Bob Owens, who responded by email to my post about the Associated Press story about a "shortage" of ammunition for police forces supposedly caused by the Iraq war has done more research on the subject. He reaches the conclusion that the story, as the AP reported it, is bogus not because of the price of metal as I thought, but because of a lack of manufacturing capacity.
On the civilian/police side of the business. It has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the war.
Since 9/11 we've seen a huge jump in demand from law enforcement. In the last fiscal year alone we saw demand from law enforcement jump 40%. By running our civil plants 24/7, hiring hundreds of new employees and streamlining our manufacturing processes we were able to increase our deliveries to law enforcement by 30% in that same period. In addition, we've just announced we'll be investing another $5 million in new production lines at our civil ammunition facilities.
I pressed Mr. Grace to clarify, asking:
Based upon this 40% increase in demand by law enforcement, is it more fair to categorize the difficulty of some departments in obtaining ammunition as a fact of increased police demand outstripping current manufacturing capabilities, and not as the result of the military needing more ammunition and drawing down civilian supply? Is their any shortage of lead, copper, or brass, or it is just a matter of not enough manufacturing equipment?
He responded:
Manufacturing capacity is the main issue. As you might imagine, for a precision manufacturing business that faced many years of steady demand, it can be quite a challenge to suddenly meet double-digit growth in demand. But we're very proud of the successes we've had with increasing our output while maintaining the quality and reliability of our products.
And we're committed to doing everything in our power to accelerate the growth in output, which is what precipitated the recently announced investment in additional equipment.
Let me make that crystal clear.
According to two spokesmen for the world's largest ammunition manufacturer, which runs the military's ammunition manufacturing plant and separately, is a major supplier of law enforcement ammunition, it is a massive and unexpected increase in law enforcement ammunition demand that is causing delays in law enforcement ammunition delays, not the war.
That should pretty much put this one away. The story is bogus - but was hyped, hard, by some on the left. One wonders what the agenda of the reporter was.
At times, we find ourselves completely speechless. Or very nearly so. We simply do not know what to say about this story.
EDINBURGH (AFP) - A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.
Daniel Blackner, or "Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf", was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors at the festival known for its oddball, offbeat performances.
The main part of his act saw him appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member through a special attachment.
The attachment broke before the performance and Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.
He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment, laughter, mortification and … hospitalisation.
Captain Dan wasn't trying to board an airplane and he isn't a judge, but he appears to have been trying for more or less the same effect. So we think we'll just leave it at that. That's the long and the short of it.
We've had another storm roll through that has taken out our power. Having spent just enough time doing protective relaying to be dangerous, I can tell with pretty fair accuracy what is happening when various and sundry interesting power phenomena occur. In this case, something, probably a tree branch (or a whole tree) is on the lines but has not broken them completely. The protective relays tried to reclose on the circuit and the lights would come on - dimly - for a few seconds, then there would be another trip.
We're probably going to be out of power for a fair time as this was a pretty big storm. And, unfortunately, we're a relatively low priority out where I live. There are not a lot of houses, so we end up getting fixed toward the end of the storm repairs.
On the bright side, I have a laptop and UPS systems running my router and modem.
That Don Surber, veteran newsman and blogger did not send this item to us for proper reportage. Our beat here at Blue Crab Boulevard includes getting the word out on the Animal Uprising™, a thoroughly thankless, self imposed task that we take very seriously. So a report on the changing dining habits of black bears is clearly our turf. Especially when bears turn to Mexican food. Specifically burroritos.
GRANTSVILLE — A black bear apparently clawed a burro at a farm in Calhoun County.
The 2-year-old burro is recovering after being treated by longtime veterinarian Joe Cain.
Cain told the Hur Herald, an online publication in Grantsville, that he'd never seen anything like it.
"The wound is from large claws," said Cain, who closed it with sutures. "I've never seen anything like it in my 50 years in the county. It was some really serious tear wounds from claws on its side and leg, tearing through the muscles."
