Serf’s Up!

Megan McArdle pointed this one out. Please, go read her whole post, but here's an excerpt:

Carbon offsets have all sorts of problems. The methods used to calculate teh precise offset are often sketchy, and it's not clear to what extent offset carbon stays offset. Creating a market for greenhouse gas reduction may also have the undesireable effect of encouraging companies and governments to keep belching factories going until they can sell the offset, or even build new ones for the purpose of being paid to shutter them. But this is really something special. Upon original reading, I had thought that it must be taken out of context or otherwise misleading:

Go read it. Then watch the movie. Then read the description:

Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.

How it works
Every source of human energy will be different, and the number of applications are hugely varied. The example below is from our project in India promoting treadle pumps for irrigation, to replace diesel power.

Ever read Nikolai Gogel's Dead Souls? Gogel would have understood this project completely. McArdle calls it human hamster wheels. I think it is much worse than that.

UPDATE: Others: Andrea Harris, Atlanta Rofters, Instapundit, Profesor Bainbridge,

Classic Computer Game!

Hey! Look what the software fairy dropped off!

(Apropos this post, of course. Or this one. )

Even More Bearifying

I posted about the Maryland family that had a very scary run-in with a bear a few days ago. The homeowner shot and wounded the bear after it attacked and tried to get into the house. Well, the story just got more disturbing.

The bear was rabid.

Mike hurried into the living room with his gun, unloaded. Sending the nephew back into the gun room for a shell, he grabbed hold of the air conditioner alongside his wife and tried to keep the bulky unit from being ripped out of the window. Once he got his gun loaded, he managed to squeeze it through a crack between the window sill and the air conditioner. When the bear grabbed the barrel, Stanton fired blindly. The No. 4 shotgun pellets struck the animal in the head and neck but didn't kill it.

The wounded bear collapsed in the yard, while Mike went into the basement and peered out, concerned that the animal would manage to wander back into the woods. His wife called 911, and an officer with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources showed up about a half hour later and killed the bear.

"There have been rabid bears over the years, but it's a very uncommon thing to hear of," said Harry Spiker, a black bear biologist for DNR. In recent years, he said, rabid bears have been confirmed in Pennsylvania and in Manitoba, Canada, but never in Maryland. "It's really atypical," he said.

Spiker said the bear would have had to come in contact with a species that commonly carry rabies, either a raccoon, a bat or a skunk. He said it was unlikely other rabid bears were in the area. "Once it gets past the incubation period, they only survive a couple of days," he said.

The Stanton family is receiving rabies treatments because Mike Stanton came in contact with the animal's blood. And you thought Cujo was scary.

Hit It, Norm!

Norman and the Hsu's sing their greatest hit!

On the lam again
Just can't wait to get on the lam again
The life I love is giving money to the Dems
And I can't wait to get on the lam again
On the lam again
Goin' back down to Hong Kong my friend
goodbye to Dems that I may never see again,
And I can't wait to get on the lam again.
(With apologies to Willie Nelson)

Just send $19.95 to Crabitat Productions, 1,600,000 Flown Coop Avenue, Hong Kong.

The Incredible Disappearing Hsu Trick

A few things about Norman Hsu and his bail (which he appears to have skipped on) warrant questions. apparently, when he showed up to surrender last week, there was some kind of deal worked out between his lawyers and the prosecutor to reduce Hsu's bail from the $2 million that was specified on the bench warrant to $1 million. The judge balked and refused to honor that deal.

"We've had good preliminary discussions with the (prosecutors) about how to resolve this case," Brosnahan said, although he declined to say when and if a new plea agreement could be reached.

But the first part of those discussions blew up Friday morning when San Mateo Superior Court Judge James Ellis refused to accept a bail plan both attorneys had agreed to. Deputy Attorney General Ronald Smetana asked for $1 million in bail - money that Hsu agreed could later be used to reimburse victims of his scam - but the judge balked and ordered bail set at $2 million. When Hsu could not immediately come up with the money, he was taken from the courtroom in handcuffs.

It was the first time Hsu has spent time in jail on the charges. His attorney arrived at the San Mateo County courthouse at around 2 p.m. with the bail money.

