Quickly! To The Dirigible!

The BBC has a report up fro one of their reporters raving about a ride he took in a "zeppelin". (It is not clear whether the reporter was on a blimp or one of the new airships that do bear the name Zeppelin, but are semi-rigid, not fully framed as the original zeppelins were. The location of the flight, however, favors the latter.) The reporter sees the airship as a viable - and attractive - alternative to being crammed like a sardine into coach-class seating on today's airliners.

We just cruised for 40 minutes, but could open the windows, speak without effort, enjoy watching the world go by 1,000 ft (300m) below, and tell ourselves what it must have been like when far bigger airships were having their heyday. Such as the Graf Zeppelin which went around the world in 1929 in four hops, starting from the US, touching down in Germany, then in Japan, and then in California.

What a flight, with meals in the dining room, cabins to sleep in, and our beautiful planet not six miles down and invisible but usually a mere 1,500 ft (450m) below.

Think of all such trips.

Perhaps down to Rio in one hop, dancing if you felt like it, walking about, and not just to a doll's-house loo.

And then stopping above your destination, watching the sun come up, shouting at the locals and then disembarking without the used-rag feeling which modern aircraft induce but refreshed, invigorated, well-fed, well-slept and delighted to be alive, instead of merely grateful that the long-haul, as they call it, has finally been concluded.

The one thing everyone knows about airships is that the Hindenburg spectacularly caught fire in May 1937 when landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey after a flight from Germany.

Well, it would be considerably slower than jet travel, but there is no real reason it could not be a viable technology in today's world, either. The technology has improved a lot since the first generation. There is a new company, considered a successor to the original zeppelin manufacturing company that is turning out the semi-rigid designs. Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) is producing the new airships in Friedrichshafen, right where the first zeppelins flew. There still is the question of payload as well. The new zeppelins only carry a very small number of passengers (around 14 so far). They are not properly lighter than air craft, either. They have slight negative buoyancy and require engine power to lift. One other minor quibble with the article. The reporter says that the one disaster of the Hindenburg should not deter us. There were actually more disasters than just the one:

The first successful airship crossing of the Atlantic was made in 1919 by the British R-34. In 1921, however, a wave of airship disasters began. The R-34 was wrecked at its departure. The Roma, built in 1922 by Italy for the United States, exploded over Hampton Roads, Va. A French Zeppelin obtained from Germany, the Dixmude, was lost in the Mediterranean in 1923. In 1925 the United States Shenandoah was destroyed by violent winds. The United States Navy built two more airships after the Shenandoah disaster. These were the Akron, destroyed in 1933, and the Macon, which crashed in 1935.

They just found the wreck of the Macon off the California coast last year. She still had her fighter planes - yes, the airship carried four fighters - and a crew of 100. The new generation has a ways to go before it will be able to carry the same kind of payloads.

The Dawn Comes Up Like Thunder

Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem titled Mandalay, the title of the post is from that poem. Unfortunately, the news out of Mandalay is even more bleak than Kipling's lament. A reporter for the Sunday Times of London managed to get into Mandalay and the picture from that second city of Burma is very bad indeed.

Thousands of people are incarcerated in four detention centres around Mandalay controlled by the 33rd division of the Burmese army. Its commanders have broken the political power of the 200 monasteries here and shattered the Buddhist clergy as an organised force.

They have instituted the severest repression inflicted upon this city for two decades.

These are the conclusions of a covert visit to Mandalay in which students, intellectuals, monks and local business people took the risk of speaking to a foreign reporter, sometimes in whispers, to tell of their ordeal.

They did so because almost no details of what is happening in the city have yet become known to the international community.

“Three organisations are looking for journalists: the special branch, military intelligence and the USDA,” said the first informant, referring to the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a violent militia group which is employed to intimidate the junta’s opponents.

“If you are caught by the last one, that’s the worst for you and for anybody you are talking to,” he added.

The nightly sweeps of raids and arrests are reinforced by daytime roadblocks and identity checks. Troops drag dozens of people, most of them young, off the streets at gunpoint.

