Ned Hibberd's Blog

You can't believe EVERYTHING you read.  Or can you?

A story about a Katy man's plans to auction the casket that for 48 years held the remains of his father, 50's entertainer The Big Bopper, hit newspapers and televisions across the country.

Nearly 50 years ago, The Big Bopper was killed in a plane crash, along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, a tragedy that became known as The Day The Music Died.

But in 2007, the Big Bopper's body was exhumed for an autopsy and to rebury it in an area where it could be accompanied by a Texas Historic Marker.

The Bopper was reburied in a new casket and his son, J.P. Richardson, loaned the old one to the Texas Musicians Museum for an exhibit.

But when asked about his permanent plans for the casket, Richardson told a reporter of an idea to auction it on eBay.

That's the notion that made headlines, inviting some criticism for Richardson.

In an exclusive interview with Fox 26 News, he says the eBay scenario was only one of several ideas he'd been kicking around.  And he was miffed by the story's backlash, which he says included people who thought he exhumed the Bopper with plans to auction the casket, from the beginning.

But he says the story's silver lining was a renewed interest in his father, one month before February 3, 2009, the 50th anniversary of the plane crash.

So...what do you think?  Would you have bid on the Big Bopper's casket?  Or is it too creepy to consider?

Ned

Every new year, there's talk of "turning over a new leaf."  So...what's YOUR new leaf?

Will you be "finding the time to exercise," like so many of us try to do in January and February (the busiest months for fitness clubs)?

Or will you be cutting back on your food intake?

Or perhaps you'll just vow to be nicer to people?  Or spend less money on frivolous things?

Those are just possibilities.  But what's your "new leaf"?

Ned

My wife has the saddest Santa Claus story.  At five years old, she was told by some older kids that Santa did not exist; it was her own parents, they claimed, who were posing as Old Saint Nick.

She decided to put their heretical views to the test.  After pretending to fall asleep that Christmas Eve, she snuck out of her room and positioned herself with an unobstructed view of the Christmas tree.

She didn't exactly see Mommy kissing Santa Claus, but she saw enough to strip away her childhood belief in Kris Kringle.  As a kindergartener, no less.

Can you remember when you learned the world-weary truth?  Was it a gradual awakening or an all-at-once revelation?  Or...do you still believe?

Ned

It's a close call, but this year the award goes to New York musician Saul Zonana.

I got hooked (belatedly) on his self-titled debut album, but since it was released in 2000 he's cranked out another half dozen (counting the Greatest Hits platter).

How to describe his music?  I hear hints of the Beatles and XTC, but Zonana has his own voice and style.  His songs hook you in, hauling you in unexpected directions, which is a prerequisite for consideration as Music Pick o' the Year.

Guitars and Zonana's ragged but versatile voice take front seat here, surrounded by harmonies that rise up at just the right moment.

I'm currently buying (and digesting) everything the guy has put out, and so far I've yet to hear a filler song.

So, congrats, Saul, for making my 2008 Music Pick o' the Year.  Sure, the economy's circling the drain, but I'll still spring for Zonana's treasure trove of albums.  Listen for yourself:

http://www.saulzonana.com/main1.htm

Ned

When it comes to holiday gift purchases, will you do the bulk of your bargain-hunting online?  Or in line?

That is, will you buy most presents on the internet or at "brick and mortar" stores?

My family has purchased a couple things off the web this year, but we still do most of our holiday shopping "up close and personal."

We are definitely watching the spending this year, as opposed to years past...

Ned

Anyone who says they haven't googled themselves either doesn't have access to the internet, or they're lying.

It's only natural to type your own name into a search engine to satisfy your curiosity about what the web has to say about you.

Some of the search results are probably harmless, some laudatory; but some may be libelous.  How do you keep the negative information from showing up when a prospective employer (or blind date) enters your name?

Mostly, you can't.  But a web service called Ziggs allows you to accentuate the positive, even if you can't eliminate the negative.

For a modest monthly fee, your Ziggs profile, which resembles an online resume, can be pushed near the top of the search results.  Presumably, this will displace some of the less flattering items, perhaps banishing them to the second or third page, where few searchers bother to roam.

What do you think about the notion of taking control of your online identity?  Should people be able to "game the system"?

