Whipped Cream Difficulties

Two of my favorite authors showed up while I was making the Internet rounds this morning.

The San Jose Mercury News has an interview with Tim Cahill, who just finished a semester of teaching at San Jose State. I hadn’t heard much from or about Cahill in a while, and the interview explains why.

Slate has an interview with Anthony Bourdain, specifically dealing with issues of right, wrong, and taste.

I was just in Liberia recently, and although I find certain tribal practices personally deeply repellant, I’d always felt uncomfortable with the idea of these “enlightened humanitarians” going to Africa and lecturing people who don’t have clean water and have been living with these systems for centuries about how to behave. And yet I gotta tell you, Liberia made me ask myself: Are some things just wrong? Genital mutilation would be one. Some of the practices of some of the traditional tribal elders—witch doctors, basically—are another. I really wonder whether there are absolutes in some cases. It’s something I’m wrestling with, clearly.

This interview is part of a series, “The Wrong Stuff“, by Kathryn Schulz, and is tied in to her forthcoming book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. This book sounds like something that’s right up my alley; I’ll report back once I’ve obtained a copy and read it.

I also wanted to link to this story about a Baltimore shooting involving an off-duty cop (hattip: Balko); not because I want to comment on the story itself (that’s being ably handled at Balko’s site), but because of this:

Baltimore Police Maj. Terrence McLarney, head of the homicide unit, said there is no indication the two men met inside the establishment or knew each other.

Terrence McLarney? Terrence f’ing McLarney? Tell me this can’t be the same Terrence McLarney who was a Detective Sergeant in Homicide when David Simon wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets? The one who graduated from the police academy in 1976, per Simon? That’d be, what, 34 years in, and McLarney’s still on the job? That’s not unheard of (and how’s Donald “The Big Man” Worden doing these days, anyway?) but given Baltimore PD politics (which McLarney seemed to be in the thick of), I’m a little surprised.

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: Well, McLarney and Worden both have entries in Wikipedia, believe it or not. And Worden apparently played “Det. Donald Worden” in a Season 5 episode of The Wire. McLarney’s entry says this:

In July 2008, McLarney was named the official commander of the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit, a position he had been the acting commander of since May 2008.

So, yeah, seems like the same guy.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Books, Clippings, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.