Blue Crab Boulevard

This is the end, folks. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have spent a long, long time trying to wake humanity up to the very real threat of the Animal Uprising™. Despite all the restraining orders, despite the long hours spent explaining to the nice man from the Health Department why we'd look really awful in the long-sleeved white sportcoat he keeps offering, despite all the official rejection of our calm and reasonable warnings, we have carried on. But it's over, friends. We can't win. The Animal Uprising™ has rolled out the ultimate weapon. More dreaded than the deadly demon deer from Hell.

The Anti-aircraft moose can't be stopped.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A helicopter is not necessarily a match for an angry moose. Instead of lying down after being shot with a tranquilizer dart, a moose charged a hovering helicopter used by a wildlife biologist, damaging the aircraft's tail rotor and forcing it to the ground.

Neither the pilot nor the biologist was injured, but the moose was maimed by the spinning rotor and had to be euthanized, wildlife officials said.

"It just had to be one of those quirky circumstance. Even dealing with bears and goats and moose and wolves, this is pretty unusual and truly a very unique situation," said Doug Larsen, regional supervisor for the Division of Wildlife Conservation.

Biologist Kevin White was aboard the chartered helicopter on Saturday for a study of moose near Gustavus, a community of 459 people about 50 miles northwest of Juneau in southeast Alaska. Moose outnumber humans there 2-to-1, White has written in an essay for the Department of Fish and Game Web site.

Suicide anti-aircraft moose. It's our personal worst nightmare come true.

A farmer in Germany is suing three teenagers for damages. Not your normal, everyday damages, either. Nobody tripped and fell, no car crashes and no, "I happened to be walking past this building when a plummeting Saint Bernard hit me on the head." No, this is very serious. The teens set off firecrackers and destroyed Gustav's sex drive. And the farmer claims he lost a lot of income because of an impotent ostrich.

Rico Gabel, a farmer in Lohsa, northeast of Dresden, is claiming $6,450 in damages for the alleged antics of the three youths, ages 17-18, between Dec. 27 and 29, 2005.

According to his lawsuit, the farmer claims that fireworks set off by the boys made the previously lustful Gustav both apathetic and depressed, and thus unable to perform for a half-a-year with his two female breeding partners.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard think this is part of an elaborate plan by the warlords of the Animal Uprising™. We suspect that they are trying to get their paws on a supply of Viagra.

Yes, it has been light again today. Yes the computer rebuilding is eating up a lot of time. But I couldn't even blog most of the day because of a fluky internet connection. After the internet ate two attempts at a post, I gave up until it improved. (It also slowed down the repair of the computers since I couldn't reliably download updates. Some of the "smart" updaters could handle a dropped connection. Others ran off into the corner and beat their fists against the wall. Or I did, as the case may be. But as of right now, the network is back on line in the Crabitat and all of the major problems appear - for now - to be somewhat under control.

Well, except for the lost pictures and such. But I just backed up everything on my main box (Which had stayed up and running through all these problems thanks to a ruthless firewall. After I finally solved the driver problem on it (it was a sound driver for AC '97 chips. There is a new one out if you are using on-board sound that uses that chip - you might want to upgrade). But at the moment I am running two computers at once in my office, tied together with a KVM switch. That can be a little disorienting when you forget which one you're working on. But I can update one and still be able to work off the other with one keyboard and monitor.

You know, it takes almost a full day to gut a system, re-install all the drivers and software and download and install all the vital fixes, patches, bells and whistles to a computer from scratch. And that is at DSL speeds. Sad. (I'm sure other folks can do it faster. But I was being extremely cautious to make sure the problems were gone for good.)

But I'll have to go fix my son's computer next. Kaspersky says there is a keylogger on it. There goes another day.

As in religion. Funny, isn't it? The left never, ever misses an opportunity to bash religion in general, but Christianity with special fervor. But then along comes campaign season.

And their favorite candidates fall all over themselves trying to wrap themselves in religion to appeal to a wider base of voters.

And so we have John Edwards playing a self-righteous and self-serving mockery of "What would Jesus do?". Or in this case, what would Jesus denounce.

While I think it’s universally understood that Jesus would want us to give more of ourselves than some of us do (it says as much in the Bible), where on earth did candidate Edwards get the idea that Jesus “would be” upset with the country’s willingness to go to war [with Iraq] when it’s not necessary”? as if to suggest that Jesus would be anti-Iraq war? Has he had a personal talk with Jesus where Jesus informed only him of his feelings about the Iraq war? Here was my comment at Hot Air:

That’s interesting. If President Bush were to come out tomorrow and say that “Jesus would have wanted this war because it freed people” we’d never hear the end of the screaming from the left that GWB was thisclose to turning this country into a theocracy. There’d be hearings, calls for healing, naked nutroot lefties laying in the street in protest. But John Edwards, politician and trial lawyer, can stand there and say that he knows Jesus would be against this war, with the implication being that for that reason, we shouldn’t have started it, and the usual suspects don’t view that in the same light.

