A Shark That Walks

Scientists are reporting the discovery of a shark that walks on its fins. Searching the waters off Indonesia near the province of Papua, researchers say the have discovered dozens of new species.

The team from U.S.-based Conservation International also warned that the area — known as Bird's Head Seascape — is under danger from fishermen who use dynamite and cyanide to net their catches and called on Indonesia's government to do more to protect it.

"It's one of the most stunningly beautiful landscapes and seascapes on the planet," said Mark Erdmann, a senior adviser of Conservation International who led two surveys to the area earlier this year.

"Above and below water, it's simply mind blowing," he said.

Erdmann and his team claim to have discovered 52 new species, including 24 new species of fish, 20 new species of coral and eight new species of shrimp. Among the highlights were an epaulette shark that walks on its fins, a praying mantis-like shrimp and scores of reef-building corals, he said.

Conservation International said papers on two of the new fish species, called flasher wrasse because of the bright colors the male exhibits during mating, have been accepted for publication to the Aqua, Journal of Ichthyology and Aquatic Biology.

The group is in the process of writing papers on the other species, it said.

Carden Wallace, a coral expert and principal scientist at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville, Australia, said she was not surprised by the finding "mostly because it is a remote location and hasn't been visited by scientists very much."

Wallace said the finds should give scientists crucial data.

"This will give us a better understanding of where all this diversity originates from and how vulnerable it may be," Wallace said.

Erdmann said the discoveries add to an already legendary reputation for the area, which stretches for 70,000 square miles on the northwestern end of Indonesia's Papua province.

Oh sure, they're reporting this like it's good news. Don't they understand what this means? The animal up rising is developing a real, live Landshark. We're doomed.

If You Want Hard Data On The Economy…

Don't expect to get it from the Associated Press. Captain Ed has some hard data that shows exactly what kind of a hit piece the AP has delivered. He notes that the story replaces hard numbers with anecdotes.

As we approach the midterms, the media will attempt to kneecap Republicans on one of the issues where they can point to real success: the economy. Over the last three years, as the last of the tax cuts came into force and provided more incentive for investment, the economy and job growth have both erupted, resulting in one of the biggest booms over the last twenty years — and this just after the 9/11 attacks designed to crush our capacity for growth. In doing so, media sources will avoid talking about real data and go on a search for individuals experiencing hard times, arguing a standard that no economy can be good for the nation as long as a few individuals have not prospered from it.

Meet Liz Sidoti, who takes that approach in a release today from the AP, one that will no doubt be reprinted in thousands of client newspapers by tomorrow. Her piece, titled "GOP talk of vibrant economy rings hollow," follows this tired and dishonest playbook to the letter:

Go read the whole thing. I read the AP story and was going to beat it up myself, but the good captain has already done a masterful takedown and has the hard numbers to back it up. This is just another case of the Democrats wanting to talk about the Sale of Two Cities.

Waxing Poetic About The Buffalo Bills

My son sends along a non-political item that he asked me to post. A remembrance of teams past, if you will. Enjoy.

It's something I was born into. Sundays in the fall were for watching Buffalo Bills games. I remember very clearly all of their Superbowl appearances, remember acutely the crushing sense of loss that accompanied them, the all-encompassing grief of seeing my heroes defeated, first by the honorable and great 1990 New York Giants, last by the quagmire of moral turpitude that is (and has been for a long, LONG time) the Dallas Cowboys. I admit, for years I gave up on them. After 1993, watching Buffalo play was just painful, especially in '96, when Jim Kelley, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed, and Bruce Smith (among many others) were coming to the end of their careers, and not at all gracefully. Gone were Cornelius Bennet and Don Beebe, gone to Atlanta and Green Bay respectively, where the latter finally got his Superbowl ring. Gone was the great Bill Brooks, who stepped into Andre Reed's capacious shoes in 1995 as Jim Kelly's go-to guy, to retirement.  Crumbling was the house that Marv Levy built in Orchard Park, NY. Since his retirement at the end of the 1997 season, Buffalo fans have been constantly taunted with the promise of new greatness, only to be violently thrown from our seats by one idiotic decision after another within the program, screaming and sometimes crying.

They call the Dallas Cowboys of that era "The Dynasty," but ask anyone from western New York who grew up in the early 1990s who made up the dynasty, and you won't hear the names Emmet Smith or Troy Aikman uttered. You'll hear the names of the men listed above, along with dozens of others. Steve Tasker, Frank Reich, James Lofton, Pete Metzelaars, Phil Hansen, Steve Christie, and yes, dammit, Scott Norwood (you're still the best, Scott), just to name a few. Those were good days, simple days, when I was young and didn't care about salary caps, multi-million dollar paychecks, or who was taking performance-enhancing drugs. Days when I didn't know what a "rebuilding season" was. Maybe all of those things were there, but I didn't care. I liked Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed and Bill Brooks because they made touchdowns. I liked Cornelius Bennett and Bruce Smith and Phil Hansen because they made the other quarterbacks eat turf. To the rest of the world, they were almost heroes, but to me, four consecutive AFC championship rings and giving hope and the principles of perseverance and dedication to a generation of youngsters makes you all heroes.

