siege of Leningrad.
1945 – World War II: Liberation of the Budapest ghetto by the Red Army.
1945 – World War II: Liberation of Krakow, Poland by the Red Army.
1955 – Chinese Civil War: Battle of Yijiangshan is fought.
1958 – Willie O'Ree, the first African Canadian National Hockey League player, makes his NHL debut with the Boston Bruins.
1960 – Capital Airlines Flight 20 crashes into a farm in Charles City County, Virginia, killing all 50 aboard, the third fatal Capital Airlines crash in as many years.
1967 – Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler", is convicted of numerous crimes and is sentenced to life imprisonment.
1969 – United Airlines Flight 266 crashes into Santa Monica Bay killing all 32 passengers and six crew members.
1974 – A Disengagement of Forces agreement is signed between the Israeli and Egyptian governments, ending conflict on the Egyptian front of the Yom Kippur War.
1976 – Lebanese Christian militias overrun Karantina, Beirut, killing at least 1,000.
1977 – Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease.
1977 – Australia's worst rail disaster occurs at Granville, Sydney killing 83.
1977 – SFR Yugoslavia's Prime minister, Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1978 – The European Court of Human Rights finds the United Kingdom government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture.
1978 – The roof structure of the Hartford Civic Center collapses after a significant snowfall.
1981 – Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield parachute off a Houston skyscraper, becoming the first two people to BASE jump from objects in all four categories: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs).
1983 – The International Olympic Committee restores Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals to his family.
1990 – Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.
1993 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is officially observed for the first time in all 50 states.
1994 – The Cando event, a possible bolide impact in Cando, Spain. Witnesses claim to have seen a fireball in the sky lasting for almost one minute.
1997 – In northwest Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 3 Spanish aid workers, 3 soldiers and seriously wound one other.
1997 – Børge Ousland of Norway becomes the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided.
2000 – The Tagish Lake meteorite impacts the Earth.
2002 – Sierra Leone Civil War is declared over.
2003 – A bushfire kills 4 people and destroys more than 500 homes in Canberra, Australia.
2005 – The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial jet, is unveiled at a ceremony in Toulouse, France
2007 – The strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years kills 14 people and Germany sees the worst storm since 1999 with 13 deaths. Hurricane Kyrill causes at least 44 deaths across 20 countries in Western Europe.
2009 – Gaza War: Hamas announces they will accept Israeli Defense Forces's offer of a ceasefire, ending the assault.
2012 – A series of coordinated actions (including a blackout of Wikipedia) take place in protest against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act).

Famous Folk Born on January 18th:

Emperor Daigo of Japan
Daniel Webster
Edmund Barton
Henri Giraud
A. A. Milne
Oliver Hardy
Cary Grant (who never said "Judy, Judy, Judy")
Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno
Danny Kaye
Nicholas Oresko (Medal of Honor recipient)
Chun Doo-hwan
Ray Dolby
Curt Flood
Bobby Goldsboro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59BZxgohr9g)
David Ruffin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bbcI5HwsAA)
Michael Angelis
Brett Hudson
Ted DiBiase
Kevin Costner
Mark Messier
Alison Arngrim
Dave Batista
Jesse L. Martin

Movie quotes today come from 1987's "No Way Out", which contains one of the best plot-twist endings in any movie, ever:

Tom Farrell: Who are these men?
Scott Pritchard: They're associated with Special Forces.
Tom Farrell: What? What does that mean?
Scott Pritchard: It means that they are associated with Special Forces.

#2

Schiller: In the Philippines when you passed that bag of underwear, Moscow was not amused! I should have acted then. But now it is no longer possible for you to remain United States. This bizarre incident has given them their Yuri, Evgeny Segevich.

#3

[Contra has chased Tom right up to the Secretary's Office when they are stopped by the MPs]
Tom Farrell: [to nearest MP] I am your superior officer and I am giving you a direct order to *arrest this man*!
Contra #2: I have orders from Pritchard!
Tom Farrell: DO IT!
Contra #2: I have my orders from Pritchard!
Tom Farrell: [to Contra] SHUT UP!
[Tom kicks Contra 2 in the groin. Contra is dragged away by the MPs]
Tom Farrell: And if he resists, SHOOT HIM!
MP: Yes, sir!