Blue Crab Boulevard

Bjoern Noerregaard has taken it upon himself to "genetically alter" the world famous statue of The Little Mermaid that has graced Copenhagen for many years. The new statue is placed not far from the wistful statue that is so very famous.

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Denmark's national symbol, the Little Mermaid sculpture perched on a rock overlooking the Copenhagen port, was given a "genetically modified" little sister, thanks to a Danish sculptor.

It's not a copy, but a very different-looking sister, but just as attractive and who will, I hope, attract many tourists," sculptor Bjoern Noerregaard told AFP.

The new Little Mermaid does not resemble her angelic older sister. The new, futuristic version looks like a science-fiction figure touched up by Picasso or Dali.

Just a short distance from her older sister, the new mermaid sits near the banks of the Langelinie Pier, welcoming cruise ships approaching the Danish capital.

According to her creator "there is room for two mermaids: the romantic Little Mermaid from the beginning of the last century, and the Little Mermaid of modern times, where genetic technology leads us inexorably to apocalypse".

Aren't modern artists interesting people? So we have the beautiful sculpture that honors Hans Christian Andersen and is the very symbol of Denmark. An icon, if you will.

Then we have a "genetically altered" alternative. We report, you go figure it out for yourself. (Because I won't post the picture here).

Click HERE for the other statue (click the top left thumbnail)

With New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez suddenly sliding in the polls due to revelations that he is under Federal investigation, speculation has been running high that the New Jersey Democrats may actually try to pull off another 'Lautenberg' and pull a last minute switcheroo. Substituting a recycled politician for one who is in criminal trouble may become a way of life in New Jersey. Republicans in the state legislature are trying to block that from happening, though.

Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) and Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce (R-Morris) yesterday called on Gov. Jon Corzine and Democratic legislators to act quickly to strengthen a law preventing a political party from switching candidates within 48 days of Election Day.

….

Next Wednesday will be the 48th day before Election Day, Nov. 7, the date set by current law for replacing a candidate who was nominated in a primary. In 2002, the state Supreme Court allowed the Democrats to replace then-Sen. Robert Torricelli with Frank Lautenberg although the deadline had passed, ruling that the law did not prohibit it. Lautenberg went on to defeat Republican Doug Forrester.

Lance's bill (S1186) seeks to block that from happening again by making clear "the Legislature's intent" that only in the case of a candidate's death can a substitution be made less than 48 days before the election.

….

The Democratic-controlled upper house would have to approve removing the measure from the State Government Committee — where it has been stalled since 2004 — something unlikely to happen.

"This is an academic exercise and an irrelevant political stunt that is moot in the context of this election," said Anthony Coley, a Corzine spokesman. "Bob Menendez was the governor's choice to replace him in the Senate in January. He is the governor's choice today, and he will remain the governor's choice through Election Day."

"Quite frankly, I think this effort is unnecessary," Codey said in a statement. "We should not be changing election law on a political whim."

Which eerily echoes the way the party supported Robert Torricelli right up to the time they threw him under the bus in the first 'Lautenberg'. Well, they can deny it all they want, but we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have discovered the TRUTH™ of the matter. Our skilled operatives from the Magic 8-Ball Private Eye Service and Haberdashery, Inc. managed to sneak into a secret meeting of the Democratic party higher-ups disguised as a large potted fern. He overheard the actually conversation when the inner circle of the party decided on who they would nominate after they threw Menendez to the wolves. They had to really reach way back to find a clean enough candidate with enough name recognition this time, though. We even have a picture of the candidate!

Yes, that's right. The New Jersey state Democratic party will nominate Grover Cleveland to take the place of the soon to depart Robert Menendez. Our operative overheard one official object, "But he's DEAD!" To which the head of the committee replied, "That doesn't stop people here from voting, why should it stop him from holding office?"

You heard it here first.

Wretchard from the Belmont Club remembers Oriana Fallaci.

The darkness came and yet the darkness claimed her not.

Hedgehogs are ONLY to be used for playing croquet and ONLY when using a flamingo for a mallet. Have these people never read Lewis Carroll? Have they never seen Disney? Well, ok, it is Serbia, so maybe they have not had a chance. But we do draw the line at using hedgehogs as a cure-all for premature ejaculation.

