i L i n d . n e t

Day 2: There’s been no response or acknowledgement from Gov. Lingle’s office to yesterday’s open letter regarding state delegations and trade missions. Perhaps it’s due to the July 4th holiday, although some who left comments yesterday doubt any reply will ever appear.

We don’t have much special planned for the 4th. No fireworks permit, as the cats wouldn’t appreciate it. A run to the recycling bins at Kaaawa School to get rid of some of our newspaper stack (those two daily newspapers mount up quickly). Meda’s got an early community association board meeting. Then I’ll do some yard work. A nap, with cats. Nothing special.

Thanks to Doug White (www.poinography.com) for the grand compliment yesterday. And give him credit for catching the info on the cost of Superferry travel, which the Advertiser follows this morning.

Did anyone else key on the story by Advertiser court reporter Ken Kobayashi tucked away inside yesterday’s Honolulu Advertiser? It described the outcome of an earlier case but, in the current context, could have been read as some sort of insider message.

A nightclub owner who was the target of an extortion scheme by the head of Aloha Stadium security and by a Ho-nolulu liquor inspector was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison yesterday in a drug case.

Let’s run through that again. The victim in a blackmail/extortion scheme was sentenced on federal charges stemming from something he was doing that created the underlying reason he was vulnerable to blackmail in the first place. Sound familiar? The state’s former administrative director hasn’t been charged with any crime, but this is a clear example of why the blackmail case in which Bob Awana was the victim can’t be assumed to be the whole story.

I’m told the Star-Bulletin is losing another veteran writer. Crystal Kua is leaving to do PR for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. It’s a loss for readers, as Kua was good at her job and will probably be quite good at this new one.

And congratulations to all the winners in SPJ Hawaii’s annual competition, although I’m not sure about the satin sheets background image on SPJ’s web page.

Just for fun, here’s a mindbender. How do you start with a standard 3 x 5 inch card and cut a hole in it that’s big enough to fit your body through? Robert Krampf shows you how to do it in one of his Science Experiment Videos. It’s pretty amazing.

These must be tough budget times for the State Judiciary. Here’s the scene that greeted me when I stopped by the circuit court building in Honolulu yesterday. For many months, perhaps it’s been a year or more, a section of the main stairs on the Restaurant Row side of the building have been closed with temporary signs and yellow tape due to concrete spalling that has exposed the rebar in several spots. Now I see that instead of fixing the problem, folks at the Judiciary have simply made the closure permanent by bolting wooden barriers to the metal railing. Inside the public document room, most of the computer terminals have “do not use” or “out of order” signs dating back months. Similar signs of disrepair can be found throughout the building, although I don’t know if it’s indicative of conditions in other parts of the system.