Even More Deadly Than The Animal Uprising

Oakland, California authorities are essentially clueless about a lot of things, but especially the dangers of the animal uprising and the even more frightening animal mafia. So they don't understand the significance of the find residents recently made.

A dead llama in the middle of the city.

At first, East Oakland residents assumed the 400-pound animal with black and white spots was a horse and called the city's animal control department to report the find.

"At first it looked like a horse — all we saw was a head sticking out from a tarp," said Andrew Gordon, with Oakland's Animal Control Field Services. "But I looked at it closely, and I said, 'Look at the ears — that's a llama.' "

The llama's legs were tied up and it was covered with a tarp, but it appears to have died of old age, Gordon said.

Residents of the Oakland hills sometimes keep llamas, who are members of the camel family, as pets.

"I can't think of any reason someone would just dump it," he said. "People who have animals that good usually have money."

The tied feet give it away. It was a professional hit by the animal mafia. This is gangland-style llama-butchery. (Apologies to the Llama Butchers).

But He’s A Criminal Lawyer

Proving once again that the old joke about the words 'criminal lawyer' being redundant is true, a 27 year old law student in Australia has been sentenced to more than four years in prison. He was captured by police trying to escape the scene of his latest burglary. In a taxi.

When not studying for a masters degree in law, Phillip Ryan See, 27, used his off-time to rob 43 houses in Sydney's plush harbourside suburbs, netting goods worth more than A$110,000 ($83,000), the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said on Thursday.

See, who once worked as a legal assistant in a government law office, would load plasma televisions, cameras, jewelry and laptop computers into the boot of a taxi after each raid.

But when a surprised home-owner discovered See during a midnight burglary, police arrested the would-be legal eagle escaping in the back of another taxi.

He'll be doing a different sort of bar exam for a few years.

Not Exactly

The Associated Press gets this wrong right from the headline: "China carries out test of fusion reactor". No, they did not. They made a successful test of a Tokamak device and created plasma. This is fusion research, but it is certainly not fusion. Nor is the Tokamak a "fusion reactor".

BEIJING - Scientists on Thursday carried out China's first successful test of an experimental fusion reactor, powered by the process that fuels the sun, a research institute spokeswoman said.

China, the United States and other governments are pursuing fusion research in hopes that it could become a clean, potentially limitless energy source. Fusion produces little radioactive waste, unlike fission, which powers conventional nuclear reactors.

Beijing is eager for advances, both for national prestige and to reduce its soaring consumption of imported oil and dirty coal.

The test by the government's Institute of Plasma Physics was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device in the eastern city of Hefei, said Cheng Yan, a spokeswoman at the institute.

Cheng said the test was considered a success because the reactor produced plasma, a hot cloud of supercharged particles. She wouldn't give other details.

They are contributing to the field of study, that's a good thing. It is indicative of the low level of expertise in the AP that they call this a "fusion reactor". Here is what a Tokamak is. Incidentally, I remember reading something a while ago that discussed the engineering difficulties of any practical fusion reactor. The biggest challenge is going to be the sheer volume of fast neutron radiation that would be produced. That's another discussion, however. The research is not far enough advanced to start engineering yet.

Character Assassination

George Allen's blog is hitting back - again - against what looks increasingly like a very coordinated campaign of character assassination. They have a very compelling roundup of some pretty darn odd coincidences around all this.

Let’s note some of the odd coincidences about the recent character assassination:

• The people making these allegations are (surprise!) Democrats and activist opponents of George Allen.
• George Allen has held prominent public office in Virginia for more than a decade, yet a few Democrats have chosen to make unfalsifiable claims at the same time, just prior to an election.
• …and they ‘independently’ sought out Larry Sabato to tell him the story? Why?
• Christopher Taylor says he heard Allen say “only the n*****s around here eat [turtles]”, yet Allen’s ex-wife has denied “with absolute certainty” Taylor’s claim, and points out that the “person who ate the turtles was our neighbor.”
• Each news story has produced one person to claim that Allen said the ‘n-word’, against many — even dozens — of people who directly contradict those claims. The unsubstantiated claims get (surprise!) headline treatment, while the dozens of contradictions are buried or ignored.
• Christopher Taylor claimed he’d merely been emailing a colleague, Fred Damon, at UVA about the alleged racism. By amazing coincidence, Fred Damon’s wife is a Democratic activist and (surprise!) a Webb supporter.
• The Damons have even given money to the Webb campaign and to the Democratic National Committee, and Nancy has called her husband “a political animal.” What a remarkable coincidence that he just happened to get an email about their candidates opponent!
• In yet another shocking coincidence, Damon is known by Webb campaign staff, one of whom listed her in “a who’s who of C’ville Dems supporting Webb“.
• Again, Sabato says of the people he’s talked to: “I never solicited them. They came to me during the past few months.” Why did they all come to him? One possibility: they were sent.
• Why have two “Louisa County sheriff’s deputies who were on the force in the early ’70s … recall no complaints about severed animal heads”, the police officer in charge of investigations say “that’s a myth”, and a “search of Louisa County’s weekly newspaper [between] the years 1972 through 1974 yield no” similar account?
• By sheer coincidence, just months before Ken Shelton allegedly ‘remembered’ a hunting trip with Allen in which a deer head was put in a mailbox, an identical incident happened in North Carolina, where (surprise!) Shelton lives.
• No doubt by pure coincidence, a blogger known by Webb campaign staff claims to be aware of news stories that haven’t come out yet.
• The New York Times runs an emailed allegation from “an active Democrat” despite having no confirmation at all from the other person she claims was a witness. No doubt they just thought it was a very well-written email…and who can doubt the word of a Democratic activist during an election? Any resemblance to bad journalism or an anti-Allen agenda is pure coincidence.