The Beachhutman has all the *shudder* details.

The Associated Press gives us what is presumed to be a story that will jerk at our heartstrings about a small town in Georgia that is suffering from a "massive" crackdown on illegal immigration. The problem is that, in trying to play on the emotions of readers, they actually reveal some things that should make the average reader angry.

STILLMORE, Ga. - Trailer parks lie abandoned. The poultry plant is scrambling to replace more than half its workforce. Business has dried up at stores where Mexican laborers once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes just weeks ago.

This Georgia community of about 1,000 people has become little more than a ghost town since Sept. 1, when federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants.

….

At least one child, born a U.S. citizen, was left behind by his Mexican parents: 2-year-old Victor Perez-Lopez. The toddler's mother, Rosa Lopez, left her son with Julie Rodas when the raids began and fled the state. The boy's father was deported to Mexico.

"When his momma brought this baby here and left him, tears rolled down her face and mine too," Rodas said. "She said, `Julie, will you please take care of my son because I have no money, no way of paying rent?'"

For five years, Rodas has made a living watching the children of workers at the Crider Inc. poultry plant, where the vast majority of employees were Mexican immigrants. She learned Spanish, and considered many immigrants among her closest friends. She threw parties for their children's birthdays and baptisms.

The only child in Rodas' care now, besides her own son, is Victor. Her customers have disappeared.

…..

Federal agents also swarmed into a trailer park operated by David Robinson. Illegal immigrants were handcuffed and taken away. Almost none have returned. Robinson bought an American flag and posted it by the pond out front — upside down, in protest.

"These people might not have American rights, but they've damn sure got human rights," Robinson said. "There ain't no reason to treat them like animals."

….

Other than the Crider plant, there isn't much in Stillmore. Four small stores, a coin laundry and a Baptist church share downtown with City Hall, the fire department and a post office. "We're poor but proud," Mayor Marilyn Slater said, as if that is the town motto.

The 2000 Census put Stillmore's population at 730, but Slater said uncounted immigrants probably made it more than 1,000. Not anymore, with so many homes abandoned and the streets practically empty.

"This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up," Slater said.

….

The B&S convenience store, owned by Keith and Regan Slater, the mayor's son and grandson, has lost about 80 percent of its business.

"These people come over here to make a better way of life, not to blow us up," complained Keith Slater, who keeps a portrait of Ronald Reagan on the wall. "I'm a die-hard Republican, but I think we missed the boat with this one."

….

The poultry plant has limped along with half its normal workforce. Crider increased its starting wages by $1 an hour to help recruit new workers.

Stacie Bell, 23, started work canning chicken at Crider a week ago. She said the pay, $7.75 an hour, led her to leave her $5.60-an-hour job as a Wal-Mart cashier in nearby Statesboro. Still, Bell said she felt bad about the raids.

"If they knew eventually that they were going to have to do that, they should have never let them come over here," she said.

Do you see a pattern here? Who is complaining about the raids? People who were making money off the illegals. And as soon as the illegals were gone, the wages went up at the plant by about 13% overnight. And workers are leaving Wal-Mart jobs to take them.

So tell me again why a flood of illegal immigrants is good for the country? Since the Democrats have decided that a Jihad against Wal-Mart is the best strategy to win the White House, here's their golden opportunity. All they have to do is crack down on illegals. Both problems solved at once.

Oh, And by the way, now Stillmore, Georgia can start expanding their population and increasing their business with legal workers who come to take the higher paying jobs. They will, you know.

The World Health Organization has approved the indoor residual spraying of the long banned pesticide DDT in an effort to avert one million deaths each year from malaria. This is, I think, long, long overdue.

"One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying," said Dr. Arata Kochi, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) malaria department. "Of the dozen pesticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT."

For about $5 per house, indoor spraying with DDT is a cost-effective response to malaria, which kills about a million people annually, most of them children under five.

In parts of Africa and Asia where malaria-carrying mosquitoes spread the disease, 85 percent of home dwellers approached by health workers allow their houses to be sprayed, global health officials said at a news conference.

