Blue Crab Boulevard

Today's utterly pointless invention: the solar-powered bra.

Lingerie maker Triumph International Japan Ltd unveiled its environmentally friendly, and green colored, "Solar Power Bra" on Wednesday in Tokyo which features a solar panel worn around the stomach.

The panel requires light to generate electricity and the concept bra will not be in stores anytime soon, said Triumph spokeswoman Yoshiko Masuda, as "people usually can not go outside without wearing clothes over it."

But it does send the message of how lingerie could possibly save the planet, Masuda said, adding that the bra should not be washed or sunned on a rainy day to avoid damaging it.

Well, strictly speaking, it really isn't pointless at all. It is a way for the maker to get free publicity. Nothing more.

Sectarian violence has erupted in Lebanon. Hezbollah is claiming it isn't their fault, but they have a lot of fighters on the street. The Lebanese Army is standing aside as the proto-civil war develops.

In a grim reminder of Lebanon's devastating 1975-90 civil war, factions threw up roadblocks and checkpoints dividing Beirut into sectarian enclaves on the second day of clashes between Sunni Muslims loyal to the government and Shiite supporters of Hezbollah.

A top Sunni leader went on television urging Hezbollah to pull its fighters back and "save Lebanon from hell." The army, which has stayed out of the sectarian political squabbling that has paralyzed the country for more than a year, did not intervene in the battles.

The chattering of automatic weapons and thumps of exploding rocket-propelled grenades echoed across Beirut into the night. People huddled in hallways and stairwells as gunmen rushed from one street corner to the next firing at their foes. Some families fled to neighborhoods that remained quiet.

"There is so much shooting and explosions outside. Our building is in the middle of the fighting," a terrified woman, Ghada Helmi, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Fighting began along Corniche Mazraa, an avenue separating Shiite and Sunni areas, then spread to other districts. Combat was heard near the office of Lebanon's Sunni spiritual leader, an ally of the government, and near the official residence of the opposition-aligned parliament speaker.

Having an Iranian armed and financed group with no loyalty whatsoever to the legitimate government is not exactly a recipe for stability. It is not an encouraging sign that the Army is refusing to intervene.

And Britain's Labor party does not feel fine. Gordon Brown's Labor party has suffered a stunning defeat in Britain. More importantly, Red Ken Livingstone is - or soon will be - gainfully unemployed. It has been a terrible day for Labor in local elections.

Boris Johnson capped a cataclysmic day for Labour by seizing power in London last night, and left Gordon Brown facing a desperate fight for survival.

The Old Etonian handed David Cameron a stunning political triumph by ousting veteran mayor Ken Livingstone.

Mr Johnson won with 1,168,738 first and second preference votes, compared with Mr Livingstone's 1,028,966 on a record turnout.

The new Mayor promised to make London "greater still" and finished his acceptance speech by saying: "Let's get cracking tomorrow - let's have a drink tonight."

Shortly after winning the Mayoral contest Mr Johnson announced he would be standing down as Conservative MP for Henley, triggering a by-election.

Mr Livingstone said he took full responsibility for his defeat and paid tribute to the Labour Party, including Gordon Brown, for the support he had been given.

Labor lost by something like 20 percent - an electoral disaster. In fact, it is a forty year low for Labor. Gordon Brown is now facing the stirrings of revolt in his own party as a result of this debacle.

First the news from Britain: Britain's Brown punished in local elections

Britain's ruling Labour Party suffered its worst local election defeat on record on Friday, forcing Prime Minister Gordon Brown to rethink his strategy to avoid losing the next national election.

Labour was braced for an even bigger drubbing as pundits and even government ministers predicted the party would lose the prized London mayoral post to a resurgent opposition Conservative Party. The result is expected late on Friday. [ed. Labour did lose the mayoral office as well.] 

Contrite Labour ministers and lawmakers said the government had failed to address Britons' fears of rising food and energy prices, higher mortgages and a possible housing market slump.

The question now is whether Labour can recover before the next general election, due by mid-2010 at the latest, or whether the tide has turned towards the Conservatives. [emphasis mine.]

I was wondering just this back in January.

Come May it will have been 11 years of Labour party rule in the UK. It has been a good run for Labour even if they haven't yet matched the 18 year run of the Tories before them. But I wonder if the inevitable cracks are beginning to show.

What prompted my musing on UK politics?  Well, I had picked up a CD by an English group called The Holloways, and after listening to it I came to the conclusion that Labour's ascendancy might be coming to an end.  A little far fetched you say?  Well, the experts were not predicting the disaster that was this round of UK elections for Labour using more traditional methods.  So, I say don't knock what works!

Finally, after 22 years, an International consortium is going to entomb the remains of the Chernobyl reactor. Russia really should have stepped up and done something about this sooner, now that it has huge income from gas and oil, but at least it is finally getting done. After shoring up the hastily-built sarcophagus that was erected after the disaster, the new plan is to build a giant dome and slide it over the entire ruin.

For years, the original iron and concrete shelter that was hastily constructed over the reactor has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse. The new one, an arch of steel, would be big enough to contain the Statue of Liberty.

Once completed, Chernobyl will be safe, said Vince Novak, nuclear safety director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development which manages the $505 million project.

The new shelter is part of a broader $1.4 billion effort financed by international donors that began in 1997 and includes shoring up the current shelter, monitoring radiation and training experts.

The explosion at reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986 was the world's worst nuclear accident, spewing radiation over a large swath of the former Soviet Union and much of northern Europe. It directly contaminated an area roughly half the size of Italy, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

In the two months after the disaster, 31 people died of radioactivity, but the final toll is still debated. The U.N. health agency estimates that about 9,300 will eventually die from cancers caused by Chernobyl's radiation. Groups such as Greenpeace insist the toll could be 10 times higher.

