At Times Like This I fear For Our Civilization

This story is sickening. Grandma and Grandpa decided they really, really didn't like their son being tried for raping a child or two. So they tried to hire a hit man to do away with the witnesses.

Their own grandchildren.

TAVARES, Florida (AP) — A couple tried to hire a hit man to kill their three grandchildren and daughter-in-law to stop them from testifying against their son in his rape trial, authorities said.

The couple, ages 60 and 59, were charged with four counts each of criminal conspiracy to commit murder. They were being held without bond.

Police said the pair initially offered $100 to an undercover sheriff's deputy to kill their son's wife, their 10-year-old granddaughter, two step-grandchildren, ages 14 and 16, and the family dog.

More money was promised after the killings, said Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Christie Mysinger.

This is positively disgusting. Trying to murder children to protect a monster who raped those children?

Still against the death penalty?

101st Blog Of The Day

Today my self imposed mission to visit one member of the fighting 101st each day led me over to Webloggin, which is actually a group effort with several bloggers. They have a number of interesting posts up today including one about the publicly funded separatist school in California.

UPDATE: Found the link. The charter school in question would be this one, where people who report about the school are victims of attempted murder.

Let Me Ask An Obvious Question

What price will this reporter pay if harm comes to these three women because of the story he wrote? What conceivable possible "right to know" did the world have to this information? This is the operative line in the story, I think:

The Daily Telegraph tracked down the Haniyeh sisters, Kholidia, Laila and Sabah, to a town in southern Israel. That they live in Israel is a closely guarded secret and nowhere is it guarded more secretly than Tel Sheva, a town inhabited mainly by Israeli Bedouin on the edge of the Negev desert.

"There is no reason to speak to my wife,'' said Salameh Abu Rukayek, 53, who married Kholidia. "It is private business and you are not welcome asking questions about my wife.'' (Emphasis added)

This was a stunningly bad idea.

UPDATE: Allah worries about the exact same thing.

Snake On A Plane

No, not the much ballyhooed movie they are releasing this summer. This is for real. Well, at least the article says it is.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Monty Coles was 3,000 feet in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane's instrument panel — a 4 1/2-foot black snake.

Coles had left Charleston earlier for a leisurely flight over the West Virginia countryside last Saturday in his Piper Cherokee and was preparing to land in Gallipolis, Ohio, when the snake revealed itself.

"Nothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this," the 62-year-old Cross Lanes resident said. But the advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor immediately came to mind: "No matter what happens, fly the plane."

Coles snagged the snake and landed the plane. The funnies part of the article is his quote later in the article:

Coles said he was lucky his usual travel companions, his wife and dachshund, were not on the flight.

"If my wife had been in the plane, I wouldn't have a wife, a plane or myself," Coles said. "I don't know what might have happened if Killer had been in the plane, but it sure would have been a lot more exciting."

We can sympathize. If my wife had been on the plane there would have been a new opening in the side of the plane. For sure.

Opus Dei

Quite an interesting essay from Paul Fortunato, an English professor and member of Opus Dei in today's New York Times. He's actually glad that The Da Vinci Code came out. It gives him a chance to explain what Opus Dei is really about. Now I've said before that I hated the book. Frankly, it was badly written with childish characterizations and ludicrous conspiracy theories of history. But, as I mentioned, Fortunato is glad it came out.

AS a member of Opus Dei, I would like to thank Dan Brown and Ron Howard for "The Da Vinci Code." Why am I not outraged like so many other devout Roman Catholics? Because I think we could not have wished for a better result: critics attack the film (and, retrospectively, the book) as boring and annoying and cartoonish; and because everyone is seeing it anyway, many people who would otherwise have no interest in Opus Dei are curious, allowing us to explain what we are really about.

For the record, I do wear a spiked metal band on my leg for a couple of hours a day just like the movie's murderous Opus Dei numerary, Silas (that's always the first question). But I do not wear a robe, except at graduation ceremonies. I'm an English professor at a state university and am finishing a book titled "Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer Culture in the Writings of Oscar Wilde." So much for stereotypes.

