Author: jbenton

Two Wilmer-Hutchins stories in recent days: this ‘un and that ‘un. Another (more fun) one will probably be in tomorrow’s paper.
Also: Dallas-area readers, I’m having a party this Saturday night. Email me (jbenton at toast dot net) if you want an invite.
Also: The new Connie Price and the Keystones album kicks so much ass that I am now nearly assless. Instrumental funk at its finest. Here’s a link to sound samples in iTunes.

Not new, but: The House of Cosbys. Awesome.

For the record: I have nothing against animals. I generally find them cute. (And tasty!)
But sometimes animal types go too far.
Take this story. A friend of mine, DMN photographer Tom Fox, took this awesome photo of a poor little dog covered in oil and muck down in St. Bernard Parish. (Tom’s down there doing great stuff on Katrina.) It was a sad photo, obviously, and readers responded. (About 100 times more than they responded to photos of individual humans in distress, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Anyway, two days later, Tom saw the same dog and arranged to have it taken in by some animal rescuers. Thanks to Tom making the call, the dog is fine and waiting to be reunited with its owner (if he/she is still alive) or adopted.
A nice story, eh?
Actually, a bunch of clowns have decided to attack Tom for a variety of crazy reasons.
First: The Fake Dog Theory. Some folks are arguing that the dog Tom actually saved was a surrogate dog, that Tom was deviously involved in a tear-jerk dog-swap. (“I would be disapointed [sic] if the media were misleading everyone,” says one clown.) One person suspects Tom swapped the dog with another oil-covered dog two towns over.
Second: The Rude Photographer Theory. Several folks say Tom’s a war criminal because he didn’t immediately adopt the dog the moment he saw him, smother him with kisses, and rescue him right that minute. One fellow says there should be a law requiring reporters to immediately aid any animal they see in distress.
Are these people on Mars? There are packs of roving dogs all over Katrinaland. Tom is supposed to rescue them all? Even though he, I don’t know, has a job to do? And in any event, haven’t these people been watching TV? There were hundreds of thousands of people — actual human beings — in conditions worse than this dog. Did they get outraged then? Or is it just a puppy that leads to this sort of insanity?
In any event, it turns out that Tom did give the dog water and food, and probably would have done more if it hadn’t bitten one of his colleagues. He did call animal rescue the first time he saw the dog, but they didn’t respond immediately. Which is why the dog was still around a couple days later, when Tom saw him again and took matters into his own hands.
So, to recap: Tom is 100% responsible for getting this poor dog saved — and he’s still taking shit for it. Some people are just crazy.
In case it needs stating: Reporters and photographers working in Louisiana have all seen literally thousands of people who need help. And they’ve probably all seen hundreds of animals who need help. They can’t help them all, and it’s not their responsibility to.

Here’s my book review in Sunday’s paper. It’s of The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol’s luridly-subtitled new book. Have already gotten a few emails calling parts of my review “insulting,” which makes me think I’m doing my job.
I’ve forgotten to link to several of my stories recently. No worldbeaters in the bunch, but for the record: Baylor delays vote on chief, Wilmer-Hutchins High to house hurricane evacuees, and Houston, D/FW districts relaxing admission rules.

More sketchiness on Michael Brown’s resume. Turns out our FEMA chief, he of the horse-contest resume, claims to have been “an assistant city manager” “overseeing the emergency services division” in Edmund, Oklahoma, from 1975 to 1978. Which would be sorta impressive, considering he’s 50 years old today, which means he would have been a 20-year-old assistant city manager.
Of course he wasn’t: he was actually an assistant to the city manager. As in, he fetched the city manager’s coffee during a college internship.
He also claims to have been named “Outstanding Political Science Professor” at Central State University. Of course, he was never a professor at Central State, much less an outstanding one.
And he claims that, for the last 23 years, he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home. Which would explain why no one there has heard of him. As one veteran employee put it: “He was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here.”
Oh, and his former law-firm boss described him as “not serious and somewhat shallow,” which is why he got canned.
This man is in charge of dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attacks on America.
(For the record, the asshole Michael Brown is not the Michael Brown who reads this site. Who, to my knowledge, has never faked his resume, been an incompetent lawyer, or fucked up the greatest cataclysm to ever hit the United States of America.)

