Is good for the soul. Both for the ranter and for those privileged enough to be witness to said exercise. Me, I feel privileged to be able to read someone in full swing at a lot of things who also happens to write beautifully. Isn't the internet grand?
So why are you still here? Go read The Anchoress.
Blogosphere, Politics, Rants | Gaius Thursday, 5 October , 2006 | 
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Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. That's a quote from Herodotus that is carved into the face of the New York City Post Office. It's the motto the US Postal Service has lived by since its inception. Unfortunately, once in a while the snow does stop a postman.
The "snow" in question being cocaine.
Salvador Gonzalez, 33, of Dallas, faces charges of possession of a controlled substance. Authorities said he may face federal charges for the unopened mail pending an investigation by the Postal Service Office of Inspector General.
A deputy constable stopped Gonzalez on Wednesday morning in Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood and saw the items stuffed in duffel bags and scattered inside the vehicle.
"He had tons of mail, like old Christmas cards, all kinds of mail he had opened up," said Dallas police Chief Deputy John L. Garrett with the Precinct 1 constable's office. "He had eight or nine credit cards in his possession with different names on them. We assume he had taken them out of the mail."
We here in the US make a lot of jokes about the Postal Service, but the fact is that things like this make news because they are so rare. We have come to expect the USPS to be there when we need it and we expect them to deliver promptly. Generally speaking, the fact that the USPS does do exactly what we expect, means we take it for granted. Well, here's a link to the Smithsonian Institution's National Postal Museum. Go see about what we take for granted.
There is a variant of mad cow disease (Properly named Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)) that effects affects deer and elk. Known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). It is just as scary as the one that strikes cattle or the human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease. Up until now scientists have not understood the way this terrible disease is spread. But with a little creativity, researchers have figured it out with a high degree of certainty.
… CWD is unusual because, unlike its very hard-to-spread relatives, it seems to spread fairly easily from animal to animal.
Scientists were not sure how, primarily because studying large wild animals is a logistical nightmare. The sheer stress of researchers handling a deer caught in the wild could kill it.
Likewise, animals deliberately exposed to infections must be kept indoors so as not to spread disease, another stress for deer used to roaming.
So Colorado State University researcher Edward Hoover turned to fawns hand-raised indoors in Georgia, which has not experienced chronic wasting disease.
"This allows you to do this safely so the deer aren't freaking out," explained Hoover, who reported the first evidence of saliva's long-suspected role in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "These deer are calm and approachable."
Hoover took saliva from wild Colorado deer found dying of CWD, and squirted it into the mouths of three of the healthy tame deer — about 3 tablespoons worth.
Additional tame deer were exposed to blood, urine and feces from CWD-infected deer.
He housed the newly exposed deer in a specialized lab for up to 18 months, periodically checking tonsil tissue for signs of infection and eventually autopsying their brains.
All of the saliva-exposed deer got sick.
So did deer given a single transfusion of blood from a CWD-infected deer — not a surprise, as blood is known to transmit this disease's cousins. But it does reinforce existing warnings to hunters in states where CWD has been found to take precautions in handling their kills.
So with deer season close upon us and the surge of activity in the animal uprising, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard thought we'd pass along a warning. Hunters, if you see a deer or elk rearing back to hawk a loogie at you, run like hell.
Authorities in Monterey, California have raided a safe house used by operatives of the animal uprising. They captured 86 animal operatives, breaking up a nefarious plot. To avoid public panic, the authorities are pretending it was just some addled woman who collected a bunch of pets.
The woman in the house had accumulated the critters over time and was trying to find homes for them. There were 56 fish, six cats, six rats, five frogs, four geckos, three ferrets, two lovebirds, two lizards, one guinea pig and one dog.
"She knew she'd gotten in over her head. She was more than happy to surrender them to us," Adams said.
SPCA spokeswoman Beth Brookhouser said she does not believe charges will be filed against the woman.
We are not sure what they had planned, but with that particular mix of operatives, we can be certain it was an amphibious operation! Obviously, the guinea pig was the brains of the operation.
Well, ok, the spider actually caused a man to crash his own SUV. But it's really just a matter of semantics isn't it? Anyway, the driver apparently tried to get out of his moving vehicle when the spider surprised him.
James Lee, 28, was trying to get out of the SUV when it smashed into a tree. He walked away with a bloody nose caused by the air bag.
But, it could've been worse. At least it wasn't the new Volvo XC90 he won in a contest.
Last month, Lee was one of 11 people from across the country to win a new vehicle from McDonald's, the Bangor Daily News reported. After finishing a Big Mac extra value meal, he got the winning game piece for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" game.
Ok, so he's a bit nervous. Or has arachnophobia big time. Personally, we try never to swerve for livestock, either inside or outside the vehicle, but that's just our way. However, if we saw one of these babies we'd probably lose control, too. However, we'd probably stay in the car.
