The Tipper Of The Iceberg

It seems Al Gore gave an interview to the Guardian over in Britain where he's come out with the harshest criticism yet against President Bush. In it he attacked the right wing extremism Bush has brought in:

Denying that his politics have shifted to the left since he lost the court battle for the 2000 election, Mr Gore says: "If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right."

I mean, it just wouldn't do to promote censorship, right? It wouldn't do to play to the right when you thought it expedient. then play left when that didn't work out.

Not to worry, Al's got a whole new shtick!

The Greenpeace Syndrome

Coming to a theater near you, the blockbuster, must-see movie of the summer! Starring Jack Lemonhead and Hanoi Jane Hiltonhead, this thriller will have you on the edge of your seat!

Greenpeace, those wacky, fun-loving folks, went to Philadelphia to protest against an appearance by President Bush promoting nuclear power. They wanted everyone to know how deadly and dangerous the Limerick reactors (that's a nuclear facility, for those who don't know) were, so they put out a press release:

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.

The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.

You really can't make this stuff up. Lord knows, I'd like to be able to, but you just can't……. Watching Greenpeace burning it's way merrily down into the center of the earth. Someone get marshmallows!

All The News That’s Fit To Skew

USA Today has an "analysis" of polls on illegal immigration. I was going to spend some time disassembling it, but it turns out Dan Riehl at Riehl World View already did. So go over and read his dissection.

This Isn’t Good

German authorities have detained three women on suspicion that they were trying to go to Iraq to become suicide bombers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended to blow herself and her child up in Iraq.

After the Web posting were spotted, Germany's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies mounted an intense search for the three women. One of them was located in Berlin, the other two are believed to come from southern Germany. The Berlin woman's child was taken away from her and she has been put in a psychiatric clinic. The two other women were also prevented from leaving Germany. One of them is also believed to have a child.

There have been stories about this sort of thing - that Islamists were trying to recruit Europeans - for some time now. A Belgian woman did detonate herself near Baghdad last year.

Contracts Written In Blood!

No, we mean literally written in blood. A contract dispute is in court in California right now in which the plaintiff's lawyer believes extra weight should be given to the unusual contract because it is written in the defendant's own blood.

Kim's lawsuit claims that Son used his own blood to write out a promise to repay money that Kim lent him. Kim sued in Orange County Superior Court to enforce the promise.

"I've been reading contract cases for about 40 years, and I've never seen one" written in blood, said Joseph M. Perillo, a professor at Fordham University School of Law who has co-authored and edited contracts textbooks.

According to the lawsuit, Kim invested about $170,000 in Son's Korean corporation but never received the returns he was promised.

Son's attorney, Vladimir Khiterer, acknowledges his client wrote out a repayment promise in blood after the pair went to a bar in October 2004 and drank alcohol while discussing their dispute. But Khiterer said Son wrote that he would repay to "the best of my ability," and the defense has argued in court papers that the document is not a valid contract.

What is not reported here is exactly how much alcohol was consumed. We're guessing more than one beer. Anyway, Kim's lawyer wants the contract to be considered extra special because of the unusual materials involved. Now we aren't exactly contract experts around here, but doesn't enforcement of a contract written in human blood generally require special equipment? Like this maybe?

That darn coconut still bugs us, though.

Unusual Litter Problem

Police in Torrington, Connecticut would like to speak with whoever is leaving the unusual litter lying about town. They aren't exactly saying it's illegal or anything, but they sure want to talk to the person or persons leaving the severed goat heads in various places.

Last week, police found two severed goat heads, a coconut and a pentagram drawn in chalk in a driveway of a home, police Lt. Francis Balzano said.

"We're not saying this is illegal," Balzano said. "We would just like to know what it means."

They find these things several times a year apparently. We suggest it might be a good starting point to look for the rest of the goats, though.

And the coconut confuses us all the way around.

Just Call Him Bob

A Malaysian man was accused of having an affair after his wife found a text message on his cell phone from another woman. The man took great offense to this accusation and promptly thought of a way to prove he was faithful. He cut off his own penis.

The man was heard by his son shouting that he wanted to prove he was not having an affair, the New Straits Times reported.