I’d wondered why my site stats showed an unusual number of searches for Opal Covey, Toledo’s resident crazy lady. I’d forgotten that she’s running for mayor again.
From a candidate’s debate Tuesday: “Ms. Covey opened by calling herself ‘a prophetess of God’ and closed by forecasting Hurricane Katrina-sized consequences if voters do not elect her. ‘I’m warning you,’ she said, in a speech that drew loud boos, ‘if you don’t change this government to God’s government, destruction will come, just as it did in New Orleans.’”
Also: “‘I want to give you the key that’s going to … put Toledo back on the map,’ Covey said. ‘[God] gave me a prophecy to read to you today…[Toledo has] fallen so hard and so dangerously that no man can bring you out, save God…I have shown my servant the miracle it will take to bring Toledo back to prosperity. This is the amusement park installment.'” That would be her grand plan, voiced before, to turn downtown Toledo into one big amusement park.
She’s also got a loose grasp on metaphor. From a written candidate Q&A with the local alt-weekly: “Q. What keeps you up at night? A. Nothing. I’m a sound sleeper.”
Yep, she’s a winner.
I used to be the city hall reporter for the Toledo newspaper, so campaign season back in Ohio is usually of inordinate interest to me. It looks like Carty Finkbeiner is a shoo-in winner. Which is good for local media. Carty was the mayor I covered, and he was enormous fun to deal with. “Colorful” would be the complimentary way to put it. (His let’s move deaf folks to the airport idea has taken on a life of its own.)
I have never been called more unprintable words by anyone else I’ve covered — maybe anyone else ever — but I have to admit, I like the guy. He’s the sort of energetic populist that you see a lot in Louisiana politics. And I’m not surprised he’s killing the competition in early polling, including the incumbent mayor.
By the way, it looks like Opal has a challenger as most crazy mayoral candidate this year. A fellow named Don Gozdowski thinks the key to ending urban poverty is improved hygiene for black people. He wants to be mayor so he can “end world hunger.” He wears flame ties. In the most recent debate: “Mr. Gozdowski quoted ’60s-era rock band The Animals and the actor Denzel Washington. He closed by donning black glasses and singing ‘I’ve Gotta Be Me.’” From the local college paper: “Gozdowski also said that though he’s never even been to a city council meeting, he has the ability to recognize and appreciate the heart of man.”
His all-purpose apology: “You’ve got to understand that what comes out of my mouth might not be what I mean.”

More debate about use of the word “refugee”:
– Scott Libin at Poynter, in effect, chickens out. “I see no easy answers to any of these questions,” blah blah blah. His disguised point seems to be: It’s silly to ban the word, but enough people have bitched about it that we might have to.
– The National Association of Black Journalists says it’s bad, falling on the silly backing that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a legal definition for the word that requires international border crossing. Well of course it does — that’s a legal definition tied to triggers in international law. Michael Chertoff doesn’t get to decide how we use language.
In any event, the appeal to international law is clearly not the issue here. That’s a front for the real reason people are opposed to the term — they view it as an insult. That’s why the head of NABJ calls it a “loaded” word. If it were just inaccurate in his mind, he wouldn’t call it “loaded.” He thinks it’s an insult to be called a refugee. I don’t think so. And I think that opinion is itself an insult to refugees around the world.
NABJ suggests, among other things, “survivor.” Ugh. This reminds me of the people who call the media whenever we refer to a “cancer patient.” They insist that, from the moment of diagnosis on, the correct term is “cancer survivor.” Look, call yourself whatever you want. But you can’t chip perfectly good words out of the English language because you want to play Orwell.
– Don Wycliff at the Chicago Tribune agrees with me. “I find myself astonished at the hubbub that has blown up around this particular word…if the implication is that Americans cannot be sent fleeing from fires, floods, famine and other disasters, natural or manmade, or from political oppression, then it is plainly untrue…It is particularly surprising to hear [Jesse] Jackson making the argument against ‘refugees’ in terms of American exceptionalism, because part of what has made him such an effective participant in this country’s political debates of the last few decades has been his ability to puncture notions of American exceptionalism.”
– This wire story details which news organizations have bought into all this. Killing “refugee” off: The Washington Post (disappointing), The Boston Globe, NPR. Keeping it alive: The New York Times, Associated Press.