I joined Opus Dei as a numerary, a member who has committed to celibacy and lives in an Opus Dei center, when I turned 18. My father is a supernumerary (one of the married members, who account for around 80 percent of us). He never encouraged me to join, though he and my mother taught me to pray and to love the ideas of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the order's founder, on turning work into prayer.

It's an interesting read, obviously, Opus Dei is not for everyone, certainly not for me. Nonetheless, they are not the cartoon bad guys that Dan Brown painted them as, either.

Video Virtue

Writing in today's Opinion Journal, Brian Anderson comes out in favor of video games. He makes a very persuasive case, too.

A few weeks ago, Sony and Nintendo both revealed their newest video-game systems to great fanfare, complete with slicker graphics and motion sensors. But not everyone was pleased. An increasingly noisy chorus of critics charge that the video-game industry–whose receipts now top the Hollywood box office–threatens to transform American kids into drooling zombies or out-and-out sociopaths. "We're trying to keep children away from R-rated violent movies that last 90 minutes," grumbles conservative media critic Brent Bozell, "but in too many basements and kids' bedrooms in America, children are role-playing murderers for hours on end, ad infinitum."

Raunchy, blood-soaked video games, unleashing "a silent epidemic of media desensitization," are "stealing the innocence of our children," agrees Hillary Clinton. That's why she and fellow senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh have introduced legislation to regulate the video-game industry, codifying its voluntary rating system and making it a federal crime for retailers to sell or rent inappropriate games to minors. Even the latest edition of Dr. Spock's famous guide to childrearing deems gaming a "colossal waste of time" at best, anger-stoking at worst.

The hysteria isn't surprising. New media have always met with suspicion: As The Economist editorialized a while back, a "neophobic" tendency dates from antiquity, with Plato's argument in the "Phaedrus" that the relatively newfangled medium of writing corrupted the memory-building powers of oral culture. Of course sometimes the new is bad. Yet the critics of video games are not only conjuring up a threat where none exists; they're ignoring the positive moral lessons and cognitive benefits that many of today's sophisticated games offer.

Now, I've raised two boys who video game and have been guilty of playing a few through the years myself. I'd agree that video games can end up wasting a lot of time, but it does keep one amused. Anderson offers some statistics that will surprise many critics: the percentage of racy or violent games that earn the strictest "mature" label is about 15%. Some 80% of the top-selling games earn the "E for Everybody" rating. So it's a lot less of a problem than you are being told by the media these days. Then there are the positives in many games:

The truth is, critics are often ignorant of the moral universe of video games–violent games included. Yes, the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series, in which the gamer plays a criminal on the make in the big city, is pretty amoral. But most violent games put the player in a familiar hero's role, notes Judge Richard Posner in a 2001 Seventh Circuit appeals-court decision overturning an Indianapolis anti-video-game ordinance. "Self-defense, protection of others, dread of the 'undead,' fighting against overwhelming odds–these are the age-old themes of literature, and ones particularly appealing to the young," Mr. Posner observes.

Nonviolent games like The Sims franchise, an open-ended computer simulation of suburban life likened by visionary creator Will Wright to a "digital dollhouse," teach players bourgeois virtues. Blogger Glenn Reynolds, who devotes a chapter to gaming in his recent book on technology and society, "An Army of Davids," overheard his young daughter chatting with a friend about The Sims (a favorite among female gamers). "You have to have a job to buy food and things, and if you don't go to work, you get fired," she said matter-of-factly. "And if you spend all your money buying stuff, you have to make more." Thanks to The Sims, Mr. Reynolds says, his daughter now knows how to budget and how to read an income statement. In SimWorld, he notes, "narcissism, hedonism and impulsiveness are punished" and "traditional middle-class virtues, like thrift and planning, generally pay off."

