Shots in the Dark

CNN.com has this remarkable footage of a pod of orcas teaching their young how to hunt seals in the Antarctic. When they surround an understandably anxious seal, it hops onto an ice floe for protection. Working together, the whales swim under the floe, creating a wave of surge that washes the seal off the ice….

…at which point, things really get interesting.

This is amazing to watch. (Click on the hyperlink, then look at the “Best of TV” section in the bottom right-hand corner.)

Free Willy aside, orcas are pretty fierce animals.

Kim Roberts goes public.

In Durham, the second stripper—whose name is now disclosed as Kim Roberts—gives an interview to the Associated Press. It doesn’t clarify things much.

“I was not in the bathroom when it happened, so I can’t say a rape occurred — and I never will,” Roberts tells the AP.

But after watching defense attorneys release photos of the accuser, and upset by the leaking of both dancers’ criminal pasts, she said she has to “wonder about their character.”

“In all honesty, I think they’re guilty,” she said. “And I can’t say which ones are guilty … but somebody did something besides underage drinking. That’s my honest-to-God impression.”

This is unconvincing.

Nor does it inspire confidence to note that Roberts is facing criminal charges of embezzlement—just as it does not inspire confidence in Collin Finnerty to note that he tried to beat up a gay guy for being gay—and that she e-mailed a New York public relations firm asking for advice on “how to spin this ]Duke situation] to my advantage.”

“I’ve found myself in the center of one of the biggest stories in the country,” she wrote. “I’m worried about letting this opportunity pass me by without making the best of it and was wondering if you had any advice as to how to spin this to my advantage.”

Ka-ching!

Roberts does indeed seem to have spun this to her advantage: She was arrested eight days after the infamous party on charges that she embezzled $25,000 from a photofinishing company where she was working. On the day that indictments came down against the lacrosse players, a judge ruled that Roberts would no longer have to pay a 15% fee to a bonding agent. D.A. Mike Nifong signed a document saying he would not oppose the change.

“Why shouldn’t I profit from it?” she asked. “I didn’t ask to be in this position … I would like to feed my daughter.”

Which, of course, means that she has a financial incentive to support the allegations of rape. If nothing happened, her story isn’t worth anything.

Roberts said she knows what it’s like to sit in jail, and that she would never wrongly accuse an innocent person.

“If the boys are innocent, sorry fellas,” she said. “Sorry you had to go through this.”

I’m sure she’ll make a great defense—I mean prosecution—witness.

Roberts also admits that she was the one who called 911 claiming that she had been called racial slurs by white men outside the party. And though the article is unclear on this point, it sounds like she admits that she made up those accusations. “Roberts acknowledged that she made the call because she was angry,” according to the AP story. Angry because of the lax players’ obscene suggestions regarding a broomstick, or because racial slurs really were directed at her? Hard to say.

Roberts does say this…

“Don’t forget that they called me a damn nigger. She (the accuser) was passed out in the car. She doesn’t know what she was called. I was called that. I can never forget that.”

I’m not going to call Roberts a liar, but this story strikes me as awfully convenient.
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Correction: As a poster points out, Roberts was convicted of embezzlement in 2001, and the new charge was related to a probation violation stemming from that conviction.

Robert G. Stone, Harvard class of ’45 and longtime member of the Harvard Corporation, has died.

Stone was, of course, the senior fellow of the Corporation that chose Larry Summers. I have no idea how he felt about the current turmoil, but it’s a safe bet that Stone, who loved Harvard, hated to see the distress at his alma mater. It surely wasn’t what he wanted.

His death now has an extra sadness, the knowledge that he did not live long enough to see Harvard right itself. One wishes that Mr. Stone, a loyal and devoted servant of Harvard, could have lived just a little bit longer, to see a brighter day in Cambridge.

No, it’s not a political joke. Coyotes have come to the suburbs of Washington, where apparently they are freaking people out. (In Washington, an inch of snow freaks people out.)

The coyotes eat primarily mice, rats, and young deer—something suburban dwellers ought to be pretty happy about. They have, apparently, attacked a few children, but in every instance it’s been determined that human beings were feeding the coyotes, causing them to lose their natural fear of humans. In any event, dog bites vastly outnumber coyote bites. In many cases, coyotes are attracted to the suburbs by dumpsters overflowing with trash, which doesn’t say much good about us humans.

The coyotes will, on occasion, eat lap-dogs and cats. Like a ban on car alarms, this could be considered a good thing. Regardless, it is an acceptable tradeoff for the wonder of having a wild animal in your midst. (No one ever said that we have a god-given right to let our lap-dog wander freely.)

The Washington Post reports that the thing to do if you see a coyote is to shout at it and wave your arms, which appears to do the trick—as with the vast majority of animals, they have far more to fear from us than we do from them…..

Meanwhile, I’m intrigued by this whole rat-eating thing. Perhaps we could introduce some coyotes into the New York subway system?

For no apparent reason, the government has been killing thousands of coyotes, on public and private lands, for decades. Because the federal government has nothing better to do….

Coyotes: Best admired from a distance.

At Harvard, Noah E. Lewis, a “co-coordinator” of the Transgender Task Force, thinks that the university should pay for sex change operations.

It is a “huge stigma to say that we respect you but we still think you’re crazy and won’t pay for your surgery,” Lewis said, according to the Crimson.

Definitely. A huge stigma. Because it is, after all, the role of the modern university in American society to pay for people’s sex change operations, and any suggestion to the contrary—well, that would be a huge stigma.

I tease, but it’s probably only a matter of time till Harvard’s health car covers exactly that.

…would be like a day without sunshine. (That’s a little historical reference for you young folk.)

To that end…

At Duke, university officials have finalized the details regarding grill use and alcohol policies for the Last Day of Classes celebration on April 26th.

(Just kidding!)

While Durham County D.A. Mike Nifong swears he’s going to arrest a third suspect sooner or later, Reade Seligmann’s lawyer says he has conclusive evidence that his client wasn’t even at the party at the time the alleged rape allegedly occurred….. Maybe Nifong should just arrest the whole team, one by one, until he finds someone who doesn’t have a good alibi.

Meanwhile, according to the Times, in Charlottesville, Va., Chip Royer, a lawyer for Jeffrey O. Bloxsom, who says he was assaulted by Mr. Finnerty last year, said Mr. Bloxsom was being hounded by the news media because of the Duke case and was now considering a civil suit against Mr. Finnerty.

A conversation with a media lawyer friend convinced me that I’m probably wrong and that it’s not ultimately a good idea to print the names of alleged rape victims. But I remain uncomfortable with the fact that the accused are getting reams of bad publicity, as is Mr. Bloxsom (a terrific name, by the way), and the accuser, whose story seems profoundly murky, remains anonymous.

(One does have to wonder about Mr. Bloxsom’s sudden consideration of a civil suit, however.)

I’ve noticed that the media has also declined to identify the woman referred to as “the second exotic dancer,” despite the fact that she’s given quite a few interviews. Of course, she’s probably giving the interviews on the condition of anonymity. But surely some reporters down there must know her name. On what basis are they withholding her identity?

But as I say, it’s probably right that if the media printed the names of alleged rape victims, many victims would not come forward to press charges against their assailants.

In an ideal world, perhaps the media wouldn’t name the names of the accused until the end of a trial….