Captain Calamity And The Breakaway State

A man that the Telegraph calls "Captain Calamity" because of his misadventures while boating has declared the windswept Shetland Island he calls home a "Crown Dependency" and broken away from Britain proper and the European Union. He is the sole inhabitant of the tiny islet he calls home, Forewick Holm, or as he calls it now, Forvik.

Stuart Hill, a 65 year-old grandfather, will announce that 'Forvik', an island officially known as Forewick Holm, has broken away from the United Kingdom, quit the EU and become a crown dependency.

Mr Hill said his declaration of a new state - measuring one hectare (2.5 acres) - is intended to force the government and local council into action over the island's history and constitutional legitimacy.

Mr Hill, originally from Manningtree, Essex, settled on the island after his failed solo attempt in 2001 to circumnavigate Britain in a home-made boat - earning the 'Captain Calamity' name - capsized west of the Shetland islands, the UK's most northerly island group.

The Telegraph helpfully linked to the 2001 story that detailed some of Hill's exploits that earned him the "Captain Calamity" name.

A LONE yachtsman was recovering from hypothermia yesterday after his calamity-strewn attempts to circumnavigate Britain came to a predictable end in 20ft seas.

Stuart Hill, 58, was nicknamed Captain Calamity after a string of maritime disasters.

The latest came on Tuesday when his "self-righting" vessel capsized off Shetland. His rescuers said he was "very lucky to be alive".

He was 52 miles west of Shetland after he was thrown out of his boat, Maximum Exposure, and left clinging to the hull.

He was airlifted to hospital in Lerwick where he ignored all appeals and announced that he would probably try again next year.

There is an outstanding quote in that last link:

"Flares and helicopters are mutually incompatible."

We'll see how Mr. Hill's insurrection plays out shortly, I'm quite sure. Meanwhile, you can contact him directly via his website, should you be so inclined. Don't miss the "Declaration of Dependence" which uses a rather familiar (to Americans, at any rate) document as its starting point.

Upper Mississippi Closed To Barge Traffic

The Corps of Engineers has closed 13 locks on the upper Mississippi River since June 12, stranding more than 100 barges.

WINFIELD, Mo. - The flooding in the Midwest has brought freight traffic on the upper Mississippi to a standstill, stranding more than 100 barges loaded with grain, cement, scrap metal, fertilizer and other products while shippers wait for the water to drop on the Big Muddy.

"We're basically experiencing total shutdown," said Larry Daily, president of Alter Barge Line Inc. of Bettendorf, Iowa.

While the bottleneck is costing him and other barge operators tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue per day, June is a slow shipping period on the river compared with the late-summer harvest, the shutdown is expected to last only a few weeks, and it involves primarily non-perishable goods. So no major damage to the economy is expected.

Note to the AP: the Missouri River is nicknamed "The Big Muddy" not the Mississippi. (There's a good picture that shows why.) When I lived in Illinois, the upper Mississippi was closed several times due to flood conditions, but always for very short periods of time. Usually much earlier in the year than this, as I recall. It seems to me that this is about the time barge operators started complaining about low river levels.

The Damage Done

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey is estimating that 10% of the state's corn crop and 20% of the soybean crop is destroyed or was never planted due to soggy conditions. If anything, his estimate might be optimistic. Total projected economic damage: $3 billion.

"Right now, we have about 10 percent of our corn that has either been flooded out or not planted and about 20 percent of our (soy)beans," Bill Northey said Friday on "Iowa Press," a public television show.

"We're seeing some beans go back in the ground, and if we were to lose that, if we weren't able to replant, that would be $2.5 billion, $3 billion — a significant amount of damage," he said.

He added that some of the remaining crops would likely have smaller yields.

Flooding in several Midwestern states has killed two dozen people and injured 148, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 35,000 to 40,000 people in several states have been displaced.