Animals | Gaius | Comments (1)
Jeffrey M. Johnson, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was forced to resign by the Tribune Company, owner of the LA paper. Johnson had refused to make staff cuts ordered by the Tribune Company.
He is being succeeded by David D. Hiller, who has been publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the Tribune Co. said in a statement.
"Jeff and I agreed that this change is best at this time because Tribune and Times executives need to be aligned on how to shape our future," said Scott Smith, Tribune Publishing president. "We thank Jeff for his leadership of important advances at the Times and his significant contributions during his Tribune career."
Neither Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman nor Times spokesman David Garcia immediately returned a phone call seeking comment.
In a Web-posted story, the newspaper reported that Tribune had asked Johnson to resign and that Hiller was expected to ask Times Editor Dean Baquet to stay, despite the editor's own protests against further job cuts by the newspaper's Chicago-based parent corporation.
Times editorial staff had rallied behind Johnson and Baquet and sent a letter supporting them to Tribune executives.
Late last month, Tribune announced it would study the possible sale or breakup of the corporation, which owns the Chicago Tribune, KTLA-TV Channel 5, baseball's Chicago Cubs and other TV stations and newspapers.
The legacy media is crumbling.
UPDATE: WaPo: It's not fair.
The announcement stunned many staffers at the Times, which has chafed under out-of-town management since Tribune bought the Times Mirror chain, including the Times and nine other papers from Baltimore to Hartford, Conn., in 2000.
"The staff has no confidence in Tribune management to do what's right for journalism or the newspaper — none whatsoever," said William Rempel, the Times deputy sports editor. "They do not have any friends in this newsroom. They'd be booed out of the building."
"The mood is grim," said political reporter Mark Barabak. "A lot of us are sad and disappointed. Jeff took a very courageous stand and I'm sorry it turned out this way. It's great news that Dean is staying, but you have to wonder what message this sends that they fired Jeff after he took the stand he did."
Vernon Loeb, the California investigations editor, described the move as a "total shock," saying: "I saw Jeff Johnson as a New Age publisher who realized the future was about innovation and revenue growth. As he said, you can't just cut your way into the future. Now our future is uncertain."
They also described the outgoing publisher as a "folk hero" for refusing to bow to the cuts.
I missed the anniversary by two days, I humbly apologize.
October 3rd, 1993, Mogadishu, Somalia.
Sgt. First Class Randall Shughart and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon were each awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously. (Citations below the fold).
A very important reminder from German drug manufacturer Schering. Please pay attention here:
Do not use hemorrhoid ointment on your face.
The warning came after a male stylist said on Norwegian television that many photo models used the cream in the morning to get rid of puffy eyes, which the drug company said seemed to have boosted demand for such products at pharmacies.
"This is a pharmaceutical and not a cosmetic," the group's Norwegian subsidiary Schering Norge AS said in a statement, warning especially to keep haemorrhoid cream out of the eyes.
This has been a public service announcement from your friends at Blue Crab Boulevard. That is all.*
* (Although, truthfully, we do know a few people who would benefit from whole body immersion).
Advice, Humor, World news | Gaius | Comments (2)
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came ;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ;
The helmsman steered us through !And a good south wind sprung up behind ;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo !In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine ;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.'`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !–
Why look'st thou so ?'–With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
Albatross! It's what's for dinner. At least that's what appears to be happening to the waved albatrosses of the Galapagos Islands. South American fisherman have been inadvertently catching the large birds in their nets, then quite advertently eating their catch. When they aren't just plain catching them, that is.
In just one year, fisherman caught and killed about 1 percent of the world's waved albatrosses, the largest bird in the famed Galapagos Islands, according to a study in the Sept. 26 issue of the journal Biological Conservation.
"If that happens every year, that is not sustainable," said Jill Awkerman, a Wake Forest University graduate student and lead author of the study. "In a matter of decades, you could be talking about extinction."
The researchers put identification bands on 2,550 albatrosses living on Española Island. In 2005, fisherman returned bands from 23 birds that had been killed, corresponding to a death rate of nearly one in every 100 birds.
While surveying Peruvian fishing communities where the albatrosses forage for food, observers found that some albatrosses accidentally became tangled in submerged gillnets. Instead of releasing the birds, many fishermen killed them for food. Some even intentionally caught the albatrosses on baited hooks.
Have you ever heard of a scientist who wasn't seriously worried about whatever subject they are talking about? They are like farmers and the weather, I swear. Anyway, they've started sending out people to talk to the fishermen to tell them not to eat albatross. Which will undoubtedly lead to one thing. The bands won't be turned in any more.
Oh well, all this fuss has made me hungry. I'm going to go fix a big pot of snail darter chowder.
But mugging for snakes? A man held a woman and her two children at gunpoint until she handed over a dozen large green tree snakes worth about $7,000 each.