Another way to help Katrina victims painlessly: Download this Pernice Brothers EP for five bucks. FYI for Dallasites, the Pernice Brothers are playing in Denton this Saturday.
After my earlier post about investing, Glenn pointed me towards Unconventional Success, a new book by David Swensen, the man who invests Yale’s $15 billion endowment and is, by most folks’ estimation, among the best at his job in America. He argues a lot of what I do in the crabwalk.com investing approach: Managed mutual funds are for chumps.
(This NYT article sums up his argument: “[H]e found himself horrified by what he saw — especially at the $8 trillion mutual fund industry, which is the primary means through which individuals invest in the market. Although his prose tends to be on the academic side, his outrage comes through on every page of ”Unconventional Success.” What is it about mutual funds that Swensen finds offensive? Just about everything. He hates the way the loads and all the hidden fees mean that the investor is always behind the eight ball…He thinks that it is criminal for fund companies to allow popular funds to balloon in size, making it nearly impossible for the manager to beat the market. He hates the way the industry pushes exactly the wrong fund at the wrong time — Internet-oriented funds at the height of the bubble, for instance…He notes, as others have before, that the vast majority of actively managed funds underperform. He uses phrases like ”invidious,” ”investor-damaging” and ”dirty scheme” to describe the general behavior of the industry…His core point, though, is that the for-profit fund industry has a fundamental conflict between its desire for profit and its fiduciary duty to its investors. And that the profit motive wins out every time.”)
He recommends a diversified portfolio of index funds — preferably purchased through non-profit companies like Vanguard or TIAA-CREF. That way you (a) get around their desire for profit clashing with your desire for strong returns and (b) get low expense ratios. His model portfolio calls for 30% domestic stocks, 15% foreign developed market stocks, 15% emerging market stocks, 20% real estate, 15% Treasury bonds, and 15% Treasury inflation-protected. For youngish folks like me, I still think 30% in bonds is too conservative; he acknowledges that he has only about 5% of Yale’s money in bonds, and I think when you’re looking at a 30-year timeframe, you can afford that sort of risk.
The thing I remember most about David Swensen is that he would never do interviews when we tried calling him in college.

Kudos to Yahoo for creating this metasearch of the various Katrina check-in sites. One place to search for a name that checks all the major web sites. Anyone who’s coming here looking for info on the late KatrinaCheckIn.org — alas, hosting could not be reestablished — should head to Yahoo.
Just 2 Guyz, having a good time.
Masters of Deception, a book on the art of optical illusion. Including videos of real iterations of impossible objects, like this cube or this utensil shadow motorcycle.
Insanely detailed (‘tho no doubt effective) backup strategy for OS X.

In the interest of self-promotion, I would like to point out that I have on only one occasion made a recommendation to you, The Reader, on where to invest your money. Back in April, I recommended the Hennessy Cornerstone Growth Fund, a fund in which a significant portion of my own money, limited though it may be, has been placed since 2003.
Ahem: Forbes magazine tells us now that said fund is now in the top 2 percent of all small-cap funds over the last 12 months, returning 34.8 percent.
In other words: Invest the crabwalk.com way, and beat 98 percent of the market.
I won’t make any iron-clad predictions here, but my money is only invested in two other places: iShares MSCI Pacific Ex-Japan — an exchange-traded fund that indexes the major Australasian markets minus moribund Japan — and Vanguard’s Small-Cap VIPER, another ETF. Both up 10-12 percent YTD, vs. less than 3 percent for the S&P.
Low expense ratios, low churn, and passionless picking: those are the keys to the crabwalk.com portfolio.