Cops Without Pants

It's already hard enough for the police to get respect as it is, but Baltimore, Maryland has managed to make it even harder for their officers. They ran out of pants for the cops.

BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) — Baltimore police are looking for a few good pairs of pants.

The police department has run out of two popular sizes of the custom-made navy blue uniform pants it provides to every officer, a department spokesman said Wednesday.

Officers who wear size 36 or 38 will have to wait for new pants until a special order comes through.

"We are officially out," said Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman. "We're putting in an emergency order for those two sizes."

The department attributed the shortage to the recent hiring of 240 new officers. But police union president Paul Blair blamed a new initiative that requires detectives to walk periodic foot patrols in uniform.

I can just hear the 911 calls coming in on this one. People reporting flashers will beg the police not to respond.

The Courthouse Ghost

Benjamin Radford debunks the Santa Fe courthouse "ghost" video over at LiveScience. He has managed to exactly duplicate the image captured on the video camera last week.

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO—Over the past week, a glowing, fuzzy white blob became an unlikely international star. It was captured on videotape early Friday morning, June 15, by a security camera at a courthouse here.

The “ghost video” has been seen over 75,000 times on YouTube; what started as a local curiosity soon became a national, then international, story.

Theories abounded: Some said that the image was the ghost of a murdered man. Others thought it was just a video glitch, or a hoax, or a spider, or maybe a reflection from a passing car.

As a scientific paranormal investigator, I was asked by a Santa Fe newspaper to look into the case. Over the past decade, I have conducted dozens of investigations into lake monsters, psychics, ghosts, crop circles, and many other “unexplained” phenomena. This was certainly unexplained, and I was intrigued.

What it is not

After the first day of investigations, I eliminated most of the theories. It was almost certainly not a hoax, because it’s unlikely anyone would think to make a blurry, indistinguishable blob on a courthouse surveillance video. Nor was it a reflection or a video glitch…..

……. I arrived at 7 a.m. and carefully placed ladybugs and other insects on top of the video camera. I waited for them to crawl around, and soon went inside the courthouse to check the videotape. While some of the images of ladybugs were obviously too large and dark to be ghostly culprit, at 7:26 a.m. we hit paydirt: The ghost appeared in the video.

Using the insects, I duplicated the ghost image. Everyone agreed that the image was exactly the same as the courthouse ghost in every respect, including size, shape, color, and movement.

The weeklong mystery is solved: The Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost was a bug.

Which is a real relief for us here at Blue Crab Boulevard. Because Uncle Guido wasn't in Santa Fe last week, apparently.

The World’s Ugliest Dog

Well, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That is precisely how Elwood won the title of "World's Ugliest Dog" at the Sonoma-Marin fair in California. After placing second last year, he hung on like a bulldog this year and won the prize. And he is one ugly dog - which delights his owners.

Elwood, dark colored and hairless — save for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head — is often referred to as "Yoda," or "ET," for his resemblance to those famous science fiction characters.

"I think he's the cutest thing that ever lived," said Elwood's owner, Karen Quigley, a resident of Sewell, New Jersey.

Quigley brought Elwood out to compete for the second year at the annual ugly dog contest at the Marin-Sonoma County Fair. Elwood placed second last year.

Most of the competing canines were also Chinese Crested, a breed that features a mohawk, bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue.

Quigley said she rescued Elwood two years ago. "The breeder was going to euthanize him because she thought he was too ugly to sell," said Quigley.

"So ha ha, now Elwood's all over the Internet and people love him and adore him."

There were quite a few entries in this year's contest. They compete for bragging rights - and $1,000 bucks. (Although we don't think that is enough money to get the dog beautified!)

Revolutionary Chic: Not So Chic

It not just Che images emblazoned on t-shirts these days, apparently. Cameron Diaz has touched off an uproar in Peru by carrying around a tote bag carrying one of Mao Zedong's slogans. And the Peruvians are very angry. After all, Maoists massacred nearly 70,000 people in Peru.

While explored the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in Peru's Andes, Diaz wore over her shoulder an olive green messenger bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese on the flap, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao's most famous political slogan.

While the bags are marketed as trendy fashion accessories in some world capitals, the phrase has particular resonance in Peru, where the Maoist Shining Path insurgency brought Peru to edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations and bombings.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed during the insurgency.

A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of "There's Something About Mary" should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.

"It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims," said Pablo Rojas about the bag's slogan. "I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology" did so much damage.

Communism as fashion accessory. Maybe this will make Hollyweird types think a bit? Nah, never happen. John Travolta is still lecturing the little people over the environment, meanwhile he was just over at the Paris air show bragging about taking an Airbus A380 for a joyride.

"I was the first non-test pilot to fly the A380. It was a moment of history. It was fantastic. It's very easy to fly. "It was a handstick operation. It is very forgiving. If you make a mistake, it handles it for you thanks to the latest technical evolutions, whereas I am used to the older Boeing that is a much more hands-on type of flying." While enjoying the flight experience, Travolta laughed off speculation he would purchase his own Airbus A380. He explained, "Now I have enough planes. Most of my time outside my profession is dedicated to my schooling in aircraft."

I suppose we'll have to have communist offsets and airplane collection offsets as well as carbon offsets to keep Hollywood happy.