Posts from — May 2005

Reuters gives us a great story of “making lemonade when life gives you lemons”: Restaurant cashes in on elephant rampage.

“Restaurant Where Elephants Have Been” is the new name of a restaurant that was gutted by three elephants that wandered away from the local zoo.

So much for my plan to make the world a better place: Wormhole ‘no use’ for time travel. I had high hopes that a friendly neighborhood wormhole would have solved the time and energy problems with my plan.

They should have bought the required Kiddie Meals at the appropriate Bodacious Burger Barn: Two hurt in mock light sabre duel.

Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol.

Pouring gasoline into glass tubes, lighting them, and then hitting them against each other: what a great idea! And people wonder why George Lucas hasn’t bothered to make the last three movies better. Hint: these people buy tickets to his movies.

[Edit: Thanks to Blogger, The Apostopher got this posted before me.]

A man charged with illegally hunting an alligator said he shot into the water to protect his daughter.

Michael Vann, 45, has been ordered to appear in court June 10 to face a felony charge. But he said a 4- to 5-foot gator charged his 9-year-old daughter while she was fishing about 400 feet from their home, and it sank after he fired.

If you read that and know nothing about alligators his story sounds reasonable. Now ask yourself: Florida just passed a law approving gunfights in the Wal-Mart parking lot, so why are they arresting this guy?

The alligator has been around two weeks, according to the story, and Mr. Vann claims he has been unable to contact Fish & Wildlife, so why was he letting his daughter fish near it? Why did he go back to the house and get a gun, instead of pitching something at the alligator to scare it off?

For that alligator to hang around, it had to have a food supply, was he or his daughter feeding it [an illegal action in Florida]? Why wasn’t this alligator “cruising singles bars” like all of the other ‘gators this time of year?

What ever was going on, it isn’t likely to be what Mr. Vann reported. The story doesn’t make sense based an alligator’s normal behavior, and that’s why he was charged.

[Note: There is a licensed alligator trapper in the area and he has captured and relocated several much larger animals.]

There’s a report on the BBC site, but given that instead of listening to the news on the BBC World Service, I’m currently hearing “world music” being played by an unfamiliar female voice who needs a bit more time in the minors before making to the World Service, I wouldn’t bet that the website will be stable today.

Apparently there will a series of 24-hour strikes in the near future, by the employees of the BBC protesting the cut of approximately 3,700 jobs.

The “plan” would appear to be replacing people with “new technology” to make the service “more efficient and competitive”. There’s no clear statement as to who exactly is competing with the BBC, as the other media outlets in the UK are commercial and dependent on advertising revenue.

It’s not clear exactly what changes in technology are going to be purchased with the savings, or how they are going to get the information to put on this new technology.

To the best of my knowledge HDTV is the only major recent change in broadcast technology and that’s been in hand for some time. The whole thing sounds like a rote repetition from some business school class project. An almost 15% cut in staff upon taking over a new job is not a reasonable thing to do. You really should spend some time investigating an organization before you start stressing it like this.

Audits by [New York]Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Those included crimes against children as young as 2 years old, he said.

Federal Medicaid funding is being reduced and if cuts must be made, the first thing to be cut should be “lifestyle” reimbursements. Reimbursements made by Medicaid have to be prioritized, and I think it is a good deal more important to get preventative and lifesaving care to as many people as possible before we start spending money on “happy sex lives”, especially when the drugs involved are over-priced patented products.

Frankly, I would question coverage for Viagra, et al. even if we had a single-payer health system that include dental and vision care. This should be classed with elective cosmetic surgery, like a facelift or permanent eyeliner. In the 1990s the Republicans made sure they we heard more about other peoples’ sex lives than most of us cared to know.

Mr. Hevesi has contacted Federal officials about changing the rule, and New York’s Senators have said they will get involved if legislation is necessary, but I would question why it took this long for someone to notice, and why that person was a state official. Wasn’t John Ashcroft supposed to be on top of this sort of thing? Why wasn’t James Dobson watching this instead of SpongeBob’s SquarePants?

The New York Attorney General seems to be the only one policing business, and now New York’s Comptroller has to police Medicaid. Is there anyone in the Federal government earning their paycheck? Where was the Religious Reich?

In self-defense the cats had taken to remaining on the kitchen table [which was cleared off during Sox’s initial overpowered leap to the surface] and they were moving by leaping from the table to bookcases, to the counter top. Food dishes and litter boxes had to be repositioned based on their refusal to travel on the floor.

I finally decided that my desire not to employ all means necessary and attempting to moderately escalate the conflict was simply not going to cut it. The fleas started it, and it was time to bring the battle to a convincing conclusion.

