Winter, Snow, Sunset, Colorado

Who could ask for anything more?

A very, very nice photograph, indeed.

A Short Treatise On A Sticky Subject

Today I had occasion to need an adhesive bandage. Many people call these “Band-Aids” which is, of course, incorrect. That name is a brand name, not the generic nom-de-booboo-cover. But I did need one, having managed to get a spot of an infection on a finger. So, it’s off to the medicine cabinet in search of a covering for the wound.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I have relatively young children around the house. They are no longer toddlers, so they are past the recreational bandaging stage. That would be when the little tykes discover the joys of sticking a bandage over an imaginary booboo. Moms everywhere indulge this little attention getting device by slapping one over a completely fictitious wound. Or one that, while it actually exists, is no more than three or four microns across. At the deep end, so to speak. But this leads to the big problem of modern American life. That is, there is never a bandage, Band-Aid brand or otherwise, around when you really need one. And I mean never.

Smart parents learn early that there are two basic types of adhesive bandages, regardless of brand name. They are the “irremovable” and the “stick-proof” types. The irremovable type can take as long as twenty years to work loose on its own. Attempts to remove the bandage before then will – inevitably – involve loss of hair, skin or in extreme cases actual bone as well as the bandage. The stick-proof type, on the other hand, is manufactured with no actual adhesive whatsoever. It simply will not stay in one place for anything longer than a nanosecond. A harsh look will send it scurrying for the floor.

So savvy parents figure out that while they might have to indulge the little beggars when they demand something be stuck across their latest fictional mishap, they darn well better keep a secret stash of the good stuff around. A sort of a hedge fund against the inevitable real need, if you will. A stock of the stick-proof variety for fictional wounds and the real bandages held in reserve. This leads to yet another problem later in life. You see, the children figure out fairly quickly that there actually are some bandages hidden away even if Mommy says there aren’t. And when they get older, they find them.

They band together and form search teams to accomplish this. They will root through every cabinet, drawer, cupboard, shoe box or envelope in the house. They will even invert shoes and shake them to see if bandages fall out. They’ll invert and shake the pets if necessary. But they will find and use every bandage in the house.

Which is what I found had happened tonight. I went to get a bandage and there were only some of the stick-proof variety left over from when the kids were smaller. Quite dusty and not at all improved in actual adhesive quality by virtue of aging. All of the secret stashes had been looted as completely as an Egyptian tomb. Even the pets. And there I was placing a stick-proof bandage on my finger and securing it with duct tape.

If they ever realize I hide that in my underwear drawer, I’m doomed.

Humanity’s First War

A German archaeologist has discovered evidence of what he is calling "Humanity's First War". The excavation at the ancient city of Hamoukar in Syria has turned up thousands of clay balls used as ammunition. The city dates back some 6,000 years.

"We have there the oldest example of an offensive war," said Clemens Reichel, who is leading an archaeological dig in the ancient city of Hamoukar, on the border with Iraq, for the University of Chicago.

Reichel said that the city, whose fortifications were three metres (10 feet) thick, was besieged and reduced to ashes probably by attackers from southern Mesopotamia.

Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad immediately denounced the Zionist aggression against the peaceful inhabitants of Hamoukar.

UPDATE: Also found, according to McQ from Qand O, were the remains of the first politician. And he has the photographic evidence. Which you can't even blame on me. Really. I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Damn it.

UPDATE: Thanks to McQ for the link. Visitors, please do take a look around. I try to have an interesting mix of things around here. Once in a while, I actually succeed.

On Beds Made

Cindy Sheehan led a group of people to disrupt a Democratic party press conference. The bed is all made up and now the Democrats get to live with it. For the fringe will even shout down their allies.

Chanting "de-escalate, investigate, troops home now," the protesters disrupted a briefing aimed at outlining priority goals when Democrats take over the House and Senate on Thursday.

Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist and mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, led the group to Capitol Hill to warn Democrats that party activists expect them to end the war in Iraq and confront the White House on a change in Iraq strategy.

"We didn't put you in power to work with the people that have been murdering hundreds of thousands of people since they have been in power," Sheehan said. "We put you in power to be opposition to them finally and we're the ones who put them in power."

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., cut the press conference short when protests drowned out his voice through a dozen microphones set up to record his comments. Emanuel said Democrats would go back to the caucus room and return later.

