Remember When?

Remember the old television ads that showed two eggs frying in a pan? It mentioned that this was your brain on drugs. It turns out it was true. If you buy some bad crack cocaine, it's not a really smart idea to complain about the bad deal to a uniformed cop. 

Eloise D. Reaves, 50, approached the Putnam County sheriff's deputy at a convenience store Friday, telling him that another man had sold her "bad crack" that contained wax and cocaine.

She pulled an alleged crack rock out of her mouth and placed it on the deputy's car for inspection, the Palatka Daily News reported for Tuesday editions.

The deputy told Reaves that she would be arrested if the crack tested positive for cocaine.

It did, she was. I'd say she was either over hard or very scrambled.

Success

Two astronauts managed to free the solar panel on the International Space Station that had jammed while being retracted, finally getting it stowed away. The unscheduled extra spacewalk worked out just fine. Astronaut Robert Curbeam became the first person to ever complete four spacewalks in a single mission in the process.

The STS-116 crew folded the port solar array on the International Space Station’s P6 truss during the mission's fourth spacewalk. The 6-hour, 38 minute excursion by Mission Specialists Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang concluded at 8:38 p.m. EST.

Curbeam and Fuglesang freed up the array for retraction with several techniques — pulling guide wires, flipping grommets, and pushing panel hinges. The spacewalkers also shook the solar array panel. The final bay was folded about 6:54 p.m. EST.

One of the guide wires looped out of the proper configuration during the folding process and the spacewalkers tightened it before commands were sent to latch the arrays.

Another objective of today’s spacewalk, which was STS-116’s fourth, was to collect information that could prove useful when the opposite side of the array is retracted during the STS-117 mission in March.

The start of the spacewalk at 2 p.m. was a historic moment for Curbeam, who became the first astronaut to conduct four spacewalks during a single mission. This was Fuglesang’s third. Expedition 14 Flight Engineer Sunita Williams conducted one.

Four spacewalks in a single mission. Wow.

S116-E-06593 (16 Dec. 2006) — Astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr., STS-116 mission specialist, participates in the mission's third planned session of extravehicular activity (EVA) as construction resumes on the International Space Station. Astronaut Sunita L. Williams, (out of frame), Expedition 14 flight engineer, also participated in the 7-hour, 31-minute spacewalk.

William Wallace Would Not Stand For This

The fabled hero of Scotland, William Wallace, has got to be spinning in his grave right about now. Not only have all of the famed Scots regiments that have centuries old histories been merged down into a single regiment, but there is even worse news.

They have no kilts.

LONDON - Great Scot! A shortage of ceremonial kilts could leave thousands of soldiers without a stitch of plaid to wear as they parade to the skirl of the bagpipes.

Military officials said Monday that more than 5,000 Scottish soldiers are having to share their kilts because defense chiefs have not finalized a contract to buy enough of the garments to go around.

The men, who face regular tours of duty in south Iraq and Afghanistan, have just 320 kilts, or one for every 15 soldiers.

Combat troops wore the traditional Highland garb in battle as late as World War I, but now the plaid kilts are used in ceremonial uniform.

New kilts are needed for all Scottish soldiers following the August 2006 merger of centuries-old regiments into a single Royal Regiment of Scotland.

"A planned deployment of kilts will be agreed with the Royal Regiment of Scotland on a roll-out basis with … the full program being completed by January 2008," a Ministry of Defense spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

The Ministry of Defense has refused to say who has won the contract to supply the kilts; in the meantime, soldiers will have to share.

I know that when there is a shortage of bunks on a naval vessel and sailors are forced to take turns using a bed, they call it hot bunking. Somehow, hot kilting is not a cheerful thought at all. Possibly unsanitary, too. A kilt shortage in Scotland, who'd a thunk.

Happy Holidays!

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have been the bearers of all too many holiday tragedy stories. Today is no exception. We regret to inform everyone that Frosty the Snow man has been the victim of a fatal stabbing. Police have two suspects in custody. But that won't bring Frosty back, now will it?

CINCINNATI - Two Christmas grinches were arrested Monday, accused of stabbing a 12-foot-tall inflatable Frosty the snowman with a screwdriver. The Hamilton County Sheriff's office said two 18-year-olds were charged with criminal damaging, and the investigation continues to snowball.