My veterinarian supplied me with selamectin [Revolution^®] for the cats and I bought chemical weapons for deploying in the theater of operations. The selamectin not only controls the fleas, but also works on ear mites, heartworms, roundworms, and hookworms, which reduces the annoyance of the cats when I have to treat them for the individual problems.

For those who haven’t done this recently, using a “fogger” for interior insect control has changed. The propellant is no longer a type of Freon^®, due to concern for the ozone layer. The current propellant of choice would seem to be propane, which can result in an interesting complication if you neglect to turn off all of the pilot lights in your house and any device that might cause a spark: a major fireball erupting in your domicile. While said fireball would probably eliminate any pests, there would certainly be undesired side effects, so if you attempt this at home, read the label and follow directions closely.

The particular fogger I used had a cheerful blurb on the label telling me that it contained an “odor neutralizer”, which sounded good having endured airing out houses and apartments. It turns out that rather than smelling the pesticide, your house smells like you just painted it. The “paint smell” seemed to be more stubborn than the old odor, but that may be subjective.

The cats are being antisocial over at my Mother’s house. They are hiding under the bed in her back room, and I haven’t seen Dot since I carried her over there. Sox will show up when I bring their canned food in the evening, but they are definitely not happy.

So far the fogging seems to have worked but I want to do some major clean up before reintroducing the cats. As they now have the medication on their skin, I don’t want them to have contact with any of the pesticide. There probably wouldn’t be any problem, but why take the chance.

Hopefully they will be able to come home this afternoon, and will forgive me for doing this in a week or ten.

Next: Something to treat the yard with that won’t kill the good insects with the bad, if at all possible.

As Australian Broadcasting is busy looking for bodies of water [see below], the BBC steps up to tell us: Powder mix-up fools sniffer dogs.

Several new Melbourne police drug dogs were trained to locate talcum powder instead of cocaine due to an “anomaly” in the police evidence system. Australian authorities have started an investigation to determine why bags that should have contained cocaine seized in drug arrests are filled with baby powder.

While admitting that the dogs will have to be re-trained, a spokesman indicated that in the meantime the dogs could be quite useful in finding lost toddlers.

The Russian village of Bolotnikovo east of Moscow is missing its lake according to this report on the Russian NTV network.

While many will suspect a sinkhole, not everyone:

One older woman has told NTV she believes the Americans have finally been able to hit them where it hurts.

“I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us,” she said as she sat on the ground outside her house.

Maybe they need to check Bush’s ranch. Can a lake be an illegal immigrant?

Isn’t wonderful to live in a country that gets blamed for every misfortune in the rest of the world. A new “honor” for the US: the world’s most mistrusted country.

Near-Earth space is already cluttered with junk that comes down along with meteorites, so now they want to launch more debris into the mix.

I would make this incredibly stupid concept dependent on making the current anti-missile system work as advertised before any research could start, which would eliminate an possibility of this ever occurring.

I have a sneaking feeling that the analysis was along the lines of: “Hey, the Invaders always win! No matter how many you eliminate more keep showing up to eliminate your ground defenses. You can’t win against a space-based weapon.” Unless, of course, you send a dozen people infected with Ebola across the Rio Grande, or have them fly into major metropolitan airports.

Space Command should concentrate on dealing with Asteroids™.

[™ Kevin Drum]

Mittens in the Driveway

Oh, drive around!

[Edit: Mittens and others have found some relief from flea attacks by sleeping in the driveway. Mittens doesn’t believe in moving until you get out of the car and approach on foot.]

Friday Ark

Among a number of different tribes of Native Americans, bringing a dog into the house is a filthy habit. In general, dogs are considered filthy in Islamic countries, and in parts of Southern Asia they are considered dinner.

When you start using animals as totems for countries, you really need to know how that culture reacts to that animal. When you are drawing a political cartoon it is important to determine if the country you are depicting reacts to that animal the same way you audience reacts.

Steve Gilliard and Digby cover the incident of a Washington Times cartoon that has created a furor in Pakistan.

Considering the reaction when the British press and MPs call Blair “Bush’s Poodle”, why would the artist think it was a good idea to portray Pakistan as America’s hound?

The world has finally decided to notice there’s a problem in Uzbekistan.

Canadian Broadcast had it on their front page: U.S. joins calls for Uzbek investigation, as did the Australians: Diplomats inspect Uzbek city of Andijan after protest violence

You have to look to find it on the BBC: US joins push for Uzbek inquiry, or CNN: Pressure for Uzbek violence probe.