Using counter-terrorist technology supplied by China, the security forces check the registrations of motorcycles against numbers captured from digital images of the huge protests that unfolded from September 23 for five tumultuous days.

It was that last sentence that made me think of Kipling's poem. The full line reads: "An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!" Human Rights Watch is calling for an end to arms shipments to Burma by China, Russia and India. That won' happen with China and Russia already blocking in the Security Council. Meanwhile the cracking of heads continues apace in Burma.

Cooked Conker Crackdown

Devotees will be relieved to know that there is a crackdown on cooked conkers at this year's World Conker Championship, held annually in Northants by the Ashton Conker Club. For non-devotees, the conker is what is known in the US as a horse chestnut. The Conker Championships entail threading one of said conkers onto a string. Two opponents thusly armed then attempt to swing the tethered nut at the opponents tethered nut. The object of all this sport is to break the other player's chestnut while not losing your own. Confused? It actually gets worse. It seems that up until this year, contenders could bring their own conkers. And contestants were routinely indulging in the horse chestnutty equivalent of doping: they doctored their nuts. 

Generations of boys have had tried and tested methods for giving their conkers the upper hand in any contest.

These usually involved soaking in vinegar or baking, to ensure a tough skin and maximum impact. It may have been in breach of the spirit of the game, but that did not necessarily mean a mighty "sixer" would be disqualified.

Today, however, as the Ashton Conker Club in Northants holds the annual World Conker Championships, rules is rules. Baking or soaking is banned (indeed, competitors are not allowed to use their own conkers, instead picking them at random from a bag).

The conkers are pre-drilled and the string is also supplied. Cheating at conkers? It's worse than we thought last year! (We would have filled ours with lead.)

Smoke On The Gorilla

You will never, ever hear Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water in the same way. Never.

The Daily Mail has even more. Lord help us.

Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings…..

Kathrine Mangu-Ward, writing at Reason Magazine, notes a new campaign by Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Harvey Wasserman to denounce "50 years of catastrophic failure" in the nuclear power industry.

I must have missed the first radioactive dead end for the planet–perhaps it happened before I was born and my parents survived in one of those backyard bunkers? Chernobyl was horrific, to be sure, but I think you need a few more catastrophic failures to get a gen-u-ine "track record" going. Anyway, we should take this warning seriously–it comes from TV's Most Trusted News Source.

The article she links from CNN is a remarkable only in that it uses the same, old techniques of misdirection.

Meanwhile, a cooling tower at the Vermont Yankee reactor has simply collapsed, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot water into the Earth. The reactor was recently allowed to upgrade its power level, and the collapse may have been caused by improper supports, rotted wood beams and an "insufficient" inspection program. Twenty-one other towers there are at similar risk.

That one is classic - the cooling towers have absolute bupkis to do with the nuclear side of the plant. When they talk about "significant damage" and "significant radioactive releases" they are, again, using misdirection. Quantify that and maybe we'll have a basis for discussion. But this is nothing more than another "Pepsi Syndrome" series of breathless dire warnings.

UPDATE: Others: QandO: "On the "brink" of technology and on the "brink" of a "green-powered planet". Seems to have been on these "brinks" for about 30 years now. Why is it we're always on the "brink" when these things are talked about but for some reason never seem able to move past that?"

Ed Driscoll: "Indeed, and it's brave of the "Troubadour-American Community", as James Lileks dubbed them on Thursday's Hugh Hewitt show, to admit their own shortcomings. (Audio here, which foreshadows the geriatric rockers' CNN piece rather well.)"

Heh. Troubadour-American Community. I love that one.

At Least Two Dead In Tunnel Crash

Firefighters have recovered two bodies so far after a fiery crash in a California highway tunnel. This is one ugly accident.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. - A crash in a Southern California freeway tunnel quickly turned into a fiery, chain-reaction pileup that mangled several trucks, killed at least two people and shut down the key north-south route as the wreckage burned for hours.

Firefighters began hauling the mangled, blackened debris of more than a dozen big-rig trucks out of the tunnel Saturday afternoon. The crash late Friday involved at least 15 trucks and possibly one or more passenger cars, and sent people fleeing for their lives. At least 10 people were injured.

