More Vital Governmental Interests

Hot on the heels of the "Great Salt Debate" and the "Kiwi Conundrum" comes the "Swedish Snub"!

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.

Meanwhile in Belgium, there are rumors that a man may have had a completely unauthorized bowel movement.

Interpol has been notified.

You, There! Step Away From The Kiwis!

Well, it must be the night for British insanity. Close on the heels of the last post, comes this gem from Britain. Government inspectors in Britain have turned away a shipment of kiwi fruit - for being about one millimeter (or four grams) too small to meet European Union standards. The wholesaler who has the undersized fruits is not allowed by law to even donate the fruit - all he can do is send it to a landfill.

Tim Down, a market trader for 25 years, said he was not permitted even to give away the 5,000 Chilean fruits, each of which is about the size of a small hen's egg and weighs about 60g.

Mr Down said his family run firm would lose several hundred pounds in sales because of the ban.

"It is bureaucratic nonsense, they are perfectly fit to eat," Mr Down said at his stall at the Wholesale Fruit Centre in Bristol.

Inspectors from the Rural Payments Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), made a random check on his stall, and found a number of his kiwis weighed 58g, four grams below the required minimum of 62g.

Mr Down said that 4g in weight was the equivalent of about one millimeter in diameter.

The inspectors also reject curved cucumbers, skinny carrots and straight bananas. Lord knows what a threat to "civilized" society all those are. I imagine the British people must feel safer all the time with the state in control.

Not.

Well, Hello, Nanny

Local councils in Britain have decreed that individuals need to be told how much salt they are allowed apply to their fish and chips. Accordingly, they have taken it upon themselves - at taxpayer expense - to give fish and chip sellers new, government approved, saltshakers.

Pot-holed roads, crumbling schools, litter-strewn streets – there’s no shortage of problem areas crying out for their attention.

But councils believe they have found a better use for their money: reducing the number of holes in chip shop salt shakers.

Research has suggested that slashing the holes from the traditional 17 to five could cut the amount people sprinkle on their food by more than half.

And so at least six councils have ordered five-hole shakers – at taxpayers’ expense – and begun giving them away to chip shops and takeaways in their areas.

Leading the way has been Gateshead Council, which spent 15 days researching the subject of salty takeaways before declaring the new five-hole cellars the solution.

Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.

Government is supposed to take care of certain things that are difficult for individuals to organize. Things like military defense, certain infrastructure like roads and bridges or some public health initiatives.

They are not supposed to decree how much salt you are permitted.

Yet the mindset of the local politicians is perfectly described in the last quote in the article:

A spokesman said: ‘Heart disease costs taxpayers £7billion a year so to say that projects such as this are a waste of money is mind-boggling.’

That attitude showcases - perfectly - the ownership that local councils feel they have over the activities of the peasants - er - citizens.

A recent commenter implied we here in America should be more like the "civilized" Europeans. I would only point out that my ancestors came to this country specifically to get away from those "civilized" European ideas, laws and customs. Personally, I'd rather not be "civilized" over my right as an individual to decide what is best for me. That is my right, not the government's.

Jobs. Good Ones.

Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, has been mentioned here at Blue Crab Boulevard several times in the past. Moore is now an eloquent spokesman in favor of nuclear power. He is now the co-chair of an advocacy group called the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, or CASEnergy. They have just released a report detailing the economic impact a "nuclear renaissance" would have. Basically, lots and lots of extremely good jobs would be created.

Currently, 17 companies and consortia are considering around 30 new reactors in the United States. This new era of nuclear energy will translate into tens of thousands of jobs created to construct,maintain and support new reactors.

Both plant construction and operation will create thousands of jobs in communities surrounding the plants. Depending on the building technique selected, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) anticipates new reactors planned will require tens of thousands of workers for construction,engineering and project management —as many as 4,000 per project at peak periods.

These are high-paying jobs, many of them are union jobs. And the plants produce enormous economic benefit for their localities. Existing plants currently inject large amounts of money into the local economy:

Already, each reactor generates an estimated $430 million a year in total output for the local community, and nearly $40 million per year in total labor income.

That money creates a cascade throughout the region the plants are situated in. The full white paper can be downloaded here.

The thing is, this will produce more than just nuclear jobs. Huge amounts of construction material will be required. Pumps and valves, piping and cable, concrete and steel. All will provide opportunities for manufacturers to expand their facilities and workforces. Abundant energy will, in turn, allow other sectors of the economy to flourish. It is worth reading this paper if you're worried about the economy and jobs.