The burro belongs to Keith Lynch, who said his dogs began barking about 11 p.m. Friday.
"It came really close to killing it," Lynch told the Herald.
The bear gave up his dinner plans when he realized that he did not have a soft flour tortilla the size of a parachute handy.
Scientists in Finland have found what they are sure is some neolithic equivalent of Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum.
HELSINKI, Finland - Finns, who introduced a birch-tree sweetener for gum, have found that the habit of chewing sticky lumps dates back thousands of years. Last month, students in western Finland found a piece of Stone Age birch-bark tar, believed to have been used for chewing and to fix broken arrowheads or clay dishes, archaeologists said Monday.
"Most likely the lump was used as an antique kind of chewing gum," said Sami Viljamaa, an archaeologist who led the dig near Oulu, some 380 miles north of the capital, Helsinki. "But its main purpose was to fix things."
Viljamaa said the piece of Neolithic gum was found among artifacts, like dishes and jewelry, in a Stone Age village at the Kierikki Stone Age Center. "It's somewhere between 5,500 and 6,000 years old," he said.
The ancient Finnish habit of chewing gum surged in the 1980s when Finnish scientists discovered that gum containing xylitol, a natural sweetener found in plant tissue including birch trees, prevents tooth decay.
They are convinced it was chewing gum because it was found stuck to the underside the neolithic equivalent of a park bench.
(Realistically, it was more likely used as an adhesive.)
There are several stories every year about some "pet lover" or other getting in trouble - or getting killed - by some exotic pet or another. Whether it is a pet python who strangles its owner or someone getting bitten my a venomous pet snake, it is distressingly regular news. But this is the first time I've ever heard of this particular one. An Australian woman who was given a camel as a pet for her 60th birthday has been killed by the Camel. Who apparently was attempting to have sex with her.
The woman, whose name was not released, was killed at her family’s sheep and cattle ranch near Mitchell, 350 miles west of the Queensland state capital Brisbane, Detective Senior Constable Craig Gregory said.
The 10-month-old male camel — weighing about 330 lbs — knocked the woman to the ground, lay on top of her, then exhibited what police suspect was mating behaviour, Mr Gregory said.
“I’d say it’s probably been playing, or it may be even a sexual sort of thing,” he said, adding the camel had almost suffocated the family’s pet goat by straddling it.
Chris Hill, a camel expert, said he had no doubt the camel’s behaviour was sexual.
Apparently, longtime camel owners know that camels have to be disciplined or they can become dangerous. Treating them as pets with no discipline is a recipe for disaster.
Most bars have some sort of a snack available for beer drinkers, be it pretzels or peanuts. Now we know that bears need a little snack when they have a few beers, too.
BELGRADE, Serbia (Reuters) — A 23-year old Serb was found dead and half-eaten in the bear cage of Belgrade Zoo at the weekend during the annual beer festival.
The man was found naked, with his clothes lying intact inside the cage. Two adult bears, Masha and Misha, had dragged the body to their feeding corner and reacted angrily when keepers tried to recover it.
"There's a good chance he was drunk or drugged. Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage," zoo director Vuk Bojovic told Reuters.
Local media reported that police found several mobile phones inside the cage, as well as bricks, stones and beer cans.
Obviously, the bears were drinking the beers, then lured their snack in by offering him a free cell phone.
I simply cannot let SeeDubya have the last word on posters. Apropos this post.
Well, I hope that Gerard Vanderleun is ready for a nasty note from Zombietime. Hey, when you muscle in on someone's territory, you have to expect that! And making fun of zombies is just adding fuel to the fire.
Actually, Vanderleun does a magnificent job with this photo essay on Hempfest. Stop by and get a good laugh. Then swing over to SeeDubya's place and see his Hempfest poster. Ed Driscoll and Maggie's Farm also chime in.