The man demanded the 12 green tree snakes, which are not venomous, when he approached the door of the woman's home near the South Australian state capital, Adelaide, on Wednesday, state police said Thursday.
He then stuffed the snakes — measuring up to 31 inches long — into a duffel bag and bound the woman's ankles and the hands of two boys before fleeing the scene.
The snakes are valued at A$9,000 ($6,708) each, police said.
Just out of curiosity, how do you fence a hot snake?
The biggest problem with the leftward drift of the Democratic party is that the fringe has lost all sense of boundaries and decency. Yet the party keeps sliding in that direction not understanding, apparently, how badly it makes them look to the moderates they need to win over. When the fringe spins something up, they consistently overplay their hand to the point that revulsion sets in among the unaffiliated voters. The Senate campaign in Virginia has reached that point now.
A field organizer for Democratic congressional candidate Al Weed resigned yesterday after it was discovered that she referred to Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) as "Macacawitz."
In an e-mail sent last night, Meryl Ibis asked Democratic supporters to protest "George 'Macacawitz' Allen" during a Republican rally in Danville.
The term "Macacawitz" is an apparent reference to Allen's use of the word "macaca" and the recent discovery that he has Jewish heritage.
Weed spokesman Kurt Gleeson said the staffer "made a mistake in her language that was not sanctioned by the campaign." Weed is challenging Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Va.) in the Southside district.
The spillover into a house race of the entire flap in the Senate race is a sign of a badly overplayed hand. The fact that this staffer completely lacked any sort of scruples about the way she used that term to describe Allen shows a level of hate that simply turns average people off. Too many Democrats fail to see the problem with this behavior. The Allen campaign pointed out that the staffer also volunteered for the Webb campaign. The Webb campaign shrugged it off. Frankly, they missed an opportunity to limit the damage.
The New York Times notices the letter posted by former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani last week. First the BBC and now the Times? What planet is this again?
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly insisted that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, sharply criticized the release of the letter. “Those who think they can weaken the will of the people for construction and development by questioning their values will fail,” he said Sunday, “and they only show their lack of wisdom and commitment.”
The letter, which had been previously published elsewhere, was written in 1988, near the end of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. It was brought to light again on Friday by the former Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to defend himself against hard-line critics who accuse him of ending the war when Iran was on the brink of victory.
But the letter has also been used by moderates to bolster the case for nuclear talks with the West. Iran faces sanctions for defying the United Nations Security Council’s demand that it halt its uranium enrichment, which the United States says is part of a weapons program.
In the letter, Ayatollah Khomeini outlined the reasons Iran had to accept the bitter prospect of a cease-fire in the war, which had ground down to a stalemate, with about 250,000 Iranians dead and 200,000 disabled. It did not specifically call for Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but referred indirectly to the matter by citing a letter written by the officer leading the war effort, Mohsen Rezai.
“The commander has said we can have no victory for another five years, and even by then we need to have 350 infantry bridges, 2,500 tanks, 300 fighter planes,” the ayatollah wrote, adding that the officer also said he would need “a considerable number of laser and nuclear weapons to confront the attacks.”
Ayatollah Khomeini determined that the nation could not afford, politically or economically, to continue the war, and in a famous public statement compared the decision to “drinking a chalice of poison.”
ILNA, the Iranian Labor News Agency, removed the word “nuclear” within a few hours of putting the letter on the Web, after receiving a call from the Iranian National Security Council, according to a reporter with the agency. The reporter insisted on anonymity for fear of retribution.
Iranian moderates (an odd term, but in relative terms they are when compared to Ahmadinejad and his buddies) are trying to warn Iran that they may be heading for a disaster. As one politician put it:
Mohsen Armin, a reformist politician, said hard-line politicians who welcomed confrontation with the West should learn a lesson from the letter so they would not have to “drink a chalice of poison” themselves, ILNA reported.
If the West could put up a united front right now, it would likely increase pressure on Ahmadinejad to back down. The longer the West dithers and does nothing, the stronger he and his kind become. There is still a window, but it is closing. We need a united front against Iran.
A horse walks into a bar, the bartender looks up and says: [Insert appropriate joke here].
How many times have you heard that line or something similar to start a joke? Apparently, it is not a joke in a town in England. The new owner of the local pub found that out the hard way when Peggy walked in for her usual. A pint of John Smith's bitter and some onion crisps. Peggy being a horse belonging to another regular, retired oil rigger Peter Dolan.
The new landlady of a pub came in for a shock when she discovered one of her regulars was a horse.
Cart horse Peggy often joins owner Peter Dolan for a pint or two of her favourite bitter.
But no-one told Jackie Gray when she took over the Alexandra Hotel in Jarrow, South Tyneside.
