Category Archives: Miami

So far, it's just an awful lot of rain and gusty wind. This is the first serious storm we've had since we redid the exterior to our house. It's very nice not to have to put up those metal shutters any more, and quite impressive to see the ferocity of the wind, even when it's just bands from the way outside of the edge of the storm.

The schools are closed again tomorrow. The university closed at six p.m. If the forecasts are to be believed, I think the major danger tomorrow will be the roads,¹ which is why everything is closing. The hurricane itself looks most likely to make landfall enough north of us that we will miss the worst — and at Category one, the very large majority of structures are designed to weather this intensity of storm.

What's slightly disconcerting, however, is that NOAA is predicting even more hurricanes than it did last month:

The updated outlook calls for an extremely active season, with an expected seasonal total of 18-21 tropical storms (mean is 10), with 9-11 becoming hurricanes (mean is 6), and 5-7 of these becoming major hurricanes (mean is 2-3). The likely range of the ACE index for the season as a whole is 180%-270% of the median.

This is, I gather, in part due to the warmer oceans, which in turn is due to global warming.

¹ And restless children.

When I was a kid growing up in Washington DC, they used to close the schools if a snowflake was sighted anywhere in the metro area. It’s true that back then DC had rather primitive snow plowing capabilities, so that a serious snow fall would in deed paralyze the city, first by panicking the drivers and then by blocking the streets, but we must have closed four out every two major snowfalls.

We don’t get much snow down here in in Miami, so the kids don’t get snow days. But it seems they do get hurricane days. The latest weather forecasts don’t show Tropical Storm Katrina hitting in any serious way until fairly late tomorrow — well after school closes — although not all the models agree on whether it will remain a tropical storm or graduate to a full hurricane around when it makes landfall. But the kids are going to get a day off from school anyway, as the Miami-Dade school system has just pulled the plug on Thursday. We used to like playing in the snow when school was closed, but there’s not much fun to be had playing in a tropical storm (much less a hurricane) and it would in any case be unsafe due to the danger of falling and flying objects. The calm before the storm is real, but before the storm hits it can be awfully still and muggy.

The law school, meanwhile, is playing a more sensible game of wait-and-see. As a result, unless something changes overnight, I’m teaching two classes tomorrow morning. But I imagine turnout will be much reduced since those who drive from far away will probably choose to stay home, and those who suddenly find they have to care for their children won’t have a choice. But until further notice, the show will go on.

Via Romanesko at Poynter, Jim DeFede writes about his final conversation with Art Teele, and his sudden firing by the Herald.

The article ran in the Miami Times, a local and rather ideosyncratic newspaper aimed at the black community.

(Unflattering June, 2005, Miami New Times article on the Miami Times.)

On Wednesday night, Art Teele, an important local political figure, shot himself in the lobby of the Miami Herald building, moments after asking a security guard to tell Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede to relay a message to Teele’s wife: ”I love you.”

The shooting followed weeks (indeed months, or years) of mounting legal troubles for Teele, capped by the publication in the New Times, a local alternative weekly, of the most damning and the most salacious bits of police surveillance reports and interviews concerning Teele. (The documents were public records, not leaks, but somehow the Miami Herald hadn’t gotten around to doing much with them.) The reports detail a very convincing pattern of corruption and payoffs–all too believable given that Teele was involved with a local community redevelopment agency known for taking public money and producing little of value (except inflated land valuations for useless properties it purchased).

The New Times story also quoted from the police’s interview with an incarcerated male prostitute who made utterly uncorroborated and somewhat implausible allegations that Teele had been a repeat customer. The allegations struck me as implausible because the source seemed unable to provide a single corroborating detail, not even his own telephone number, and could list no identifying marks of his supposed bed partner, nor indeed relate anything about Teele that you wouldn’t have seen on TV. Nevertheless, coming on top of a sea of increasingly credible allegations of graft, they may have been the last straw.

In his last hours, Teele had several telephone conversations with Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede, who incidentally is one of the very few regular Herald columnists always worth reading. DeFede and Teele went way back, ironically to when DeFede worked for the New Times. In one of those last talks, concerned that Teele was sounding unusually weird, DeFede turned on a tape recorder and recorded the call.

That recording was a serious no-no: Florida is a two-party consent state and (at least as general rule, see below) telephone calls may not be taped without the consent of both parties. After the shooting, DeFede, aware he’d broken the Miami Herald’s rules, confessed the taping to his bosses. The Miami Herald then fired DeFede immediately.

Enter the Southern District of Florida blog, with news and views:

Southern District of Florida: Journalists for DeFede: Peter Wallsten and Charlie Savage have started a blog called Journalists for DeFede. It’s an open letter now signed by a number of Herald employees and others journalists asking for the Herald to reinstate DeFede. The letter argues that the taping may not have even been a violation of law, citing to this post. Any thoughts? I’ve written a little about DeFede’s firing here.

Yes, I have a few thoughts.

Continue reading →

How did I miss this when it happened?

Baby Monkey Stolen From Primate Expert's Florida Home: MIAMI — Three masked men in capes stole a baby owl monkey Thursday from the home of a primate expert, police said.

Men. In. Capes. Stole a rare monkey. In the Redlands (one of the last little-developed areas here, about 30 minutes to the south).

Then again, other news reports say the masked intruders wore “black robes” which suggests they are judges rather than caped crusaders. I suppose that's marginally more plausible. Although if you are a judge, you can monkey around on the bench, so why steal one? (Sorry your Honor, I couldn't resist.)

(original story spotted via Majikthise who has an entire blog category for Monkeys, Apes, and Prosimians … don't miss the slow loris)