The assertion was followed by loud screams and the man emerged from his room bleeding profusely, his 14-year-old son quoted as saying. His wife rushed him to hospital.

Doctors reattached the severed organ.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have no desire to have prove our faithfulness. So we will avoid anything that might be misconstrued. Ever.

UPDATE On Norton Antivirus Problem

A new patch has been released to fix a fatal flaw in Norton Anti-virus. It is available using Norton LiveUpdate, so you might want to run it if you use Norton. The earlier post is here.

(I still think Kaspersky is better).

Stopping The Spread Of A Destructive Insect

The Emerald Ash Borer is a tiny, bright green beetle native to Asia. It is causing widespread damage in several areas of the United States. A number of states have imposed tough rules or outright bans on bringing firewood into campgrounds as a result.

Indiana, Ohio and Michigan — where the emerald ash borer has been located — have imposed tough rules on bringing wood into parks and moving live ash trees or logs out of infested areas.

Wisconsin and South Dakota have banned out-of-state firewood outright, and other states are keeping a wary eye on the bug, which has killed nearly 20 million North American ash trees in the three infested states and southern Ontario.

The iridescent green beetle was found in Michigan in 2002. Experts say it likely hitched a ride years earlier from Asia in wooden packing crates. Campers, hunters and city dwellers heading off to cottages for weekend excursions have spread them rapidly by bringing their own firewood along for outings, experts say.

"It's almost done unconsciously when you go camping — you pack your cooler and your tent and your firewood and you head out," said Sharon Lucik, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service in Brighton, Mich.

Because the ash borer's native range is in Asia, it has no natural predators in North America. Trees can be treated annually with chemicals to combat the larvae, but that isn't an economical option for vast forest expanses, tree-lined streets and suburban yards, Lucik said.

She said the federal agency's goal is for states to keep ash borer populations confined to infested areas so the beetle will be easier to combat if an effective form of control is found.

The beetle doesn't just threaten ash trees, a wide-ranging species valued for fast growth, shade and fall foliage in the wilderness. Ash wood, strong and light in color, is used in furniture and baseball bats, generating about $200 million annually, according to the American Forest & Paper Association.

So if you're a camper maybe it's time to change your habits and not bring firewood with you at all. Because this has happened before and may well happen again. Illinois has been fighting another species of beetle for a number of years and is finally getting the upper hand. But they are now imposing firewood restrictions so they don't go through the same thing all over again.

101st Blog Of The Day

Continuing my task of trying to visit one member of the Fighting 101st each day, today I visited And Rightly So. Raven has an example of why pedophiles are such a danger to society. She's not too happy with the Dutch, either.

An Unfortunate Nickname

It seems the people who live in the capitol city of Kazakhstan, Astana, have a habit of giving buildings nicknames. Since the capitol was moved there in 1997, many new buildings have been erected using large amounts of the oil revenues they have. One building that houses the Economic Ministry is called The Dollar, a huge residential building near the river is called The Titanic and a tower with an egg on top (don't ask me, they say it represents the nation's prosperity) has been dubbed The Lollipop. The building that houses the Ministries of industry, communications and information was given the unfortunate nickname of The Cigarette Lighter because of it's shape. Why unfortunate, you ask?

Because it turned out to be rather flammable.

Flames and smoke could be seen pouring out of the top of the 38-story building which houses the ministries of industry, information and communications in the capital Astana's government quarter.

There were no official reports of injuries and there was no immediate word on the cause of the blaze. Firemen at the scene said all those inside the building had been evacuated.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev moved the capital of his Central Asian state 1,000 km (600 miles) to the north from leafy Almaty to Astana in 1997. Billions of Kazakhstan's oil revenues have been spent on new buildings.

One can't help but wishing the residents of The Titanic better luck with their nickname.

We Need THIS Kind Of Stuff In Our Congress

It would turn C-Span into the number one network in America overnight! In a totally novel new debating technique, a Taiwanese legislator signified her opposition to a bill being offered for consideration.

By eating the written proposal.

Lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) charged toward the podium and protested noisily to prevent the review of an opposition proposal seeking an end to decades-old curbs on direct air and shipping links with China.

