I Didn't Know That

Under the heading of "I didn't know that" is this from a post by guest poster Ron at the Grouchy Old Cripple's site.

HERE ARE ALL THE DEVELOPED NATIONS OF THE WORLD THAT OFFER BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP TO THE BABIES OF TOURISTS AND ILLEGAL ALIENS:
1. United States

That's right, every other modern developed nation in the world has gotten rid of birthright citizenship policies. Yet, most of U.S. news media and politicians the last two weeks have ridiculed the comments by some other politicians that it is time for the U.S. to put an end to birthright citizenship for tourists and illegal aliens.
Folks, sadly, the U.S. stands alone.

He goes into more detail so be sure to go read the whole thing.

It's time for change.

A Palindromic Message

One more from Sis. (I'm going to have to add her as a contributor soon!)

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.

This only runs for 1 minute, 44 seconds and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward.

This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled "u @ 50" by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it.

(I may not agree fully with everything she says but I do find this piece to be extremely well done.)

We need more backhoe control laws!

Minn. man allegedly assaults worker with backhoe

Prosecutors charged the co-owner of a Hermantown construction company with allegedly assaulting a construction worker with a backhoe. The criminal complaint said a 48-year-old man told investigators he wanted to "nudge" the victim, but didn't want to hurt him. He also said it was a stupid thing to do.
...
Hermantown police Sgt. Mark Gunderson said it appeared the suspect didn't think the construction worker in the trench was doing his job right, so he hit him with the backhoe.

An obvious misuse of the dreaded assault backhoe!

But it was right here when I left!

Irishman wins euro46,000 after island home disappears

[61-year-old Neville] Presho successfully sued developer and hotelier Patrick Doohan after he returned from New Zealand to find no trace of his six-bedroom property beside the island's harbor. In its place stood a septic tank and parking lot for Doohan's newly built 12-room hotel, which remains the only one today on Tory.
...
Presho spoke wistfully Tuesday of his lost island retreat, where he could sit on his front doorstep watching the fishermen come and go in the harbor and the panorama beyond of the wild Atlantic and Donegal mainland.

But Presho said he doesn't expect to live there again. Even if he does receive his court-ordered euro46,000, that's less than a fifth of the average house price in Ireland.

"You could build a really nice chicken coop with that sort of money," he quipped, "but you'd have no money left over to buy the chickens."

You can't blame him for not wanting to live there again. Everyone on the island--170 people in all--pulled a Sgt. Schultz during the investigation. "I know nothink!" they all proclaimed.

"The Turtle Moves"

I wonder if it knows a fella named Burtha?

Villagers confine rare turtle, offer prayers

Hundreds of poor Hindu villagers in eastern India have refused to hand over a rare turtle to authorities, saying it is an incarnation of God....
...adamant villagers have refused to give up the reptile, saying the turtle bears holy symbols on its back and is an incarnation of Lord Jagannath, a popular Hindu deity.

Watch Out for Entrepreneurial Dolphins

Smart critter!

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.

[Full story here.]

I've commented on the referring sites that this dolphin understands capitalism better than most, if not all, of our Democratic Congress Critters. She recognizes the value of paper money (her collected litter) and has perfected a method of investment in the future (tearing off just a small piece of paper at a time and saving a fish to use as bait for the next sea gull) that works for her.

(h/t to both Tyler Cowen @ Marginal Revolution, who posted it first, and Bitter @ Snowflakes In Hell who directed readers there.)

All riiigght!

"If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I've no problem shooting them,"

Angelina Jolie

She and Brad (Pitt--the lucky SOB) aren’t afraid to have guns in the house and she at least knows how to use them—and when.

I’m liking her more and more.

"I can handle myself," she said. "There's a side to me that people know is humanitarian, and there's a side to me that's a mommy. But there's also the side that likes to get down and dirty and run and jump around and fire guns."

Yowsa!

(h/t to Jungle Trader.)

Chinooks at 3000 feet

For the second time in two weeks we have had a fly-by of a CH-47 here at the Aerie. Last week it was a solitary Chinook flying east to west at about 3000 feet. This morning it was a formation of four, also at approximately 3000 feet flying east to west. Since the deck of the Aerie is at approximately 2100 feet, these babies were pretty low and the drumming from their twin-rotors vibrated the house. They were moving fairly slowly as they passed overhead, but dummy me didn’t think to grab the camera. Here’s a link to a photo of what I’m talking about. Chinook Helicopter. (UPDATE: This link doesn't seem to work in all browsers. I can get it in Firefox but not AOL or Safari or IE. Aaarrrrgh!)