Or should they be forced to let the chips fall where they may, even if that means living with a front page Google link to pics of that spring break party they'd rather forget ever happened?

Ned

I'd like to say Luke Laborde is "all amped up" about his newly converted all-electric car.

But if that's true, you'd never know it.  The San Antonio 17-year-old likes to hold his emotions close to the vest.

I interviewed Laborde and his father for a special report on tonight's Fox 26 News at 9. 

Laborde spent his summer converting a gas-powered Bradley kit car to run on an electric motor, supplied with juice by eight heavy lead-acid batteries.

He says the total cost was somewhere around $18,000 and the project required about 150 hours of labor on his part.

The car will go approximately 40 miles on a charge, which costs four bits (or maybe six) for the electricity.  That's 50-75 cents, if you didn't know "two bits" refers to a quarter!  Top speed: 55 MPH.  But the higher the speed, the lower the range.

So here are the pertinent facts: 17 year old, $18K, 150 hours, 40 miles, 75 cents.

Anyone who's seen the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car?" knows that General Motors cancelled its prototype EV1 program in 2003, saying the car was not commercially viable.  Translation: the EV1 cost too much to produce and the market for it was too small.

Now with oil having hit $140 a barrel, and citizens having realized that global warming is not something Al Gore invented, GM is trying again: the Volt should hit the American market within a couple years.

Other automakers, specifically Toyota, are also aiming at the electric market, with their initial forays in the form of plug-in hybrid vehicles (which also run on gasoline).

My question to you is this: why have automakers failed to produce an affordable all-electric car over the past two decades, when a teenager with no mechanical training managed to put one together over the summer?

Ned

That tickle in the back of your throat; you know the one I'm talking about...

 No, no, no!  I'm not referring to Saddam.

I'm referring to Sickness.  The kind that starts with that tickle, then progresses to coughing, sneezing, runny nose, pressure in the head, lethargy in the body.

Or else...it doesn't.  False alarm.

I've had the tickle the last couple days.  When this happened in October, it ended up blossoming into a cold I couldn't shake for a month, and only then after taking antibiotics.

I'm hoping for the false alarm this time.  I need a reprieve.

Come to think of it, I bet Saddam wouldn't have minded one of those.

The reprieve, that is.  Not the tickle.

Ned

The champagne was on ice at C.O. Bradford's watch party.

But the Democratic candidate for Harris County District Attorney was not destined to taste the sweet liquid on election night.

By the final hour of ballot-counting, Bradford's initial four-point lead had evaporated...leaving his opponent, Republican Pat Lykos, with a razor-thin win.

It is a win comprised of about four-thousand votes, out of a total of 1.1 million.

And it will almost surely be challenged, in a recount.

For Bradford, anyway, the champagne will have to remain on ice...until and unless a second look awards him an extra four thousand votes.

Ned

It will be an interesting race for Harris County District Attorney.  Republicans have held that office for almost 30 years.

If former Houston Police chief C.O. "Brad" Bradford wins, he would be both the first African-American ever to hold the post, and the first Democrat to win the office since the Reagan years.

If former Criminal District Judge Pat Lykos wins, she would be the first woman elected District Attorney in Harris County, but the office would remain in GOP hands.

Lykos has at least one thing working against her.  She shares a political party with the last D.A., Chuck Rosenthal, who resigned under a cloud.

The District Attorney is an important office, but it is still a down-ballot race to the presidential contest, which has drawn extremely heavy early voting.

So this race, like many others, may be decided largely by straight-ticket voting by supporters of Barack Obama and John McCain.

Ned

In the good old days, there was a single day in November on which the electorate would make its wishes known.

We still have that day in November set aside for the general election.

But Texas and other states allow early voting (previously known as "absentee balloting") which means you might well have made your choices 2 weeks ago!

I understand all the arguments for extending the voting period for the convenience of the constituency.

But my question to you is: doesn't this make Election Day obsolete?

Ned

I can't wait for the polls to close on Election Day.

Not because I'm impatient to learn who will lead our nation for the next four years.

But because when the curtains slam shut on the voting, that heralds the end of...

...the relentless stream of campaign ads, which have predictably developed an increasingly negative pitch as November 4 drew closer.

