You Can't Ban Evil

Thanks to Bert.

Meanwhile Corey and Erika prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse...



Look for their other videos. Wombat-Socho has this one in with his great (in more ways than one) list of Rule 5 posts "Neuroengesang" at The Other McCain.

Your Friday Monkey Dacker Lab Tech

a little old, but still amusing

I think he's still drunk

GHSU lab tech found drunk, partially clothed, police say 2 lab monkeys found outside cages

According to a GHSU Police Bureau incident report, a co-worker discovered Coley Mitchell, 32, partially unclothed in a locker room in the Sanders Research and Education Building about 10:30 p.m. Monday.

Campus police said Mitchell, a Lab Animal Services technician, was intoxicated and seated in a chair with his pants half-down.

The spokeswoman said two monkeys were found outside their cages in the lab but were confined to the room.

Mitchell was booked into the Richmond County jail Monday on charges of public intoxication.

What, you mean that's never happened to you?

Too Bad He Wasn't a Network Anchor or Something

D.C. man who shot dogs biting boy could face charges

City wants to know if gun he used was legal

D.C. police are investigating whether a man will face criminal charges for shooting a pit bull that was attacking a child in his neighborhood.

The incident unfolded Sunday afternoon, after three pit bulls attacked an 11-year-old boy as he rode his bicycle through the Brightwood neighborhood of Northwest, according to a police report.

When the man, a neighbor, saw the boy being mauled by the dogs, he went inside his home and got a gun. The man killed one of the dogs. The gunfire attracted the attention of a police officer in the area near Eighth and Sheridan streets, where the attack occurred. The officer responded and shot the other two pit bulls as they continued to attack the boy.

The police report, which did not identify any of the people involved, said the boy suffered severe lacerations. The Washington Post, which first reported the details of the shooting, quoted the boy’s uncle as saying the boy was also shot in the foot.

The guy's a hero right?  He killed one of the attacking dogs and brought the attack to the attention of the police. No, that would be in a rational society.

Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said Wednesday that the entire case, including whether the man legally owned the gun he used to kill the dog, is under investigation...

The man could face a host of charges depending on the specifics of the case, including whether the gun used is a registered firearm that the man was legally permitted to own, Mr. Gross said. Possession of an unregistered firearm or ammunition is punishable by up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine, and determining whether the man legally possessed the gun used will likely have greater bearing on the way the case is handled, Mr. Gross said.

Low-level unregistered firearms and ammunitions charges generally are prosecuted by the D.C. office of the attorney general, but additional charges could mean the case is bumped up to the U.S. attorney’s office.

“In this case, it would likely be the U.S. attorney’s office, and their discretion is sometimes less than local prosecutors,” Mr. Gross said.

Does anyone care to put a wager on whether the U.S. Attorney's will decline to prosecute on the grounds that the person who owned the "illegal" firearm (if it is, indeed illegal) like it did for the media personality David Gregory, who broke the same statute when he waved an illegal 30 round clip in the face of Wayne Lapierre of the National Rifle Association while in his Washington D.C. studio, did not intend to do any harm with it?  I hope his lawyer raises the "Gregory" defense.

Legislators Still Pushing Conowingo Cure

Conowingo pressure builds

Jay Jacobs, E.J. Pipkin and other members of the Eastern Shore delegation want action on the Conowingo Dam sediment problem. They expressed their disappointment at Friday's Shore delegation meeting with state officials.

“There's been a lot of studies, a lot of meeting, but not a lot of action,” Sen. Pipkin said to Maryland Secretary of the Environment Robert Summers and Frank Dawson, assistant secretary for the Department of Natural Resources.

During his exchange with Pipkin, R-36-Upper Shore, Summers said scientists have been aware of sediment buildup behind it since at least 1972, when Hurricane Agnes hit the Susquehanna Valley and sent a record amount of sediment into the Chesapeake Bay. Every time the dam's floodgates open during a storm, sediment stirred up behind the dam by scouring flows into the bay. It adds onto whatever silt and debris is carried downstream by floodwaters above the dam.

Justified or not, Eastern Shore and other MD legislators have fastened onto the problem of Conowingo dam as a way out of or at least ameliorating the costs of the "Bay Diet".  If a significant bite out of the total amount of pollution coming into the bay can be removed and sequestered by Conowingo, then their communities (particularly the agricultural communities on the Eastern Shore) will have to chip in less.  Unfortunately, the movement is in the opposite direction; Conowingo is becoming a less efficient sediment trap every year, and so a greater share of the TMDL will have to be achieved by cutting ag, septic and sewage, and storm water run off.

