Presidential Honors

The body of Gerald R. Ford arrived in Washington, DC for the start of funeral rites this evening. A long procession of vehicles escorted him to the Capitol building.

The journey of the president's body, from its arrival at Andrews Air Force Base at about 5:30 p.m. to its installment beneath the Capitol rotunda about two hours later, took place in the early evening darkness that was broken by floodlights, illuminated fountains, and simple holiday decorations.

It was attended by modest but somber crowds that lined the avenues of Alexandria, where the former president once lived, and which gathered in silence as his hearse, and the limousine bearing his wife, Betty, 88, paused beside the flickering fountains of the World War II Memorial.

The cortege, about 40 vehicles in length, then moved slowly along the broad and empty expanse of Constitution Avenue toward the gleaming dome of the Capitol, bright against the night sky. There the casket bearing Ford's body was carried up the steps to the grand columned east entrance to the House of Representatives.

The casket was placed on the same bier as the one used for Abraham Lincoln 141 years ago, and for Ronald Reagan 2 1/2 years ago.

The Washington Post has a number of articles posted at their website about various aspects of the funeral rites and schedule of events. A subdued and somber occasion. Rest in peace.

“Dear Santa, I’d Like A Pony……”

"…..to eat." A Christmas wish letter from one of the alligators at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Ok, we made that up. But the National Zoo has a website and they really are looking for some generous Santas to help out.

Zookeepers want Frisbees for the pandas. They want feather dusters for birds. They want nature CDs for the zebras and a Double Decker Super Slide for the otters.

Like little kids everywhere, the animals at the National Zoo have wish lists this time of year. But their wants, which are posted on the zoo's Web site and can be donated through January, aren't just for fun. They are specifically designed to make life in captivity more stimulating, more wildlife-like, zoo officials say. They are meant to help animals feel more a part of their species and less a part of a display.

The process of stimulating an animal's senses to replicate life in the wild is called enrichment, and it's an increasingly emphasized part of zoo life, as researchers test different approaches to pique animals' instincts and as activists vie for happier living conditions for those in captivity.

So although Little Tikes toys might resemble nothing of the Southeast Asian streams where small-clawed otters slide down rocks and flop in the water, zookeepers think they will provide a similar level of amusement.

"They like to slide, hide under things, snuggle in corners," zookeeper Jenny Spotten said.

Now, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard want to help out the National Zoo, mainly because they are keeping some of the Animal Uprising™'s troops out of circulation, but hey, whatever works! So here is their site. This is the specific wish list page.

This article did give us an idea, too. Here at the Crabitat we labor long and hard to bring you all the latest news. We could use a bit of stimulation around here as well. So, if any generous people would care to help out, we'd sure appreciate one of these:

We could use a bit of enrichment! Thanks! And happy holidays! (Help out the zoo if you can, too.)

Neat Things Found While Looking For Other Things

This is one of those serendipitous little finds that happen now and again when poking around on the Algore Memorial Interwebby Tubes®. How about every, single page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a long defunct newspaper, from 1841 through 1902. Scanned, digitized and fully searchable. The project was done by the Brooklyn Public Library using some Federal funding. And you know what? I think that is money well spent. As both a news junkie and a history buff, this kind of project warms the cockles of my heart.

Batting Cleanup In Somalia

Ethiopian and Somali government forces are now heading toward the last remaining stronghold of the islamist militias. The Somalian port city of Kismayo holds an estimated 3,000 islamists since the only place left for the islamists to walk very briskly to is right into the Indian Ocean, the Ethiopians finally have a chance to catch up.

Some 3,000 Muslim militiamen have taken a stand in the port city of Kismayo, wedged between the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. government believes they may include four suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The Islamic movement's leader, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, pledged to continue its fight despite losing capital and other key towns in recent days. "I want to tell you that the Islamic courts are still alive and ready to fight against the enemy of Allah," he told residents in Kismayo.

The military advance on Kismayo marks the latest move in a stunning turnaround for Somalia's government, which just weeks ago could barely control one town, its base of Baidoa in the west. Since Ethiopia's dramatic entry into the war last week, however, government troops have retaken the capital, Mogadishu, and pushed the Islamists from much of the territory they held for six months.

The Somali and Ethiopian troops, riding in 16 Ethiopian tanks and armored vehicles, were positioned about 75 miles north of Kismayo on Saturday. A trickle of Somalis began to leave the city in anticipation of an attack.

Um, that is one heck of an armored fist, isn't it? 16 whole vehicles. Are you starting to get the impression that the overall reporting coming out of the Horn of Africa is abysmal? The press touted the islamists as the mightiest thing since Quinn the Eskimo. And 16 tanks annihilated them or sent them out to earn the brisk walk land speed record. Someone should tell them that if they are brisk enough they could actually briskly walk across the water. I saw it on a cartoon once. It must be true. At least as good as some of the reporting, anyway.

