Plane Crash In Antarctic

A charter aircraft carrying a six-person team of researchers and four crew members crashed in the Antarctic on December 20th. All of the people on board survived, but the airplane itself suffered severe damage.

A National Science Foundation (NSF)-chartered aircraft operating in Antarctica crashed shortly after take-off earlier this week while providing support to a group of researchers at a remote location on the southernmost continent. None of the 10 people aboard was injured, but the DC-3 Basler was severely damaged.

The aircraft, which is owned by Kenn Borek Air Ltd., a Canadian aviation firm, experienced difficulties in taking off from a field site near Mt. Patterson in West Antarctica on the morning of Dec. 20, local time (U.S. stations in Antarctica keep New Zealand time), roughly 550 miles from McMurdo Station, NSF's logistical hub in Antarctica.

Thankfully, everyone is safe. In case you're wondering what a DC-3 Basler is, it is a retrofit of the venerable Douglas DC-3 with Pratt&Whitney PT6A-67R Turbo Prop Engines installed. I have no idea how they will ever recover the wreck given its location. (Great DC-3 site here that has tons of information of this 70-plus year old warhorse. Some 400 of them are still flying in various configurations.)

Darn It

I got an email from my friend Bruce Webster over at And Still I Persist pointing out this anomaly (via Heckler Spray) that shows up on Google Earth:

Darn technology. Now Santa will have to move his workshop. I'll bet the folks at Google Earth are in for a lot of coal in their stockings!

(I just checked Google Earth and the big whatever it is still shows up.)

Could It Really Be This Simple?

Mark Tapscott reports that there is a legal opinion out there that says that most earmarks - or at least those not actually attached to bills directly voted on by Congress - could be eliminated by a simple executive order. The earmarks attached to bills by committee reports may not have the actual force of laws.

If the headline on this post seems too good to be true, be assured it reflects an expert legal opinion, that of the Congressional Research Service. The opinion is at the heart of an urgent joint letter sent today to President Bush by the Porkbusters coalition. Here's the key graph:

"A December 18 legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service concluded that 'because the language of committee reports does not meet the procedural requirements of Article I of the Constitution — specifically, bicameralism and presentment - they are not laws and, therefore, are not legally binding on executive agencies… Given both the implied legal and constitutional authority as well as the long-standing accepted process of Presidents, it appears that a President can, if he so chooses, issue an executive order with respect to earmarks contained solely in committee reports and not in any way incorporated into the legislative text.'"

If CRS is correct, then the coalition urges Bush to sign an Executive Order directing executive branch agencies to only recognize earmarks that are included in the text of the just-passed Omnibus spending bill.

The CRS is a division of the Library of Congress, it is not some maverick organization. Is it possible that it would actually be this simple to devastate the earmark system as it exists today? Could the stroke of a pen force Congress to stand up and vote openly on each waste of taxpayer money to fund political paybacks? Do read the Q and A that Tapscott has over there.

You know, after the way the Democratic party leadership has demonized and vilified George Bush, it would be sort of ironic justice if he turned around and did this, wouldn't it?

“You Can’t Have Any PUDDING”

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
(Roger Waters, Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2)

The title of this post is, of course, taken from that famous, dark Pink Floyd song describing the violent, repressive teachers that tormented the lead character in The Wall. In Britain today, the role of that song's thuggish, controlling teachers who try to mold people into the proper shape will be played by government bureaucrats. For you see, you really can't have any pudding anymore if you want to "save the planet."

Families should give up Christmas pudding to help save the planet, Government advisers said yesterday.

They suggested that rather than serving up a dessert that often goes to waste, cooks should reheat whatever leftover mincemeat they have to hand and serve it with ice cream.

The advisers from the Waste and Resources Action Programme, the £80millionayear state body set up to encourage recycling, said ice cream was an excellent accompaniment because unused quantities could be returned to the freezer, again cutting waste.

It warned cooks that "buying the right amount of food and getting portions right" was especially challenging at Christmas.

The advice from the organisation - which last year told councils to bring in fortnightly rubbish collections during winter so that no one would notice the smells - has proved controversial.

Last night, a spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance said: "Surely at the festive season quangos could take a break from bossing people around.

"It seems that WRAP are on a mission to use public money to hector and patronise the public at a time when everyone wants to relax and have a good time with their loved ones."

The mind boggles at the utter and complete insanity that is now on full display - in all its stunted-souled glory - in Britain today.

