This Looks Suspiciously Like Fun

Military 22 Comments

A reader just back from a Port Security training exercise with the Navy Reserve sends along this photo and explanation (click to enlarge);


boat.jpg
Port Security RHIB completing high-speed turn. These are also the same boats carried by our ships in the Persian gulf and used for armed boarding parties. The comm/radar arch is an add-on for our purposes.
We didn’t issue weapons, combat dress, or body armour for this exercise, partly because it was in Vancouver harbour. Can’t have…Soldiers…With guns…In Canadian cities…

That photo belongs on a Navy recruitment poster!

Blog Pulse

Political Animal 74 Comments

Driving into the city today and listening to John Gormley post-mortem the fallout in Alberta over the tepid support Ralph Klein received this past weekend, I’ve been struck by the “shock” in media over the results.
Am I the only person not surprised by the outcome?
Perhaps that’s because I’ve been reading the comments here and elsewhere from ordinary Albertans for the past two years, leading me to conclude that the only remaining demographic who considered Klein a right-of-center Conservative were the national media and the left. With the increasing noise over Alberta’s “responsibility to share” her oil wealth, (not to mention the alarm over growth in spending) I was getting the sense that more and more Albertans were uneasy about how steadfast a Klein led government might be if push came to confiscate.
Discuss.

The 5 Billion Tonne Challenge

Great Moments In Socialism 90 Comments

One generally gets the sense that mental giants such as this emerge from their calculations as theoretical members of the “survivor” percentage.

[T]here was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth’s population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka’s strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.

Otherwise, the question bears asking – what’s holding you back, Dr. Pianka? Sure, it’s a slower process than you’re advocating, but you know – the journey to homo sapiens planetary purity begins with that first step in front of a bus.
Time to lead by example, dear doctor.
Update – Pianka responds after a fashion.
Udate – April 5 – Pianka’s Biology 304 course evaluations – scroll down to this “dissenting” opinion from 2004;

Though I agree that convervation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness. I found Pianka to be knowledgable, but spent too much time focusing on his specific research and personal views.

Via Ed Minchau who has lots more.

Tim Hortons Explosion

Radioactive 142 Comments

CTV;

One man is dead following an explosion at a Tim Hortons restaurant in downtown Toronto.
The blast occurred in the washroom of the coffee shop located near the intersection of Yonge and Bloor Streets, just after 1 p.m.
Emergency crews responded to the scene and tried to help the victim. Fire department spokesman Daryl Fuglerud said the man had burns to his body. They do not know if he was a customer or an employee.

No details or speculation yet as to the cause, but all joking about “natural gas” aside, a washroom wouldn’t seem to be the likely place for an explosion.
Continuing updates – over radio: The man killed was wearing the explosives, his body is still at the scene. He is not an employee, but has not been identified … Another evacuation is underway at a different Tim Hortons, because of a suspicious package…
Commentor “BC Monkey” writes;

That Timmie’s is directly besides the subway entrance to Yonge/Bloor station, the busiest subway station in Toronto. […] Just watched the 6 o’clock news. There is another Timmie’s shut off for a suspicious package at Lawrence and Yonge, that’s about 8 km north of the first incident, yes, near another station. (Though I doubt this second Timmie’s will amount to much.)

Update II – CTV is now reporting the man carried a can of gasoline into the washroom.

According to police, another man smelled gasoline fumes and ran out, yelling. A few moments later the blast occurred.
Investigators do not know what ignited the gasoline or what the deceased man’s motives were. Suspicion is focusing on either suicide or arson. They say he was definitely not a terrorist.
“He’s not a strap-on al-Qaida bomber guy,” Toronto Police Staff Sgt. Don Cole said Sunday evening. “It sounds to me like a guy who either wanted to do a torch job or commit suicide.”
[…]
Toronto’s police chief, Bill Blair, declined to discuss the possibility of a bomb.
He described the blast as “a very hot and intense fire in an enclosed area within the washroom.”
The police bomb squad worked at the scene for much of the afternoon.

Bizarre.

License To Kill

Great Moments In Socialism 38 Comments

Childhood sexual abuse has officially achieved the status of “Get Out Of Jail Free” card.
Star Phoenix;

A 28-year-old woman won’t spend a day in jail for killing her baby by pulling him out of the toilet bowl in which he was born, snuffing out his first breaths with a plastic bag and then discarding his tiny body in a dumpster on a Manitoba reserve.
Selena Stevenson pleaded guilty Monday to the rare charge of infanticide and was given an 18-month conditional sentence by a sympathetic judge who called the case “heartwrenching.”
“A period of incarceration would serve no purpose whatsoever,” said Queen’s Bench Justice Deborah McCawley. She called the facts of the case “monstrous” but said she couldn’t overlook Stevenson’s horrific background.
“This was clearly an act of desperation done out of fear,” she said. Stevenson will be allowed to remain free in the community to care for her other two children, aged eight and two. The conditions of her sentence include abstaining from alcohol and continuing to seek counselling. No curfew was imposed.
The Crown agreed to reduce the charge against her from murder to infanticide, which carries a five-year maximum and can only be used in cases of mothers who kill their newborns while in a “disturbed” state of mind in the immediate aftermath of giving birth.
Stevenson was a battered woman who got pregnant in the spring of 2002 by a man who raped her when she passed out drunk at a house party, court was told Monday.
She feared reprisal from her common-law husband and was able to conceal the pregnancy from him and other family and community members.

