Not-So-Great News

Well, the same folks who brought you raging infections with antibiotic-resistant strains of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria over in Britain by not keeping hospitals clean have come up with a cure for the flesh-eating bugs. But you won't like it.

Maggots.

Maggots have been successfully used to treat patients with the superbug MRSA, according to scientists.

In a preliminary trial, 12 of 13 patients with wounds infected with the potentially deadly bug were cured using larvae of the greenbottle fly Lucilia Sericata.

Because maggots eat dead and decaying flesh while leaving healthy tissue intact, "larval therapy" has been used by doctors since at least as early as the Napoleonic Wars, and the technique is still taught to US Army Special Forces medics.

The patients in the study, aged between 18 and 80, were cleared of the infection in an average of three weeks, compared to the 28 weeks needed for conventional treatment with anti-MRSA lotions.

Researchers used maggots to treat diabetic patients who had contracted MRSA in foot ulcers, but they said the findings were likely to apply to all patients who contracted the superbug in wounds.

The technique may be taught to US Army Special Forces medics as something to use in a last resort situation where decent, clean hospital facilities are not available but….. Oh, wait. Maybe that's the answer, then. Britain is down to last resorts.

Still think socialized medicine is a good idea?

“Mr. President, It’s The Bees And The Spiders Again”

I can't believe the news let me get that line from I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus by the Firesign Theater into a post. But bless their hyperventilating hearts, they managed it. First the bees then. The media, anxious for something to pump up into the crisis de jour, has decided on the bees again. (They've done this before, incidentally. Remember the hysterically hyperventilating news reports of the killer bees? The very early Saturday Night Live - you know, when it was mostly funny instead of rarely - ripped hell out of the media for the killer bees hysterics.) So now, instead of, "We're all going to be stung to death," we get, "We're all going to starve to death."

BELTSVILLE, Md. - Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

Get a grip. Seriously. Most of the crops mentioned here may be a nice side dish - but they are not and have never been the staple foods of the vast majority of the earth's population. Buried deep in the article is the fact that - lo and behold - these sudden disappearances have happened before.

Even though experts this year gave what's happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.

Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.

So the difference is what exactly? The media hype? Gee, scientists have figured out, like Pavlovian dogs, that playing the media brings gobs of money. This is not exactly rocket surgery. Item to be looked at? Sure. Item to predict yet another end of the world? At this rate, who freaking cares what's going to end the world. Everything is a monstrous crisis the likes of which has never been seen. Until next week when something else is the monstrous crisis. And forget about those other bees, they aren't important any longer. So, on to the spiders!

British "experts" have declared, authoritatively, that global warming causes spiders!

It may be no bigger than a pea, but its bite can put grown men in hospital.

And thanks to global warming, the false black widow spider is on the march across the country, posing a threat to gardeners and anyone else spending time outdoors.

Officially called steatoda nobilis, it is closely related to the black widow spider whose poison can be fatal to humans.

The species had kept a low profile since arriving in Britain with a cargo of bananas from the Canary Islands 200 years ago.

But according to Stuart Hine, an insect expert at the Natural History Museum, it is rapidly spreading.

"There is no doubt in my mind that this is due to the milder winters caused by global warming," he said.

(Note the photo accompanying the story. The spider appears to have a peace sign on it. Interesting.) Local weather is not a sign of global warming. We had a mild winter where I live this year and a brutally cold spring. Last year, we had heavy winter storms and a warm spring. So is the spring the sign of global warming or the winter? Depends on the media hype and what can cause the most hysteria, I suppose.

Me, I think I'll break out a few Firesign Theater CDs. Seems fitting. After all, I think we're being treated like we're all Bozos on the bus.

Fabulous News!

The solution to both clean water and green power is at hand. And best of all, it involves beer!

The experimental technology was unveiled Wednesday by scientists at Australia's University of Queensland, which was given a $115,000 state government grant to install a microbial fuel cell at a Foster's Group brewery near Brisbane, the capital of Queensland state.

The fuel cell is essentially a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble brewing waste such as sugar, starch and alcohol.

The battery produces electricity plus clean water, said Prof. Jurg Keller, the university's wastewater expert.

The complex technology harnesses the chemical energy that the bacteria releases from the organic material, converting it into electrical energy.