Lowering Expectations

The Politico is reporting that orders have been given to members of camp Clinton that nobody is to predict a win in Iowa. While it is quite common for campaigns to try to lower expectations before an election, this seems like quite a bit different animal. The Politico surmises that the Clinton campaign is not at all sure it can win - or even place second - in Iowa.

Orders have come from the top of the campaign here that nobody is to predict that Hillary Clinton will win Iowa.

That may be part of the “expectations” game that all campaigns play.

Or it may be because the campaign no longer is really sure that Clinton will win.

In interviews with top Clinton staffers, who did not wish to be quoted directly, I was told that Clinton could survive a second-place finish in Iowa and that the state was not do-or-die for her.

Gordon Fischer, the former chair of the Iowa Democratic Party who is now backing Obama, says that attitude represents an “evolution.”

“The strong pitch made to me and others not that long ago was that we had to be for Hillary, because Hillary was going to be the inevitable winner,” Fischer told me. “They have come a long way if they now think Iowa is just survivable.”

Technically speaking, all the Democratic campaigns probably can survive a loss in Iowa on Jan. 3.

After all, the New Hampshire primary is only five days later. Why drop out before then?

But no campaign is underestimating the importance of Iowa.

It is really going to depend on how things break at the caucuses, I suspect. A disaster would be if Hillary placed third on the first round and could not reach the 15% threshold - that would be a real problem for the campaign. (I do not think that extremely likely, however.) But then, a lot of Hillary's attacks have been backfiring on her as they have been exposed for what they are. Since her new, warmer side has so far consisted of her proxies hurling verbal fireballs at the opposition, she could be in real trouble in Iowa. That could change the whole race.

Enemies List

Tired of fake Facebook friends? Are you anti-social toward social networks? Think MySpace should be just that without anyone bugging you? Then places like Snubster, Enemybook and Hatebook are where you want to be!

Over the past 18 months, sites such Snubster, Enemybook and Hatebook are appealing to Internet users who get a kick out of the tongue-in-cheek humor of mocking their friends and others who are just plain cynical.

"I didn't understand these fake-friend war chests that people were so busy building online," said Bryant Choung, a technology consultant who started Snubster last year.

"I would get Facebook requests from people I talked to for three minutes at a bar or party, and now this person wants to go online to peruse all of my photos and contacts. I just didn't get it," the 26-year-old added.

Snubster, a Facebook application and a Web site with 16,000 users worldwide, lets users compile people and things they dislike.

No one from Facebook, which boasts 59 million active users worldwide, was available to comment about the sites.

When Facebook opened up its network to outside applications earlier this year, some users decided it was an opportunity to poke fun at the phenomenon.

Social networking for the anti-social! Absolutely perfect. A professor of (I'm not kidding here) pop culture sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto, Murray Pomerance, is warning that these anti-social (and their social counterparts) can actually be dangerous for some people who take them too seriously. (Which has been shown to be tragically true just recently.) So parents should be monitoring what their kids are doing on these sites, social or anti-social. The adults are on their own.

Major Snake Smuggling Ring Broken

Officials in Vietnam have broken up a major snake smuggling operation in that country. The snakes, cleverly disguised as boxes labeled "live fish" were trying to get themselves into Vietnam via Indonesia. Vietnam has harsh penalties for captured smugglers, too.

"The snakes were alive when they were found in the cargo," a quarantine officer at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport told AFP. "Seven hundred snakes were later destroyed when no-one claimed ownership."

The reptiles were found on December 19 in a container that arrived on flight TG 682 from Indonesia. Accompanying paperwork identified the content as "live fish", the state-run Vietnam News Agency reported.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard believe that the snakes were trying to infiltrate the Vietnamese shoe industry, which is quite extensive. We have, of course, documented many times the weird fascination that snakes have with shoes.

Chinese Raise 800-Year Old Merchant Ship

China has raised an 800-year old trading vessel from the bottom of the South China Sea. The ship, identified as the Nanhai No. 1 was actually located in 1987. The ship is believed to have between 60,000 and 80,000 porcelain objects on board.  

The Nanhai No. 1, which means "South China Sea No. 1," sank off the south China coast with some 60,000 to 80,000 items on board, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing Wu Jiancheng, head of the excavation project.

Archaeologists built a steel basket around the 100-foot vessel, and it took about two hours for a crane to lift the ship and surrounding silt to the surface, Xinhua said. The basket was as large as a basketball court and as tall as a three-story building.

