Murdered Blogger reveals identity of his killer

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This was Simon Ng’s final entry on his Blog at 5:05pm on May 12….

“Today I missed my Japanese class again, since I have gotten a bad throat. I only went to the class once this week, so I am probably so far behind now. I will catch up in the summer tho so no worries hehe. Anyway today has been weird, at 3 some guy ringed the bell. I went down and recognized it was my sister’s former boyfriend. He told me he wants to get his fishing poles back. I told him to wait downstair while I get them for him. While I was searching them, he is already in the house. He is still here right now, smoking, walking all around the house with his shoes on which btw I just washed the floor 2 days ago!”

The guy wandering round the house stabbed him, then waited for his sister to return and then stabbed her to death. For the full story see this NY Newsday report.

Windbreak

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These trees just outside Dingle have always fascinated me. They’ve withstood Atlantic gales for as long as I can remember. I’ve always wanted to photograph them but never got round to it — until yesterday.

Grand Prix

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Philip Toynbee famously said that if an atomic bomb were dropped on Twickenham during the ‘Varsity (i.e. Oxford v. Cambridge) match then “the prospects of fascism in Britain would be set back by two generations”. I have similar feelings about the Monaco Grand Prix which takes place today, on the grounds that it’s a uniquely obnoxious combination of a corrupt sport and an unspeakable location. For ‘x’ read ‘cks’.

On this day…

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… in 1935 T.E. Lawrence died after being injured in a motorbike crash. There was an interesting item on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme claiming that both US and UK troops in Iraq are reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom as a guide to Arab culture. (And no, I did not make that up!) It’s a bit like Tony Blair speed-reading the Koran after 9/11.

Quote of the day

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The issue here isn’t one of bad manners — it’s about bad management and bad judgment. Bolton isn’t just a tough guy; he’s a tough guy who apparently used his ire to bludgeon intelligence reports into the shape he sought. It’s one thing to push around your subordinates; it’s quite another to push around the information on which the lives of Americans and American troops depend. The reason Bolton’s nomination strikes so many observers, including me, as so profoundly wrong is that it’s precisely Bolton’s management style — one shared by, and endorsed by, the Vice President’s office — that led to the debacle of American intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.

Scott Rosenberg on the fruitcake Dubya wants to appoint as the US Ambassador to the United Nations