Too Tired To Play With The Dog?

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Via the Daily Mail . 

Crazed Canadian Cow Killed

Toronto police were forced to shoot a belligerent cow after it rampaged through the city for four hours. The cow was set loose following an accident and the police tried for some four hours to capture the animal before it charged and the officer who found himself in the animal's path was forced to shoot.

The steer injured two people and repeatedly charged at police after a trailer carrying it and several other cows flipped over on a freeway, Ontario Provincial Police Constable Dave Woodford told reporters.

After four hours of trying to corral the 1,000-pound (450-kilogram) animal, an officer finally took it down for safety reasons, using his service revolver, he said.

"We were following this cow that was running in the main streets of the (suburban neighborhood) and all of a sudden it turned and started charging at the officer," said Woodford.

"He just pulled his handgun out and started shooting at it. It would be like a car coming at you, that's what it would be like," he said, adding that the officer fired more than a dozen bullets at the steer.

"Service revolver."  Brilliant reporting. The Toronto police use – as many police departments do – Glock 22's or 23's. Which explains the firing of more than a dozen bullets. (The Glock is a pistol, not a revolver.) 

A New Motto For Microsoft Vista!

Courtesy of an unidentified commenter on a survey done over at PC World comes a catchy new slogan for the newest Microsoft operating system. Vista: It runs like a dead hamster!

When I posted a little survey concerning the news that Microsoft plans to discontinue most sales of Windows XP on June 30th, I expected lots of people to take it, and for the sentiment to be overwhelmingly pro-XP. They did, and it was. (More than 3500 people completed the survey, and 83 percent of them are unhappy with Microsoft's move.)

I was startled by how many people took the time to not only participate in the survey but share their thoughts at length–and by how diverse their opinions were. Some folks were raving fans of XP; others just grudgingly tolerated it. Some reported nightmares with Windows Vista; others said they were happy Vista campers. More than a few said that the prospect of an XP-less world was prompting them to consider dumping Microsoft operating systems altogether in favor of Linux or Mac OS X.

Over the next few pages, you'll find a sampling of the 1000+ comments the survey prompted. If they inspire you to share your own thoughts, we're still listening–just leave a comment on this article.
XP Plaudits

"Windows XP has mature to where is the best OS in the market. It's better then Leopard or Tiger from Apple. It's more convinient than Linux and it has gone to a point that I feel it is very secure. Of course nothing is 100% secure, but Windows XP comes very close. The performance is much better than Vista and right now there are more compartible programs to XP than Vista. What would had me jump into Vista, a new file system and a faster seach engine, it's not being deliver. So why switch? Vista is a XP with a fancy look, nothing more. XP has become as secure as Vista, without the slowdown."

There are many, many more opinions over there. A lot of people are going to be very angry come June. I suppose this means that there will never be a service pack 3 for XP, either. Too bad. For all my unhappiness with the XP system, it actually is fairly stable now after all the many patches. And I am used to it and can get around in it pretty well. So, I'll reinstall all my XP systems before the end of June and update them just before they pull the plug. That should get them a few more years of service. When the computers eventually die or become so hopelessly outdated as to be unusable, I'll change to something else.

So far, Ubuntu Linux has been working very well for me for office-type applications. I think Microsoft should be worried. Vista is not doing well for them and they are going to lose business over it.

Obama’s Soaring Rhetoric

Obama the eloquent healer, the candidate of hopey changyness, the guy running for messiah, describes his grandmother as "A typical white person."

Think about it: can you imagine any Presidential candidate, in any context, describing anyone as a "typical black person?" Or a "typical Asian person?" Worse, what Obama said was that the "typical white person" views others of different races with fear and suspicion. Obama appears to be digging himself in deeper and deeper.

You know, I honestly don't care – at all – what color someone's skin is. I'm sick to death of identity politics and I really don't want a president who is a champion of that sort of thing and who stereotypes others based on their physical attributes.

Such soaring rhetoric just lost a few more voters for Obama. That particular set of words soared right up and got sucked into the intake of a jet engine.

UPDATE: Anthony noticed this bit of rhetoric, too.  