So, how was this deal reached and where did all that money come from? This was cash - not bond. That is a lot of money to have lying around. Even more importantly, why did the prosecutor or the judge not demand Hsu's passport? More on the incredible disappearing Hsu from the LA Times:

Hsu's attorney, James Brosnahan, explained that he had lost contact with Hsu and that the financier had failed to deliver his passport as promised.

"Mr. Hsu is not here and we don't know where he is," Brosnahan said outside court. "We expected him to be here."

Brosnahan told Foiles that a legal assistant for his law firm went to Hsu's New York City condominium last week and spent 90 minutes searching for Hsu's passport.

Prosecutors in California said Hsu disappeared in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.

"We don't know if he has his passport," Deputy Atty. Gen. Ralph Sevilla said. "What we do know is that a bench warrant has been issued."

Asked if Hsu has left the United States, Sevilla said that "he has that capability."

THAT makes it sound as if the passport was supposed to be handed over. But why in the world did they let him walk out of jail until it was?

UPDATE: And it's an all-right extravaganza! Amazing, isn't it? Not one left-leaning blog has commented on this - at least none are showing on Memeorandum. Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Wizbang, Right Wing Nut House, The American Pundit, Suitably Flip,  Riehl World View, Wake up America, Don Surber, Jammie Wearing Fool, A Blog For All, Liberty Pundit, Fausta, Captain's Quarters, Gateway Pundit, Sister Toldjah, Pajamas Media, Detroit Populist Times, TigerHawk, Betsy Newmark, NewsBusters, In From the Cold, The Belmont Club, Badger Blog Alliance, MVDG, The Oxford Medievalist, John Lott, The Influence Peddler,

Suitably Flip, meanwhile has continued to do the heavy lifting and has provided a hot-link to a graphic he made comparing the Hsunami with the Abramoff scandal. I'd just point out here that there is another $2 million in play that is now confiscated by the court. Money total is looking on par, but Abramoff gave about 30% of his money to Democrats. Hsu was virtually all to them. This one is going to get ugly.

Has Norman Hsu Fled The Country?

Democratic fundraiser and felony fugitive Norman Hsu turned himself in last week on a 15-year old bench warrant. He posted the mandatory $2 million in bail on that and was supposed to appear today at a bail reduction hearing. But he has not shown up, his lawyers don't know where he is.

And the judge did not take Hsu's passport when he made bail.

California businessman Norman Hsu, a former New York apparel executive and major contributor to Democratic candidates and causes, failed to appear for a bail reduction hearing Wednesday, leading to speculation that he again is a fugitive from the law, FOX News has learned.

Hsu's attorneys say they do not know his whereabouts, and that their client did not surrender his passport.

Hsu turned himself in to authorities last week after more than 15 years on the run from a felony conviction of grand theft. He admitted to defrauding investors of $1 million in a bogus investment scam.

A man who had a warrant out for his arrest for 15 years. A man who reportedly spent several years in Hong Kong while a fugitive. And the judge did not take his passport? Are you kidding?

Yo, Ho, Ho

Sail with me and I will make your fortune,
Whether it be women or gold.
A tall ship riding upon the gulf stream water;
The hurricane has blown me so far from home.

I fly the flag of sovereign Carthagena,
All the Spanish boats fair game.
The days are hot and the nights are filled with singing,
Women in the moonlight dancing away.

Down in Côte Blanche Bay.

(Zachary Richard, Côte Blanche Bay)

Graham Neilson, a former commander in the Royal Navy is about to set sail on his latest project. His very own pirate ship. Yo, ho, ho.

Barbary pirates from the 17th century have inspired a former Royal Navy commander to spend 12 years converting an Arctic trawler into a £6 million replica pirate ship, which is now set for its maiden voyage.

Graham Neilson bought the 60-year-old fishing vessel in 1995 and has since worked "tirelessly" on the project with a team of 15 enthusiasts.

He used 400-year-old designs discovered in museums and libraries in France and Spain to build the 150ft long craft called Pelican.

The ship, which is moored in Weymouth, Dorset, has undergone successful sea trials this summer and is due to make its maiden voyage to the Caribbean later this month.