The problem is not unique in history. A tyrant has put too much pressure on his people and some of them revolted, which resulted in the violent suppression of the dissidents. The government reports 169 deaths, but others say in excess of 700. The government conducts a tour near, but not at, the site of the suppression to show there was no massive loss of life, while insisting that foreigners cannot talk to local people. The foreign ministry chants “war on terror” in the background.

The breakup of the Soviet Union provided jobs to some former Soviet bureaucrats, and a number of them are not very nice people:
Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus – garden variety thug and murderer with delusions of grandeur.
Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan – totally delusional, names months after himself and want a palace of ice built in a desert.
Emomali Rakhmonov of Tadjikistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan are not quite as friendly as Mayor Daley of Chicago in the 1960s.

Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan is a nice fit for the group, but he’s smoother and less obvious about the fact that he will do anything and kill anyone to maintain his control.

The Bush administration has allied itself with Karimov to get necessary military bases in its “Global War on Terror”. They had to ignore the reports of the murder and torture, because everyone murdered and tortured was an “enemy combatant” or “Muslim extremist”, and these things don’t usually take place in public or on Sundays. They know this because Mr. Karimov told them, and there’s no reason for him to lie.

The Uzbek national hero is buried in a vault carved from what is rumored to be the world’s largest chunk of worked jade in Samarkand. Timur kicked up quite a fuss at the end of the 14^th and beginning of the 15^th century. Known by many variations such as Tamerlane, he was a rather successful conqueror, and not notably a nice guy.

May 19^th, 2005 is the 1346^th day after the September 11^th, 2001 attack on the US. There were 1346 days between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the unconditional surrender of Japan, ending World War II.

The American people under FDR managed to train and equip several major armies to fight a war on a truly global scale against massive enemy armies and develop the atomic bomb.

Under GWB we don’t seem to be able to find one guy in a cave, nor to supply our troops with the equipment they need, and our possible enemies are the ones developing the atomic bomb.

Recently, George W. Bush criticized the actions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II. President Roosevelt won his war in 1346 days, even with the handicap of dying before the end, and “he went to war with the army he had”, but he made it better along the way.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. [Matthew 7:15-16]

Where are Bush’s “fruits”, the results of his leadership?

The local no-new-tax Republicans discover that public facilities that no one ever remembers seeing have been destroyed by the hurricane. Some of these facilities have been talked about for years, but the officials wouldn’t raise the taxes to build them.

Florida’s Democratic Senator and former Insurance Commissioner, Bill Nelson, set off alarm bells when he saw the reports on FEMA aid and discovered that millions of dollars had been paid out in the Miami-Dade County area. None of the four hurricanes hit that area, so the Senator wanted an investigation as to why the money was spent there.

The multi-talented Jillian posting at the home of the marsupial of miniscule, skippy, gives you a taste of of some of the items covered.

For those who have forgotten, the Sun Sentinel reminds us that one of the storms, hurricane Frances in the first week of September, 2004, looked like it might strike Miami, so John Ellis, our money-grubbing…er Republican governor, asked for a federal declaration of emergency in Miami-Dade and 17 other counties. The initial Presidential declaration only included 5 counties in the area where the storm did strike, about 100 miles north of Miami, but FEMA later added all of the counties on JEB’s wish list without conducting an initial survey for damage.

Of course, no one should assume that the fact that Cuban-Republican voters are centered in Miami, that Florida’s governor is the President’s brother, or that Florida was a close Presidential race, had any effect on the decision to dispense the taxpayers’ money with such largess.

Attacking Kofi Annan is pretty safe because the Secretary General of the United Nations is a diplomat and always “plays nice”, but accusing George Galloway, British Member of Parliament, of anything is sort of like kicking a fire ant mound barefooted – you are going to get hurt.

Galloway was ejected from Tony Blair’s Labour Party as a Member from Glasgow-Kelvin for his statements about the Iraq War, but he responded by winning a seat at Bethnal Green & Bow from a Labour Member as part of the Respect Party.

“Gorgeous George” is all attack, he doesn’t care about defense or moderation. He is proud and loud about being a liberal leftist.

skippy has a short transcript of Galloway’s opening remarks, and Crooks and Liars has audio and video of portions of his testimony, in which Mr. Galloway lays out some of the nasty facts of US-Iraqi relations, and the run up to the Iraq War. No punches were pulled and no quarter was given.

Fortunately for Coleman dueling is illegal, because Galloway would have called him out for a sunrise meeting. The Republicans have been lulled into believing that they can get away with anything because the Democrats don’t like to act abrasively. In the British Parliament you had better be ready for war before you badmouth someone, and you had better have your facts straight. Coleman has a war now, and Galloway is not going to give up.

And, Norm, Karl doesn’t want people to notice the British memo, so attacking a British MP was pretty stupid.