Will their hypocrisy never end?

It astonishes me on a regular basis that the Democrats continue this transparent pandering. Do they honestly think that little of voters? But what's really funny here is the cognitive dissonance it must be causing for their ardent, left-wing supporters. Edwards wanted to keep a blogger on staff who has a rather blatant anti-Christian and especially anti-Catholic set of beliefs, then tries to play to the religious shortly thereafter. Astounding.

The House of Representatives appears to be heading for passage of yet another non-binding resolution. This time it is not aimed at administration policy or internal politics. It isn't aimed at the US at all. It is aimed at Turkey and denounces the genocide in Armenia 92 years ago. And it is an appallingly bad political move.

Here is a debate that could occur only in Washington — a bizarre mix of frivolity and moral seriousness, of constituent pandering, far-flung history and front-line foreign policy. And that's just on the American side; in Turkey there is the painful struggle of a deeply nationalist society to come to terms with its past, and in the process become more of the Western democracy it wants to be.

Start with the pandering: Schiff, a Democrat from Los Angeles, cheerfully concedes that there are 70,000 to 80,000 ethnic Armenians in his district, for whom the slaughter of Armenians by the Young Turk regime during World War I is "anything but ancient history." Local politics also explains why a resolution that has failed numerous times in the past 20 years is suddenly looking like a juggernaut: Pelosi, of San Francisco, also has many Armenian supporters……

……Imagine the 435 members of the House, many of whom still don't know the difference between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, solemnly weighing whether Schiff's version of events 92 years ago in northeastern Turkey deserves congressional endorsement. But the consequences of passage could be deadly serious: To begin with, Turkey's powerful military has been hinting that U.S. access to the Incirlik air base, which plays a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, could be restricted. Gul warned that a nationalist tidal wave could sweep Turkey and force the government to downgrade its cooperation with the United States, which needs Turkey's help this year to stabilize Iraq and contain Iran. Candidates in upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections could compete in their anti-American reactions.

So the same folks who think we should not be involved in Iraq now think it's fine to meddle in the affairs of an allied nation. Even if it damages US interests in the region. To do what, exactly? Strut politically, accomplishing no good and lots of potential harm? Look, I fully understand that a lot of Armenians died during that period in history, I grew up with a friend who was of Armenian descent, so I've likely known more about that period than the politicians who will posture over this whole thing. And the next president will have to live with the damage the fools in the House do with this sort of pointless gesturing. Because the resolution will do no good. None at all.

No, not the frozen water variety. The diamonds are a girl's best friend kind. Very suddenly, Canada has become a major player in the diamond mining world. They rank third in the world ever since the first discovery in 1991 (the first mine opened in 1998). It is very big business up North.

The booming industry is replacing the stigma of "blood diamonds" mined in conflict zones with images of polar bears and maple leaves engraved on snow-pure gems.

The riches have brought a juggernaut of men and machines to the remote tundra. They came to a place with no roads, towns or electricity, and brutal winters. Now giant machines screw into the permafrost, moving and sifting tons of rock 24 hours a day.

The territorial government is cheering them on. "Diamond mining is critical for us," Brendan Bell, the local minister of industry, said from the capital, Yellowknife. "We don't want to be a one-trick pony. But if you have to be reliant on one industry, diamonds are perfect."

In 2005, even before the Jericho mine opened in the adjoining territory of Nunavut, Canada's first two big diamond mines in the Northwest Territories unearthed 15 pounds of the gemstones, worth $4 million, each day……

…….In 1998, the BHP mine was the first to open at the site of Canada's original 1991 discovery by geologist Charles Fipke and a partner, Stewart Blusson. Fipke spent decades pursuing diamonds around the world. Abandoned by companies and a wife who tired of his obsession, he borrowed money from friends and sold stock to neighbors, offering only hope.

Like a detective, he sleuthed out purple garnets and emerald-green chrome diopsides that might accompany diamonds, refined his hunches about where the glaciers might have picked them up, and eventually solved the mystery by drilling near the frigid shores of Lac de Gras, 200 miles northeast of Yellowknife.

Other prospectors moved in quickly after him. Small exploration companies flocked to Yellowknife, rented anything that could fly and raced into the wilderness to plant wooden stakes marking their claims. The Diavik mine, 20 miles from Fipke's find, was staked out under the waters of Lac de Gras and opened in 2003.

"It was a surprising time. We lived through the largest staking rush the world has seen," said Yellowknife Mayor Gordon Van Tighem. "There were bales of stakes around town. The local construction companies were churning them out, running out of wood. With the gold mines petering out, it came along at a very good time for us."

It is actually a rather interesting article. There are, predictably, environmentalist protests. But it's interesting that these mines help alleviate the demand for "blood diamonds". This is one of those trade-offs that seem to be more positive for the world than negative.