Blue Crab Boulevard

First, find an old laptop computer on eBay. We're talking a Toshiba Satellite 4000CDT with a mighty Pentium II (with MMX technology, thank you very much, as the sticker on the case proudly proclaims) and an awe inspiring 96 Megabytes of RAM. Dead battery that won't take a charge, but with a functional CD-ROM and a floppy drive. Second, install a copy of Windows 98 (Second Edition) and make sure everything works. Check the expansive 3 Gigabyte hard disk drive and find it works perfectly with no bad sectors. Run all your various diagnostics that you have accumulated over the years and find that the computer, though old and slow, is flawless. Literally everything on it works to perfection. Third, install a few odd old games that were originally meant for Windows 95 and confirm that they all work properly. Rediscover the world of Myst. Then give it to your 12 year old son as an early birthday present.

It seems to be amusing him, too.

Not a bad way to spend $50.

Wow, this one even got a major raspberry from Briton. John Travolta is lecturing people to "do their bit" to curb global warming.

That would be the John Travolta who owns a fleet of private jets. Which he flies around for fun. What's wrong with this picture? (Oh, and do, please, click the link to see the picture.)

His serious aviation habit means he is hardly the best person to lecture others on the environment. But John Travolta went ahead and did it anyway.

The 53-year-old actor, a passionate pilot, encouraged his fans to "do their bit" to tackle global warming.

But although he readily admitted: "I fly jets", he failed to mention he actually owns five, along with his own private runway.

Clocking up at least 30,000 flying miles in the past 12 months means he has produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions – nearly 100 times the average Briton's tally.

Travolta made his comments this week at the British premiere of his movie, Wild Hogs.

He spoke of the importance of helping the environment by using "alternative methods of fuel" – after driving down the red carpet on a Harley Davidson.

Wow. Al "Gorezilla" Gore has a weird attraction to power lines and uses 20 times the national average of electricity in his home - and strip mines Tennessee to boot. John Travolta flies enormous carbon emitters into the upper atmosphere - pretty much just for the hell of it. (And I'd love to see the power bill for that little pad of his, too.) And these are the spokesmen for global warming?

Apparently, they are both in favor of it, so long as they get to cause it all by themselves. Screw the little people. Boy are their supporters getting shafted. They appear to be unable to see that.

If you are a person who prays, please do so for Ed Morrisey's wife and for Ed himself. She underwent a kidney transplant today. If you are not one who prays, please keep them in your thoughts. So far all the signs are that this has been very successful. Best wishes to them both.

I remember growing up in Rochester, New York when there were still some small, old fashioned amusement parks in the area. Right in Rochester was Seabreeze Amusement Park, at that time it had slipped into a state of seedy disrepair, still functional, but old and run down. It was kind of the lower-level park in the area. (Interestingly, Seabreeze managed to reinvent itself in later years and is still around today.) The other major amusement park was Roseland, in Canandaigua, a bit South and East of Rochester itself. That was the better kept of the two parks, but it is no longer there, the land sold for real estate development. Both parks had, as I recall, Tilt-A-Whirl rides. Those were not new inventions, they were already fixtures of many amusement parks all across the country having been introduced in 1926. Many a child and adult tossed their cookies as a direct result of those infernal machines (I loved riding them - it was fun trying to walk when you got off the ride). Now a lawmaker in Minnesota has stepped up to the plate to address the yawning need of nostalgic boomers to relive their childhoods. Or something like that.

 ST. PAUL - State Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, has introduced a bill designating the Tilt-A-Whirl the official amusement ride in Minnesota.

Fritz said she's taking up the cause of 52 kindergarten students from her district who say it deserves special attention because it was invented in their town.

"I represent children too," Fritz said, adding, "Minnesotans like to have fun, and it's a fun thing to do."

The Tilt-A-Whirl is a platform-type ride consisting of seven freely spinning cars holding up to four riders apiece.

I didn't realize that "DFL" meant "Demented Feel-good Lunacy". But there you have it; today's serious state legislatures addressing serious issues all across the country. Seriously.