"It looked like a bomb went off," said Los Angeles County firefighter Scott Clark, one of about 300 firefighters who battled the blaze throughout the night.

California Highway Patrol Officer David Porter confirmed Saturday that the bodies of two crash victims had been found in the tunnel. He couldn't immediately say whether one was a trucker who had been listed as unaccounted for.

The fire raged for quite some time and there is what sounds like quite a bit of damage to the tunnel itself. Chunks of concrete have fallen inside the tunnel - it is not known how bad the damage is at this time.

Hunters Feeding The Hungry

There has been a sharp increase in donations of deer, wild hog and squirrel meat to soup kitchens across the country. Campaigns like Hunters for the Hungry are increasingly being supported by state conservation departments and greater numbers of hunters are participating.

As the whiff of fall descends in northeast Georgia, Victor Devine readies his bow for an annual rite he's observed since boyhood: the deer hunt.

His family of five eats about 100 pounds of venison a year. But in recent seasons, Mr. Devine has returned to the woods to take one or two extra animals, for the benefit of strangers.

He's part of a national "Hunters for the Hungry" campaign that is racking up record amounts of donated deer, wild hog, and squirrel meat to bolster soup-kitchen chilis during the coldest, leanest stretch of the year for poorer Americans.

Such field-to-kitchen charities draw the ire of animal rights groups, but game managers say they play a role in keeping America's deep woods healthy by curtailing wildlife overpopulation. As the number of hunters declines in the U.S., and as wild herds grow in many locales, a new market for surplus meat helps overcome many hunters' reticence against taking animals that won't be used, they say.

"A lot of hunters think it's wasteful to take three or four deer if they can't eat it all," says the flannel-shirted Mr. Devine, a middle-school teacher. This program, he says, provides high-quality protein to people who need it, not to mention helping to "get deer out of people's pea patches."

Dozens of programs, often run jointly by states and nonprofit groups, have cropped up since Safari Club, a pro-hunting organization, began donating unused game in the 1980s. But in the past five years, as more rural "deer coolers," or processors, have signed up to take part in such programs, the total pounds donated has risen dramatically, increasing 30 percent nationwide last year alone.

"No chemicals. No hormones. It's field stuff - free-range deer," says Mary Weisenburg, a food pantry coordinator at the Urban Ministry in Athens, Ga. "[Recipients] love the venison chili, and when we serve it in burgers they don't know the difference."

Hunters are the original conservationists, of course. Despite the objections from the usual suspects here, this seems like a real win-win situation. Hunters get to hunt more and the homeless benefit. Severe overpopulations of deer are happening in many areas. Mother nature has a way of dealing with that situation that is very unpleasant. There have been several outbreaks of epizootic hemorrhagic disease this year among deer herds in a number of states. Chronic wasting disease or CWD is also a real danger to deer herds.

NASCAR Fever! Catch It!

Unless you are a staffer for the US House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee. Those folks were advised to get immunized against a number of diseases before traveling to NASCAR events in Talladega, Alabama, and Concord, North Carolina. The list of shots recommended included hepatitis, diphtheria, tetanus and influenza. The House member who represents Concord, Republican Representative Robin Hayes, got a bit miffed at the suggestion that NASCAR fans might have "cooties", as the Washington Times put it. The Democrat who chairs the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, fired back at that. This is how political dust-ups develop.

Gentlemen, start your engines . . .

"I am beginning to get offended," said Republican Rep. Robin Hayes. "We thought it was silly that you needed to get a vaccination to come to Concord to go to the NASCAR races. This is the greatest sport on Earth today and you sure don't need a shot to come down here."

Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said he never meant to offend or scare anyone about health risks at the races. The measure was advised to provide congressional staff with the same disease protection first responders get, especially as they head out on a series of fact-finding missions around the country.

"It's not about whether the people have shots. … Our staffs as they go forward will be going into sterile areas, they will be working in public health facilities, they will be talking to many holding facilities where criminals are being held….

