Final Natalee Holloway update

Avid readers might have noticed that the stream of news from this direction has dried up somewhat. I'm sorry for those who've come to rely on brand new Natalee Holloway snippets, but there's really nothing left. Yeah, Natalee's parents hired a sub, Joran is in a mental institution, etc. But the big story is over and it didn't amount to all that much in the end. If you're into Justice, you can take comfort in the fact that Joran van der Sloot won't have much of life, at least not for the next couple of years.

I'm still annoyed that I was able to scoop all these reputable news organisations with what were essentially on the fly translations of the news and the various special reports, they couldn't get somebody to translate some of this? Maybe I misjudged the scope of this story, but at least people on the internet were interested. I just expected better of them, I guess.

I stand by my assessment of the various 'experts' and their theories, usually about Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, they acted suspiciously, but so what? The only one that admitted to anything is Joran, even though this doesn't mean he'll hang for it. It's true I don't like Dr. Phil McGraw, though I do sometimes find his show entertaining. The main reason isn't that he interferes with media circus celebrity-nonsense cases like this one or Britney Spears or the custody battle for Anna Nicole Smith's baby, for instance. It's his inability to be honest about what he's doing, i.e. turning news and psycho therapy into entertainment and why's he's doing it, it's his job, that annoys me. He should at least take some responsibility for when it goes horribly wrong. Maybe being sued by Britney's family will bring forth a kind of public apology.

After all that talk of responsibility, it's my turn to apologise for not checking out or retracting the Lorenzo van Rijn story. But in my defense, I was just reporting what everybody else was reporting. I'd love to have had the resources or contacts to call Aruba and ask somebody there, but I don't, I barely have enough time to update a few times a month. but I'm more than willing to except responsibility in this matter, I strive to be factually correct, and if I'm not, you can call me on it.

Anyway, thanks to all the people who left comments, even ones I didn't agree with, that week was just great. I'm going back to writing longish essays about whatever, and maybe follow the primaries a bit more.