At some point before the election I predicted that the Democrats would regret their choice of allies. That didn't take long at all did it? You see, Rahm, you did nothing to help win the election for the Sheehans of the world. You encouraged them to shout others down, how's it feel to be on the receiving end? There's a saying here about fleas that applies.

Others: Townhall, PoliPundit, Redstate, Sister Toldjah, Right Voices, The American Mind, Jammie Wearing Fool, Slublog, An Army Lawyer, A Blog For All, Hot Air (Video at this one), Dawnsblood, American Princess, Gateway Pundit, Don Surber, Marathon Pundit, STACLU,  American Pundit, Dogwood Pundit (GREAT advice), Two Malcontents,

Aliens In New Jersey!

Word from the Associated Press that the aliens have begun bombarding New Jersey. We understand that this would normally not actually attract any attention, but this time they hit a house.

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A metal, rock-like object about the size of a golf ball and weighing nearly as much as a can of soup crashed through the roof of a Monmouth County home, and authorities on Wednesday were trying to figure out what it was.

Nobody was injured when the oblong object, weighing more than 13 ounces, crashed into the home and embedded itself in a wall Tuesday night. Federal officials sent to the scene said it was not from an aircraft.

The rough-feeling object, with a metallic glint, was displayed Wednesday by police. "There's some great interest in what we have here," said Lt. Robert Brightman. "It's rather unusual. I haven't seen anything like it in my career."

Now, they say they don't know what it is. But our cracked investigative staff have found out the Real Truth™. Pouring over internet records of UFO sightings we came across this entry (And we swear this is exactly how the entry reads):

Freehold NJ Light 5 minutes A bright light that hoover motionless eventually ascended straight up 10/30/06

Which is exactly the evidence we needed to validate this picture. We now know the truth. You heard it here first:

“Death Awaits You All With Nasty, Big, Pointy Teeth.”

As Tim said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Although this rabbit doesn't need sharp teeth. It can just sit on you. It's giant livestock day here in the Crabitat! Now we have seen these rodents of unusual size before, in fact even though the picture link is dead in the earlier post, I think this is the same guy and the same Baby Huey rabbit.

As we said back then, giant fruits evolve and giant herbivores evolve to eat them. Then come the giant wolves. (Possibly radioactive, too!)

Consult the Book of Armaments at once.

Now We Understand

Just prior to Bulgaria joining the European Union, they were required to shut down two older nuclear reactors at Kozloduy in the Northwestern part of the country. The Bulgarians were kind of bitter about it since that had been a source of revenue for the nation, but the EUrocrats demanded it. Little did we know they real reason - until now that is.

SOFIA (AFP) - A grey wolf weighing 80 kilogrammes (176.4 pounds), has been reportedly shot dead in northwestern Bulgaria, which if confirmed would make it the biggest wolf ever recorded.

Slavcho Slavchev, who said he killed the animal near the village of Brusartzi, told BTA news agency that he shot the six-year-old beast with a single bullet to the head while lying in ambush for other game.

None of the hunters in his party had ever seen or heard about such a big animal, Slavchev said, adding that a 50-kilo wolf is already considered an exceptionally weighty trophy.

There was no immediate independent confirmation of the weight of the animal Slavchev said he had shot.

Now we understand. The EU was actually combating the animal menace! The Animal Uprising™ must have been conducting scientific experiments to breed giant wolves! We saw that in a movie once. Although it was ants that time.

A Blog Navy

The only blogger to actually own a real, live destroyer. No, really.

I am extremely jealous. I want one, too. Although a carrier would be even nicer.

The Case Of The Missing Rhinos

Authorities in Nepal report that a number of endangered Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros have gone missing from a nature preserve in Southwestern Nepal in recent years. The 72 rhinos had been relocated to the park starting in 1984 as a conservation measure. How many have gone missing?

All of them.

Authorities introduced 72 rhinos, also known as the Indian rhinoceros, in the Babai Valley, 320 km (200 miles) southwest of Kathmandu, as part of a conservation drive that started in 1984.

"We have records showing 23 rhinos had died due to poaching or other causes. The rest are missing," Laxmi Prasad Manandhar, a senior official at the Department of National Park and Wildlife Conservation, said.

But he ruled out the possibility of all the 49 missing rhinos falling prey to poachers.

"If poachers had killed them they should have left behind the bodies" after taking away the horn, he said, adding that just one rhino skeleton had been found during an extensive search in June.

"Where did they go? I have no answer. It is a mystery," Manandhar said.

