Quick! Call A Surgeon!

The Suwannee sturgeons are attacking jet skiers again. Or should we say, still. Yes, last year we mangled Stephen Foster when reporting about the amphibious airborne assaults of the savage Suwannee sturgeons. We still refuse to use "Like a Sturgeon", however. If anything, Madonna is even creepier this year what with her sudden fascination with her baby collection.

Sharon Touchton, 50, of St. Petersburg, had serious injuries, but she was later discharged from a hospital after the March 31 accident, officials said.

She had been camping with a group of personal watercraft enthusiasts near the town of Suwannee in north Florida, said Karen Parker with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The group went for a ride and Touchton was traveling 25 to 30 mph before the accident.

Touchton's husband was the first to come up behind her after the accident and found her floating face-down in the water. No one else saw the collision, so it was initially unclear what had happened.

Parker said once Touchton was able to talk to investigators, she simply said something about a "big fish."

We'd like to point out that she had just been the victim of a strafing run by an armor-plated, prehistoric, aerial fish, so she forgot to mention the aerial part. At this point, the Kamikaze sturgeon attacks on the Suwannee are getting right out of hand. So much so that the US Navy has stepped in to help. We have exclusive pictures of the finest naval force in the world today engaging the suicide squadrons of evil sturgeon on the Suwannee.

They Said It

The Telegraph said it. We're just reporting - that's all.

Wolves At The (Four) Door

Now do you believe us about the Animal Uprising™? We have the best proof yet: Wolves are trying to bring down their biggest game ever. A full-sized pickup truck!

BRIMSON, Minn. - When conservation officer Steve Peterson got a call that a timber wolf was chasing vehicles on a country road near Brimson, he thought it was prank or a misidentified German shepherd. But then he saw it firsthand.

"I couldn't believe it. It was like a dog chasing cars," Peterson said. "It looked like a big, healthy male wolf. No mange."

Responding to the call last Friday, Peterson saw the animal hide in the ditch as a pickup approached and then come bounding out to chase it.

The wolf did the same when Peterson drove to that spot, where he stopped his vehicle.

The real danger here is quite simple. The more domesticated canine species like the common dog have always faced a vital dilemma when chasing cars: what do they do with it once they catch it? The wolves being more predatory by nature  already know what to do when they finally catch a car or truck.

Eat the filling.

Spring Is Here

You can tell it's spring. The alligator legions are marching North again. Last year it was Pennsylvania and New York, this year they are invading Indiana. The cold snap may have done at least one of them in,though. Authorities found the carcass.

BERNE, Ind. - Surveyors looking for the source of a clogged drain in southern Adams County found a 7-foot dead alligator. "At first they thought it was a turtle in there, but then they discovered an alligator," Adams County sheriff's Deputy Larry Butler said.

He said the 120-pound alligator, which had been dead for about a week, was put inside the drain after it died. The sheriff's department and the Department of Natural Resources were looking for the owner of the reptile found Monday in Berne, about 30 miles south of Fort Wayne.

It is legal to own alligators in Indiana, but the state requires owners to apply for a permit with the DNR for alligators that are longer than 5 feet, said Greg McCollam, assistant director with the department's fish and wildlife division. There were no permits registered in Adams County, he said.

We'd like to savor this for just a moment. The surveyors thought the alligator was a turtle. There doesn't appear to be much breadth in the educational program for surveyors, does there? We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are always ready to help educate people about animals so, for the edification of the surveyors in Indiana we whipped up a little photo guide. The first picture shows a turtle. Note how it differs from the second photo, which shows an alligator. There will be a test later.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Look

The Antwerp city zoo, in the land of chocolate and waffles, Belgium, have issued instructions to visitors. Don't look at the chimpanzees. They are being more than a bit disingenuous about the reason, however.

New rules have been posted outside the chimp enclosure at the city zoo urging visitors not to form a bond with a particular male chimp named 'Cheetah.' He was raised by humans but is now bonding with the seven other apes at the park, a zoo official said Wednesday.

"We ask, we inform our daily visitors and other visitors that one of the monkeys is particularly open for human contact," zoo spokeswoman Ilse Segers told AP Television News. "He was raised by humans in a family and therefore we are trying to integrate him, to try to get more social integration with the group."

