Hello from Morehead City

I've been in Morehead City for almost three weeks now. I'm sharing a house with a Felix, a marine biologist at NC State's lab.

So far, so good. I'm slowly getting acclimated and am enjoying living near the beach. I've probably even lost a little weight and gotten a bit of a suntan.

Morehead City is small, and there isn't a great deal to do here that isn't ocean-related. When I get out here for good, I definitely think I'll need to get a little boat of some kind. Rents are cheap -- I'll definitely make out better here that I would have in Seattle, or even Chapel Hill.

I saw Batman Begins in the theater with Felix the other night. I thought it was pretty decent, even though it was about two-thirds back story. As the director pointed out in an interview I saw, it's pretty hard to explain why a guy would dress up in a bat suit to fight crime.

Last night I was in the mood to see a documentary, so I rented "Capturing the Friedmans." It was a very strange film that documented the disintegration of a family when the father and one of the sons are accused of child molestation. Dad was definitely a pedophile and surely molested some child, some time, though apparently not those for which he went to prison. The tragic part was that his son, who seems almost certain to be completely innocent, went to jail as well, for 13 years.

After finding child pornography in Friedmans's house, the police started interviewing children who had attended computer classes in his basement (he was a retired school teacher). Sure enough, some claimed to have been molested, though high-pressure, leading interview techniques and even hypnosis (which has been proven capable of implanting false memories) were used. The stories the children told were totally unbelievable -- mass anal rapes, occuring week after week for months, after which the parents would show up to pick up the kids and not notice a hair out of place. Was there not a single person with a shred of common sense involved in the prosecution?

Apparently not the impartial judge, who actually said on camera that "she never had a moment's doubt" about the defendants' guilt, even though the case never got to trial due to a plea bargain.

The children's ridiculous stories implicated not only the father, but his 18-year-old son as well. (Unlike the case with the father, there was no other evidence that the son was a pedophile). Facing something like 300 years in prison if convicted (which he likely would have been, given the publicity), the son pled guilty, got 6 to 18 years and would up serving 13.

Here's a question to ponder. If a judge is presented with a signed confession with blood on it, what does he do? He throws it out of court. A confession obtained under threat of violence is no confession at all. So why is it any different when the threat, instead of a beating, is a 300 year sentence?

And yet here is the slimebag judge defending herself at the premier, emphasizing how the kid admitted the crime in open court. This impartial judge who never had a moment's doubt about his guilt and who dangled over the head of a terrified 18-year-old the prospect of dying in prison.

This sort of thing happens all the time, actually; the justice system has no intention of giving anyone but the very wealthy a fair trial, and pressures most people into pleading out, whether they are guilty or innocent.

What a country we live in.