Around my area there are many fields where the corn is less than a foot tall - and it has yellow leaves, not deep green. The yields will be very low from such fields. (There are still large areas under water, too. In many cases, the fields have been submerged so long that algae is growing in the water.) The beans do not look much better. There has been an enormous amount of damage and we won't know how bad it really is until the harvest comes in.

Don't expect food to get cheaper any time soon, however.

Canadian Lunacy

In yet another sign that Canada has completely lost it, a judge has overturned a father's decision to ground his twelve year-old daughter.

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.

The father's lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl's "own protection" and is appealing the ruling.

Courts do not belong in the parent-child relationship in this manner. Period. One hopes that sanity will prevail in the appellate court. If not, parents in Canada are in serious trouble.

Traction

Robert Novak notes that Congressional phone lines have been going berserk over a surprise hot-button issue. People are backing Republican calls to "Drill NOW!"

Members of Congress were swamped by telephone calls and e-mail messages Thursday demanding, "Drill now!" in response to a Republican call for increased American oil production to fight runaway gasoline prices.

Lawmakers got little response to previous proposals intended to lower the cost of oil: alternative energy sources, a federal gasoline tax holiday, an excess profits tax on U.S. oil producers and pressure on foreign oil producers. In contrast, the demand to "drill now" (first urged this year by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich) has taken hold.

Our politicians had better pay attention to this one, this could be extremely damaging to Democrats if they continue to stonewall drilling for oil here in this country. This could also be a massive boost for Republicans in November. So far, the "Drill NOW!" support is coming from Republican lawmakers. Democrats ignore this at their own peril.

Washington's stupid energy policies are directly responsible for the promotion of pie-in-the-sky ethanol and the refusal to allow drilling for known reserves of billions of barrels of oil in our own territory. It's time to send a message to Congress. Call your lawmakers and make sure they hear your views. Drill NOW!

Ice, Ice, Baby

NASA scientists believe they have proof of water ice on Mars.

Scientists with the Phoenix Mars mission yesterday declared for certain that there is ice on the Red Planet, putting them an essential step closer to answering the question that has driven three decades of Mars exploration and centuries of Earth-bound speculation: Could there have been life there?

Pictures beamed 170 million miles to Earth from the Phoenix lander atop Mars's northern polar plain erased any doubt about the presence of ice, they said.

But the evidence came in a roundabout way. Last Sunday, several dice-size solids were observed at the bottom of a trench that had been dug by Phoenix's robotic arm. On Thursday, they were gone.

The only reasonable explanation, the scientists said, is that the objects were pieces of ice that evaporated into the dry Martian atmosphere through a process called sublimation. And the presence of ice means that Mars might once have had liquid water, which is essential for life — at least as it is known on Earth.

This seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the photographic evidence, which you can see for yourself on the Phoenix Mission homepage. There are definitely several objects visible in one image that are just gone in the second one. The Phoenix lander is having some unfortunate software and hardware issues at the moment. The scientists and engineers are working on resolving those issues. Hopefully, they can get definitive proof soon. But it certainly looks like they found something that behaves like water ice.

It’s The Courts

I have been saying for a very long time that this election is about the courts. Conservatives and anyone that is right-of-center should be paying attention to this. According to Human Events (an outlet I seldom link to) John McCain would appoint Fred Thompson to help vet judicial appointments.

In a McCain administration, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson would play a dominant role in selecting Supreme Court nominees and other judicial appointments, sources close to the McCain campaign and to Thompson tell us.

That would be a very smart thing to do. Fred Thompson would be a powerful, credible public voice for John McCain in that arena. Thompson doesn't just play a lawyer on television, after all.

Even though I dislike some of McCain's positions, I dislike them considerably less than I dislike the thought of a left-wing packed Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary. Keep that in mind folks.

Storms On Storms

This is either the storm that knocked out power to the Crabitat two nights ago or part of the same system:

And this is the sudden storm that popped up last night. It didn't knock out power, but it delivered yet another gully washer and ruined any chance of taking a swim.

Sigh. This weather pattern is getting very old.