Ultimately, a solution to the Conowingo problem may not be achieved; EPA has the unofficial position that dams are thing of the past and so a new dam, or even a restoration of the old pool behind the Conowingo Dam seems unlikely.

Waterkeepers Cut Losses in Chicken Shit Suit

Won't appeal pollution case 

A New York-based environmental group that sued Perdue Farms and an Eastern Shore contract grower said Wednesday it won't appeal a federal judge's ruling in an alleged poultry pollution case.

The Waterkeeper Alliance said in a statement that while the group believes it presented compelling evidence, it won't appeal U.S. District Judge William Nickerson's ruling last month in a case that had broad implications for the state's poultry industry.

"Given the high burden appellate courts impose for reversing a district court's findings of fact, Waterkeeper Alliance will not appeal Judge Nickerson's decision," the group said in a statement.

From the remarks we've seen from Judge Nickerson, and the questionable nature of the suit (they continued to sue after it was shown that the pollution the alleged did not come from the chicken houses), they'll be lucky if they aren't counter sued by Hudson Farm and Perdue.

Snow!

It started in around 11 PM last night, and it's still going.  There's only about 2 inches on the ground, and it should quit soon

Women In Combat?

Panetta to lift ban on women in combat

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is ending the military’s ban on women serving in combat.

The move could open up more than 230,000 jobs that had been previously closed to women by overturning a 1994 ban on female servicemembers in small combat units.
A senior defense official confirmed that Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey would officially announce the policy change on Thursday.

Panetta’s decision gives the military services until 2016 to request special exceptions for positions they think should remain closed to women, according to the Associated Press, which first reported the move.

Of course, only a small fraction of women in the military have any interest in the forward line combat positions, and the vast majority of those only because it is considered essential for career advancement.  To allow them to "compete" the physical standards will have to be lowered for them; the average male strength and fitness score is near the maximum of the women's.

The services will now develop plans to implement the policy change, which was recommend by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the service chiefs will report back to Panetta — or potentially his successor — in May.

The announcement is a major policy move for Panetta near the end of his tenure as Defense secretary.

So keep the standards, and if they can make it, let 'em in. Hold them to the same standards as men; if they don't like it, let 'em out using the same standards they would apply to men.  Got pregnant?  You know what causes it.  Get an involuntary discharge, not a transfer to a safer, less demanding slot, and no pension.

And form all female combat battalions. We'll see what happens when women have to deal with their own slackers.

If they can indulge their fantasies, I can indulge mine...

Ginger Explains How Debt is Crushing the Young

And they mostly haven't caught on yet. Kind of quiet, so be prepared to turn it up.



Found at the Instapundit. Wombat-Socho has this one in with his great (in more ways than one) list of Rule 5 posts "Neuroengesang" at The Other McCain. Also picked up by the Classical Liberal in his Rule 5 post "Pistol Grip Pump."

Dolphin Asks Diver For Help

Marine mammal stuck on fishing line pushed itself into scuba instructor and waited patiently to be freed

A dolphin tangled in fishing line sought help from a diver in the waters of Hawaii. The amazing encounter on January 11 was captured on video and the diver, Keller Laros, spent the better part of eight minutes tending to the needy mammal who readily accepted the help.

Mr Laros was leading a group of snorkelers for a manta ray dive experience off the Big Island's Kona International Airport when the dolphin squealed out. The diver explained, 'The way he came right up and pushed himself into me there was no question this dolphin was there for help.'

The diver said that the animal patiently and calmly allowed him to work to remove the fishing line. 'I've had bottlenose dolphins approach me a lot of times and they are really smart animals,' Laros, Laros, a professional scuba instructor and Manta Ray researcher, explained.

Mr Laros did remove the fishing hook and clipped the line that was near the mouth but as other divers joined Laros and tried to remove more fishing line, the mammal swam off and did not return.

Weird, just weird.

O'Malley Proposes Offshore Wind Power, Again

Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013

Governor Martin O’Malley introduced the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013. Identical in all substantive respects to the bill that overwhelmingly passed the House of Delegates last year, this measure will operate within Maryland’s existing Renewable Portfolio Standard to create a framework that will support a major offshore wind project.

Based on a report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a major 200 MW project would create almost 850 manufacturing and construction jobs for five years and an additional 160 ongoing supply and Operations & Maintenance (O&M) jobs thereafter. Additional projects, both in Maryland and in the region, would lead to a significant new sustainable industry for Maryland workers.