The landlady said she got the shock of her life when the 12-year-old horse walked in.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing when this horse walked in," she said.
"She's no bother when she's in. She's got the taste for John Smiths and also likes pickled onion crisps."
Apparently Peggy is better behaved than some of the other regulars. They don't specify who the less well behaved ladies are, though. I wonder if it could be a couple of nuns?
Animals | Gaius | Comments (3)
Richard Weitz, Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Center for Future Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute, writes about one realistic approach to halting nuclear proliferation in today's Washington Post. A joint US and Russian program to provide cheap nuclear fuel if nations using it return spent fuel to the two countries for reprocessing.
For several years, Russia has sought to become a core participant in a new network of global nuclear-fuel-service providers. At the mid-August 2006 summit of the Eurasian Economic Community, Putin again proposed that Russia (and other states that already possess advanced civil nuclear technologies) sell uranium fuel at modest prices to countries lacking their own enrichment facilities — provided the recipients returned the fuel. The original suppliers would then store and reprocess the spent nuclear fuel under international oversight.
Although Taiwan, South Korea, and other countries have expressed interest in storing spent nuclear fuel in Russia, the provisions of their atomic-energy agreements with the United States forbid them from transferring U.S.-origin nuclear material elsewhere without prior American consent. U.S. law requires a separate Russian-American accord before such shipments may occur. Until recently, American concerns about Russian-Iranian nuclear cooperation and Russian plans to reprocess the spent fuel into plutonium have blocked such an agreement. The need for enhanced multinational collaboration to counter nuclear proliferation, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and provide additional energy sources has appropriately led the U.S. administration to reassess its position.
Requiring the return of spent nuclear fuel to its original suppliers would advance global nuclear-nonproliferation goals by depriving recipient countries of opportunities to reprocess it and extract plutonium. Guaranteeing developing states the right to purchase and store fuel internationally at modest cost would make it unnecessary for them to develop national uranium-enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. Without such sensitive technologies, Iran and other countries would find it much harder to use a civilian nuclear-power program to acquire nuclear weapons. Any government that persisted in developing a costly indigenous nuclear-fuel cycle — despite assured access to international nuclear-fuel services — would raise the alarm that they were driven by military rather than economic motives.
This initiative would at least give some assurance that nuclear proliferation concerns were minimized. Even the Russians suspect that Iran is working on weapons, not energy. If a system like this can be set up, it would help deliver nuclear energy without adding to concerns about weapons.
Energy, Iran, World news | Gaius | Comments (2)
While Russia and South Korea scramble frantically to try to stop the North Koreans from detonating a nuclear device, the US has sent aloft a monitoring aircraft capable of detecting radiation. It would appear that something is considered imminent here.
Meanwhile, a U.S. military plane capable of detecting radiation has taken off from southern Japan, believed to be part of U.S. efforts to monitor for signs of a possible nuclear test by North Korea, a news report said Thursday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow was working with Pyongyang to try to dissuade it from a test.
"We must do everything so that that doesn't happen," Lavrov said at a news conference on a visit to Warsaw. "We are working with the leadership of North Korea to stop steps that could negatively impact the situation."
Roh also ordered the government to draw up a "contingency plan" if the nuclear standoff with North Korea worsens, Yonhap said, citing unidentified presidential staff.
At the same time, Roh instructed the South Korean government to step up diplomatic efforts to forestall a North Korean test, the report said.
Roh's orders came after a meeting with his top security adviser, according to Yonhap.
Calls to the presidential office went unanswered on the first day of a three-day holiday.
North Korea threatened Tuesday to conduct a nuclear test to prove the country is a nuclear power. Pyongyang claims it has nuclear weapons and needs them to deter a U.S. attack, but hasn't performed any known test to verify that.
Even China is not being silent this time, either.
The North's announcement prompted outcry from a host of nations including China, the North's main ally. Beijing's ambassador to the United Nations urged Pyongyang Wednesday not to go ahead with a test, warning of "serious consequences."
Wang Guangya said at the U.N. that "no one is going to protect" North Korea, if it goes ahead with "bad behavior."
"I think if North Koreans do have the nuclear test, I think that they have to realize that they will face serious consequences," Wang said Wednesday.
The comment was China's most forceful public response yet to its ally's announcement Tuesday, and a break with Beijing's usual conciliatory strategy of avoiding warnings to or criticism of the North.
Beijing — the North's main source of food and fuel aid — had previously appealed for restraint but hasn't said what it might do if Pyongyang detonates a bomb.
The rebuke could spell trouble for North Korea, which faces a relatively united front against its nuclear aspirations, in sharp contrast to the fractured reaction to a series of North Korean missile tests in July. At that time, China accused Japan of overreacting in calling for sanctions.
Kim is seriously miscalculating this time. If China stomps down on aid across the border, North Korea will have completely isolated itself. The flames are being fanned here.
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