She said Cheetah's continued interaction with humans was "delaying the social integration of the animal in the group," and isolating the ape from the others.

One of our informants broke away from the all-the-waffles-you-can-eat special at a local eatery long enough to clue us in to the real reason they are clamping down on Cheetah. Well, other than the fact that he stole Tarzan's sidekick's name. Cheetah was caught panhandling again. He's been trying to get enough money to make bail by hitting up the visitors.

Stopping Killers

Glenn Reynolds has an op-ed in the New York Daily News today about armed citizens stopping killers. The media has not widely reported these incidents, because, of course, they don't fit into the agenda. I pointed these out to my son a couple of days ago - he had never heard of them. (Regular readers know that I linked to these items over at Doug Ross' blog.)

In fact, some mass shootings have been stopped by armed citizens. Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun.

Police can't be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it's usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. Only if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all.

"Gun-free zones" are premised on a fantasy: That murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That's an insult. Sometimes, it's a deadly one.

I'd also point out that Japan has extremely strict laws concerning handguns. Which did not stop the mayor of Nagasaki from being gunned down by a gangster yesterday. The laws did ensure that the killer had complete confidence that no armed citizen could stop him, however.

SCOTUS Upholds “Partial Birth” Abortion Ban

There will be much hyperventilation about this from the absolutists on the abortion issue. The Supreme Court has upheld the ban on so-called partial birth abortions. There should be one fact that we should be able to discuss as adults, however.

This is a barbarous procedure. Regardless of where you stand on abortion, this is an abomination that we, as a society, should not allow. (I am frankly shocked that any doctors in this country agree to perform what is nothing more than the killing of infants. Not embryos, infants.) China routinely forces women to undergo this procedure by all reports. I would rather see this nation hold to a higher standard than that. 

The ruling only addresses this one technique. Other means of abortion are not impacted in any way.

Let the hyperventilation begin.

A Taxing Time Of Year

John Stossel, who is one of my favorites these days, devotes his column today to that American rite of spring: Tax Day. The traditional April 15th was moved this year, of course, but it is still a time of anxiety and angst. Even those who are all proud of paying taxes and all admit that the system is overly burdensome. (He's never taken us up on our offer to help make him more proud, however.) Stossel explains what is wrong with the current tax code and why it is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Twelve years ago, Estonia became the first country to tax everyone — companies and individuals — at the same flat rate. It started at 26 percent, dropped to 22, and will go to 20 in 2009. There are a few deductions for things like mortgage interest, educational expenses, and charitable donations. Very low incomes are exempt.

Unsurprisingly, Estonia is booming. The former Soviet republic used to be poor, with an average income 65 percent below its European neighbors. Today, Estonians are almost as rich as their neighbors, and their economy is growing more than 11 percent a year.

Corporations like a tax system that is low and simple, too, and that leads them to do more business in flat-tax countries. American companies such as Microsoft, Colgate, 3M, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and Johnson & Johnson opened businesses in Estonia after the flat tax was adopted. Twelve years ago, foreign investment in Estonia made up only 5 percent of GDP, but today, it's up to 20 percent. That means there's more money in the Estonian economy to tax. So while the tax rate dropped, government revenues actually increased.

So why can't we do that here?…..

……But here's a problem: Many in Congress don't really want to reform the tax code. They like things just the way they are. So what if it makes paying taxes a headache for you? It gives them the awesome power to dispense privileges, which helps curry favor with lobbyists.

Congressmen bicker over who gets to hand out these special treats. In 2004, Sen. Olympia Snowe deplored the "financial burden on shipbuilders," many of whom happen to operate in her home state of Maine, and got them a $310 million tax break. Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski got her state a tax break on contributions for "charitable" whaling activities (whatever that means). And Sen. Saxby Chambliss demanded tax relief for the timber industry in Georgia.

So while business gets its tax breaks and congressmen get their campaign contributions, your spring weekend is devoted to wading through Form 1040 instructions.