The 660-gallon fuel cell will be 250 times bigger than a prototype that has been operating at the university laboratory for three months, Keller said……

……He expected the brewery cell would produce 2 kilowatts of power — enough to power a household — and the technology would eventually be applied in other breweries and wineries owned by Foster's. The cell should be operating at the brewery by September.

So save the planet: Drink more beer! (Joking aside, it doesn't produce a lot of power, it is more of a wastewater treatment method for the brewery that has a bonus. Pretty clever, isn't it?) And remember, help produce electricity responsibly.

Canadian Sunset

I have no idea what they are putting into the water in Canada, but it's very, very strong. Not long ago were were treated to serious advice from a former Canadian defense minister on how to solve global warming. All we have to do is use all that alien technology the government is hiding from us, explained Paul Hellyer. It's that simple.

Today we get a lecture from another Canadian, this time a Canadian MP, Mike Lake, who is calling - seriously - for the protection of Bigfoot as an endangered species. Told ya it was strong stuff.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Bigfoot, the legendary hairy man-like beast said to roam the wildernesses of North America, is not shy, merely so rare it risks extinction and should be protected as an endangered species.

So says Canadian MP Mike Lake who has called for Bigfoot to be protected under Canada's species at risk act, alongside Whooping Cranes, Blue Whales, and Red Mulberry trees.

"The debate over their (Bigfoot's) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing," reads a petition presented by Lake to parliament in March and due to be discussed next week.

"Therefore, the petitioners request the House of Commons to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot," says the petition signed by almost 500 of Lake's constituents in Edmonton, Alberta.

A similar appeal has been made to the US Congress.

Down through history, there have been numerous, if unsubstantiated sightings of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch in North American folklore.

The beast is said to inhabit remote forests, mainly in the US Pacific northwest and western Canada, and many believe it could be related to the equally mythical Yeti said to have found its home in Tibet and Nepal.

While sometimes described as large, hairy bipedal hominoids, Bigfoot are considered by most experts to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes.

Malaysia official declares that there are no bigfoots (bigfeet?) anywhere in Malaysia; Canada wants to protect them. Or rather one MP who's been hitting the water harder than usual. Ok, let's go through the directions again: if you want to find an ivory-billed woodpecker, you have to look for a bigfoot. If you want to find a bigfoot, you have to look for Elvis. If you want to find Elvis, we'd recommend going on a snipe hunt.

A Very Bad Decision

The US Army has made an enormous mistake. They have issued orders which, in effect, kill blogging by soldiers.

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has — it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

Outstanding stupidity. The news sent by soldiers is extremely welcome and read avidly by many civilians looking for better information than they get from an increasingly biased and inept media. Milbloggers directly contradict a lot of the media reports and present the military side of many matters. Seriously, seriously bad move on the part of the army.

No Override

The House failed to override Bush's veto of the pork-laden, surrender now spending bill the Democrats passed. The vote wasn't even close tothe 2/3 needed, 222-203.

The Democratic-controlled House failed Wednesday to override President Bush’s veto of an Iraqi war spending bill with timetables for troop withdrawals.

The 222-203 vote, far short of the two-thirds majority needed for a veto override, occurred just ahead of a White House meeting that Bush called to begin compromise talks with congressional leaders of both parties on new legislation to finance the war, now in its fifth year.

Micromanagement of a war by Congress is a dreadful prospect - and the Democrats should be worried about how one of their own would fare if the situation was reversed.

Out Of This World

NASA has released some absolutely stunning images taken by the New Horizons probe during its flyby of the Jupiter system in February. Scientists are very pleased with the performance of the probe thus far.

New images beamed back by a NASA spacecraft that flew by Jupiter earlier this year are giving scientists their most detailed glimpse yet of the gas giant and its moons.

On Feb. 28, New Horizons passed within 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) of Jupiter as part of a slingshot maneuver to give it a speed boost as it races toward its main target Pluto. During the move, the spacecraft snapped hundreds of images of the Jupiter system.

Some of those images, unveiled today during a NASA news conference, reveal never-before-seen features of the planet and its moons. New Horizon's principal investigator, Alan Stern, said New Horizon's Jupiter flyby was "successful beyond our wildest dreams."

"This is the eighth mission to Jupiter, and it gives us a chance for the first time to take these modern instruments in close where Cassini couldn't go and with the bandwidth that Galileo couldn't deliver to really unveil new views of the system," Stern said.