DDT came into common use in the 1930s as an agricultural insecticide. It became notorious after biologist and ecologist Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" exposed how DDT entered the food chain, killing wildlife and threatening humans.

This is not the widespread outdoor use that the chemical used to have. This is a very limited, indoor only campaign.

Richard Tren, director of the group Africa Fighting Malaria, stressed the difference between agricultural DDT sprayed outdoors and the residual spraying meant to act like a giant mosquito net over individual houses.

"The environmental impact associated with spraying insecticides — whether it's DDT or other insecticides — indoors is minimal, it's negligible … This is as unrelated to 'Silent Spring' as anything," Tren said. "The science is very clear that there are no harmful human effects."

Tren said environmental groups in Africa support its use.

Finally, even the Sierra Club has reluctantly embraced the use of this pesticide. It only took around 30 million deaths plus to reach this point.

With the opening of the massive new solar panels on the International Space Station, observers on earth should be able to see it quite clearly at night. It may, in fact be as bright as Venus, currently the brightest object that can be seen from Earth.

Astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) unfurled a new pair of solar energy panels that sprout out of the end of a new 17.5-ton truss section, which was brought up by the space shuttle Atlantis. They are the largest solar panels ever taken to space; fully unfolded, they reach a length of 240 feet (73 meters). They are designed to double the ISS's capability to generate power from sunlight when they go online during a future shuttle mission.

The panels are made of layers of thin gold Mylar plastic, which are highly reflective

Like other satellites, the ISS shines by virtue of sunlight reflected off of its metallic skin. The station orbits approximately 213 miles (341 kilometers) above Earth.

How bright?

Before the ISS spread its new pair of gold wings, it was already the brightest of all space vehicles, at times appearing to shine with a brilliance equal to the planet Jupiter.  Now skywatchers should notice the orbiting outpost glowing with an even greater luster. 

Nobody knows exactly how much brighter it will be, but there's a good chance that it could be brighter than magnitude -3, approaching the glow of Venus, the brightest planet.  On this astronomers scale, smaller numbers denote brighter objects, and negative numbers are reserved for the handful of the very brightest.

As I have mentioned before, to find out when the best viewing times in your area are, you can look at NASA's tracking page or a website called Heavens Above. The latter requires registration.

Dana Milbank, writing in the Washington Post, explains the latest new, new, really super new, yup it's new direction the Democrats have wandered off in this time. I've long since lost count of the newest of new directions, but Milbank provides a handy-dandy guide.

"I hope you all received 'A New Direction for America,' " she said, standing at a lectern that bore the same slogan. She called the manifesto "a compilation of many of the initiatives taken by our House Democratic Caucus that encompasses our new direction for all Americans."

It was a handsome booklet, full of homey photographs and popular proposals, but there was a problem. Democrats have had more "New Directions" recently than MapQuest.

Among the party's campaign slogans this year: "Culture of Corruption," "Culture of Cronyism," "Do-Nothing Congress," "Rubber-Stamp Congress," "Together, We Can Do Better," "Together, America Can Do Better" and, most recently, "Six for '06."

For those keeping score at home, Democrats arrived at "New Direction" yesterday by downgrading one of the "Six for '06" issues (health care) and upgrading three others (honesty, civility and fiscal discipline), for a total of eight items on the contents page.

By contrast, Republicans have settled on a single, unofficial slogan, which essentially says: Vote Democrat and Die. And in politics, scary and scurrilous usually trumps elaborate and earnest — something Pelosi has experienced firsthand in recent days.

I think that's a bit hyperbolic on the Republican slogan, but let that pass. The fact is that Pelosi cannot seem to settle on one thing. It has been almost painful watching the complete lack of focus. They settle on issues that have a really good chance on coming back to bite them (culture of corruption for example), then are surprised when it happens. They issue their six points then suddenly drop one, add three and meander off in that direction.

As I have been noting in the past few days, there are signs of nervousness coming from some Democrats. Now you can understand why that is.