That’s a lot of coincidences. Here’s one more.

Go read the rest, including the extremely odd way the original accuser (and party activist) Dr. Ken Shelton turned down Fox News for an interview. One of the other accusers is the same guy who runs the thoroughly discredited Capitol Hill Blue website.

I said it yesterday: The vicious season.

Shipwreck Found

She was 785 feet long, could carry a crew of up to 100, carried four fighter planes for self defense and was the last of her kind. Battered by severe storm winds, she sank under the waves of the Pacific Ocean on February 12, 1935. After she fell from the sky. She was the USS Macon, the last rigid airship built by the US Navy. Her wreckage has been found in 1,000 feet of water off the California coast.

On September 17, 2006 researchers from NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary program and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) will embark on an expedition off the Big Sur coast to conduct an archaeological investigation at the submerged wreck site of the rigid airship USS Macon, the nation's largest and last U.S.-built, rigid lighter-than-air craft.

The 785-foot USS Macon , a U.S. Navy “dirigible,” and its four Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk aircraft were lost on February 12, 1935 during severe weather offshore of Point Sur, California, on a routine flight from the Channel Islands to its home base at Moffett Field. The wreckage of the USS Macon provides an opportunity to study the relatively undisturbed archaeological remnants of a unique period of U.S. aviation history.

“A key mandate of the National Marine Sanctuary program is to explore, characterize, and protect submerged heritage resources and to share our discoveries with the public,” said Robert Schwemmer, West Coast maritime heritage coordinator for NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program and co-principal investigator for the expedition. “The USS Macon is a top research and stewardship priority in the Monterey Bay Sanctuary and we encourage the public to join in on the adventure via the sanctuary's web portal.”

Two of the Macon's crew of 83 died in the sinking, all the rest survived. The four Curtiss Sparrowhawk fighters the Macon carried were located as well as engines and other parts of the ship's structure. High resolution photographs of the wreck can be found here. A history of the Macon can be found here.

Commission To Review AZ “9/11 Memorial”

All of a sudden, the commission that approved the Arizona "9/11 Memorial" will review the structure that carries inscriptions that make it seem more like a tribute to moral equivalence. The chairman says that the commission did not actually review the planned inscriptions before approving the memorial. After that particular odd admission the chairman went on to say that the board would do so from now on.  

Also Wednesday, Gov. Janet Napolitano said she didn't pre-approve the wording criticized by Republican gubernatorial nominee Len Munsil and others as containing "blame America" messages and lacking enough sentiments related to faith, unity and patriotism.

The memorial includes quotations like: "You don't win battles of terrorism with more battles" and highlights chronological events such as "Congress questions why CIA and FBI didn't prevent attacks" and "Erroneous US air strike kills 46 Uruzgan (Afghanistan) civilians."

Among the other inscriptions: "FBI agent issued July 2001 warning in `Phoenix Memo,'" "Steve of Scottsdale wrote songs for brother, Robby" and "Violent acts leading U.S. to war, 05-07-1915, 12-07-41, 08-04-64 and 09-11-01."

Smith's commission in February heard a presentation from the Governor's Sept. 11 Memorial Commission on its plans for the memorial and authorized its placement near the State Capitol.

Smith said he plans to personally review all the inscriptions and have the mall commission meet, likely in October, "to review the statements that have been engraved in the 9-11 memorial and see if some of them could be removed."

However, he said, "I can't do anything until I get all the facts."

Smith, a Phoenix Republican who served in the Legislature from 1991 through 2002, said he didn't know who or what would pay for any costs of altering the privately funded memory but that he believes the mall commission has the authority to revisit its authorization.

Frankly, the funniest thing is the way Napolitano is positively scrambling to distance herself from this one and turning away reporter's questions:

Napolitano, who on Sept. 11 called the memorial a "fitting and thoughtful tribute" to the terror attacks' victims "and to the strength that we have built since," said Wednesday the panel was an "independent commission" and that she didn't preview the inscriptions or other details of the memorial's design.

"I knew the general schematic. I knew that the concept was to use a disc with the sunlight coming in that would illuminate a piece of the World Trade Center, but I didn't see the wording, no."

Asked whether she would have objected to any of the wording if she'd seen it beforehand, Napolitano demurred.

"You know what, guys, address those questions to the commission. The commission had hearings. The commission approved the memorial. Move on."

I take it her challenger is gaining ground by going after this issue. I'm pretty sure the details of the inscriptions is not sitting well in Arizona.