Bad Day For Blogging

Well, obviously, today's big topic - pretty much to the exclusion of everything else - is the execution of Saddam Hussein. There are a couple of posts from others out there that should be looked at, however. Gateway Pundit has a roundup of stuff from the left side of the sphere. Contrary to what one commenter wrote here yesterday, I think, there actually is much wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from that side of the sphere.

Redstate has a takedown of the mendacious and pernicious meme that keeps popping up. As he points out, things change over time. One of the things the left is very good at is cherry picking a certain event out of its historical context and judging it in light of today's standards. That is a particularly egregious way to lie.

UPDATE: Yuck. This is unhinged. A news anchor in Orlando calling Saddam's execution an "assassination. Anchoress calls it a new low in broadcast journalism. Its probably even worse than that.

The Conquest Of Florida

We regret to inform our readers that the state of Florida is rapidly falling to the assaulting forces of the Animal Uprising™. First it was the alligators torching tourist traps, then the python legions advancing from the Everglades. Now the next, and grossest, wave has landed in central Florida, just a short distance from Disney.

The mouse brigades are advancing.

But while Mickey Mouse's fans may be welcome, the residents of Apopka, a tiny town 25 miles north of the theme park, are disgusted by the hundreds of thousands of real mice that have overrun their community.

The thumb-sized house mice have chased people out of homes and offices for the second time since 1999, said David Overfield, environmental administrator for the Orange County Health Department.

"It's pretty nasty," said Overfield, whose job includes trying to determine the cause of the infestation.

His current theory says an overabundant crop of acorns may have encouraged well-fed mice to mate — and mate some more.

Dee Sincavage, owner of one of the many ornamental plant nurseries for which Apopka is known, is hard pressed to pick her worst mouse experience since the infestation began last summer by chasing kids out of Camp Wewa.

Was it the morning she walked into her nursery and felt the squish-crunch of fresh mouse carcasses underfoot? The night mice chewed through plumbing, flooding her office and soaking her business records? Or just the daily ordeal of drowning and disposing of dozens of live mice caught in traps overnight?

Once Apopka falls, they'll swarm on down to Orlando. People won't be so fond of Mickey after that, let me tell you.

Yet Another Escape

The Australian animal confinement facility where they keep all the worst detainees of the Animal Uprising™ has had yet another escape. (For some reason, the Aussies like to call this prison the "Adelaide Zoo", but we here at Blue Crab Boulevard know all the euphemisms by now.) After the February, 2004 escape by the squirrel monkey and this past April's breakout involving Wanda, the baby meerkat (a stone cold killer that one), they promised much tighter security. But yesterday, the great escapes continued. This time it was the brains of the outfit. The two African grey parrots busted out.

THEY came under the cover of darkness, silently cutting the wire fence and searching for their prey. Within the hour, staff were alerted, but too late. Adelaide Zoo's prized pair of African grey parrots was gone.

The birds, worth tens of thousands of dollars, were stolen between midnight and 1am yesterday.

Zoo officials expressed fear that the thieves would try to sell the parrots interstate or overseas.

"It's likely that they were stolen for their dollar value and their relative rarity," said Kevin Evans, director of the zoo's conservation programs.

"I think these African grey parrots were specifically targeted … because they're in a quiet location in the zoo grounds, and there were many other species around of value that they could have pinched.

"I would say that they (the thieves) knew what they were doing."

Often referred to as the brainiest of birds, African grey parrots can live to about 60 years and learn hundreds of words. Originally from central Africa, they are commonly kept as pets overseas but number only a few hundred in Australia.

They keep up the charade that someone stole them to avoid panicking the populace, of course. Now that they are on the loose, Australia's supply of crackers is in serious danger.

Career Over

Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong can kiss his career goodbye at this point. When your fellow prosecutors turn on you, you are pretty well toast.

Dec. 29, 2006 — In yet another moral blow to Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys called for the prosecutor to step down from the Duke lacrosse case.

The group, which represents district attorneys from across North Carolina, said in a statement that "it is in the interest of justice and the effective administration of criminal justice that Mr. Nifong immediately withdraw and recuse himself from the prosecution."

"It's extraordinarily unusual and it means a great deal," said Joshua Marquis, a district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore.

The district attorney group also called for the case to be reassigned and handed over to "another prosecutorial authority."

It won't make up for the lives he has ruined, of course. But the politically-driven witch hunt after the three lacrosse players is about over with now. Expect a complete dismissal of all remaining charges very shortly. Don't expect all the people who drove it, including the media, to actually apologize, however.

Reality Rears Its Ugly Head

The New York Times reports a real "duh" moment. At least it is a duh to any longtime readers here. They have finally noticed that there are real problems with wind power.