Things are going so well, that NASA has altered plans for the New Horizons to hibernate for a portion of the journey:

"We've really learned how to drive this spacecraft," Stern said. "The people that did the Jupiter encounter are now charged in the coming year and a half with designing and writing all the code for the spacecraft to execute during its Pluto encounter."

The original plan was to put New Horizon into hibernation for several years after the Jupiter flyby before waking it again to prepare for Pluto. "We've instead decided that the team is so expert now and they're at the peak of their performance that we're going to be designing and writing all the code in '07 and '08 and doing our first rehearsal of the Pluto encounter in 2009," Stern said.

New Horizons is currently hurtling away from the Sun and Earth at 52,000 miles per hour (83,600 kph), making it the fastest NASA mission ever launched. It is currently 100 million miles beyond Jupiter and more than half a trillion miles from the Sun.

The image of Europa rising over the horizon of Jupiter makes great wallpaper for your computer. I know that for a fact!

It Continues

I have mentioned on several occasions that it appeared that the media is rapidly running out of patience with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. The hard push to the left by the two is endangering the more centrist part of the Democratic party. More evidence today as the New York Sun defends David Broder from the attacks from the left.

Mr. Broder's offense? The Pulitzer-prize winning columnist and reporter, 77, wrote a column criticizing the Democratic leader in the Senate, Mr. Reid, for Mr. Reid's comment that the Iraq war "is lost." Mr. Reid, Mr. Broder wrote "is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. In 2005, he attacked Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as ‘one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington.'" Wrote Mr. Broder, " Reid's verbal wanderings on the war in Iraq are consequential — not just for his party and the Senate but for the more important question of what happens to U.S. policy in that violent country and to the men and women whose lives are at stake." The New York Sun publishes the column today on the adjacent page.

For this Mr. Broder won a rebuke not only from the senators but from the New York Times's Frank Rich, who ridiculed Mr. Broder in his column Sunday and who defended as "obvious" Mr. Reid's assessment that the war is lost. The episode illuminates how thin-skinned and intolerant the left is in this country of a press corps that is anything less than completely pliant. It began with the Democratic presidential candidates refusing to participate in a presidential debate that would be aired on the Fox News Channel, a network so reflexively right-wing that its regular paid contributors include Michael Dukakis's campaign manager Susan Estrich, National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, and the 2006 Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr. First they came for Fox News Channel, then they came for David Broder.

James Joyner pointed to a Gallup poll yesterday ranks public trust in various sources about the Iraq war. Reid is near the bottom of that list. Watch his numbers fall as the press turns on him.

Sea Deer Set Sail

The British, who appear to be cooperating in their own destruction, have aided the warlords of the Animal Uprising™ in their latest nefarious scheme. Two Brits helped an amphibious assault deer reach shore.

Chris Earl and Tony Allsopp were out in their boat to check lobster pots when they spotted the animal, complete with antlers "and big worried eyes," swimming through the waves off the southwestern English coast.

"At first I thought it was a big log, but then as we got closer we saw its legs were moving and realised it was a deer," Earl told the Guardian daily. "It's not the sort of creature you expect to see half a mile out."

The two startled fishermen came alongside, threw a line around the beast and hauled it on board by its antlers.

"Luckily it wasn't the biggest of animals or we wouldn't have had a chance. It was about the size of a big dog. It was a good job the sea was flat calm. If there had been a swell we wouldn't have seen the deer," said Earl.

They found the deer near a small island called Gull Rock, apparently heading further along the Cornish coast. Animal experts said it may have fallen into the sea by nearby woods, adding that deer are known as good swimmers.

For some unknown reason, the amphibious cows didn't work out for the animals. But the two fisherman ensured the success of this first test run for the sea deer squadron. Next up, submersible badgers. Just watch.

Snakes On A Commie!

Former Maoist fighters in Nepal are complaining that snakes have invaded the camps housing them. No, really, they are.

Maoist chief Prachanda accused the government of ignoring the maintenance of the camps, set up under a peace deal in November that ended a decade-old civil war in which thousands of people died.

"More than 700 snakes have been killed in a cantonment," RSS quoted Prachanda as saying.

There are 28 camps housing 31,000 ex-guerrillas under United Nations monitoring.

Prachanda did not say if any of the former guerrillas had been bitten by snakes.

Obviously a running dog imperialist plot. Literally, since it is the Animal Uprising™ that is sending the slithering waves of surly serpents to visit the Maoists. The snakes, of course do it for their own purposes. They are after the rebel's shoes.