I don't know, but . . .

The first story:

"Chris David, a reporter working for Radio Paraclete, has been found dead in Gbarnga with gunshots wounds. David’s death has sparked protests from motorcyclists in Gbarnga, who are demanding the intervention of the Liberia National Police."

A follow-up story:

Ballah said as a mark of respect and protest for the death of Chris, all radio stations in the county have decided to suspend major programs for several days.

...

They further said should all of the mentioned actions fail to yield any fruitful results; they will shut down all of their radio stations because the police cannot guarantee the safety and protection of their employees.

...

Chris was said to have also been a motorcyclist who does his normal hustle when he’s off duty.

The latest update:

Prince Garlawolo, a notorious criminal in Gbarnga, Tuesday admitted to police investigators that he and the deceased Radio Paraclete journalist Chris David had gone to steal a goat on the night of October 29 on Tucker Farm before he (David) was shot in the stomach by the owner of the farm.

...

Garlawolo, who was arrested on November 2 following a manhunt, informed police that he and David had been successful in stealing goats at night and selling to a local restaurant owner in Gbarnga, Geeta Bryant.

Radio Paraclete is a Catholic radio station that began broadcasting on Pentacost 2020.

Sometimes it pays to wait for the rest of the story.

For the past few months she's been held up as an example of racial animus in Madison. She said 4 men sprayed something flamable on her through her car window and set it on fire--and she presented with genuine burns.

But the picture of her car at Gorham and State shows nobody nearby.

I was dubious from the get-go. The description of the "attack" didn't sound like something that would work unless you were not just standing next to somebody, but able to keep them from fleeing. 4 pedestrians, from the side of the road, spray bottle, though the driver's window? No.

The article includes a line "Bernstein said the attack happened at around 1 a.m., or about 20 minutes after a group of people threw a Molotov cocktail through a window of the City-County Building in the Downtown, starting a small fire." The molotov cocktail part isn't particularly relevant--the photos show her car coming down Gorham from a bit farther east, and if she'd been involved the hospital would have been easier to reach from John Nolan.

So she lied. The burns were real--and were presumably from something she didn't want to explain to people. It doesn't seem likely to have been the firebombing--and gasoline would have probably made much worse burns.

Update: If you're curious, the police records are here. Personal info, including medical, is redacted from the documents, which makes the some of the documents pretty useless to us. The police also included testimony from people who claimed to have information--one woman was told by the Holy Spirit who the culprits were and where to find them. They found some residue on her shirt consistent with lighter fluid, but no burns in the car. A quick googling turned up a possible alternative to her story.

In the post on a dice game, I didn't explain the meaning of the graphs.

A player has about a 50/50 chance of winning some points in her turn. That's in a good range--not too rare, not too often. But one attractive feature of the "losing turn" is that it isn't a one-and-done. There's a little tension: "I missed once, will I miss the second time too?" It makes the game a trifle slower, but the dramatic advantage should compensate for that. Clever.

Getting multiple points in a turn is common enough to make that something to hope for--and even getting a winning throw isn't so rare that the women wouldn't see it every few games. This also helps cultivate a little drama.

The more biased the chips are, the more likely early players are to win, but the effect isn't that dramatic for reasonable estimates of unfairness. If the chips are dramatically unfair, players will notice and quit using them. So it seems to be a pretty fair game.

The prize (some yard goods that she would give to a man in exchange for something of equal value) was something easily provided by the other women, something the man had to supply, and an exchange which emphasized the reciprocal obligations of men and women in the tribe. And--probably now and then an unmarried winner used it for signaling interest.

I'll work up some estimates for how many women can play the game before it gets too unfair. If there are 1000 women playing, the winner will appear in the first few hundred and the last ones will pretty much never get a turn. If you've only got 2 players, the odds are close to even for them both.

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UPDATE:

Actually, this is a terrible game. Below see the table for the number of women playing and the relative odds of the last woman in the group to those of the first woman in the group. If you can randomly pick who goes first, who second, and so on, you're OK, but otherwise the first players have quite an advantage.

UPDATE:

The easiest way to fix this is to skip the "first past the post" rule, and allow points to keep accumulating. The first past woman with 10 or more points marks the final round, which continues until all are done; then the woman with the highest number of points wins--with tie-breaker rounds as needed. Of course, that's a different game then, but probably similar enough.

Footage(*) of the gas line explosion was released.

No criminal culpability was found. The widow is suing the firms involved.

Followup to an Earlier note

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(*) I'm showing my age with the word "footage."

I mentioned an explosion in town here and here

The latest word is that the gas line was improperly marked. "failed to correctly mark the gas line in the street, where it was actually located, and instead marked a spot on a sidewalk about 25 feet away where there was no gas line."

That would do it. Documentation is vital.

The explosion downtown came from a gas leak that started about about 6:20. The gas wasn't completely shut off until 9:30. Why?

The first response gas fitter (presumably tasked with turning it off) was caught in the explosion. Word on the street is that he has a severe concussion and no hearing. The explosion damaged a network of pipes and required a dozen valves be shut off.

2500 attended fireman Barr's funeral. That's over 7% of the population of the town. Our next door neighbor's son is in the volunteer fire department, and was on the scene. Barr had initially asked him to walk with him over near the intersection, and then changed his mind and told him to stay by the truck while Barr went on alone.

I understand Amazon wants to make more Lord of the Rings-based movies: prequels, I gather.

If they use existing characters, even peripheral, in a prequel, the story gets cramped. If they use new ones, it is more of a "in the universe of LoTR story," but likely without an equivalent story-teller behind them. I haven't heard any enthusiasm for working from the Silmarilion.

I suspect I won’t be investing in downloads.

But... Do you remember the stir when HarperCollins announced the plan to create new Narnia novels?

I’d pretty much forgotten about that—the article above, and several like it, date to 2001. I thought I’d heard a peep or two more recently than 16 years ago, but that may have been temporal foreshortening again.

They have coloring books, and shortened versions: told for younger audiences, and this: ”Based on characters originally featured in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, The Giant Surprise is a brand new Narnia adventure story about Marshwiggles, giants, and mice for young children. Lally, a small wigglet, and her Uncle Puddleglum undertake a hair-raising rescue of their mice friends, before they become a giant’s supper.”

I wonder if HarperCollins quietly shelved the “new novels.”