The reason is that in Texas, and most of the United States, the hottest days are the least windy. As a result, wind turns out to be a good way to save fuel, but not a good way to avoid building plants that burn coal. A wind machine is a bit like a bicycle that a commuter keeps in the garage for sunny days. It saves gasoline, but the commuter has to own a car anyway.

Xcel Energy, which serves eight states from North Dakota to Texas and says it is the nation’s largest retailer of wind energy, is eager to have more. Wind is “abundant and popular,” said Richard C. Kelly, the chairman, president and chief executive, speaking at a recent conference on renewable energy.

But Frank P. Prager, managing director of environmental policy at the company, said that the higher the reliance on wind, the more an electricity transmission grid would need to keep conventional generators on standby — generally low-efficiency plants that run on natural gas and can be started and stopped quickly.

He said that in one of the states the company serves, Colorado, planners calculate that if wind machines reach 20 percent of total generating capacity, the cost of standby generators will reach $8 a megawatt-hour of wind. That is on top of a generating cost of $50 or $60 a megawatt-hour, after including a federal tax credit of $18 a megawatt-hour.

By contrast, electricity from a new coal plant currently costs in the range of $33 to $41 a megawatt-hour, according to experts. That price, however, would rise if the carbon dioxide produced in burning coal were taxed, a distinct possibility over the life of a new coal plant. (A megawatt-hour is the amount of power that a large hospital or a Super Wal-Mart would use in an hour.)

Without major advances in ways to store large quantities of electricity or big changes in the way regional power grids are organized, wind may run up against its practical limits sooner than expected.

They make a lot of the same observations that I did when I wrote this post not long after I started the Crabitat. You should read the article in the Times, though. There are a lot of different initiatives to try to address storage. To my eye at this point, most of them wont work out really well, but they are at least trying a few creative ideas. The biggest problem is the sheer loss of efficiency of converting wind into electricity into some other form of energy and then back to electricity.

Emu-Napping In The News

Authorities in Britain are reporting that emu was kidnapped from the animal center he lived at. Now, the emu, named Rod, was five feet tall and fairly hefty at 45Kg. So the emu-nappers used a wheeled garbage bin to take Rod for a ride.

Rod the emu, named after the late entertainer Rod Hull, was removed from a fenced enclosure at the animal centre near Blackburn, Lancashire, before he was stuffed into the bin.

Staff at Lords House in Rishton fear the fully-grown creature may not have survived his ordeal and that his mating partner, Penny, who was untouched in the raid, may be "traumatised".

The eight-year-old emus are among the animals at the farm who provide therapy for youngsters and adults with special needs.

Police said burglars broke into the premises in the early hours of yesterday morning and used a bin from a neighbouring property to make off with the creature.

They are thought to have wheeled Rod through fields for up to a mile before they crossed a main road and onto a track which led to a disused railway bridge.

The bin was found dumped in a nearby stream. Karen Hamer, the farm's animal care supervisor, said she feared Rod may be dead.

Now if the police had read the news today oh, boy, they be looking in one of the four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. But we digress. This story, oddly, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Animal Uprising™. Instead, our informants tell us this was actually a professional hit job. Note where the trail of the wheelie bin led - to the nearest bridge. Yes, the hit had been ordered by none other than Penny. She'd caught Rod making eyes at the ostrich.

Birdman

Yves Rossy is either a genius or a lunatic, you decide. Rossy dreamed of flying, not in an aircraft but rather as an aircraft. And the 45 year old Swiss has done just that. He has invented what amounts to a four-engined, strap-on parasail. And he flies.

Back in 2003 Rossy, now a commercial airliner captain, began his Flying Man project, when he strapped a pair of stubby wings to his back and leapt out of a plane, swooping eight miles in freefall for the loss of just 1000ft in altitude.

Strapping on the contraption, which is made of various metals, fibreglass, Kevlar and carbon fibre, Rossy climbs into the small aircraft which is to launch him into his flight.

At an altitude of some 7750ft, he leaps out, just like a skydiver. But unlike a skydiver, he does not plummet to the Alps below.

There is just enough lift generated by the 10ft aerofoil strapped to his back to negate the effects of gravity. At first, after the wings are unfolded electrically, he becomes a glider then, when the four kerosene-powered engines are turned on, he becomes a jetplane.

Thanks to the engines, each of which develops 22kg of thrust, he can not only maintain altitude but actually gain height, he says, at a rate of several hundred feet a minute - until the fuel runs out six minutes later. He lands with a conventional parachute.  

"There have been no proper aerodynamic studies of how to simulate this sort of flying," he says. "All simulations involve a rigid aircraft. My wings are rigid, but of course I am not." He steers the contraption, he says, 'purely by intuition'.

You have to see the video to really get a feeling for this (YouTube alternate here - it is the same video). It might give you a bit of vertigo to watch. The wings are actually very complex internally, as you can see in the footage. Rossy's website is here.