The rhinos were moved to Babai Valley from Chitwan National Park on Nepal's southern plains under a conservation scheme supported by global conservation group WWF.

Our operatives were able to get in to see an official in the Nepalese Supreme Bureau of Incompetent Management who informed us that the rhinos were not, in fact, missing. Rather, they were all on vacation at the beach. He said that Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros were well known as avid surfers. He was happy to furnish a picture as proof but refused to give his name.

(Here's an interesting site where you can download pattern sheets and build a paper sculpture of one of these endangered rhinos as well as other animals. Or motorcycles.)

Vegetable Oil: It’s Not Just For Health!

It turns out it can be good for your freedom as well.

OSLO, Norway - A Lithuanian held on suspicion of theft in an Arctic Norway jail slipped out of custody — literally — by stripping naked, smearing himself with vegetable oil and sliding through the prison bars, police said Wednesday.

"He slipped through the bars on Christmas Eve," said Svein-Erik Jacobsen, operation leader for the Oest-Finnmark Police District. The unusual escape made national news in Norway on Wednesday.

Another Lithuanian, held as an accomplice in the same cell, also used the technique to try to slip out of a window of the Vadsoe Jail, but failed, apparently because he was too big. The men had managed to bend the bars slightly to gain more space.

The Police have but out an all points bulletin for Yuris Sinkevicius, 25, described as 5 feet, 8 inches tall with a thin build. And he's slippery, very slippery.

Modest Hero

This guy deserves a medal.

It was every subway rider’s nightmare, times two.

Who has ridden along New York’s 656 miles of subway lines and not wondered: “What if I fell to the tracks as a train came in? What would I do?”

And who has not thought: “What if someone else fell? Would I jump to the rescue?”

Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran, faced both those questions in a flashing instant yesterday, and got his answers almost as quickly.

Mr. Autrey was waiting for the downtown local at 137th Street and Broadway in Manhattan around 12:45 p.m. He was taking his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, home before work.

Nearby, a man collapsed, his body convulsing. Mr. Autrey and two women rushed to help, he said. The man, Cameron Hollopeter, 20, managed to get up, but then stumbled to the platform edge and fell to the tracks, between the two rails.

The headlights of the No. 1 train appeared. “I had to make a split decision,” Mr. Autrey said.

So he made one, and leapt.

Read the whole thing. He doesn't feel he did anything special at all. I think the rest of us do.

UPDATE: A new story from the AP just came up. This guy is amazing.

NEW YORK - In hindsight, jumping in front of an oncoming subway train may not have been the smartest move Wesley Autrey has ever made.

"It's all hitting me now," Autrey said Wednesday, a day after he saved the life of a young man who had fallen down onto the tracks by pushing him into a gap between the rails. "I'm looking, and these trains are coming in now. … Wow, you did something pretty stupid."

No, sir, Mr. Autrey. You did something to save a man's life. That does not make you stupid. It makes you a hero. Even if you don't think it is anything particularly special, a lot of us do. So does the family of Cameron Hollopeter. Thank you.

Keller To Kill Public Editor Position?

The New York Observer says that there is a very distinct possibility that New York Times executive editor Bill Keller may well end (or hamstring) the position of public editor when Byron Calame's term ends in May. Keller appears to not want his paper's lies, distortions or omissions aired in public.

The two-year term of the current public editor, Byron (Barney) Calame, will conclude in May. There may, or may not, be another.
 
“Over the next couple of months, as Barney’s term enters the home stretch, I’ll be taking soundings from the staff, talking it over with the masthead, and consulting with Arthur,” meaning publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., wrote Bill Keller, The Times’ executive editor, in an e-mail to The Observer.
 
Mr. Calame is the paper’s second public editor since Mr. Keller announced the job on his first day as executive editor in July 2003.
 
Mr. Keller wrote in his e-mail that “some of my colleagues believe the greater accessibility afforded by features like ‘Talk to the Newsroom’ has diminished the need for an autonomous ombudsman, or at least has opened the way for a somewhat different definition of the job.”
 
Mr. Keller added that “the creation of a public editor has helped the paper immensely in a period when the credibility of the media generally has been under assault.” The position at The Times was created in the wake of the Jayson Blair debacle that emerged in 2003.
 
When reached by phone on Dec. 29, Mr. Calame said he had heard the news. His assistant, Joseph Plambeck, had attended an in-house Q&A on Dec. 15, at which Mr. Keller expressed the idea.
 