So now I sit back, more than a decade later, catching what games I can on AFN (the American Forces Network) as I sit in a tiny trailer in Iraq, rooting for Indianapolis and Cincinnati and Chicago because I see sparks in those teams of what Buffalo used to be. However, as the song goes, the first cut is the deepest. When it comes to being lucky, they're cursed. When it comes to loving me, they're worst; but when it comes being loved the Bills are, and will always be, first.

Oh, and the other reason this season is disappointing: I don't care how damn good he is, Terrell Owens is a jackass. How ironic that Dallas picked him up…those two deserve each other.

A Harsh Critique Of Liberals

By a liberal. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, of all places, Sam Harris write about the head in the sand attitude of the majority of liberals. His assessment is brutal. He does not come up with this opinion out of thin air. Rather it is based on years of correspondence with people from every type of political bent. After he published a book entitled The End of Faith, he received letters and emails from all types of people. From this he concludes liberals are badly out of touch with the reality of the world.

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I'd like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

Harris is not at all happy with this situation. He fears that the public will come to realize that the religious right is the only group that understands the reality on the ground and has the ability to combat the situation. He is genuinely afraid that the liberals will fade away because they cannot deal with the world as it is as opposed to the world as they wish it to be. He may be right.

I'd say this one is a must read. For both sides of the political spectrum.

Space Station Initiates Emergency System

The crew of the International Space Station pulled the emergency alarm and put on protective gear after fumes were detected. The crew initially though it was smoke, but have since determined it to be potassium hydroxide, an irritant. NASA says there is no danger to life.

"We don't exactly know the nature of the spill … but the crew is doing well," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. "It's not a life-threatening material."

The crew first reported smoke but it turned out to be an irritant, potassium hydroxide, leaking from an oxygen vent, Suffredini said.

The crew donned surgical gloves and masks but did not have to put on gas masks or oxygen masks, Suffredini said.

"Things are calming down," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said.

Because the station's emergency system was activated, the ventilation system was shut down, but ground operations were working to get it back up, Suffredini said.

The potassium hydroxide, a corrosive that can cause serious burns and can be harmful if inhaled, was to be cleaned up and wrapped up in two rubber bags, Suffredini said.

Potassium hydroxide can be used to power batteries and is also known as potash lye.

The crew in the orbiting lab 220 miles above Earth had been working on a Russian oxygen-generating system known as the Elektron, NASA said.

The system has given the space station headaches before. It had operated on-and-off for months before breaking down last spring. In June, the crew tried to reactivate it, with mixed results, after replacing a hydrogen vent valve outside during a spacewalk.

It might be time to get something different up there rather than keep trying to use a system that appears to be fairly dangerous.

Security Breech At US Capitol Building

The US Capitol Building has been placed under a security lockdown after a man crashed his car through a security barrier. The man has been taken into custody. Authorities are examining the car.

Construction workers said the man had driven through a barricade at the Capitol, where a major visitors' center is under construction.

Police put the Capitol complex under a lockdown as the investigation of the incident progressed. The incident happened shortly before 8 a.m., witnesses said.

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, spokesman for the Capitol Police, said police were examining the man's vehicle.

UPDATE: The man was armed and did actually get into the building, across the rotunda and down into the basement.

We Hate To Say We Told You So

The British are finally awakening to the reality of the animal uprising. Sort of, anyway. They are noticing that they are being invaded, but still insist on trying to cite other causes.

LONDON (AFP) - It's a jungle out there: the number of sightings of non-indigenous, exotic animals in Britain has sky-rocketed in the last six years, according to a new study.

More than 10,000 sightings of everything from wallabies to dangerous spiders, crocodiles and even a penguin have been recorded since 2000, with the rise attributed to climate change, zoo thefts and animal escapes.

Chris Mullins, founder and co-ordinator of Beastwatch UK, which compiled the data, said Monday: "It is clear the United Kingdom contains far more exotic wild animals than the British public could ever imagine."

The figures show that in the last six years 51 wallabies, 13 spiders including a tarantula and a Black Widow, 13 racoons, 10 crocodiles, seven wolves, three pandas, two scorpions and one penguin have been spotted.

There were also reported sightings of 5,931 big cats, 332 wild boars and 3,389 sharks in British waters.

They try to blame it on global warming, neglecting the true malevolence behind this. Soon life in Britain will resemble a Monty Python skit gone horribly wrong. Wait until the penguins start exploding on the telly.

Terrorists Vow To Conquer Rome

The situation over the words Pope Benedict XVI spoke in a speech in Germany continues to deteriorate. Now the Iraqi terrorist Shura council has issued a statement.

The statement by an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda came after the Pontiff said on Sunday he was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of a medieval quotation on Islam and holy war.

"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said a Web statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine … God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome … (May) God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.

In Iraq's southern city of Basra, up to 150 demonstrators chanted slogans and burned a white effigy of the Pope.

"No to aggression!," "We gagged the Pope!," they chanted in front of the governor's office in the Shi'ite city. The protesters also burned German, U.S., and Israeli flags.