So I'll have to do it this way:


(There are lots more pretty pictures and history at this site. )

I did manage to get the field glasses on the last two but could not see any markings.

Last week I thought the flight might have been related to the wind farm construction scheduled to begin any day now. After today’s flight I’m not so sure.

I’ve experienced these sorts of flights up at the Bolt Hole prior to their shutting Griffis Air Force Base in Rome, NY. Occasional flights from/to Fort Drum in the northwest corner of NYS still pass over. (My area of the Adirondack Park has little Wilderness designation so it’s a good place for them to fly.) The thwump-thwump-thwump of the helicopters’ engines always makes me think of the opening to MASH.

Interesting times!

Terry and I woke up this morning to the sound of rain drumming on the roof. That was a most welcome sound as when we went to bed last night it was supposed to be snow. It was a sound that made you want to just spend the morning lazing beneath the comforter but, unfortunately, Chester was on the other side of the bedroom door insisting we get the hell up and feed him, and, by the way, Julie and Shadow too.

We had to get up anyway since we were expecting a delivery of some furniture form Raymore and Flanagan this morning. Terry has been harping about the need for a hutch in the dining area so she can put her teapots on display and I finally caved to her demands and told her to do some shopping while she was up in Horseheads earlier in the week. She picked out a nice craftsman style hutch and, since it was a floor model and they don't usually deliver floor models, a craftsman style hunt table for the foyer as well. (There goes our tax return!)

Arrangements were made for delivery today and the store called to confirm that the truck would be here between 9 and 11 AM. Due to a cancellation, they pulled in the driveway around 8 AM.

Our driveway is not the easiest to get into or out of with a large truck such as they had. The drive forms a fairly tight Y with the road with the point aimed up the hill while most traffic comes from down the hill where Route 6 is located. The deliverymen made the correct choice of driving past the driveway and then backing in to the house. The process of unloading and moving the furniture indoors went smoothly enough. While they were doing so we asked what the weather was like up in NY State. (Horseheads is just on the north side of Elmira on Route 17.) The response was that it was hellish. They had around 6 inches of heavy wet snow with some freezing rain mixed in and figured they would find the same here. Coming down Route 15, however, they were pleasantly surprised to find nothing but rain on the PA side of the border.

Anyway, they got the hutch and table in the house and headed out to their next stop.

They didn't get far. The driver tried to make the sharp turn to head down the hill at the end of the driveway and didn't swing wide enough to accomplish his goal. Then, when he tried to back up as if to make a K-turn, he buried his tires in the mud at the end of the drive and grounded his platform lift in the driveway itself. He was stuck. He couldn't back up and he had nowhere to go forward as a tree was 4 inches in front of his hood.

I went out with the Tundra to see if I could pull him out of his predicament but it was no use. I couldn't pull him straight back as there was only the width of the driveway before there is a stone hillside. I tried dragging his ass end to the side but again had no luck. His tires were buried in deep grooves and I was trying to pull him up the hill to boot. We tried digging the tires out only to find that beneath the soft muddy clay and stone there was still lots of ice. (The combination of wet clay, loose stone and ice made my attempts at towing near impossible as I could get no traction.) The only hope was to get a tow truck up here from Mansfield. If I knew my neighbors better, I could have seen about getting a tractor to pull on the front end of the truck, but....

When the truck arrived it was on the downhill side of the R & F truck and was able to hook up to the front end and slide it down hill until it was near the middle of the road again. At 10 AM they were free to go to their next delivery. What was supposed to be a quick in-and-out became a two hour affair. During the entire time they were blocking the road (nearly 2 hours) not one vehicle attempted to go up or down the road. Aaah, rural living!

Terry had a club meeting at the Bradford County Library she wanted to attend but was stuck in the house during all this since the end of the driveway was pretty well occupied. As soon as things were cleared, however, ziiiip! she was gone with only a caution to me that there was something in the wood stove in the basement.