One Vote

Glenn Reynolds, writing in The New York Post, discusses the very narrow decision by the US Supreme Court affirming an individual right to keep and bear arms. The "victory" for gun rights was made with a single vote.

I confess that I was one of the Second Amendment scholars who doubted that there were five votes on the high court to support an individual-right view of the Second Amendment.

I'm happy to be wrong about that, but there were only five such votes - demonstrating how narrow the margin was, and how out of touch the court is with the American public, which believes the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms by a 3-1 margin.

If, as some have been calling for, we had a "Supreme Court that looks like America," this case wouldn't even have been close. Ordinary Americans have generally believed that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" applied to, you know, the people.

It takes politicians, law professors (and, it turns out, four Supreme Court justices) to believe that a "right of the people" somehow actually doesn't belong to the people at all.

One lonely vote affirmed the Second Amendment rights, folks. One vote. Still think this election is not about the courts? The next President could appoint at least four justices. Think really hard about that. And think about how close we came to losing our rights.

Think hard before you decide who you will vote for. Or before you decide sit this election out.

One vote. Think.

Volcano Madness

Scientists were surprised to find that their theories of how undersea volcanoes behave were wrong. It seems that even when the volcanoes are miles deep, they can erupt explosively and spew rock, lava and megatons of hot gases.

Even under the Arctic ice cap.

New evidence deep beneath the Arctic ice suggests that a series of underwater volcanoes have erupted in violent explosions in the past decade.

Hidden 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) beneath the Arctic surface, the volcanoes can range up to more than a mile (2 kilometers) in diameter and a few hundred yards (meters) tall. They formed along the Gakkel Ridge, a lengthy crack in the ocean crust where two rocky plates are spreading apart, pulling new melted rock to the surface.

Until now, scientists thought undersea volcanoes only dribbled lava from cracks in the seafloor. The extreme pressure from the overlying water makes it difficult for gas and magma to blast outward…..

….Robert Reeves-Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and his colleagues discovered jagged, glassy fragments of rock scattered around the volcanoes, suggesting that explosive eruptions occurred between 1999 and 2001.

There is the now standard disclaimer that any of this could possibly have anything to do with the melting of Arctic ice. While much is made by the true believers and the media (yes, that was redundant, wasn't it?) about the melting of Arctic ice, very little is written about the rapidly growing Antarctic ice. And it is growing very rapidly, indeed. See for yourself: North Pole, South Pole. Here's the Southern anomaly. That is not a declining trend, folks.

Misery In Missouri

The town of Winfield, Missouri has been evacuated after a levee holding back the Mississippi River failed. Despite a huge effort by residents, in the end, the river won the battle and roared through a 20 foot wide breech.

Floodwaters surging down the Mississippi River broke through an earthen levee near the eastern Missouri town of Winfield yesterday, overwhelming a massive sandbagging effort and forcing die-hard residents to evacuate their homes.

The Pin Oak agricultural levee gave way shortly before 5:30 a.m. Central time, the latest of dozens of such structures to be breached or overtopped by floodwaters that have poured into the Mississippi after heavy rains in May and June. Officials said muskrat burrows weakened the levee, contributing to the breach.

The National Weather Service subsequently issued a flash-flood warning for eastern Lincoln County, Mo., saying that “water is expected to ultimately inundate the eastern portion of the town of Winfield.” The flooding threatened to swamp about 100 homes and 3,000 acres of farmland.

It may not be over yet for people downriver, either. More water - and other stuff - is heading their way. The Midwest was pounded again by massive storms, including one that wreaked havoc on Omaha, Nebraska. The storm disrupted Olympic swim trials and dropped baseball-sized hail in the city.  

OMAHA — Severe storms with strong winds swept through the Plains on Friday, forcing swimmers practicing for U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha to flee pools and run for cover, killing two people in Iowa, and knocking out power to thousands.

Officials at the Qwest Center near downtown Omaha closed the building to examine it after superstar swimmer Michael Phelps and hundreds of other athletes were herded into hallways because of a tornado warning.

Water poured into the building, down arena steps and onto the deck of the competition pool during the storm. The storm’s winds may have reached 100 mph in some areas, said meteorologist Bryon Miller……

….The Missouri River Wastewater Treatment Plant, which serves the Omaha area, lost power, said Bryan Cook, duty officer for Nebraska Emergency Management.

Untreated wastewater was being discharged into the Missouri River, said Joe Gudenrath, spokesman for Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey. City officials told people to avoid wading or swimming in the water in the stretch of the river that passes by Omaha, and several miles downstream.

Very ugly storms lashed many areas of the Midwest yesterday. At times most of Illinois and a large part of Wisconsin were pretty much all red on the radar.