Green-glazed porcelain plates and shadowy blue porcelain items were among rare antiques found during the initial exploration of the ship. Archaeologists have also recovered containers made of gold and silver as well as about 6,000 copper coins.

Xinhua has a report that shows the "Crystal Palace" which was built to house the wreck while it is excavated. People will be able to watch the work as it goes forward.

The ship dates back to the early Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) and is 30.4 meters long and 9.8 meters wide. It was the first ancient vessel discovered on the "Marine Silk Road" of the South China Sea. It was named Nanhai No. 1? meaning "South China Sea No.1."

    Wu said, Nanhai No. 1 left port in southern China to trade with foreign countries and sank probably due to stormy waves. It was quickly buried by silt. It was estimated there were probably 60,000 to 80,000 relics on board.

    To better protect the precious relics and gain valuable information, archaeologists launched an unprecedented operation in early May to raise the wreck and the surrounding silt in a huge steel basket.

    According to the plan, a crane would first put the basket onto a barge. Tow boats would then pull the barge to a temporary port on Sunday where the basket would be sent to a specially-built museum.

    In order to avoid damage to the relics caused by a change of environment and pressure, the ancient ship would be put in a huge glass pool. There, the water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions would be the same as the sea bed where the ship lay.

    The pool, named "Crystal Palace" is 64 meters long, 40 meters wide and 23 meters high. It contains seawater and is about 12 meters in depth.

There is also an in depth (pun intended) look at the excavation work - with some nice photos - that also profiles Zhang Wei, the director of the Underwater Archeology Center of China who has driven the efforts to recover the ship for 20 years.

Kinder, Gentler Character Assassination

The Boston Globe has to admit that the Clinton campaign appears to have developed a split personality. A softer image for Clinton herself, while Clinton's proxy warriors continue the hardball attack politics. Call it Clinton's Jekyll and Hyde campaign.

GRUNDY CENTER, Iowa - Hillary Clinton's campaign is exhibiting signs of a split personality.

Touring Iowa this week, she has criticized Barack Obama only implicitly as she focused on showing a softer picture of herself as a loyal friend and tireless public servant, tearful old friends and grateful constituents by her side.

At the same time, her surrogates and supporters have been increasingly busy sharpening their knives for Obama.

The latest examples: A major union backing Clinton is mailing fliers in Iowa that attack Obama's healthcare plan, but never mention Clinton's name. It quotes John Edwards instead, prompting his campaign to cry foul yesterday. "There have been a lot of misleading tactics and tricks in the last few weeks, but we've just never seen anything like this before," Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, Iowa director for Edwards, said in a statement.

And yesterday, after the New York Times published a story about Obama's record of voting "present," instead of yes or no, while an Illinois state senator, the Clinton campaign organized a conference call for reporters with three disapproving members of Congress.

"We are learning more and more that he took what a lot of us in public life call the easy way out on controversial votes," said Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York.

Trying to stay above the fray while dispatching surrogates to play the bad cop is a time-tested political strategy. But it is especially striking in the Clinton campaign now because the sharp jabs are such a contrast from the candidate's warm and fuzzy message.

Well, Clinton playing socialist Santa while her buddies wield their shivs is a bit of a contrast. But it shouldn't be a surprise. Clinton is singularly unsuccessful at pulling this off, however. Everyone is seeing through the smokescreen - they know full well that Clinton is calling the shots. I suspect that this has a lot to do with her rapid slide in the polls. She's trying to be too clever by half with these tactics - and the voters are not buying it. Besides, poetry says it all.

Well, Now We Know Part Of The Story

I just got an email from my friend and fellow blogger from Thailand, Agam, that informed me that a question from yesterday has been answered, at least in part. I mentioned that a terror suspect released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Britain had been promptly arrested by the Brits, then just as promptly bailed out by unknown an unknown person or persons. It seems we now know one of the people who bailed this guy out.

Vanessa Redgrave.

Two suspected al-Qa'eda operatives released from Guantanamo Bay have walked free from court although they are still wanted in Spain on terrorism-related offences.

One of the men, who is accused of distributing extremist propaganda produced by Osama bin Laden, had half of his £50,000 bail surety met by the actress Vanessa Redgrave.

Jamil el-Banna, 45, who was said during a brief court hearing to have helped run a cell called the Islamic Alliance, recruiting people to fight jihad in Afghanistan and Indonesia, returned to his London home tonight.

