Snowzilla Dies

Snowzilla, we hardly knew ye. The city of Anchorage, Alaska has terminated Snowzilla.

It wasn’t the weather. It wasn’t angry neighbors bearing shovels and pick axes.

It turns out Snowzilla’s biggest foe — the one who felled the controversial but much-loved giant — was a notice-bearing city code enforcement officer.

That’s right, Snowzilla was abated.

It was just a few years ago that 16-foot-tall Snowzilla arose in a residential yard in Airport Heights, launching an annual procession of local gawkers and an international media blitz.

I first posted about Snowzilla about a year ago. I am not unsympathetic with the neighbors who had to put up with the traffic brought by the gigantic snowman. But one should also point out that the city of Anchorage is missing a great opportunity. If one family could generate this much media frenzy with an over-sized snowman, how much could the city get by building a bigger one – with the original family helping out in some official capacity? Instead of the negative publicity of a code enforcement action to simply shut it down.

Think about it.

The Falcon And The Crashland

The Animal Uprising^TM claims another new first: the krazed kamikaze kestral.

A kestrel falcon was blamed on Monday for the crash in May of a US-owned Boeing 747 cargo plane as it took off from Brussels airport.

As the aeroplane was taking off, the bird was sucked into one of its four engines, said Etienne Schouppe, a senior transport official, citing an accident report.

The 747 Kalitta Air jet broke into three pieces not far from houses in the north-east Brussels suburb of Zaventem.

As the old adage says, it is great to soar like an eagle, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet intakes. Although we are not too sure if that is true these days. Actually, reading a story like this just a few days before flying isn’t recommended. We’re sorry we did. We apologize.

Rushing To Print

Well, The New York Times stepped in it today. They published a letter criticizing the attempt by Caroline Kennedy too be appointed to the US Senate. The letter was supposedly from the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë. Unfortunately for the Times, the letter was not. But without any fact checking whatsoever, they ran it anyway.

With all the respect and admiration I have for Ms. Kennedy’s late father, I find her bid in very poor taste, and, after reading “Kennedy, Touring Upstate, Gets Less and Less Low-Key” (news article, Dec. 18), in my opinion she has no qualification whatsoever to bid for Senator Clinton’s seat.

Which led to this little gem from the editors when they discovered that the letter was a fake:

We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë’s office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

About a year ago, I received an unsolicited email with supposed juicy news. Despite having somewhat less in the way of resources than the Times, I managed to fact check the email in short order and published it – along with the results of the fact check that exposed it as a fraud. Some rather bigger names than that of The Crabitat got burned on that one.

Not saying that anyone is above getting caught at times, I’ve also done that. Just saying that the impact of me being caught by an April Fool joke is rather a lot less than the purported paper of record failing to meet even its own minimal standards. It’s great to have a scoop – if it’s real.

Via Memeorandum

The Road To Bailoutistan

Mark Steyn:

The newspapers blame the Internet, just as Detroit blames Japan. But the Japanese have problems of their own. One day they’ll get theirs. That’s the beauty of capitalism. Nothing is forever. The big railroad barons smoking cigars and enjoying pheasant under glass in the dining car on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe thought Henry Ford was a schmuck. Who’d want to ride around in that thing? Next thing you know everyone’s getting their kicks on Route 66:

Read the entire reflection on the state of our economy. California collapsing under the weight of its self-imposed obligations. New York’s governor proposing a huge tax increase on just about everything that moves. Car companies asking for taxpayer money. Its a painful piece to read and think about.