UPDATE: KT Cat's comment deserves to be up here on the main page:

“Our polling says that Americans want change. Therefore, we are changing our slogans and plans on a regular basis. We Democrats are giving this country what it wants.” - Nancy Pelosi.

Er, or maybe just me writing something Nancy Pelosi might say if she said something like that.

I'm sorry to have to tell Tom Maguire this, but she tops his comment. (Although he gets high marks in both cheap and sophmoric, which is what he was going for!) Brothers Judd says the Dems are just out of gas.

The game the Cubans are playing of "will he or won't he?" continues unabated. Raul Castro showed up to assume the leadership of the Non Aligned Movement, but Cuban authorities still won't rule out Fidel appearing at the final dinner.

After acknowledging his brother's illness, Raul Castro launched a stream of anti-American rhetoric in his inaugural speech, saying the world today is shaped by the United States' "irrational pretentions for world dominance."

"When there no longer is a Cold War, the United States spends $1 billion a year in weapons and soldiers and it squanders a similar amount in commercial publicity," he said. "To think that a social and economic order that has proven unsustainable could be maintained by force is simply an absurd idea."

Raul Castro earlier accepted Cuba's three-year chairmanship of the Nonaligned Movement to a round of applause by leaders from two-thirds of the world's nations, saying "Comrade Fidel has asked that I transmit to you his most cordial greetings."

But while Castro is under doctors' orders not to preside at the summit, the iconic leader could make an appearance, Cuba's foreign minister told the assembly.

"Despite the rigor and will with which he pursues his treatment and physical therapy, the doctors have insisted that he continue to rest," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said. "His health improves continually and his convalescence is satisfactory."

Many are wondering whether the 80-year-old Castro, a living symbol of revolution for many in the developing world, will be able to guide the group formed during the Cold War in its search for relevance in this era of globalization.

Still waiting on any announcement from Air America as well.

Popular Mechanics has an interesting little debate between Patrick Moore, environmental apostate, and Anna Aurilio, US PIRG luddite. Why those terms? Moore is a founder of Greenpeace who is now vocally in favor of nuclear power. Aurilio represents US PIRG and its unyielding anti-nuclear stance. Neither really presents any new arguments, but the debate does provide a primer on the two major schools of thought regarding nuclear power.

Nuclear energy is safe. In 1979, a partial reactor core meltdown at Three Mile Island frightened the country. At the time, no one noticed Three Mile Island was a success story; the concrete containment structure prevented radiation from escaping into the environment. There was no injury or death among the public or nuclear workers. This was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States. Today, 103 nuclear reactors quietly deliver 20 percent of America's electricity.

Spent nuclear fuel is not waste. Recycling spent fuel, which still contains 95 percent of its original energy, will greatly reduce the need for treatment and disposal.

Nuclear power plants are not vulnerable to terrorist attack. The five-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects contents from the outside as well as the inside. Even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode.

….

In a post-9/11 world, nuclear facilities will always be a tempting target for terrorists, and government studies have highlighted the weaknesses in our current safeguards.

Even without attackers, the danger of an accident is ever-present. The Davis-Besse plant in Ohio narrowly avoided a disaster in 2002 when inspectors found a hole that had corroded almost all the way through a pressure vessel, leaving just 3/16 of an inch of steel preventing the release of radioactive steam. Instead of clamping down, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seems more intent on loosening safety rules to help aging plants keep operating for longer.

And when plants are operating perfectly, they're still producing high-level radioactive waste. No country in the world has solved the problem of how to dispose of it, and even the most optimistic advanced reactor designs will continue adding to the lethal mountain of waste already produced.

Really very predictable. Ms. Aurilio, however, makes the same, exact mistake that every proponent of renewable energy makes when discussing these issues. The inescapable fact is that while wind and solar can help offset some fossil or nuclear power the fact always remains that those plants must remain either running at lower efficiencies or in instant readiness to startup if the wind stops or it gets cloudy. I explained that particular false premise, that wind power could replace existing generation, way back not long after I started the Crabitat. You can find that essay here. We remain somewhat captive by the very nature of the technology. There is no magic bullet here. We must address the reality that baseload units are always necessary, and generating assets must remain in 100% reserve to back up intermittently available generation assets.