The other man, Omar Deghayes, 38, a Libyan national freed from Guantanamo and allowed into the UK because he once lived here, is said to have had links to the same al-Qa'eda cell. He was also released on bail.

Spain issued European arrest warrants for both men within hours of their arrival in Britain last night from the Cuban detention centre. Miss Redgrave said: "It is a profound honour and I am glad to be alive to be able to do this.''

She added: "Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp. It is a disgrace that these men have been kept there all these years."

But the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court heard of their alleged links to al-Qa'eda, which raised fresh questions over why the British government interceded on their behalf to allow their return here from Guantanamo.

Although the men have been resident in the UK and have family here, they are not British citizens.

Trotskyist Redgrave has been a disgrace for years, Britain's Jane Fonda, if you will. Agam also pointed out in his email that Jamil el-Banna looks like a refugee from The Lord of The Rings. But she has been a fond supporter of thugs and thuggishness in the past. Not really surprising, I suppose.  

Hillary Still Sliding In New Hampshire

A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that Barack Obama has pulled even with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. While there is a huge amount of volatility in the results with a lot of people still on the fence, so to speak, these can't be considered good numbers for Clinton. Oddly enough, John McCain also appears to be making a surge in the poll as well.

PELHAM, N.H. — Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are locked in a dead heat among New Hampshire voters in a statewide USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, underscoring the volatility of the race less than three weeks before the nation's first primary.

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney's lead has narrowed to single digits over John McCain, who hopes to repeat the victory here that ignited his presidential campaign in 2000.

The survey's fundamental finding is uncertainty: More than four of 10 voters in each party say they may change their minds before the Jan. 8 primary. That fluidity could magnify the impact of late-breaking news, last-minute gaffes and the Iowa caucuses that will open the presidential season five days earlier.

"People are just taking a hard look at this point," says Jim Hardy, sheriff of Hillsborough County and a McCain supporter who is greeting voters at a campaign town hall with the Arizona senator at Pelham High School on Wednesday night.

If Hillary crashes in Iowa, undecideds may swing over to Obama. This isn't a pretty picture and I imagine there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth at team Hillary headquarters right now.

Finns Perfect Anaconda Control Foam

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have documented many methods used to attempt to control raging reptiles. From the ever popular kicking and punching of poppy-picking pythons, the handy switchblade control method, The useful "Don't taze me, bro" method and, of course, the legendary python putter. However, all those methods pale in comparison to the newest control technique. Fearless Firefighters in Finland use foam to freeze feisty anacondas. Technology marches on!

The 3.3-metre (10-and-a-half-foot) long reptile, which was apparently hungry after fasting for four months, attacked its owner as he tried to remove it from its terrarium to move to a new apartment.

The anaconda also attacked a veterinarian who tried to inject it with a sedative.

The firefighters cooled the snake's temper by emptying the contents of a fire extinguisher into its terrarium. Ten minutes later, the placated snake was easily lifted into a bag and moved to its new home.

They had a snake sack at hand? Boy, are those guys prepared or what? Reptile relaxing foam, boa bags - I wonder what else they carry on their trucks. Well, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that they're ready for anything. After all, Finland has Klingons in Parliament.

Major Terror Bust In Belgium

Belgian authorities have nabbed 14 people, identified as "Muslim extremists" who were apparently planning to break another extremist out of jail. Security has been tightened all across the country as a result of the arrests. There appears to be a great deal of unease about whether the police got all the people involved and fears of other retaliations from uncaught extremists.

Security was heightened across the capital, at airports and subway stations out of precaution, officials said.

"Other acts of violence are not to be excluded," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said. He said authorities had "elements of information which point to the preparation of an attack."

Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman of the federal prosecutor's office, said security also was being stepped up at Christmas markets.

"Since it could not be excluded that the group had other plans and because of the heightened terror threat this time of year, it was decided no risk should be taken," Pellens said.

The suspects sought to free Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian who played soccer for several German teams and who was sentenced to the maximum 10 years in prison four years ago, authorities said.

He had admitted planning to drive a car bomb into the canteen at Kleine Brogel, a Belgian air base where about 100 American military personnel are stationed and where U.S. nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.

Trabelsi testified that he intended kill American soldiers.

Its a good news bad news situation. They got 14 of them, but they really appear to be nervous that there are still more out there. Other media is reporting the nervousness as well. Reuters is reporting it this way:

"There are indications a terrorist attack could be in preparation," Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt told a news conference.

Have yourself a nervous little Christmas. Here's hoping they disrupted any preparations.