The assault on Frosty was caught on tape when homeowner Matt Williquette set up a motion-sensitive video camera in a tree in his yard because the snowman had fallen victim to two earlier attacks.

The inflatable, the biggest figure in his Christmas display in suburban Colerain Township, was punctured with a screwdriver Sunday night, for the third time.

Williquette had used white masking tape to patch over Frosty the first two times.

I guessing the two attackers are a couple of flakes. Hey, if the cop could do it, we can, too.

Let’s Do The Time Warp Again

The other day I mentioned that many events going on today felt a lot like the events of 1968. It's like deja vu in some respects, one of those moments when you can feel the ghosts of the past run Popsicle fingers down your spine. But I really had no idea just how bad it has gotten. Because now come the protests at recruiting stations led by students who are members of the Students for a Democratic Society. The Weathermen cannot be far behind.

CHAPEL HILL - Police charged five protesters on Friday during the second demonstration in a month outside the new Army recruiting station.

"We thought it was important to not have this recruiting station open quietly," said Emily McFarlane, a UNC-Chapel Hill junior who helped organize the protest at the Army Career Center, 1502 E. Franklin St.

About 30 protesters — members of Students for a Democratic Society, The Raging Grannies and others — held signs, walked in a circle and shouted, "Out of Iraq, out of our schools! Out of town, shut the war down!"

Property manager Analisa Bellamy, flanked by about five police officers, told the protesters to move to the public sidewalk several yards away on East Franklin Street.

After her second request, all but three protesters moved to the sidewalk.

Two of them, Barry Freeman, 80, and Janie Freeman, 71, were charged with second-degree trespass after refusing Bellamy's request that they put their signs down. The couple's 8-by-11-inch signs read "Hands Off My Grandchildren."

Man, the bad, old days are back with a vengeance. It might be instructive for the young folks to take a look at the history of the original organization before being so proud - and vain - as to recycle the name.

Senator Johnson Sporadically Conscious

South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson has been conscious several times following his emergency brain surgery. He is currently being sedated, however. Doctors report being encouraged by his progress so far.

The South Dakota Democrat has made it through the first 72 hours since the Wednesday evening brain surgery, spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said, a benchmark that doctors consider a good sign for recovery. The senator remains in critical but stable condition, she added.

Fisher said the next "target" for doctors is to watch his progress over the next week.

The senator showed some signs of recovery late last week, responding to voices, opening his eyes and moving his limbs. But his long-term prognosis is still unclear.

Good news for him and his family so far.

To Boldly Go Where No Barista Has Gone Before

Bad news from Malaysia, I'm afraid. It doesn't involve Bigfoot this time, either. No, this is really, really important. In a devastating blow to the Malaysian space program, their first astronaut to visit the International Space Station will not take one small step for a barista, one giant leap for baristakind.

The astronaut will not be making a cup of tea.

Malaysia announced in September it would send its first astronaut into the heavens aboard a Russian rocket next year with a mission to make the nation's favourite hot drink, teh tarik, while orbiting Earth in the International Space Station.

But the Star newspaper, under a front-page headline "No space for teh tarik", said the voyage next October would be no tea party after all. Instead, it added, the astronaut would carry out experiments for Malaysian universities, including one on the effect of microgravity and space radiation on cancer cells.

Making teh tarik would be no small feat — it involves tossing boiling-hot milky tea from one cup to another — but one critic recently suggested in an Australian newspaper that Malaysia was wasting money with its push into space travel.

The Southeast Asian nation's obsession with food will still be reflected in the list of experiments, the Star report showed: the astronaut would take with him Malaysian fruits and herbs with the idea of developing them into space-travel treats.

Now, some people might be prone to ridiculing a "space program" that appears to be centered pretty much around eating. But since that is what the entire cruise industry centers around, it's hard to criticize. Think of it as taking a nice cruise in space. We do want to point out that we suspect, with no proof whatsoever, mind you, that we detect the espresso stained fingers of Starbucks in the sudden decision not to make tea. If the astronaut instead produces a Iced Decaf Triple Grande Vanilla Non-fat with whip latte we will have definitive proof! You heard it here first.