"The NASCAR event is just one date, but after that they will be doing a number of things," said Thompson, adding that the World Series and Super Bowl are two other mass gatherings that are going to be researched for readiness.

During the trip to North Carolina, staffers were to visit a medical facility with patients at the Lowe's Motor Speedway. They were also set to inspect an empty mobile hospital. After the House physician told Republican staffers that shots were not necessary to go to North Carolina, they didn't get them. Democratic staffers reportedly did.

Now we here at Blue Crab Boulevard realize that patriotic, troop supporting NASCAR fans might seem foreign to Democratic staffers, so we thought we'd help them with a quick pointer - since they already have their shots. Corn dogs are not fierce animals used in hunting. They are actually a somewhat edible food product served on a stick.

We hope that helps clear up one of life's little mysteries for committee staffers.

UPDATE: Others: BitsBlog: "As a friend of mine said upon reading this article; Imagine with me a white congressman saying something like “well if any of my staffers are going to the NAACP you rally you’d better be sure to get your shots before you go…”

Conservative Belle: Interjections! With a blast from the past video.

Newsbusters: "It will be interesting to see if NBC anchor Brian Williams, who's regularly touted as a NASCAR fan, gets around to this story."

Democracy Arsenal: "There are no shortage of broken programs and systems at DHS, and frankly, it’s ridiculous for any Congressional Committee to be investigating local and state responders for ANYTHING until they’ve gotten the federal systems shaped up."

“You Tell The Truth, And That’s It.”

The words of William "Wild Bill" Guarnere, one of the surviving members of E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment, immortalized as "Easy Company" in Band of Brothers, both the Stephen Ambrose book and the miniseries of the same name. Guarnere, along with fellow Easy Company member and lifelong friend Edward "Babe" Heffron have written their own book about the war and their lives both before and after it. The title quote refers to the fact that they tell their story unflinchingly, warts and all.

PHILADELPHIA - After parachuting into Europe during World War II, battling along a strip of road called Hell's Highway in the Netherlands and surviving the freezing woods of Bastogne surrounded by German troops, William Guarnere and Edward Heffron do not consider themselves heroes.

Guarnere, 84, and Heffron, 84, are among the surviving members of the fabled Easy Company memorialized in the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers." To them, the real heroes are the men whose bodies stayed buried in that foreign soil and the mothers who sent their sons off to war, praying for a safe return.

It is so their sacrifices are not forgotten that Guarnere and Heffron have written "Brothers in Battle: Best of Friends," recently published by the Berkley Publishing Group.

"Sitting there in the plane, you wonder why you're up there," says Heffron. "You could be home, but then when you land there, and you go through these villages and you look at those people's faces … now you know why we're here."

Heffron sits in Guarnere's Philadelphia house, surrounded by pictures of soldiers the two served with and mementos emblazoned with the Screaming Eagle of the 101st Airborne Division, of which they were part.

The book, with a foreword by actor Tom Hanks, one of the miniseries' producers, tells the story of how the two young men from South Philly became paratroopers, fought in some of World War II's major battles and survived to form a lifelong friendship……

……Guarnere's voice has a raw, unvarnished "tell it like it was," quality while Heffron's is an often-introspective look at the war and life. But neither is sanitized or rosy-eyed. Both speak plainly about killing German troops, the looting that sometimes occurred and the drinking and partying that went on after the war and when they were on leave.

But they said it was important to give as an accurate picture as they could about what they experienced, saying that they were simply trying to do their job the best they could and protect their friends.

"Once you start lying and trying to change things, it's no good," Guarnere says. "You tell the truth, and that's it."

Guarnere lost a leg during the Battle of the Bulge while Heffron served all the way through the rest of the campaign as told by Band of Brothers. After the war, the two became inseparable friends. They see each other almost daily. There are only about 23 members of Easy Company still alive now and the number shrinks each year. I think this book will be on my must read list.