A speech by Pope Benedict last Tuesday was seen as portraying Islam as a religion tainted by violence, causing dismay among Muslim states where some religious leaders called it the start of a new Christian crusade against Islam.

I think the Vatican might be well advised to evacuate personnel like aid workers, nuns and priests from the worst areas pretty quickly. This does not look at all like a good situation.

Reform In Sweden

Sweden's ruling Social Democrat party has been tossed from office by moderates who promise to reform the welfare state and cut taxes. The victory was a narrow one, however, and the Social Democrats have vowed to "keep attacking". Why does this sound all too familiar?

Moderate party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt declared victory as near-complete results gave him a 1% lead.

Minutes later, Prime Minister Goran Persson accepted defeat and said he and the government would resign, ending 12 years of Social Democrat rule.

The centre-left party has led Sweden for all but 10 of the past 89 years.

Mr Reinfeldt, who had promised to cut taxes and reform Sweden's cradle-to-grave welfare state, took to the stage in front of supporters with his arms raised.

"We ran in the election as the New Moderates, we have won the election as the New Moderates and we will also together with our Alliance friends govern Sweden as the New Moderates," he said.

Mr Persson told his supporters he would step down as party leader in March 2007.

"We have lost the election but we are not a beaten party," he said. "We will never accept the right's change of system - we will hit back!"

Key issues in the election included whether Sweden's generous welfare model must reform for it to survive in the global economy.

Opinion polls had put the centre-right alliance consistently neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats.

The latest poll, published before voting began, put the challengers a few points ahead.

The new model for the left globally appears to be to continue to fight the lost election, regardless of result or cost to society. Call it the American model. Call it governmental paralysis as well. This is a horrible tactic. Instead of working within the system, this is a way to disrupt the system.

Will The New McCarthyites Please Stand Up

The man who wrote The Path to 9/11, Cyrus Nowrasteh, tells his side of the story on the film today in the Opinion Journal. It is well worth reading. An object lesson in how things are twisted in the media for political advantage. A guide, in fact, to the tactics of the new McCarthyites.

It would have been good to be able to report due diligence on the part of those who judged the film, the ones who held forth on it before watching a moment of it. Instead, in the rush to judgment, and the effort to portray the series as the work of a right-wing zealot, much was made of my "friendship" with Rush Limbaugh (a connection limited to two social encounters), but nothing of any acquaintance with well-known names on the other side of the political spectrum. No reference to Abby Mann, for instance, with whom I worked on "10,000 Black Men Named George" (whose hero is an African-American communist) or Oliver Stone, producer of "The Day Reagan Was Shot," a film I wrote and directed. Clearly, those enraged that a film would criticize the Clinton administration's antiterrorism policies–though critical of its successor as well–were willing to embrace only one scenario: The writer was a conservative hatchetman.

In July a reporter asked if I had ever been ethnically profiled. I happily replied, "No." I can no longer say that. The L.A. Times, for one, characterized me by race, religion, ethnicity, country-of-origin and political leanings–wrongly on four of five counts. To them I was an Iranian-American politically conservative Muslim. It is perhaps irrelevant in our brave new world of journalism that I was born in Boulder, Colo. I am not a Muslim or practitioner of any religion, nor am I a political conservative. What am I? I am, most devoutly, an American. I asked the reporter if this kind of labeling was a new policy for the paper. He had no response.

The hysteria engendered by the series found more than one target. In addition to the death threats and hate mail directed at me, and my grotesque portrayal as a maddened right-winger, there developed an impassioned search for incriminating evidence on everyone else connected to the film. And in director David Cunningham, the searchers found paydirt! His father had founded a Christian youth outreach mission. The whiff of the younger Mr. Cunningham's possible connection to this enterprise was enough to set the hounds of suspicion baying. A religious mission! A New York Times reporter wrote, without irony or explanation, that an issue that raised questions about the director was his involvement in his father's outreach work. In the era of McCarthyism, the merest hint of a connection to communism sufficed to inspire dark accusations, the certainty that the accused was part of a malign conspiracy. Today, apparently, you can get something of that effect by charging a connection with a Christian mission.

These are some damning words, for these are precisely the tactics of McCarthy; distortion, innuendo and guilt by association. They are precisely the tactics that we used against Nowrasteh. The left is almost continuously charging that someone is smearing one of them. There appears to be no end of projection at work there. Nowrasteh also points out who the heroes of this whole situation are: ABC executives.

Despite intense political pressure to pull the film right up until airtime, Disney/ABC stood tall and refused to give in. For this–for not buckling to threats from Democratic senators threatening to revoke ABC station licenses–Disney CEO Rober Iger and ABC executives deserve every commendation. Hence the 28 million viewers over two nights, and the ratings victory Monday night (little reported by the media), are gratifying indeed.

There are still people trying to attack the central message of the film: the Clinton administration had eight years to do something about terrorism and bin Laden and did not do so. Bush was in office only eight months, was moving very carefully because of the contested 2000 election battle, was barely getting his arms wrapped around the job. Yet the left and the Democrats want all the blame to fall on him.

That was why the airing of the film was so bitterly fought, they did not want that truth presented, even if it had some details that were not 100% historically accurate.