Saddam on trial

Omar over at Iraq the Model gives a uniquely Iraqi view on Saddam’s trail today.

If anyone still doubts this monster needed to be removed, read Omar’s words.

Another Voice on the port deal

Odysseus is the nom de blog of someone I first met over on Cathy Seipp’s blog. He’s got a pretty darn sharp entry on the port deal that’s generating so much smoke in the blogosphere right now.

I enjoy Odysseus’ milblog and am blogrolling him over on the sidebar.

We have a trifecta

First there was the story about stolen beer, then the truck full of whiskey that burned.

Finally, here’s a story about a small distillery that is planning to produce 184 proof whiskey. That’s 92% pure alcohol. The whiskey will be distilled four times, and they plan on producing about 5,000 bottles of the stuff.

If all 5,000 bottles of that stuff caught fire, the small distillery will beat the NASA probe to Pluto……

Why is it these weird stories tend to run in groups of three?

The world of Art

Is rather completely divorced from the world of sanity these days….

A Dutch “artist” has put hairstyles on cars. That’s right, he put hairdos on cars and is displaying them as art. One of the cars sports a mullet. A bright orange mullet.

Now, I can’t under any circumstances think of the words mullet and art coexisting in the same context. But maybe that’s just me.

And this is even worse

It must be booze related news day today.

A shipment of Scotch whiskey burned up, causing a loss of $240,000. That’s a lot of whiskey….

Apparently, a tire on the truck burst, causing the resulting damage.

Having been behind 18-wheelers when one of the tires caught fire and burst, it’s a wonder there aren’t more stories like this.

Now THIS is serious

Someone made off with $26,000 worth of beer. A semi-trailer load of the stuff was stolen from a trucking company. This could be a crisis! Prices could skyrocket as the shortage is felt!

Be on the lookout for the thieves, who will likely be making frequent stops to use the rest room…..

Those who forget history

I read an article like this and I frankly wonder what in heck they are teaching in schools these days. It certainly isn’t history.

The article implies that it is some kind of revelation that gladiators had a strict code of conduct. Although the forensic proof is interesting, it only confirms what was already well known and documented. But one would have to have actually read and understood some history to be aware of facts, I guess.

The real tour-de-force of ignorance in this article is the caption of the picture. It describes the individuals shown as being dressed as gladiators.

They are dressed as Roman Legionaries.

When Political Correctness takes over…

Newspapers call a terrorist a “radical environmental activist“.

A man who bills himself as a member of the Earth Liberation Front has been indicted for demonstrating how to build a firebomb. The speech he was giving occurred only a short time after an apartment complex under construction was firebombed. This guy is also an ex-con who spent four years in prison for firebombing an animal testing facility.

It is only a matter of time until the Earth Liberation Front kills people. Terrorists always escalate things.

The media has got to start calling people like this for what they really are and stop legitimizing them as “activists”.

Voodoo

This is a perfect example with what’s wrong with academia today.

A college president in Canada has banned WiFi from the campus because he’s afraid of the effects of electromagnetic radiation.

“Some studies have indicated that there are links to carcinogenetic
occurrences in animals, including humans, that are related to energy fields
associated with wireless hotspots, whether those hotspots are transmissions
lines, whether they’re outlets, plasma screens, or microwave ovens that
leak.”

Those “studies” were widely discredited. They were exceptionally badly done epidemiological studies and results could not be replicated. Doesn’t matter to this guy though. Because it’s all voodoo science, all the time. (One wonders from this guy’s resume if he was involved in the discredited research).

For those who bother to remember such things, the electromagnetic radiation hype was the big scare tactic before the recent global warming meme. But it was too easily debunked.

I spent my entire career around extremely high EMF and suffered no ill effects. Other than the need to blog.

Oh, and I don’t need a nightlight anymore……

Update: Well, it seems that some people are still actively flogging this horse (or were a few years ago), which I didn’t realize. I found this link on the EPA website. If you can wade through it, you have a very strong case of masochism. The highlight, a slight majority of the participants voted that there was some very limited support for the idea that EMF might, possibly, maybe could cause a slight increase in cancers in children. All of the other findings were rejected.

Dubai port deal

I try not to jump right away on a lot of stories. Partially, this is mistrust of a lot of the sources these days, partly it’s some kind of sixth sense that something is wrong with the story I’m hearing. I can’t really explain what triggers this, but it does happen.

So, that’s the long version on why I haven’t posted on the takeover of the P&O company by a company based in Dubai.

Rather than rehash what a lot of other people have started to realize - that this may very well be a political spin meme - I send anyone interested over to Mike’s America for his take on it.

I’m not really happy with the way the Administration handled this one, they could have really stuffed Schumer and company if they had done this right.

Nigeria update

Well, this is not a good sign of things to come. The President of the Christian Association of Nigeria has issued a pretty strongly worded warning to the Muslim extremists that violence is not the exclusively reserved for their use alone.

There may be a full blown religious war brewing. The West must start paying attention to this situation.

Meanwhile, our MSM boldly hides.

Batcave discovered!!

Batman’s secret lair, the Batcave has been discovered!

Ok, not really, but they have found a cavern large enough for two helicopters to fly into. They can land next to the massive waterfall.

Be careful though. They also discovered poison frogs there.

Today’s Criminal Mastermind

A guy gets himself pulled over by the police for driving erratically. He identifies himself as Robert Carmer.

The police were somewhat suspicious, though, It seems he had the name “Cecil” tattooed on the back of his neck.

Cecil was booked on several charges including having a methamphetamine lab in his car…..

Note to would be criminals. Police pay attention to identifying marks like tattoos. It is particularly dumb to tattoo your name on the back of your neck. Besides, it looks like your Mom put a label on you like she did on your underwear before you went to camp.

And on a related note

Somehow, this sort of thing keeps happening. Weird stories seem to come in groups.

Close on the heels of the previous post about San Francisco experimenting with turning dog feces into electricity comes this item:

A 7-year old girl in India has ritually married a stray dog in a ceremony designed to ward off the evil eye. They say she will be able to marry a man in the normal fashion later on.

Frankly, I don’t believe the “evil eye” story. I think they heard about the San Francisco program and decided to begin cornering the Indian Market in dog feces futures. There will likely be a brisk trade in those in coming years as the program takes off. They are positioning the family to be the Standard Oil of dog poo.

Go ahead, poo-poo my theory.

Novel recycling program

San Francisco is planning to begin testing a program to turn animal waste into electricity. Apparently, they determined that 4% of all waste going to landfills were animal feces. (Did someone count? Man, who drew that short straw?) So they will be collecting the waste and diverting it to a methane digester. The methane will be used to generate electricity.

Personally, I want full credit for coming up with the perfect name for this program:

Crap for Kilowatts!

Saudi Arabia, eat your heart out!