It’s Not All Praise For Gore In The Media

Several op-eds out today that take shots at both Al Gore and at the Nobel Prize committee that selected the Goreacle for the Peace Prize. First a really snarky one from the New York Post by Andrea Peyser:

October 13, 2007 — HERE'S a pop quiz:

Which failed U.S. pol itician has succeeded in regaining his global stature and impressing his lefty friends, winning the Nobel Peace Prize for creating alarmist works stuffed with half-truths, outright lies and political propaganda?

The answer: Jimmy Carter.

No, wait! Al Gore.

Actually, both.

It's official. Following his sweep of the Oscar and Emmy awards, Gore is taking home the liberal trifecta. The ex-vice prez and leading peddler of junk science has won the Nobel in the category of peace, and presumably science fiction, for his docu-comedy "An Inconvenient Truth."

Gore's career as a rock star for global warming capable of forcing small children and seniors to hide under their beds in fear has proved a more successful endeavor than politics. And he doesn't have to get up as early in the morning.

While my jury is still out on climate change - the planet has been warmer at other times in history - you may in your heart accept that the Earth is slowly cooking and still reject Gore as a warming nut.

Peyser goes on to roast the Nobel committee and their rapidly declining standards. Oddly the last sentence in the blockquote is exactly illustrated in another op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg in, of all places, The Boston Globe (that's two in one day - did someone put something in their water coolers?)

Likewise, Gore agonizes over the accelerated melting of ice in Greenland and what it means for the planet, but overlooks the IPCC's conclusion that, if sustained, the current rate of melting would add just 3 inches to the sea-level rise by the end of the century. Gore also takes no notice of research showing that Greenland's temperatures were higher in 1941 than they are today.

The politician-turned-moviemaker loses sleep over a predicted rise in heat-related deaths. There's another side of the story that's inconvenient to mention: rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells, which are a much bigger killer than heat. The best study shows that by 2050, heat will claim 400,000 more lives, but 1.8 million fewer will die because of cold. Indeed, according to the first complete survey of the economic effects of climate change for the world, global warming will actually save lives.

Gore has helped the world to worry. Unfortunately, our attention is diverted from where it matters. Climate change is not the only problem facing the globe.

Gore concentrates on his call for world leaders to cut CO2 emissions, yet there are other policies that would do much more for the planet. Over the coming century, developing nations will be increasingly dependent on food imports from developed countries. This is not primarily a result of global warming, but a consequence of more people and less arable land in the developing world.

The number of hungry people depends much less on climate than on demographics and income. Extremely expensive cuts in carbon emissions could mean more malnourished people. If our goal is to fight malnutrition, policies like getting nutrients to those who need them are 5,000 times more effective at saving lives than spending billions of dollars cutting carbon emissions.

Remember that Lomborg firmly believes in anthropogenic global warming. He just doesn't believe in Al Gore or the frantic, Chicken Littleish alarmism of the former VP. Lomborg supports helpful initiatives, not stupid and draconian kneecapping of economies.

Counterproductive Effort

Even the Boston Globe thinks the "Armenian genocide" bill now before the House of Representatives is a really bad idea. They say so in an editorial today.

THE HISTORICAL evidence shows that the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians in eastern Turkey constituted what the world now knows as genocide, and Turkey ought to acknowledge this reality. But a resolution before Congress has provoked an upsurge of nationalism that threatens US interests and would do nothing to lift Turkey's willful amnesia. It should not be pursued at this time.

The editorial also points out what a lot of people have been saying - there may well be real damage done by this gesture. They hint that the proper thing to do right now is to engage in constructive activity - the same ideas espoused by Jane Harmon in the LA Times yesterday. Instead of finger-pointing, why not encourage Turkey to remove the law against insulting Turkishness or to normalize relations with Armenia? What this resolution does is to play into the hands of the worst sentiments in Turkey:

The House resolution, by inciting the worst aspects of Turkish nationalism and creating government-to-government friction, would delay a reckoning with history.

Empty gestures are easy. Really solving problems takes work. Sadly, the bill before the House is taking the easy route.