A starling had come down the chimney, despite the spark arrester at the top, and was keeping the cats entertained. Feeling magnanimous, I released it to the outdoors unharmed. (We had two do the same thing last spring and I wasn't so gentle with the second. Should this or another show up again....)

New sign of spring: We have had a Purple Finch showing up at the feeders with the freeloading Redpolls.

"Swim faster, we're late for school!"

And we have kids who would bitch and moan about walking a mile and a half to school.
From the BBC:

A South African village is demanding that a bridge be built across a crocodile-infested river to stop children swimming it to get to school.
Students as young as seven have been making the crossing for two months since the community's boat was stolen.

Of course, if they get neither a bridge nor a boat, the graduates will be able to compete in the future Olympics. Either as swimmers in the 100 meter freestyle or in the Special Olympics for the handicapped.


h/t once again to the Jungle Trader

Mammoth Ivory

Now who said global warming was all bad? Here’s one scenario where folks are benefiting from the thaw.

From the NY Times: Ivory for the Taking, From Beasts Well Beyond Caring

The ivory in this part of the world [Siberia] comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as their remains emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business that had all but gone extinct itself during the Soviet period, but is flourishing now.

Ivory carving, a form of scrimshaw work, has increased recently in Siberia as more material has become available to the artist.

Mr. Seliverstov recently paid $500 for about 16 pounds of mammoth ivory from a family that had stashed it in a barn for years before realizing its value.

The trade, given a lift recently by global warming, which has melted away the tundra and exposed more frozen remains, is not only legal but actually endorsed by conservationists. They note somewhat grudgingly that while the survival of elephants may be in question, it is already too late for mammoths.

Seems like a win-win-win situation for the people doing the collection of the ivory, the artists involved in producing the carving and the elephants who continue to thrive in Africa and Asia.

The business of ice age ivory, a mainstay in Siberia since the 17th century, was further helped by the international ban imposed on the elephant ivory trade in 1989. Russian exports of mammoth ivory — the only type of ivory legally imported into the United States — reached 40 tons last year, up from just 2 tons in 1989…

(h/t to the Jungle Trader who continues to highlight amazing stories.)

Every group, person, organization that is part of the "the sky is falling" doom and gloom front over looks the positives that might occur in the case of the earth warming. While this story is certainly not a major one within the realm of that scenario, it highlights just one small positive among many that the models and prognosticators conveniently overlook.

Bad News Bear

I was also thinking of calling this post The Bears and the Bees, but didn't want to confuse anyone who might think it had to do with The Talk.

This also comes via the Jungle Trader : Bear convicted of stealing honey

It happened in Macedonia.

At first I worried for the safety of Pooh, but then I remembered the Hundred Acre Wood is far removed from Macedonia. Reading the story it seems owner of the beehives tried to keep the bear at bay with bright lights and loud music. He obviously hasn't heard the complaints about prisoner treatment at Gitmo.

The bear is still loose and will likely face nothing more than more flashing lights and “thumping "turbo-folk" music” should it return to the scene of the crime. I assume the bee keeper has had sufficient time to fuel up his generator.

I do love the last line of the story: “There was no information on the whereabouts of the bear.”

Gators Rock!

I came across this over at the Jungle Trader and immediately thought of Jimbo over at Parkway Rest Stop.

HOW ALLIGATORS ROCK AND ROLL

Without a ripple in the water, alligators dive, surface or roll sideways, even though they lack flippers or fins. University of Utah biologists discovered gators maneuver silently by using their diaphragm, pelvic, abdominal and rib muscles to shift their lungs like internal floatation devices: toward the tail when they dive, toward the head when they surface and sideways when they roll.

It sounds like a fascinating study of the maneuverability of the alligator and may have implications for many other critters, including, obviously, crocs.

"It allows them to navigate a watery environment without creating a lot of disturbance," says doctoral student T.J. Uriona. "This is probably really important while they are trying to sneak up on an animal but don't want to create ripples."

The discovery in American alligators suggests "special muscles that manipulate the position of the lungs - and thus the center of buoyancy - may be an underappreciated but important means for other aquatic animals to maneuver in water without actively swimming," says C.G. Farmer, an assistant professor of biology.

I suggest you go over and read the rest. (Don’t worry Jimbo, there are no pictures.)