Coal Boom

World demand for coal has climbed 30% in just six years as developing economies have begun screaming for more energy. The United States is rapidly running out of production and shipping facilities to meet the demands of domestic and foreign demand, causing coal prices to skyrocket even faster than oil prices have. On the plus side, the coal boom has helped improve the US trade deficit with the value of exports increasing some 19% last year. 

In the United States, the boom in coal exports and prices has helped lower the trade deficit, which declined last year for the first time since 2001. The value of coal exports, which account for 2.5 percent of all U.S. exports, grew by 19 percent last year, to $4.1 billion, the National Mining Association said. An even bigger increase is expected this year.

That means that, in a small way, higher revenues for U.S. coal exports indirectly helped the U.S. economy cover the cost of iPods from China, flat-screen TVs from Japan and machinery from Germany. The still-gaping trade deficit of the world's largest industrial power at the dawn of the 21st century was slightly eased by a fuel from the era and pages of Charles Dickens.

Big swings in the prices of coal and other commodities are common. But while the price of coal has slipped slightly in recent weeks, many analysts and companies are wondering whether high prices are here to stay. As increasing numbers of the world's poor join the middle classes, hooking up to electricity grids and buying up more manufactured goods, demand for coal grows. World consumption of coal has grown 30 percent in the past six years, twice as much as any other energy source. About two-thirds of the fuel supplies electricity plants, and just under a third heads to industrial users, mostly steel and concrete makers.

Meeting rising demand will prove difficult. To maintain its role as the world's producer of last resort, the United States will need to make major investments in mines, railways and ports.

"We think the current world markets have legs," said Thomas F. Hoffman, senior vice president of external affairs at Consol Energy, one of the biggest U.S. coal producers. Consol is trying to decide whether to expand output at its Appalachian mines and to add capacity in Baltimore's harbor.

"We're at a point where we're running through the capacity," said David Khani, a coal analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group. He compares the coal market to the oil market. For coal, he added, "it is unprecedented." 

Bad news for American electricity prices, incidentally. Half of the US electric supply is generated with coal. On a somewhat brighter note, the Florida Public Service Commission has just approved the construction of two new nuclear units at Florida Power and Light's Turkey Point facility. Unfortunately, those will take more than a decade to bring on line.

Florida regulators have approved Florida Power & Light Co.'s petition to build two new nuclear plants at its Turkey Point facility.

The state Public Service Commission determined that there is a need for the additional power.

Turkey Point, located south of Miami, currently has nuclear units, two gas and oil units, and one natural gas unit. The two new nuclear units would come online in 2018 and 2020, and contribute between 2,200 megawatts and 3,000 megawatts of new generation, the PSC said.

Fantasies Run Amok

Even the Washington Post acknowledges that the promises of both Democratic candidates regarding Iraq are unrealistic and badly damaging to American interests. The Post also admits that should either candidate do what they are saying they will, that the result would be a bloodbath in Iraq.

Barely acknowledging the reduction in violence, the Democratic candidates insist that U.S. troops are, as Ms. Clinton put it, "babysitting a civil war." In fact, the surge forestalled an incipient civil war, and U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq don't hesitate to say that if American forces withdrew now, sectarian conflict would probably explode in its full fury, causing bloodshed on a far greater scale than ever before and posing grave threats to U.S. security.

BOTH Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton propose withdrawing U.S. troops at the most rapid pace the Pentagon says is possible — one brigade a month. In the 16 months or so it would take to remove those forces, they envision the near-miraculous accomplishment of every political goal the Bush administration has aimed at for five years, from the establishment of a stable government to agreement by Iraq's neighbors to support it. They suppose that the knowledge that American forces were leaving would inspire these accords. In fact, it more likely would cause all sides to discount U.S. influence and prepare to violently seize the space left by the departing Americans.

With equal implausibility, the Democratic candidates say they would leave limited U.S. forces behind to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing bases. They assume that an Iraqi government that had just been abandoned by the United States would consent to the continued presence of American forces on its territory. In all, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama speak as if they have no understanding of Iraqi leaders, whom they propose to treat as willing puppets.  

The Post goes so far as to hope that both candidates are telling political lies. Personally, I'm bothered that both of them are so fond of embracing American defeat.