Not to joke about the death of young Anand Baskanan, a Long Island transplant who came to Minnesota to work at 3M, and brought his passion for very fast racing motorcyles with him…

…to I394 this past weekend, where he apparently dumped it while racing at 100-120mph one night.  Baskanan died at the scene.  My condolences to his friends and family.

I bring it up not so much to point out that riding racing bikes on highways that have just gone through a brutal winter has about the same outlook as being an Iranian human land mine detector as to point out the immense culture clash among different types of “journalists”.

Compare the rat-a-tat just-the-facts-ma’am of Tim Harlow and Paul Walsh, two news department guys…:

A motorcyclist with a passion for fast bikes was going at least 100 miles per hour when he struck a pothole or a crack along a winter-worn stretch of a Minneapolis interstate and thrown to his death, authorities said Wednesday.

Anand “Andy” Baskaran, 30, of the Long Island community of East Northport, N.Y., hit the road hazard along eastbound Interstate 394 near Theodore Wirth Parkway about 9:50 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the State Patrol.

…with the almost-poetic account byStribdrama critic Rohan Preston, who witnessed the aftermath with is daughter on the way home from the Orpheum:

“We drove slowly by it, taking in the horror with silence. There was no one near the bike,” said Preston, who described the motorcycle as being a racing-style bike. “That bike lying on its side in the middle of the highway, the police officers walking around the scene, and all the lights flashing into a surreal blur told us all we needed to know.”

I hope if I ever buy it in a spectacular accident that the first people on the scene aren’t sports writers.