The politicians get to glad hand with your money, you get the shaft. This is a bipartisan problem; neither party is very good at addressing the fundamental problem of a tax code that currently runs to 66,000 pages. And is growing. The estimated burden of all this on the taxpayer is actually greater than the Federal budget deficit. That's nothing to be proud of.

Deadly Consequences

One thing that you can be sure of is that whenever something is being touted as the next big thing that will save the world there will be unintended consequences. I have pointed out that ethanol production is diverting corn from use as food and consumer food prices are being driven up as a result. I've also pointed out that ethanol production is grossly inefficient, using almost as much energy as is produced. I've also pointed out that the rush to mandate the use of compact fluorescent bulbs may have the potential of mercury contamination in one's home. (Incidentally, some argued the risks were minimal. I've been hearing messages on the radio that asbestos surveys are now being required prior to starting renovations. How long until someone pushes for mercury surveys?)  Now one study indicates that the much touted environmental benefits of using ethanol instead of petroleum may be fictitious. Ethanol may cause even worse environmental consequences than burning gasoline.

Jacobson focused especially on Los Angeles, which is home to about 6 percent of the nation's population and has historically had some of the most polluted airs in the United States and has been the testbed for nearly all U.S. air pollution regulations, making it ideal for a more detailed study, he explained.

He programmed the model to compare two future scenarios—one in which all the cars, trucks, motorcycles and other autos in the country are fueled by gasoline, and another in which vehicles are driven by E85, a popular blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

''We found that E85 vehicles reduce atmospheric levels of two carcinogens, benzene and butadiene, but increase two others, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde,'' Jacobson said. ''As a result, cancer rates for E85 are likely to be similar to those for gasoline. However, in some parts of the country, E85 significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog.''

200 more deaths per year

Specifically, E85 would cause ozone levels to increase in Los Angeles and the northeastern United States but to decline in the southeast United States. This is because of levels of airborne pollutants such as nitrogen oxides or volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde vary in the air of each locale. Emissions from E85 would therefore react chemically in different ways, creating ozone at some areas and destroying it in others.

Gasoline currently leads to roughly 10,000 premature deaths in the United States annually from ozone and particulate matter, Jacobson explained.

''In our study, E85 increased ozone-related mortalities in the United States by about 200 deaths per year compared to gasoline, with about 120 of those deaths occurring in Los Angeles,'' he said. ''These mortality rates represent an increase of about 4 percent in the U.S. and 9 percent in Los Angeles above the projected ozone-related death rates for gasoline-fueled vehicles in 2020.''

At the least, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Because it is never as simple and easy as the single-issue people make it out to be. Never.

Ur Tu Stoopid Tu Spel Gud

The Simplified Spelling Society wants to change the way the English language is spelled. They would like to use all phonetic spelling because, they say, the spelling of English has not been updated in 500 years. Itz tu hard tu spel gud.

The Simplified Spelling Society (SSS) is celebrating its 99th birthday by launching a new campaign to make it easier to read and write English.

It may be the world's most universal language but linguistic experts say it has failed to adapt for the last 500 years and now half the globe's English speakers have difficulty spelling.

With texts and e-mails revolutionising the way we communicate, SSS secretary John Gledhill says the time is ripe for phonetic reform and spelling simplification.

"Texts cut away the complications and take away the stigma of not being able to use an obsolete spelling," Gledhill told Reuters in an interview.

The SSS message is simple: "You can change the spelling without spoiling the language. People are scared of change and don't realise it is normal in language."

European children learn to read and write far quicker than the British, he said. Italians take just two years while the British can struggle for up to 12 years.

He said 40 million American adults are functionally illiterate — for everyday purposes, they are not able to read and write.

Gledhill, who has a PhD in the history of Dutch consonantal spelling from 1100-1970, said the Netherlands updated spelling to keep pace with pronunciation.

Do I occasionally misspell a word, sure. I have spell checker on this blog for just that reason. Sometimes it is a typing error, sometimes I just flub the spelling. But, really, is was not all that hard to learn to spell English. Their are a few weird rules but nothing all that difficult (I'm quite sure the Dutch consonantal spelling has a few oddities in it, too.) English grammar is probably somewhat more difficult than the spelling is. But there are far more difficult languages in the world.