Panda-monium

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have tried to warn people about the Animal Uprising™, but all we get for our troubles is one restraining order after another. Some people are just such ingrates. But if people would actually pay attention to us, they could avert disaster. Take for example our dire wanting about the true nature of pandas. We warned people that when they volunteered to feed the pandas, they were actually volunteering to be on the menu. If this woman had just listened, she would not have needed to be rescued. 

One moment a Chinese tourist was posing happily with a bunch of giant panda cubs, the next she was discovering what it's like to become an endangered species.

The young woman had paid £80 to be photographed with some of the younger residents at the Wolong Panda Reserve in Sichuan Province.

She made the mistake of stroking them on the head a little too enthusiastically - and found herself suddenly knocked to the ground.

The woman had to be dragged from the pen while a panda gripped her around the waist, and was eventually lifted out of danger by her boyfriend.

They have pictures of the woman's near-buffet experience. They try to say that the pandas are vegetarians. We of course know better. They have a taste for human flesh which the Chinese authorities are exploiting to keep the food bills down at the panda preserves.

Barack And Roll

Michael Barone asks a rather obvious question about all the Obamania going on these days. Is the media feeding frenzy justified? Does Barack Obama have the experience to be an effective president? He seems a nice enough man and he does seem to project a somewhat less partisan image than has been the norm since 1993. But is that enough of a set of credentials?

Obamamania seems to be the political flavor of the month. Illinois freshman Sen. Barack Obama drew crowds of 3,000 in New Hampshire — more than candidates usually pull in the last weekend before the primary. He has appeared not only on "Meet the Press" but also on "Monday Night Football." His announcement that he was thinking about running for president seems to have prompted Hillary Rodham Clinton's moves to kick her candidacy into gear.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen shows him getting 17 percent of the primary vote to Clinton's 34 percent, with no other candidate in double digits. Rasmussen has Obama getting favorable ratings from 52 percent of all voters, 2 percent more than Clinton, and unfavorable ratings from 33 percent, 15 percent less. All this for a man who was almost totally unknown to voters when he stood up in July 2004 to deliver the keynote at the Democratic National Convention.

You only have to watch the video of that speech again to realize why Obama has impressed so many Americans.

There is clearly a demand in the political marketplace for candidates who can rise above the bitter partisanship that has dominated our politics since Bill Clinton took office in 1993. That partisanship has been bitter in part because Clinton and George W. Bush — both born in the leadoff baby boom year of 1946 — happen to have personal characteristics that Americans on opposite sides of the cultural divide absolutely loathe. And it has been bitter because the demographic factor most highly correlated with voting behavior is religion and degree of religious devotion — which is to say, people with deeply held moral views. Too many people have come to regard the views of the other side as not only wrong, but evil.

Obama has been getting the rock star treatment in the press. Part of that is undoubtedly the prospect of a fresh face to write about. But Obama is pretty light on the experience. Is being a fresh face enough to warrant trusting him with the most important job in this country? As Barone points out, not even Obama seems to know the answer to that question. Unfortunately, neither to the voters. And all the Barack and roll hoopla isn't really giving us any answers, just some nice glitz and glamor but few real answers. The main attraction seems to be that Obama isn't Hillary. Clinton has baggage, Obama is almost a blank slate.

UPDATE: John Fund over at the Opinion Journal says he is not at all sure Obama will run at all. And that may be the most brilliant move he could make.

In addition to all the consultants who are urging him to run, Mr. Obama has other advisers who are telling him that at age 45 he can afford to wait. He also could easily find himself on the top of her list of potential running mates. "A Clinton-Obama ticket would be the most powerful turnout machine you can imagine for the Democratic base in 2008," one Democratic congressman who knows both of them told me. "He might be better positioned to be president if he first ran for vice president. If Hillary won, he would be the heir apparent. If she lost, no one would blame him for that."

For all the disappointment the national media might express at an Obama noncandidacy, he could marshal his rhetorical skills and deliver a superb speech that would deepen his long-term appeal to the electorate.