Amid the chaos, DPP deputy Wang Shu-hui snatched the written proposal from an opposition legislator and shoved it into her mouth, television news footage showed.

Wang later spat out the document and tore it up after opposition lawmakers failed to get her to cough it up by pulling her hair.

Can you just see the ratings? It would be bigger than American Idol by far!

Oh, never mind. Too many bills in Congress these days are downright toxic.

Another Sign

Of the impending implosion of Europe. Dutch pedophiles are forming their very own political party. They want the age of consent, currently at 16 years, lowered to 12. They also want child porn legalized as well as approval for sex with animals.

The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said on its Web site it would be officially registered Wednesday, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!"

The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

"A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.

"We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighboring Belgium.

"We want to get into parliament so we have a voice. Other politicians only talk about us in a negative sense, as if we were criminals," Van den Berg told Reuters.

The Netherlands, which already has liberal policies on soft drugs, prostitution and gay marriage, was shocked by the plan.

An opinion poll published Tuesday showed that 82 percent wanted the government to do something to stop the new party, while 67 percent said promoting pedophilia should be illegal.

To the credit of most Dutch people, they are not happy about this and want it blocked. That pedophiles feel safe enough to start political parties doesn't speak well for the state of things in the Netherlands in general, though, I think.

UPDATE: Others taking a dim view of this: Moonbattery (do NOT miss the picture!), Liberty and Justice and Riehl World View.

UPDATE: And the champions of truth, justice and the American way (cough) at the ACLU just lost a biggie. The Supreme Court has decided that convicted pedophiles do not have the right to visits from children while in prison. Perhaps the ACLU would be more comfortable in the Netherlands.

This One Will Get Some People Spun Up

Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Children's Diets, writes Harriet Brown in today's New York Times. It's about sending the wrong messages by forcing a "bad food-good food" narrative. It's also about raging nanny-statism and the paving stones on the way to, well, you know.

A look at what's happening on the state level confirms this. In Arkansas, for instance, children's report cards now include their B.M.I., or body mass index, along with their grades. The governor, Mike Huckabee recently lost more than 100 pounds and is passionate about stopping the "obesity epidemic." Maryland is considering a similar standard.

Never mind that B.M.I. is only a measure of height against weight and does not take into account muscle mass, body type or other factors. (Tom Cruise has a B.M.I. of 31, which puts him in the "obese" category.)

"You're setting kids up to feel bad about how they are," says Dr. Nancy Krebs, chairwoman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Nutrition and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado.

Such efforts usually fail, making weight problems and eating disorders worse. A recent Internet discussion board among families with anorexic and bulimic children identified middle school health classes, which focus on weight, as the No. 1 trigger for their teenagers' disorders.

The food wars are being fueled by our emotionally fraught relationships with food, and by increasingly hysterical rhetoric.

We often hear, for instance, of a rising tide of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, especially in children. But the science behind such pronouncements is shaky. A study of nearly 3,000 children presented at the American Diabetes Association's 2005 conference suggested that a third of the children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with being overweight, were later found to have Type 1 diabetes, linked to genetics.

Abigail C. Saguy, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies media framing of obesity, says it's hard to know if rates are truly rising, since no nationally representative data are available.

One study of teenagers in the Cincinnati area found that the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes went from 7 per 100,000 teenagers per year in 1982 to 7.2 per 100,000 teenagers per year in 1994 — a difference that could easily be a result of better diagnostics.

"The term 'epidemic' refers to the rapid and episodic onset of infectious diseases and is associated with fear of sudden widespread death," Dr. Saguy says. In reality, she adds, new research shows no significant difference in death rates between "normal" and overweight Americans; mortality rates rise only for those with a B.M.I. exceeding 35 — only 8 percent of the country. (Links removed)

The use of junk science and feel-good notions to set public policy has always been a real issue. This is a bad way to do business, folks. Read the whole thing. Ms. Brown makes a lot of sense. (But I'll bet her inbox is already smoking from the responses she's getting!)

We’ve Got Hate Mail!

Gee, you really know you've arrived when the emails start rolling in. From deities, no less! Bob over at Confederate Yankee actually took the time to respond (he was also one of the addressees), so head on over there to read his response. Anything I wrote after that would be an anti-climax.