Video games can also exercise the brain in remarkable ways. I recently spent (too) many late-night hours working my way through X-Men: Legends II: The Rise of Apocalypse, a game I ostensibly bought for my kids. Figuring out how to deploy a particular grouping of heroes (each of whom has special powers and weaknesses); using trial and error and hunches to learn the game's rules and solve its puzzles; weighing short-term and long-term goals–the experience was mentally exhausting and, when my team finally beat the Apocalypse, exhilarating.

And surprisingly, the more constructive games if you will, hold the attention of the player much longer. That's something I've observed over and over again in my boys. On fact Anderson mentions though got me thinking; notice how there is a lot of screaming from the left about repression and how they're being silenced? Then why is it that the ones who routinely call for government censorship are always Democrats? Notice who was calling for regulation in the article.

Oh Good, We Didn’t Have Enough To Worry About

Charming little essay in the New York Times today about what caused rioting in the 1870's. Apparently a good economy did it.

LAST month saw one of the sharpest drops in consumer confidence since the recessions of 1979-1982. But those were truly dreadful times. Oil prices tripled, rates on home mortgages shot into the mid-teens, the stock market was a disaster area and unemployment rates reached double digits.

Over the past three years, by contrast, American economic performance has been almost glittering. Inflation is still low, while employment and productivity have all been rising strongly. True, stock markets are clearly nervous, and the sharp upsurge in gas prices is adding to consumer skittishness. But the reaction still seems inconsistent with the economy's underlying strengths.

There are parallels with another historical period, however, that suggest the deeper currents of uneasiness.

Pan the camera back to Pittsburgh, July 1877. The Pennsylvania Railroad yard, stretching along the city's riverfront, is a raging inferno, set afire by angry mobs of railroad workers. A contingent of state militiamen, trapped in a burning railroad roundhouse, fight their way through the flames with a Gatling gun.

Over the next few weeks riots rage throughout the country. In Chicago, newspaper headlines declare that "howling mobs" control the city. In New York, The Sun demands a "diet of lead" for rioters. Unrest in San Francisco explodes into a vicious anti-Chinese pogrom. The same period marks the glory years of the rural Granger movement and the Roman-candle growth of the Knights of Labor. American Populism puts down permanent roots.

Historians long attributed the turmoil to a "great depression of the 1870's." But recent detailed reconstructions of 19th-century data by economic historians show that there was no 1870's depression: aside from a short recession in 1873, in fact, the decade saw possibly the fastest sustained growth in American history.

Employment grew strongly, faster than the rate of immigration; consumption of food and other goods rose across the board. On a per capita basis, almost all output measures were up spectacularly. By the end of the decade, people were better housed, better clothed and lived on bigger farms. Department stores were popping up even in medium-sized cities. America was transforming into the world's first mass consumer society.

But why did people feel so miserable? Partly they were confused by prices, which were dropping sharply. Farmers thought falling grain prices meant they were getting poorer, without noticing that the price of everything else was falling too. Farmers' terms of trade — the price differences between what they sold and what they bought — actually racked up solid gains in the 1870's.

Gee, I feel much better about the economic reporting now. Don't you?

You Can’t Even Have A Good Bar Fight In Glasgow

Well, if the Glasgow city licensing board has it's way, you won't. Because there were 59 fights in Glasgow pubs involving glass, the licensing board has decreed that all glass is banned from pubs. The pub owners are fighting the new regulations.

A legal challenge has been raised against plans to for a total ban on glasses in Glasgow's pubs and clubs.

The Scottish Beer and Pub Association (SBPA) has lodged papers at the Court of Session opposing the enforced use of toughened or plastic glasses.

The licensing board agreed on the ban, which will be rolled out in January, to reduce injuries from violence.

Glass was banned in pubs and clubs with late night entertainment licences earlier this year.

The SBPA said the ban was a "disproportionate response".

Chief executive Patrick Browne said a judicial review was being sought as it believed Glasgow's Licensing Board was acting outside its powers.

"We argued against the board's blanket ban on the use of glass which we believed could not be justified in terms of cost or risk and was a totally disproportionate response to the issue," he said.