By the way, you’ll notice the people doing this research—and, I therefore assume, knowing a great deal about alligators—are from the University of UTAH! (Although, as the article mentions, they did travel to Louisiana to conduct the study.)

Arctic find

A new/old ”sea monster” has been identified.

A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.

h/t Jungle Trader

Were there Illinois Nazis involved?

I was unaware they were filming another Blues Brothers movie. This time in Japan.

2,240 police, 460 patrol cars, copter mobilized for car chase in Osaka

(Actually, I wish they were filming another BB flick. The music was great in the first two.)

Torture? or Treatment?

I saw this article linked over at Instapundit the other day and, having many allergies and sinus problems, I went over to look at what they were touting as a solution. (No pun intended.)

It sounded interesting but I kept having just one thought: Isn’t this the “torture” technique called “Water boarding”?

I don’t know that I could do this to myself even if it were to bring relief. Hell, I'd probably succumb to "water boarding" so fast and start spilling the beans at such a rate that they'd have to use a high speed recorder slowed down to get any meaning out of my words. I'd make stuff up to tell them, too, if they would stop. But then I did that when the podiatrist went to put a needle in the sole of my foot. I'll take a shot anywhere but there! (And lay off the gums unless you give me nitrous first, mister dentist.)

I think I’ll stick to the saline sprays.

What we have here, is a failure to …

More than 500 parking meters stolen in Atlanta

What the heck!? How do you steal 546 parking meters?

City officials say crooks sawed off 546 parking meters this year —39 percent of all the meters in the city, at a total loss of $273,000.

Because it happens so often, the city does not report meter muggers to police, said Tenee Hawkins, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works.

"If they don't report it to us, we don't investigate it," said Ron Campbell, a spokesman for the Atlanta Police Department.

I get it. You do it one at a time and the city never, ever reports the theft so there’s never, ever an investigation.

Must be tough branding the little sprites

Australian police alert to oyster rustling: official

Rustlin’!? Why that there’s a hangin’ offense, pardner…er mate!

I blame Global Warming

New giant rat and possum found in Indonesia's Papua

Ahoy Matey! Aaarrgh!

Captain Kidd Ship Found

This sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones adventure with a little bit of Dirk Pitt thrown in.

The wreckage of a pirate ship abandoned by Captain Kidd in the 17th century has been found by divers in shallow waters off the Dominican Republic, a research team claims.

The underwater archaeology team, from Indiana University, says they have found the remains of Quedagh Merchant, actively sought by treasure hunters for years.

The vessel in question is the Quedah Merchant. The last straw in a less than lustrous career for a man who thought he was doing the crown’s wishes. Kidd was forced to keep this “prize” by a mutinous crew that looted and burned the vessel when he left them in the Caribbean to defend himself against piracy charges.
(Indiana University? Okay, they are bounded by Lake Michigan, the Ohio and Wabash Rivers, but what the hey are they doing in the Caribbean? One would think a university closer to the scene would have a more active underwater archaeology team, but no, IU happens to have a world renowned team. Who’d have thunk it. )

It is remarkable that the wreck has remained undiscovered all these years given its location, just 70 feet off the coast of Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic in less than 10 feet of seawater.
"I've been on literally thousands of shipwrecks in my career," Beeker said. "This is one of the first sites I've been on where I haven't seen any looting. We've got a shipwreck in crystal clear, pristine water that's amazingly untouched. We want to keep it that way, so we made the announcement now to ensure the site's protection from looters."

Amazing that in an area where you would suspect there would be people fishing, diving and just plain out and about on the water a find like this can still be made.

According to the Wikipedia entry, Captain Kidd was one of the least successful of privateers/pirates. Even his capture of the vessel Quedah Merchant bearing a rich cargo and flying under an Armenian flag, was questionable as Kidd himself realized when he tried to persuade his crew to return the ship to its English captain. Unable to control his own crew, Kidd was doomed. Having lost the support of his backers (probably because he was less successful than they would have liked and because he was a bit of an incompetent leader), Kidd was convicted on one count of murder (one of his crew) and five counts of piracy. Available evidence that might have justified his acts of "piracy" was never presented at court. He was sentenced to be hung by a British court. His body remained in a cage hanging above the River Thames for two years as a warning to any and all pirates.