Hunter season has opened in Finland. No, that's not a typo. Hunter season is where the bears get a chance to bag a hunter.
Together with two hunting buddies, the man was tracking a brown bear he had just wounded with a bullet in a thick forest in Kiite, in eastern Finland near the Russian border, when the bear released its anger on the shooter.
The animal escaped another round of heavy-calibre fire and the jaws of the man's hunting dog before turning on the hunter.
The bear bit the man in the arm and clawed his neck, head and back before the two other men succeeded in scaring off the animal and shooting it dead.
The hunter suffered only minor wounds, the head of the local hunting federation Hannu Tahvanainen told AFP.
The bear didn't have a proper hunter permit anyway. He forgot to get the correct stamp.
Richard Miniter has an analysis over at Pajamas Media looking at how The New Republic let itself get suckered by "Scott Thomas" Beauchamp. It get pretty ugly at times.
The New Republic has not responded to repeated phone calls from PajamasMedia.com.
Foer’s office voicemail indicates that he is on paternity leave until August 15. On the 16th and 17th, he did not return phone calls. What appears to be his home phone number—the only Foer listed in D.C.—has been “temporarily disconnected.”
Perhaps a cone of silence has descended. A longtime New Republic editor told me that she was not sure that she was allowed to discuss the Beauchamp affair, citing the magazine’s lawyers.
If the magazine had provided a full and immediate accounting of the incident, the story might look very different, full of mitigating factors and useful distinctions. It is a pity that the editors did not provide it.
But The New Republic cannot control the story. An insider-turned-whistleblower and the fabricator’s former fiancée, as well as other sources, have spoken to PajamasMedia.com—providing a plethora of new details that raise new questions.
Those questions include: Did the fabricator’s wife, Elspeth Reeve, fact-check her husband’s articles? Did her staff position make other fact-checkers go easy on him? Why didn’t Reeve’s knowledge of Beauchamp’s character and history make her skeptical of his work? (Remember the old journalist saw: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”) Did Foer’s friendship with Beauchamp affect the fact-checkers or provoke Foer to defend him in the face of mounting evidence? And, why was the whistle-blower the only New Republic staffer to be fired? Finally, what does the magazine intend to do to ensure that it does not get fooled again?
Frankly TNR has damaged itself and shows no signs of trying to fix that damage. I suspect that the stonewalling is going to continue and TNR simply will not ever acknowledge it was in the wrong here. Ultimately, I think that strategy will do far more damage to TNR than 'fessing up and apologizing. Others looking at this today - and frankly writing more about it than I have been: Power Line, Confederate Yankee, Townhall, A Blog For All, Sister Toldjah, Riehl World View, TigerHawk, Little Green Footballs,
Here's an interesting article by Donald Roberts, an expert in tropical diseases, about the use of DDT to help control malaria in Africa. It turns out that using the insecticide indoors has a repellent effect even on mosquitoes that have developed an immunity to DDT.
In our studies, in which we sprayed DDT on the walls of huts in Thailand, three out of every five test mosquitoes sensed the presence of DDT molecules and would not enter the huts. Many of those that did enter and made contact with DDT became irritated and quickly flew out.
The mosquitoes we used were the kind that carry dengue and yellow fever, not malaria. But there is ample evidence that malaria-carrying mosquitoes respond similarly to DDT. Several malaria-carrying species are even more sensitive to DDT’s repellent effects.
When we sprayed the huts with either dieldrin or alphacypermethrin, in contrast, all the test mosquitoes entered. Alphacypermethrin acted as a contact irritant, and it killed others that lingered on a treated surface. Dieldrin worked only as a poison — a powerful one, killing 92 percent of mosquitoes that made contact with it, far more than alphacypermethrin or DDT.
But dieldrin’s strong toxicity means that mosquitoes quickly develop resistance to it. Its use against malaria was short-lived, ending in the 1950s, because it so quickly became powerless.
But the mosquitoes hate the DDT even if it doesn't kill them. That is really good news for malaria control.