However, since wind power requires an active online backup when, as it inevitably does, the wind fails, this won't substantially reduce the amount of coal burned to produce power for Maryland.

Working with the U.S. Department of Interior, Maryland agencies have helped designate a Maryland “Wind Energy Area” 10 nautical miles east of Ocean City that is expected to be leased to developers later this year.

I'll miss the Bald Eagles, Ospreys and sea ducks.

Shorter Clinton: "I Accept Responsibility...

...but I am not responsible"

10

Degrees F and mph.  And still falling...

Is the Replicator the Next Step?

A friend on a fishing bulletin board posted this picture of a dress printed using a 3D  printer, with the comment that this is the first 3D dress that is actually pretty; most just look like chain mail (not there's anything wrong with a chick in chain mail):

Not bad; a little complicated for ordinary daily wear, but nicely see-through in appropriate (or inappropriate, depending on your perception) places.  Probably a little cool for winter though.  But is it the first pretty dress printed with 3d printer technology?  A few other examples below to judge by:

Carla Bruni to Leave Fance for Tax Haven

And she's taking some guy with her... Sarkozy's plans 'to dodge new 75% French tax rate by moving to London with wife Carla and setting up £1bn private equity fund'

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy could become the next wealthy Frenchman to flee to Britain over his country’s looming tax hikes on the rich.

Mr Sarkozy – who famously snubbed the Prime Minister’s attempt to shake his hand after Mr Cameron vetoed changes to the EU treaty in 2011 – is reportedly planning to move to London to set up a £800million investment fund.

Carla and her beau, whoever he is, are not the first wealthy people to depart France as a result of the new 75% tax on upper income planned by the new regime.  We've seen previously that Laetetia Casta, another supermodel type, and some old fat guy (not that there's anything wrong with that) have also departed France for greener and/or redder pastures.

The 57-year-old, who was ousted from office last June, has amassed a fortune from £150,000-an-hour public speaking engagements and is now said to be trying to raise capital from investors.

If the move goes ahead, the controversial Frenchman will become the latest to escape a potential top tax rate of 75 per cent in his home country.


He and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.

Carla is, of course, the power in the couple.  A polymath, supermodel (NSFW) singer and lover.  As cattily noted by Ann Althouse, she "famously" cheated on Eric Clapton with Mick Jagger.  Neither of whom were ever noted to be models of fidelity. Nick is just a poor schlub who married up.

But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.

Details of the planned move were uncovered during a raid by fraud police on Sarkozy’s Paris mansion last June.

It came within weeks of Mr Sarkozy losing his immunity against prosecution after being defeated by Socialist rival Francois Hollande in the May presidential election.

So how much do you owe your country?  When your country does something so completely and personally vindictive (I'm mean, they're not raping everybody, just the rich 1%), do you owe it to you country to stay and pay?  Remember, the United States is a country of immigrants.  Each one of those immigrants was also an emigrant from another country, one which made them dissatisfied.  In fact, this will be Carla's second exile, having left her native Italy for France.

Previous Carla Bruni posts:

It's (almost) Final! Carla Bruni Out in France!
Say It Ain't So, Carla!
Take A Smoke Break, Carla!
Carla Bruni Can't Wait to Get it Over With
Putting Carla On a Pedestal
Powerful Men and Pretty Women - Rule 5 - Carla Bruni

Wombat-Socho has this one in with his great (in more ways than one) list of Rule 5 posts "Neuroengesang" at The Other McCain.  Also picked up by the Classical Liberal in his Rule 5 post "Pistol Grip Pump."

Rip Out His Throat

They hate me, they really hate me

On the eve of the president's inauguration, I wrote a piece about what President Obama needs to do to be a transformational rather than caretaker president. I was using a very specific definition of transformational presidencies based on my reading of a theory of political science and the president's own words about transformational presidencies from the 2008 campaign. It was also based on these givens: the president is ambitious, has picked politically controversial goals, has little time to operate before he is dubbed a lame-duck president, and has written off working with Republicans. "Bloodier-minded when it comes to beating Republicans," is how Jodi Kantor put it in the New York Times. Given these facts, there is only one logical conclusion for a president who wants to transform American politics: he must take on Republicans--aggressively.