The nanny state has taken over completely. How about this: prosecute thugs who use glass in a fight instead.

Naw, not intrusive enough. They'll never go for it.

I Suspect You Won’t, Either

"I'd rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith," Dixie Chick Martie Maguire told Time. We don't want those kinds of fans."

I rather suspect you'll get your wish on that one, Martie. Nice way to alienate your employers. The new Dixie Chicks album is not selling as well as their last one. Sales are off by close to 30%.

New Technology, Old Book

Here's an interesting science story. New imaging techniques are helping recover additional information from the oldest known book (actually a scroll) ever found.

ATHENS, Greece - The burnt remains of a 2,400-year-old scroll buried with an ancient Greek nobleman may help unlock the secrets of early monotheistic religion — using new digital technology.

A team of U.S., British and Greek experts is working on a new reading of the enigmatic Derveni papyrus, a philosophical treatise on ancient faith that is Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.

More than four decades after the papyrus was found in a grave in northern Greece, researchers said Thursday they are close to uncovering new text from the blackened fragments left after the scroll was burned on its owner's funeral pyre.

Large sections of the mid-4th century B.C. document — a philosophical treatise on religion written in ancient Greek — were read by scholars years ago.

But now, archaeologist Polyxeni Veleni believes U.S. imaging and scanning techniques used to decipher the Judas Gospel — which portrays Judas not as a sinister betrayer but as Jesus' confidant — will considerably expand and clarify that text.

"I believe some 10-20 percent of new text will be added, which however will be of crucial importance," said Veleni, director of the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum, where the manuscript is kept.

"This will fill in many gaps. We will get a better understanding of the sequence and the existing text will become more complete," Veleni told The Associated Press.

The scroll, originally several yards of papyrus rolled around two wooden runners, was found in 1962. It dates to around 340 B.C., during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.

"It is the oldest surviving book, if you can use that word for a scroll, in Western tradition," Veleni said. "This was a unique find, of exceptional importance."

Hanson On Europe

Victor Davis Hanson writes on Europe. The assessment is bleak. It's all about good intentions - and what those pave.

But instead of utopia, unintended consequences ensued. Unemployment soared. Dismal economic growth, shrinking populations and a scarier world outside their borders followed.

Abroad, even the much-heralded "soft power" of a disarmed Europe could only bring attention to, not stop, the killing in Darfur. Meanwhile, China and India are no longer inefficient socialists but breakneck capitalist competitors. Indeed, they have thrown down the gauntlet to the Europeans: "Beware! Workers of the world who labor harder, longer and smarter deserve the greater material rewards!" In this new heartless global arena, apparently few will abide by the niceties of the European Union.

Publicly, Europe's frustrations are fobbed off on "crass Americans" - and particularly George Bush. The Iraq war has poisoned the alliance, the Europeans insist. They contend that America's greedy consumers warm the planet, siphon off its oil and trample foreign cultures.

But in private, some Europeans will confess that the problem lies with Europeans, not us. Some brave soul soon is going to have to inform the European public: Work much harder and longer for less money; defend the continent on your own; move out of mama's house and start changing diapers - and from now on expect far less from the state.

Who knows what the reaction will be to that splash of cold water? In response, what European populist will soon appear on the streets in Rome, Berlin or Madrid once again to deceive the public that it was someone else who caused these disappointments?

We in America should take note of the looming end of this once seemingly endless summer. We've been there, done that with this beloved continent all too many times before.

Read the whole thing.

The Aliens Are Already Here

But fear not, the ducks will save us all!

CORDELIA, Calif. - The International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia plans to raise funds with an unusual duck X-ray. The bird came in with a broken wing, but when Marie Travers, assistant manager of the center, radiographed the duck, she was stunned to see a very clear image of what appeared to be the face, or head, of an extraterrestrial alien in the bird's stomach.

"Marie looked at it and all she could say was 'unbelievable,'" said Karen Benzel, public affairs director for the rescue center, which has been rescuing sick and injured birds for more than three decades.