Victor Davis Hanson has a long essay on the study of war and its value to a society in the City Journal. It will take you some time to get all the way through, but it is a fascinating look at the state of the study of war. Frankly, it is almost becoming a lost art - and that is a bad thing for society.
Try explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory. You’ll provoke not a counterargument—let alone an assent—but a blank stare: Who or what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the Persian Wars altogether.
It’s no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history—understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict’s outcome and its consequences—had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject.
This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war—and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever.
I came to the study of warfare in an odd way, at the age of 24. Without ever taking a class in military history, I naively began writing about war for a Stanford classics dissertation that explored the effects of agricultural devastation in ancient Greece, especially the Spartan ravaging of the Athenian countryside during the Peloponnesian War. The topic fascinated me. Was the strategy effective? Why assume that ancient armies with primitive tools could easily burn or cut trees, vines, and grain on thousands of acres of enemy farms, when on my family farm in Selma, California, it took me almost an hour to fell a mature fruit tree with a sharp modern ax? Yet even if the invaders couldn’t starve civilian populations, was the destruction still harmful psychologically? Did it goad proud agrarians to come out and fight? And what did the practice tell us about the values of the Greeks—and of the generals who persisted in an operation that seemingly brought no tangible results?
A recent review of the faculties of the top US colleges showed that of more than 1,000 professors only 21 were military historians. Not understanding war and the nature of war can lead to dreadful mistakes - and to the easy spread of disinformation as well. Read the whole thing, it really is a fascinating essay.
Authorities in southern China made a surprise raid and broke up a crocodile smuggling ring. They captured about 70 of the offenders and have thrown them into jail. It's a good thing, too. There's no telling what the crocodiles would have tried to smuggle next if they got the turtles in.
The haul of crocs, each about 70 centimetres (28 inches) and weighing 1.5 kg (3.3 lb), along with baby turtles was made in Guangdong province in the country's far south, a part of the world where locals have famously adventurous eating habits.
But the report by Xinhua news agency said the crocodiles were "ornamental" and were caught with 3,000 baby turtles in the port city of Zhuhai. It did not say where they came from or what happened to the smuggler.
Southern China has long been the favourite stamping ground of smugglers who, before a crackdown several years ago, easily slipped cars, televisions, luxury goods, and even dismantled bowling alleys into the country.
There is no word on what the authorities plan to do with the captured criminal crocodiles, but our informants tell us that there appears to be a new barbecue pit behind the local police station and that the local police chief has a lovely new pair of boots. Coincidence? We report, you decide.
There has been a fair amount of interest from bloggers about the arrest and deportation of Elvira Arellano, the woman who had been hiding in a Chicago church claiming "sanctuary" - a concept that is not, and can not be, recognized under American law. Ms. Arellano, a convicted felon, has already been deported to Tijuana. And her supporters might want to really think hard about whether they want to make her a poster child for immigration reform. Because people in this country are very angry with her and the antics of her supporters. These poll results are telling. She's a bad choice for a symbol.
OTHERS: Gateway Pundit, Captain's Quarters, American Thinker, Fausta's blog, Lone Star Times, Don Surber, Wizbang, Hot Air, Lonewacko, Scared Monkeys, Daily Pundit,
Incidentally, Fausta points out that it is not clear whether Arellano actually stole someone's Social Security number or used a made-up number. In either case she had forged documents. What is truly frightening is that she had a job at O'Hare airport cleaning airplanes using those forged documents. That is exactly why the border must be controlled. And another reason why her supporters are outright foolish to try to make her a poster child - Americans will be angry about the identity theft but the airport job will remind them even more about why this immigration problem needs to be fixed. Americans will also be angry because she got away with crimes that would have put an American behind bars. That is not going to sit well at all.
Blogosphere, Media, War | Gaius Monday, 20 August , 2007 | 
Comments (3) 