Mr Neilson, 72, from West Bexington, Dorset, said: "She is a beautiful specimen and it is difficult to express how happy we were when she was finally at sea and proven.

"I think she has fulfilled all our hopes, both with her performance and in terms of the spectacle she provides. I believe she is possibly the most interesting sailing vessel of the last decade."

The ship is patterned after the 'Xebec' style ships the pirates used.

Arab pirate ships were notoriously difficult to catch. The French attempted to make their own Xebec fleet but still couldn’t catch the Arabs. So what was so unique about the Xebec design?

“They added square sails to the middle mast,” says Graham. “That, combined with a triangular, lateen sail on the fore mast, gave the boat both lift and thrust.”

The designs, it seems, were lost in time. Until they were discovered by Philip Goode, a sail designer who had been researching Xebec ships in French and Spanish libraries.

Having joined forces with Graham, Philip went to work on a model Xebec ship, to test how effective it would be. To their surprise, the model ship went faster than any other they had seen.

After the maiden voyage to the Caribbean, Mr. Neilson plans to use the ship for sail-training. No word on if Spanish boats will be fair game.

Say “Grubs”

A British man has made a huge mistake. He has allowed meerkats to get cameras.

Ian Turner, Deputy Head Warden at Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire, was taking pictures for a new glossy brochure when he left the enclosure to get another camera.

But while his back was turned the inquisitive creatures clambered up the tripod and began pressing buttons. They unwittingly captured three snaps of the eight-strong mob of meerkats - even though they were a little out of focus.

Ian was stunned when he returned to the Meerkat Mountain attraction five minutes later to find a new set of pictures on the camera's digital memory card.

It is believed the shutter button was pressed by adult alpha male Monty, who usually leads the family when exploring new equipment.

Ever since Disney's The Lion King, people have thought meerkats were cute. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Besides being scouts for the Animal Uprising™ they are also well known extortionists and blackmailers. Now that have cameras, nobody is safe.

High-Priced Pig

A professional hunting company from New Zealand has been paid $3.9 million (US dollars) for killing 5,036 feral pigs on Santa Cruz island off the coast of California. They completely eliminated the feral pig population, apparently and may well have rescued the Santa Cruz fox from extinction in the process.

Which has some folks hopping mad.

Experts have declared successful a pig cull for which a team of professional hunters from New Zealand was paid $US3.9 million ($NZ5.63 million) to kill 5036 pigs on a Californian island — the equivalent of $NZ1117 per pig.

The Paeroa-based Prohunt NZ Ltd company was called in during April 2005 to kill an estimated 2000 pigs on the island of Santa Cruz.

The shooters killed the last of 5036 pigs on July 5, 2006, and scientists now say the cull has been a success, with the endangered Santa Cruz island fox species and nine rare plants now rebounding, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Channel Islands National Park and the private Nature Conservancy, which owns 75 percent of the island, have been monitoring the results of the eradication 29km off the Ventura County coast.

The island was fenced into five sections, and pigs were methodically culled from each part, with as many as 30 dogs used to track and corral them.

About that hopping mad thing:

In April 2005, the Park Service hired Prohunt Inc., a New Zealand-based company, to track down the pigs using helicopters with snipers, traps, dogs and electronic collars. Officials said the methods were "following euthanasia guidelines set forth by the American Medical Veterinary Assn."

"We deny that vehemently," said Richard M. Feldman, a Santa Barbara businessman who sued the park's owners, saying the killings were inhumane and that the Park Service violated its own rules and procedures when it approved the environmental data to support the eradication.

Feldman's suit was dismissed and is currently under submission to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Elliot M. Katz, a Northern California veterinarian who is founder and president of In Defense of Animals, joined in the lawsuit and a second one filed to stop the killing of more than 100 wild turkeys that proliferated once the pigs were gone.

"Obviously, we'd like to stop the government's killing machine, but it's a difficult thing to do. It's a shame," Katz said. "They tend to be very aggressive when it comes to killing other species. As compassion and concern grows in our country, we hope they'll be forced to become responsive."

Gads. Save the feral pigs, let the foxes die? There simply is no sense of proportion these days.

If A Bear Falls In The Forest…..