Which negative ads bother you most?

Is it the one that makes it sound like Democratic congressional candidate Michael Skelly is rubbing his hands together with glee, in anticipation of stealing your land?

Or the one that helpfully points out every segment of the produce section where the consumption tax would rise to 23% if Republican congressional candidate Pete Olson got his way?

Keep in mind, these two candidates are running in separate districts, so they're not attacking each other!

Negative ads pervade the airwaves because they work, but only up to a point.  If the claims are too outrageous, they can provoke a backlash against the candidate making them.

This is one reason why candidates must end their commercials with "I'm ____ and I approved this message."  Call it the shame tactic.  The hope is that candidates will balk at attaching their names to the most craven attack ads.

Of course, there's a workaround here.  Political parties and PACs are free to smear opponents on behalf of their candidates, who can then express some degree of deniability.

Has an attack ad ever changed your opinion on a candidate?  Has one ever convinced you to switch your vote?

Ned

For anyone who wants to follow the NTSB investigation into this month's deadly crash of Channel 13's Skyeye helicopter, the preliminary summary will soon be posted on this page:

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/AccList.asp?month=10&year=
2008

Scroll down and look under "Monday, October 13, 2008."  If it's not there yet, check back over the next few days.

Here's the NTSB probable cause summary for the crash of our own Fox 26 Skyfox helicopter in November 2000, which killed the pilot:

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20001212X2
2284&key=1

And the summary for the crash of Channel 11's helicopter in May 2001, which resulted in no fatalities:

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20010522X0
0986&key=1

There's a "Full Narrative" available on both of those, since the investigations have been completed.  Just click the link and you can delve into the details.

But beware: jargon alert!

Ned

When it comes to forensic science, there's a common misperception among civilians: that DNA testing is a fail-safe way to establish identity and connect a criminal to a crime scene.

The recent identification of the teenager pictured in this facial reconstruction illustrates the limits of genetic testing.

Forensic anthropologists at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office identified the remains of Randell Lee Harvey, a 15-year old who disappeared in 1971.

The remains were among the victims of a trio of serial killers: Dean Corll, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks.

Harvey has two living sisters, and they submitted DNA samples for comparison to the unidentified victim, whose degraded genetic material only allowed for a partial DNA profile.

So the testing showed a match between the sisters and the victim, but that match only narrowed down the possibilities, since about 8% of caucasions share that particular sequence.

In other words, the results were consistent with the theory that the sisters were related to the unidentified victim, but not conclusive.

In the end, the identification was made on the basis of genetic testing along with other evidence, both biological (Harvey's description matched the remains in several important aspects) and circumstantial (Harvey could be linked with others who were positively identified as victims, themselves).

The lesson here is that DNA testing is merely a tool in the toolbox.  It's not the whole construction company.

Ned

We reporters and photographers spend a lot of time driving all around the Houston area.  And we see a lot of things on the roads.

Even so, I had a hard time believing my eyes, a couple days ago.

My photographer, Mike Foster, and I were assigned to get the "live streaming video" traffic shots with our ComVue camera/phone for the 5pm and 5:30pm newscasts.

We were waiting in a parking lot, preparing to jump on the highway a few minutes before our shot was needed, showing traffic on the Southwest Freeway, inbound.

A green compact car pulled into the parking lot, right in front of us.  The driver got out and kicked the tires, then climbed behind the wheel and pulled out of the parking lot.

But his wide right turn onto the feeder road took him into the left lane, immediately in front of a large, fast-moving SUV, whose driver had to jump the curb completely to avoid a collision.  It was a matter of inches.

Mike and I had a front row seat for this close call, and we were marveling at the stupidity and/or inattention of the green car's driver.  We figured the guy was just an accident waiting to happen.

Soon we got the call that our live traffic shot was imminent, so we hopped on the highway and provided a live streaming picture for Ruben's "Get 'Em Home" traffic.

Not even one mile up the highway we saw flashing lights on the inbound feeder, to our right.  It was a wrecker that had just pulled up to a minutes-old crash.

There was that same green compact car with its hood crumpled like an accordian.  And in front was another driver who had just been rear-ended by the "accident waiting to happen."

It was one of those times when an offhand remark turned out to be prophetic.

Ned