As usual, the media cannot get this right. People do not die from radioactivity. They may die from radiation exposure. Regardless, the RBMK reactor design of the Chernobyl facility was, despite Soviet claims, a weapons reactor with an inherently unstable design. It should not have been used for electricity production and should certainly not have been operated in the manner it was.

A British man has been acquitted of all charges in a landmark case. 25-year old Stuart Kennedy will not have to display a floppy truncheon when he next delivers a strip-o-gram.

Three judges have ruled that a male stripper who dresses as a policeman can use a real truncheon in his act.

Stuart Kennedy, a student whose stage name is Sgt Eros, was arrested on his way to an engagement in Aberdeen by two female police officers.
 
They watched his performance in a city pub to confirm his explanation for wearing a police uniform before he was charged with carrying an offensive weapon.

A sheriff threw out the charge at a lower court amid widespread criticism of the Crown for pursuing the case, but prosecutors decided to appeal against the ruling.

They told the Appeal Court in Edinburgh at an earlier hearing that Mr Kennedy, 25, a genetics student and part-time strippagram, would not have been detained if his truncheon had been "floppy".

Men everywhere will be relieved that floppy truncheons are not required by British law.

This is a strange story. Remember the sneak attack by Israel on a site in Syria last year? Well, it seems that the Israelis showed Washington a video of North Koreans inside the facility - which just happens to be almost identical to the North Korean reactor facility at Yongbyon, right down to the number of holes for fuel rods.

The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel's decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core's design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows "remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon," a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video "very, very damning."…..

…..David Albright, president of Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the absence of such evidence warrants skepticism that the reactor was part of an active weapons program.

"The United States and Israel have not identified any Syrian plutonium separation facilities or nuclear weaponization facilities," he said. "The lack of any such facilities gives little confidence that the reactor is part of an active nuclear weapons program. The apparent lack of fuel, either imported or indigenously produced, also is curious and lowers confidence that Syria has a nuclear weapons program."

Now that is one weird statement. The absence of fuel in the presence of what certainly appears to be a reactor should not lead one to conclude that there is no weapons program. Rather, it should lead one to believe that the Syrians hadn't fueled the reactor yet. Albright's statement is akin to claiming that a man carrying a machine gun isn't armed if he doesn't have bullets in it. (One doubts such a defense would work in a court.) Wikipedia had a picture of the top of the reactor at Yongbyon. Perhaps Mr. Albright could explain what in the world the Syrians could have been planning to use such a facility for if not for plutonium production.

Side note: This paints Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria in an even worse light. And kind of points to the silliness of Barack Obama's grasp of how to deal with thugs.

Founding a new religion can be a bit rough, apparently. But then, when you base your liturgy on the teachings of a movie prop puppet what can you expect? Yes, Jonba Hehol was finally attacked by a badly-dressed Darth Vader impersonator. One wielding a metal crutch instead of a light saber.

A judge has issued a warrant for the arrest of a Darth Vader impersonator who allegedly attacked two Star Wars fans in their own back garden.

Arwel Wynne Jones, who was dressed in a black bin liner and shiny black helmet, is accused of assaulting Barney and Michael Jones while they were being interviewed for a TV documentary about their love of the films.

Barney Jones (or, as he styles himself for his priestly duties, Jonba Hehol) is one of the founders of the British Jedi Church - which I have posted about before. To update my conclusion about the last post, not only is said Jedi priest seriously in need of a life, it would appear he could also use a good suit of full plate armor.

It's not easy being a puppet messiah.

In what could well be a sign that Robert Mugabe's nightmarish misrule of Zimbabwe may be coming to an end, a Chinese shipment of arms to Zimbabwe has been turned away. Other African nations and organizations banded together to frustrate the planned delivery.

JOHANNESBURG, April 22 — A Chinese ship carrying weapons and ammunition for Zimbabwe's military may be headed back home, reports said, after repeated attempts to deliver its cargo were frustrated by a coalition of legal activists, union workers and human rights groups.

The region's resistance to the shipment, which drew praise from the United States on Tuesday, marks a dramatic turn from southern Africa's traditional embrace of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and its reverence for national sovereignty.

It also signals the strength of South Africa's mounting backlash against President Thabo Mbeki's traditionally deferential dealings with Mugabe. The resistance from union workers, almost all of whom are members of his African National Congress, was decisive in preventing the ship from unloading its cargo of bullets and mortars on schedule.

The 489-foot An Yue Jiang was near the Cape of Good Hope on Tuesday night, headed northwest at a modest speed, according to Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit, based in London. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said that because the shipment could not be unloaded, despite being part of a "perfectly normal trade," the cargo would probably return to China. Jiang added that she hoped the incident would not be "politicized."

Too late for that, I'm afraid. It has already become a political issue. For once, Mugabe is on the short end of the deal, too. The ship is carrying some three million rounds of ammunition as well as mortars. The shipment has not left the vicinity yet, however, so it is too early to tell if this is over yet. Still, it is encouraging that other African nations are refusing to allow the shipment into their ports.

What does that Beatles lyric have to do with this rather odd story from Britain? Nothing whatsoever other than location, but it came to mind when I read about the battling brothers and a Shepherd's pie.

After a day spent drinking, Michael Garvin cooked his brother John the traditional English dish for dinner, expecting a grateful response.

John, however, voiced his disquiet that the pie was not topped with a layer of sliced tomatoes.

His brother, a chef, claimed a layer of tomatoes was not the appropriate way to finish off a shepherd’s pie, and responded by hitting him over the head with a shovel.

As the argument got out of control, John threatened to petrol bomb his brother’s flat and was arrested.

Apparently, he wanted the pie well done. Forget the argument over a layer of tomatoes, however. The real important thing is whether the shepherd was fresh, isn't it?