Does it make a sound? Well, it does in South Carolina. It sounds like: "Thank God. Thank God, we got it back, It feels really, really good."

The missing bear was in the woods.

That's the word from Dino Riganas, owner of the statue of a red-clawed grizzly bear stolen from his future restaurant in Bluffton.

The statue was one of two that stood sentry outside Montana's Restaurant and Grizzly Bar. The restaurant closed down, but new owner Riganas hopes to reopen in the fall. He had been working for several weeks to get the restaurant ready.

While preparing for the grand reopening, he was disappointed to find one of the 450-pound wooden bears bolted into a stone pedestal had been stolen. When he showed up for work Thursday at 7:45 a.m., the bear was gone and the base of the second bear was loose.

Riganas offered a $1,000 reward, as was reported in Saturday's Island Packet, hoping the bear would eventually find its way home.

On Sunday evening, Riganas got his wish. He received a call saying his bear was in the woods.

A neighbor saw a green van pull up to some woods off Alljoy Road near Confederate Avenue around 6:30 p.m. The culprits dumped the wooden bear and drove off. The police were called, and they in turn called Riganas.

We're very happy for Mr. Riganas and his bear. We're also happy we were able to avoid that other bear-woods saying that would have violated our own comment policy.

Big Terror Plot Broken Up In Germany

I saw a couple of early reports on this but waited a bit before posting on it hoping for more details. It looks like the Germans have made a very big terror bust. The three suspects had managed to obtain 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide. One can safely assume they did not have a boo boo that needed cleaning.

Harms declined to name specific targets, but said the suspects had an eye on institutions and establishments frequented by Americans in Germany, including discos, pubs and airports.

Sudwestfunk televison, citing unnamed security sources in Berlin, reported that Frankfurt international airport and U.S. Ramstein Air Base were among the targets.

Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, appearing on a morning ARD television show, was asked if the airport and U.S. base were targeted.

"I ask you to understand that I cannot say anything about the details. But I will say again, our security forces were very active here and in my view did very good work," Jung said.

He also said: "I can only say that our security forces did very good work in that this action tonight was possible, it also shows how direct the threat situation was."

Later, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was asked about the reports and said that "we don't know exactly what the targets of the attacks were."

The suspects, delivered by helicopter, made a first appearance at a closed hearing at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, which ordered them held pending trial.

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, said that President Bush had been briefed on the arrests and that he's "pleased a potential attack was thwarted and appreciates the work of the German authorities and the cooperation by international law enforcement."

Officials said the solution of hydrogen peroxide, stored in a hideout, could have been mixed easily with other additives to produce a bomb with the explosive power of 1,200 pounds of TNT.

"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," Joerg Ziercke, the head of the Federal Crime Office — Germany's equivalent of the FBI — said at a joint news conference with Harms.

The three suspects — two Germans, ages 22 and 28, and a 29-year-old Turk — first came to the attention of authorities because they had been caught observing a U.S. military facility in Hanau, near Frankfurt, at the end of 2006, officials said.

This could have been very ugly.

Happy Anniversary

September 5th, 1793 is considered the starting date of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. To greatly oversimplify, the Girondins were pretty well overcome by the Jacobins for about 10 months and many people lost their heads. Quite literally.

The result was policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On September 9, the Convention established sans-culottes paramilitary forces, the revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On September 17, the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods, and also fixed wages. The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions: Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Queen Marie-Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité despite his vote for the death of the King, Madame Roland and many others lost their lives under its blade.[3] The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Most of the victims received an unceremonious trip to the guillotine in an open wooden cart (the tumbrel). Loaded onto these carts, the victims would proceed through throngs of jeering men and women.

It might be useful to point out that in the end many of the Jacobins were hauled to the guillotine in a tumbrel. Just pointing that out.

Burn The Heretic

The Opinion Journal looks at the new assault on Representative Brian Baird of Washington. Baird, you will recall, is the Congressman who opposed the Iraq war from the start, voted against it and has been a strong critic all along. Until he returned from his last trip to that country and admitted that the surge was working and that the troops need more time. Hence the new attack ad campaign against the Democrat.

By "Democrats" led by MoveOn.org.