Mayor Toilet Builds A House

When a guy who earned the nickname "Mayor Toilet" for his tireless work to improve public restrooms in his city decides to build a new house what else would it be but a giant toilet? Sim Jae-Duck was the Mayor of the South Korean city of Suweon from 1995 to 2002. During his tenure, the city's restrooms took on a whole new look and met high standards of cleanliness. Now he is taking his campaign worldwide - and his new house is part of the effort.

SEOUL (AFP) - Sim Jae-Duck was born in a restroom and now he plans to live and die in one — a 1.6 million dollar toilet-shaped house designed to promote his tireless campaign for cleaner loos worldwide.

Sim will open what is billed as the world's one and only toilet house on November 11 to mark the launch of his World Toilet Association.

The 419-square-metre (4,508-sq-foot) concrete and glass structure is rising on the site of Sim's former home in his native city of Suweon, 40 kilometres (24 miles) south of Seoul.

Before he moves in, anyone who is flush with funds can rent it for 50,000 dollars a day — with proceeds going to his campaign to provide poor countries with proper sanitary facilities.

Apart from two bedrooms, two guestrooms and other rooms, the two-storey house — of course — features three deluxe toilets. Unlike the giant "toilet" in which they are located, they will not be see-through affairs.

"A showcase bathroom screened by a glass wall is located in its centre, while other toilets have elegant fittings or water conservation devices," Sim told AFP.

The showcase loo will feature a device producing a mist to make users feel secure. An electronic sensor will raise the lid automatically when people enter, and there will also be music for patrons.

The house, complete with a stream and small garden in front, is named Haewoojae, meaning "a place of sanctuary where one can solve one's worries".

His mother intentionally gave birth to Sim in a restroom, incidentally, believing it would lead to a long, prosperous life for him. Well, it certainly seems to have influenced him, doesn't it?

How Important Is New Media?

There has been a lot of discussion about the rising importance of new media in political campaigning. Many of the loudest proponents of it are, understandably, part of that new media. Some of the more grandiose claims come from a few of the larger left-wing sites, of course. And frankly, the new media is making more and more inroads into traditional media with newspapers and television networks starting up blogs and hiring bloggers in some cases. But how much difference does new media actually make in influencing voters. Well, in Iowa the answer is not very much - at least according to the New York Times.

It’s not that the Democratic presidential campaigns in Iowa haven’t tried to reach out. Their staffs have bombarded prospective caucusgoers with e-mail and text messages and with recorded voice mail from celebrities. They have built elaborate MySpace and Facebook pages in the candidates’ names, adding thousands of online “friends.” And aides adorned with new titles like “director of e-strategy” talk rapturously of how the Internet is transforming politics.

Yet even the campaigns concede that many caucusgoers in Iowa are happily encased in an old-media bubble, immune to the digital overtures of the modern presidential campaign and much more tuned in to commercials on television than to videos on a candidate’s Web site.

“It’s clearly true,” said Joe Trippi, a senior adviser to former Senator John Edwards, “that blogs and Web sites, and even some of the cool stuff that our team is doing in Iowa, has got less of an impact in Iowa.”

One reason is that the state’s population is older, and so are its caucus voters. According to the 2004 National Election Pool entrance poll in Iowa, 27 percent of Democratic caucusgoers were 65 or older — people less likely to download candidate podcasts, though more inclined to withstand the rigors of caucusing, which can require hours of votes and revotes.

Using technology to attract younger, first-time voters was crucial to Howard Dean’s strategy four years ago, and Mr. Edwards and Senator Barack Obama have tried to mimic it. (Indeed, Mr. Obama in particular appears to have plenty of young supporters, although it is unclear whether they will actually caucus.)

But privately, campaign aides say the ramped-up Internet efforts are intended to build buzz and positive press, with little expectation that they will translate directly into votes. (Mr. Dean, once considered the 2004 Democratic front-runner, finished third in Iowa.)

The Times is not saying that all new media effort is useless. Frankly, though, this is a fairly well done article and not the hit piece one would expect from the paper that the blogosphere loves to hate. Basically, the problem is that the demographics in Iowa are somewhat different. The smart campaigns have figured that out and are working the traditional means of political communication more heavily. But even in Iowa, the new media is having some impact - just not as much as proponents would have you believe.