Imagine how refreshing it would be if he bowed out of the race for now, saying: "For every thing there is a season. I believe I am qualified to be president. But I think the country would be better served if I break with normal political ambition and for now devote myself to listening, learning and becoming the most effective senator for Illinois I can be. In other words, I have decided not to succumb to the hype that others are busy creating around me. That's for Hollywood, not for the serous business of running a country in troubled and dangerous times. I appreciate all the attention, but I would like to have more of a conversation with the American people before asking them to entrust me with that grave responsibility. That conversation is better conducted for now outside the media glare of a presidential campaign. Let the dialogue begin."

Mon Dieu!

This is un désastre! This is une tragédie! The world is surely coming to an end. There is a truffle shortage in France! The situation is so dire that they have officials scouring the countryside looking for counterfeit truffles! Pigs are out of work and prices are skyrocketing.

In the truffle markets of Provence, conditions couldn't be riper for truffle fraud: Worldwide demand for the homely delicacy — a rare fungus that retails for $1,200 a pound in upscale Parisian gourmet shops — is rocketing at the same time that truffle production is plummeting because of the worst droughts in modern European history.

Roudiere prowls markets and peruses restaurant menus in his Provencal district in search of cheap Chinese imports — a different biological variety — masquerading as French black truffles, or of French rejects being peddled as premium "black diamonds."

"It's hard to tell the quality of something full of mud, even for people who know what to look for," said Roudiere, one of the top truffle specialists at the department of competition, consumption and fraud prevention, a wing of the finance ministry. "Since it's difficult to identify, it's easy to counterfeit."

Richerenches, a village of 300 inhabitants about an hour's drive north of Avignon, has the largest fresh truffle market in France. Wholesale prices typically triple at year's end as the holiday season brings increased demand. This year, dirt-encrusted French black truffles are selling to wholesalers for up to $600 a pound, half of what they'll fetch when they're resold retail. A pound of Chinese truffles wholesale costs about $60.

Shrinking supply is also driving up prices. Over the past four seasons, truffle production in Provence has plummeted 70 percent, from 33,000 pounds harvested in the winter of 2002 to 9,680 pounds last year, according to ministry records. Truffle production nationwide last year was about 74,000 pounds, half the yields of a decade ago. Neighboring Italy and Spain also report diminished truffle yields because of dry weather.

Farmers have abandoned using the traditional method of truffle hunting and now use dogs instead of pigs to find the mud-filled treats. But who knew the Chinese could counterfeit even truffles? What's the world coming to? Now we finally understand why the French are withdrawing their special forces from Afghanistan. They must guard that which defines France itself! One has to have one's priorities, after all.

Massive Overkill

The British authorities investigating the murder of Alexander Litvinenko are saying that the killers used ten times more polonium 210 than is needed for a lethal dose. That large an amount indicates - very strongly - that a government is behind the operation. The street value of that much of the radioactive isotope is $10,000,000.

Police do not know why the assassins used so much of the polonium-210, and are investigating whether the poison was part of a consignment to be sold on the black market.

They believe that whoever orchestrated the plot knew of its effects, but are unsure whether the massive amount was used to send a message — it made it easier for British scientists to detect — or is evidence of a clumsy operation.

A British security source said yesterday: “You can’t buy this much off the internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers.”

Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko, said: “Only a state-sponsored organisation could obtain such a large amount of polonium-210 without raising suspicion on the international market.”

In Moscow, Scotland Yard detectives have asked to question further two Russian businessmen who met Litvinenko several times in the fortnight before he died, including November 1, the day he fell ill. Both men, Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun, were contaminated with polonium-210 and remain isolated in a clinic.

The men — who have been friends since they were 12 and attended the same Moscow military academy — deny any role in the poisoning and claim that they are victims. German police, however, have begun a criminal investigation into Mr Kovtun after traces of polonium-210 were found at severallocations he visited in Hamburg. Neither man has explained why the radioactive poison was discovered in London in places they visited as long ago as October 16.

The nine British detectives sent to Moscow to investigate the murder are likely to return home this week. Russian authorities have blocked their inquiries and left them on the sidelines as their own officials question the main figures in the investigation.

It sounds like the two men the Russians are protecting played out a live version of Hansel and Gretel, leaving a trail of radioactive breadcrumbs all across Europe. Because of the short half-life of polonium 210, 138 days, this stuff was pretty fresh and there was a lot of it. That isn't really a comforting thought.