“I have been critical of the newsroom,” Mr. Calame said. “I’ve also praised the newsroom, and I think that Bill Keller has been—quite obviously—unhappy with some of the things I’ve written.”
 
“It seems to me that the high degree of independence that has been given to the public editor at The New York Times makes it a situation that inevitably causes criticism,” Mr. Calame said.
 
He added: “So it is not a surprise to me that The New York Times—that Bill Keller, the executive editor, and Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher—would want to sit down and think about whether they want to have a public editor.”

The article describes the relationship between Keller and Calame as "really bad". It probably would be a bit better if the Times indulged in accurate reporting instead of agenda driven distortions, but that's pretty obvious. It is also pretty obvious that Keller will be unlikely to leave the position as it exists today. It will either be muzzled or eliminated.

The Misuse Of Polls

A very interesting analysis of polls, polling and the misuse of the same by Charles Arlinghaus appears in the New Hampshire Union-Leader today. It is short and well worth the time to read it.

Polling about politics and public policy is incredibly misleading and counterproductive. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think pollsters are incompetent or that their information is wrong. Today's polls are surprisingly accurate measurements of public opinion. The problem is the way they are used.

A poll is merely a quick snapshot of people's immediate reaction to a very specific question at one particular time. That piece of data is very useful if used correctly to assess baseline attitudes or initial impressions of personalities. Unfortunately, the numbers are most often used superficially to cause inaction or make judgments that aren't true.

As an example, in 1999, with the first contest more than a year away, the Republican primary looked like a tight contest between Elizabeth Dole, then leading in the polls, and George W. Bush, the only other candidate with significant support. Bush and Dole were the only two candidates anyone had heard of, so their numbers were naturally high. A nobody named John McCain was at 2 percent. But in the end Dole dropped out and McCain won the primary going away like Secretariat at the Belmont.

The poll was largely a measure of name identification before anyone started campaigning and before most candidates had a chance to become known.

The fixation with a flat numeric answer is the worst abuse, of course. But there are others including falling into a false interpretation of a poll's meaning by failing to put the snapshot into a larger context. The trend is more revealing than the snapshot of a single poll number. The analysis is written from a New Hampshire point of view, but applies just as much to national polling.

When Pigs Party

January 1st officially ushered in the Year of the Boar in Japan (which follows the Solar calendar rather than the Lunar one). So it was obviously time for the wild boars to party. And they did, by attempting to hold a human roast in the rural city of Yawatahama on Shikoku Island.

TOKYO (AFP) - Four Japanese nationals needed no reminding that the year of the pig had arrived when they were attacked by wild boars in a rural city on New Year's Day.

The four, aged between 56 and 77, sustained slight leg or head injuries when three wild boars went on the rampage in a residential area in Yawatahama on the island of Shikoku on Monday afternoon, police said Tuesday.

"Some 15 local hunters tried to track down the boars after they went back into the mountains," a duty officer at the police station in Yawatahama, a seaside city of 41,000 people, said by telephone.

"They abandoned the hunt after a couple of hours and we alerted the citizens to be aware of boars by the public address system," he said.

This is a disturbing new trend in the Animal Uprising™. Themed attacks designed to conform to human events. It is a good thing there isn't a year of the seagull, isn't it? But next year will be the year of the rat. There's something to look forward to. *Shudder*

We Found Them!

We have them now! We have located the source of the dreaded giant puppet heads! They are bred over in Taiwan and now Taiwan wants to export puppet chic to the world! Run for your lives.

HUWEI, Taiwan (Reuters) - Traffic stops every year in downtown Huwei, a city almost lost among the farms of central Taiwan, as some of the town's most celebrated citizens parade through the streets.

Some are giants. Others blue-suited aliens. And they are all puppets, operated by as many as 200 local troupes that generate a buzz in Huwei which officials hope to export around the world.

Huwei and surrounding Yunlin County aim to send the wooden, hand-powered celebs to the world stage. The silver screen is one part of the plan. Local tourism is the other.

"We hope the culture can mobilise industry," vice county commissioner Chiou Shang-chia said. "The government thinks that culture is an asset. You can say Yunlin is a cultural resource."

The county, whose puppetry legacy spans three centuries, launched a publicity drive last year by inviting foreign journalists to attend the parade.

Officials say they will invite foreigners every year to help stimulate tourism. Yunlin is also building a puppet museum which will offer weekend puppet shows.

Now we know where they came from. Maybe we can develop some sort of repellent spray.