Unfortunately, the duck died quickly and quietly of its injuries.

We're guessing aliens aren't good eating.

Meanwhile, in a weirdly related story, goslings and baby chickens invaded a school in Fort Kent, Maine. Well, strictly speaking the minor fowl had no choice in the matter as it was really the fault of some foul minors. Or the minor fowl produced major fouling. Or something like that.

The six boys ordered 10 goslings and 45 chicks from an Indiana company and then set them loose in Community High School early Thursday morning, school officials said.

The pranksters put the birds in the school gym, in classrooms, in lockers, in offices and into a drawer of a teacher's desk, said Principal Tim Doak. But the animals left their mark on floors, chairs and tables, forcing administrators to cancel school Thursday and Friday to clean up the mess.

The school will expect full restitution for cleanup costs, which are expected to run into the thousands of dollars, said Sandra Bernstein, superintendent of School Administrative District 27. The canceled days will be added to the end of the school year.

"It's comical when you start thinking of chickens in your school, but it's just another chapter in the book of school administration," Doak said.

A teacher discovered the intruders before 6 a.m. after entering the building and hearing the birds running around the hallways, Bernstein said. When students arrived, they were taken to the school gym, which had been sterilized, before being sent home.

A crew of about 10 was enlisted to clean and disinfect all surfaces where the birds left a mess — about 70 percent of the school. The birds pose a public safety hazard because of salmonella bacteria, Bernstein said.

It's been a busy day in the wonderful world of birds, hasn't it?

Brits Raid Suspected Bomb Factory

British authorities conducted a raid on a home where they suspect a chemical bomb of some sort was being constructed.

A man has been shot by police in an anti-terror raid in London on a suspected chemical bomb factory, Sky News has learnt.

The 20-year-old, who has not been identified, was shot in the shoulder and was arrested in hospital - his life is not in danger.

His 23-year-old brother - both men are of thought to be of Bengali or Pakistani origin - was also arrested at the scene and is in custody.

This morning's raid involved 250 police officers and both men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.

Police sources told Sky's Crime correspondent Martin Brunt detectives expect to find a chemical bomb of some kind in the house in Lansdown Road, Forest Gate, east London. They were allegedly being primed for a suspected bomb plot against the UK.

Police at the scene of the raid He said: "These brothers were being watched for many weeks if not months. There is no suggestion anything was imminent but clearly the suspicion was people at the house were involved in the planning to target the house.

"Police are not expecting to find conventional weapons. They are looking to find chemical ingredients of some kind."

UPDATE: Allah Reports it just got a LOT worse. A chemical suicide vest and the police cannot find it.

Twisting The News

Job growth "stalls" with only 75,000 new jobs created.

Only?

Lowest unemployment in more than five years and it's reported as "only" 75,000 jobs.

This is absolutely absurd reporting.

UPDATE: Don Surber agrees and has some comparative quotes to back it up. The Sundries Shack as well. A Blog For All has a high opinion of the coverage. The lefties are all hyperventilating, though. It's that numbers thing they can't actually grasp.

That’s A Big Hole

Scientists have discovered an enormous crater under the ice in Antarctica. Believed to be related to the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the crater may have been formed by an object as large as 30 miles across.

The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed Australia northward, the researchers said.

"This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.

How they found it

The crater is about 300 miles wide. It was found by looking at differences in density that show up in gravity measurements taken with NASA's GRACE satellites. Researchers spotted a mass concentration, which they call a mascon—dense stuff that welled up from the mantle, likely in an impact.

"If I saw this same mascon signal on the Moon, I'd expect to see a crater around it," Frese said. (The Moon, with no atmosphere, retains a record of ancient impacts in the visible craters there.)

So Frese and colleagues overlaid data from airborne radar images that showed a 300-mile wide sub-surface, circular ridge. The mascon fit neatly inside the circle.

"And when we looked at the ice-probing airborne radar, there it was," he said today.

300 miles across. That must have been some lightshow.