I've mentioned the unintended consequences the sudden mad rush to produce ethanol for fuel is generating. Rising cost of animal feed has already been seen and is predicted to go higher. The last warnings being generated focused on meat prices. They will continue to rise as feed costs skyrocket. At that time I predicted there would be more bad news for consumers. Told ya so. There are now dire warnings that diary product prices are set to climb sharply in the near future. (I'll bet the next price jumps are going to be felt in soft drinks and consumer foods that use corn - especially high-fructose corn sweeteners.)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Dairy economists predict the retail price of milk could rise as much as 30 cents per gallon — a 9 percent jump — by fall. The reasons include rising fuel and feed costs for farmers and increasing demand for milk products around the globe.

The average retail price of whole milk could rise to $3.35 per gallon by October, up from $3.07 in January, said Ken Bailey, an agricultural economist at Penn State University who specializes in the dairy industry.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast also predicts an increase in the price that processors pay to farmers for raw milk. That is typically an indicator that the retail price of milk also will rise.

Yet seesawing milk prices seem to have little effect on the buying habits of consumers like Celesta Powell.

Powell buys four gallons of milk every week for her four children, and even with milk prices expected to rise, she says she has no plans to cut back.

"You can't look at cutting your kids back on milk," she said after loading several bottles of milk from Meyer Dairy store into her minivan recently. "What are you going to give them, soda?"

When the average price of milk rose 19 percent in the spring of 2004, milk purchases declined less than 4 percent, said Stephanie Smith, a Denver-based nutritionist and spokeswoman with the National Dairy Council.

Despite being hideously inefficient, they push to produce ethanol is reaching a fever pitch (there are several facilities under construction or in the planning stages all over the region I live in). And there will be dramatic - very dramatic - impacts on American consumers as a result. These surging prices will, as always, hurt the poorest of Americans the worst. Yet another unlovely repercussion of the agenda-driven rush to ethanol.

I am not sure why the British sailors and marines captured by Iran inside Iraqi waters appear to be caving in to Iranian pressure very, very quickly. When they get released, Iran will have some explaining to do. But they have paraded yet another of the people they kidnapped, a marine this time, "apologizing" for having trespassed in Iran's waters. The crisis continues to escalate as a result of this behavior on Iran's part.

TEHRAN, Iran - One of the 15 British service members held captive in Iran appeared Friday on the government's Arabic-language TV and apologized for entering Iranian waters "without permission." The Iranians meanwhile released a third letter allegedly by captured sailor Faye Turney, in which she said she has been "sacrificed" to the policies of the British and U.S. governments.

The Iranian Embassy in London criticized both Britain and the U.N. Security Council on Friday for becoming involved in the crisis.

Prior to the release of the third letter, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose government has insisted that its navy personnel were captured in Iraqi waters, immediately denounced the broadcast and said it would only lead to further isolation for Iran. The standoff has added to tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions and over allegations that Iran is arming Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq.

"I don't know why the Iranian regime keeps doing this, all it does it heightens people's sense of disgust. Captured personel being paraded and manipulated in this way, it doesn't fool anyone," he said in a brief statement. "And what the Iranians have to realize is that if they continue in this way they will face continued isolation."

In the video Friday, Royal Marine rifleman Nathan Thomas Summers was shown sitting with another male serviceman and the female British sailor Faye Turney against a pink floral curtain. Both men wore camouflage fatigues with a label saying "Royal Navy" on their chests and a small British flag stitched to their left sleeves. Turney wore a blue jumpsuit and a black headscarf.

"Again I deeply apologize for entering your waters," Summers said in the clip broadcast on Al-Alam television. "We trespassed without permission."

The latest letter, addressed to the British people, said that Turney had been treated well, unlike the prisoners held by the at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I'm writing to you as a British serviceperson who has been sent to Iraq, sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair government," the letter said.

Interestingly, even the reliably left-leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain is not real happy with Iran right now. But these are the direct dividends of Western weakness and lack of resolution when dealing with the rogue mullahs and their psychotic president, Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was rumored to have been one of the people involved in the taking of American hostages in Tehran in 1979. It really isn't surprising that he is attempting to relive his "glory days". I really hope that Iran has overplayed its hand this time and will generate world wide revulsion. But I am also waiting for the apologists to start kicking in.