For me, this was a math problem with an unmistakable conclusion. Some people thought I was giving the president my personal advice. No. My goal was to make a compelling argument based on the facts. I used words like "war" and "pulverize," and some have responded with threats to me and my family. ("Go for his throat!" some have counseled, echoing the headline.) These words have also liberated some correspondents (USUALLY THE ONES THAT TYPE IN ALL CAPS!!!!) from reading the piece or reading it in the spirit in which it was written. But there were also almost 2,000 other words in the piece, which should put that provocative language in context. What's been lost in the news ticker and Twitter threats is the argument of the piece: This is the only plausible path for a bold, game-changing second term for a president who has positioned himself the way President Obama has. Indeed, the piece accurately anticipated the forceful line the president ultimately took in his inaugural address with his call for collective action and failure to reach out to Republicans. Brit Hume said Obama's speech confirms for all time the president's essential liberalism. The New Republic's Noam Scheiber precisely identifiedthe speech not merely as liberal but an argument for liberalism.

Poor baby; they questioned your insincerity?  I'd have a little respect for you if you owned to your role as a cheerleader.

I'd Rather Be Waterboarded

Al-Gore Jazeera Explores Sesame Street Songs As Instruments Of Torture

Songs of War, a recent documentary produced for Arabic news agency Al Jazeera, explores claims that music from Sesame Street as well as heavy metal and rap songs were used in the torture of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

After being alerted that some of his educational children’s music was used as a weapon of war, GRAMMY award-winning songwriter Christopher Cerf set out on a mission to learn more about what he believed to be an “inhumane” use of his work. Al Jazeera’s cameras followed as Cerf personally interviewed former soldiers and detainees.

According to the report, prisoners, shackled and held in private cells, were subjected to near-deafening music from Metallica, AC/DC, Marilyn Manson, Drowning Pool, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen and Rage Against The Machine in addition to popular children’s classics from Sesame Street and Barney the purple dinosaur.

I will make one exception for the Sesame Street music, however:

Go Up, Young Man

Asteroid Mining, an idea whose time has come?  

I can't tell you how many Sci-Fi stories I've read which featured asteroid mining. Can it be that it getting close to some version of reality?

A new asteroid-mining company launched Tuesday with the goal of helping humanity expand across the solar system by tapping the vast riches of space rocks.

The new firm, called Deep Space Industries, Inc., announced today (Jan. 22) that it plans to launch a fleet of prospecting spacecraft in 2015, then begin harvesting metals and water from near-Earth asteroids within a decade or so. Such work could make it possible to build and refuel spacecraft far above our planet's surface, thus helping our species get a foothold in the final frontier.

"Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development," Deep Space CEO David Gump said in a statement. Deep Space Industries will hold a press conference today in Santa Monica, Calif., at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST/1800 GMT) to unveil more details of its bold mission plan; you can watch the webcast live here at SPACE.com.(too late now - Fritz)

Sadly, or happily perhaps, it won't initially call for human spaceflight, just the now ubiquitous robots.

Deep Space will inspect potential mining targets with 55-pound (25 kilograms) spacecraft it calls Firefly, the first of which are targeted for launch in 2015.

Fireflies will conduct asteroid reconnaissance on the cheap. They'll be made from low-cost "cubesat" components and will hitch a ride to space aboard rockets that also carry large communications satellites, Deep Space officials said.

"We can make amazing machines smaller, cheaper and faster than ever before," Deep Space chairman Rick Tumlinson said in a statement. "Imagine a production line of Fireflies, cocked and loaded and ready to fly out to examine any object that gets near the Earth."

I'll look around for a suitable illustration later.

Don't Let the Door Hit You in the Ass on Your Way...

off the earth: David Attenborough - Humans are plague on Earth

The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources. He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth.

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times.

Sir David, who is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.

Standard environmental cant from a rich celebrity.  It's pretty damned easy to recommend everyone else take strong measures to reduce their lifestyle to make life more pleasant when you're old, rich, and not about to change your own living and traveling habits, which use up an "unfair" share of the earth's resources.

Do us all the favor and leave; and take Leonardo DiCaprio with you.

All About Striped Bass

Chesapeake Bay Program has a video out on Stripers.  It's not bad, but a little dry.  I'll take issue with one point that he made, that a "unique" feature of juvenile Striped Bass is that they are dark on top and light on bottom, to be less visible to predators from above and below.  This is called counter shading, and it's an extremely common color pattern in fish in well lighted waters (not so much in the abyss).



You can also get lectured at about the proper means of deicing your walk and driveway here. This might be appropriate, as weather reports suggest a snow storm in our area this weekend.

19

The temperature in Fahrenheit, and the wind speed in miles per hour.  Dang it's chilly outside.