In the Hell Hath No Fury sweepstakes, groups like MoveOn.org are gearing up to take on a new set of perceived traitors in their midst–Democrats who have acknowledged some success from the troop surge in Iraq.

Chief among the targets is Washington Congressman Brian Baird, whose indiscretion was recognizing progress on the ground, despite having initially opposed the surge and having opposed the war in the first place. After a recent trip to Iraq, Mr. Baird said: "One of the things that gets very little attention is that virtually every other country I visited says it would be a mistake to pull out now."

We hope he took his flak jacket home from Baghdad. MoveOn is rolling out an ad this week in Mr. Baird's Washington district, in which a former soldier tells of being shot at in 2003 by the Iraqis he had fought to liberate and calls America's continued presence in the country "wrong, immoral and irresponsible." What does this have to do with the wisdom–or lack thereof–of the current strategy? Nada, which tells you something about MoveOn's honesty.

The group doesn't aim to engage in debate, but to punish and silence Democrats who dare to think for themselves. There's a pattern here: When John Dingell contradicted party orthodoxy on global warming and auto mileage standards this year, MoveOn ran ads in his Michigan district calling the 81-year-old Congressman "Dingellsaurus."

Inquisitions have a way of backfiring in the long run. The far left didn't learn that with the Lamont challenge to Joe Lieberman. Hence the current auto de fe politics.

The Inquisition (what a show)
The Inquisition (here we go)
We know you're wishin' that we'd go away.
But the Inquisition's here and it's here to-
"Hey Toquemada, walk this way."
"I just got back from the Auto-de-fe."

Hiding In Plain Sight

Robert Samuelson points out that there is a trend in poverty data that is being ignored completely. It is hiding in plain sight because nobody seems to want to discuss it. Call it the elephant in the room. I disagree a tiny bit with his wording of the problem, but it really deserves a hard look.

The standard story is that poverty is stuck; superficially, the statistics support that. The poverty rate measures the share of Americans below the official poverty line, which in 2006 was $20,614 for a four-person household. Last year, the poverty rate was 12.3 percent, down slightly from 12.6 percent in 2005 but higher than the 11.3 percent in 2000, the recent low. It was also higher than the 11.8 percent average for the 1970s. So the conventional wisdom seems amply corroborated.

It isn't. Look again at the numbers. In 2006, there were 36.5 million people in poverty. That's the figure that translates into the 12.3 percent poverty rate. In 1990, the population was smaller, and there were 33.6 million people in poverty, a rate of 13.5 percent. The increase from 1990 to 2006 was 2.9 million people (36.5 million minus 33.6 million). Hispanics accounted for all of the gain.

Consider. From 1990 to 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased 3.2 million, from 6 million to 9.2 million. Meanwhile, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty fell from 16.6 million (poverty rate: 8.8 percent) in 1990 to 16 million (8.2 percent) in 2006. Among blacks, there was a decline from 9.8 million in 1990 (poverty rate: 31.9 percent) to 9 million (24.3 percent) in 2006. White and black poverty has risen somewhat since 2000, but is down over longer periods.

Only an act of willful denial can separate immigration and poverty. The increase among Hispanics must be concentrated among immigrants, legal and illegal, as well as their American-born children. Yet, this story goes largely untold. Government officials didn't say much about immigration when briefing on the poverty and income reports. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group for the poor, both held briefings. Immigration was a common no-show.

Samuelson's point - that a flood of low-skilled immigrants, primarily illegal, is skewing the data is seriously worth a look. (He necessarily speaks in terms of Hispanic immigrants because that is the way the data is broken down. But I would point out that the flood of illegals is not completely made up of Hispanics. Nevertheless, his basic point appears to be correct.)

Samuelson's main idea here is that the discussion of both poverty and of the effects of (primarily illegal) immigration on poverty cannot be honestly discussed if the data is being ignored. He's right. There is a lot of emotion, there is a lot of passionately held beliefs that may or may not be based on facts, there are a lot of advocates for and against illegal immigration. But if facts are ignored there will be a lot more heat than light generated in any discussion.

I've maintained that there is no reason why we cannot have secure borders and a very liberal legal immigration policy into this country. All it takes is the political will. And some honesty in interpreting and discussing the data.