Her lawyer, Greg Brodsky, is being interviewed on the Mike McIntyre show at the moment, carefully laying out the details of the case and explaining why, for all intents and purposes, she had no choice – because all the other options available to her carried with them “consequences”.
Looks like his assessment is bang on.

Bush Censure Moving Ahead

Insufferable Twits 19 Comments

With all the momentum of a lead zeppelin.

Senator Russell Feingold was a lonely man yesterday.
Of his seven Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, only two showed up for the committee’s hearing on Feingold’s call for a censure of President Bush. One of them — Feingold’s fellow Wisconsin Democrat, Herb Kohl — ducked out early without uttering a word.
So Feingold sat amid a sea of empty chairs in the hearing room, withstanding a withering Republican barrage. GOP lawmakers took turns branding Feingold’s resolution ”irresponsible,” ”inappropriate,” ”excessive,” ”perverse,” ”false,” ”surreal,” ”beyond the pale,” and ”destructive.”
”I can only hope that this constitutionally suspect and, I believe, inflammatory attempt to punish the president for leading this war on terror will not weaken his ability to do so,” declared Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah.
Feingold’s resolution has no chance of passing in the Republican-controlled Congress. Only two Democrats have signed on as cosponsors, and party leaders, fearful of rallying Bush’s supporters with direct attacks on the president, have resisted the GOP’s offers to bring the resolution to the Senate floor.

Via Wizbang, where there’s more.

Not So Rogue Wave Off Scotland

Climate Cult 12 Comments

Scotland on Sunday;

IT IS straight out of a nightmare: a wave almost 100ft high bears down on your helpless vessel miles from the safety of the shore.
But that is exactly what a team of British scientists faced while conducting experiments off the west coast of Scotland.
[…]
The significance of the Rockall event is that the height of the sea was measured by an onboard wave recorder, making it officially the biggest ever.
The NOC’s boat, RSS Discovery, a successor vessel to Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ship, was stranded by storms for five days, with waves averaging 61ft. Wind speeds hit the severe gale category.
The 295ft-long vessel was in the area to conduct experiments on global warming, but the onboard instruments were also capable of accurately measuring wave height.
Holliday said: “Very strong winds are common here all the year round. The point is that all of these previously high measured waves were under hurricane conditions – really extreme conditions, but our big waves weren’t. These are not especially unusual conditions. It wasn’t just a one-off.”

The event happened in 2000, but was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters Journal.

The researchers believe the discovery of such a huge wave amid relatively low, non-hurricane wind speeds could have implications for oil exploration on Britain’s Atlantic shelf.
Holliday believes the extreme waves were caused by a resonance effect.
It occurs when the wind velocity matches the speed of the waves, resulting in wind continually feeding energy into the sea.
She said: “Energy was continually being put into this wave group. This was pretty close to the maximum height that the waves could have got to. This is the edge of the Atlantic Shelf where a lot of exploration is going on.
“These new figures are going to be quite significant. Engineers who are trying to design ships and oil platforms will have to think again.”

Emphasis mine. It’s another story that features what appear to be qualified researchers who are seemingly unaware of duplicate research in their own or related fields. It’s a phenomenon I first came across in the course of breeding dogs and tracking developments in genetic research – often, breeders have a better grasp on the current state of research in their breeds than the veterinary specialists they consult.
In July of 2004, I mentioned this item, “Seas Awash With Monster Waves”

Rogue waves that rise as high as 10-storey buildings and can sink large ships are far more common than previously thought, satellite images show.
Two European Space Agency (ESA) satellites have monitored the world’s oceans to test the frequency of monster waves that were once dismissed as a nautical myth.
Three weeks of data from the early months of 2001 showed more than 10 individual giant waves around the globe over 25 metres high.
Previously, ESA said, scientists believed that such large waves occurred only once every 10,000 years.
“Having proved they existed in higher numbers than anyone expected, the next step is to analyse if they can be forecasted,” said Dr Wolfgang Rosenthal, a scientist at the GKSS research centre in Geesthacht, Germany.

One would think the existence of well-publicized data such as this would preclude statements that claim “discovery” – especially in an era when simply entering the words “monster waves” into a Google search can pull up multiple references.

Frist: No to UN Human Rights Council

Political Animal 51 Comments

Via The Corner; FRIST INTRODUCES RESOLUTION OPPOSING U.S. PARTICIPATION IN U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

�The newly created U.N. Human Rights Council fails to address the significant failures and shortcomings of the widely discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Since its establishment in 1946, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights sacrificed efficacy and credibility by granting membership to some of the world�s worst human rights abusers, neglecting to condemn state sponsors of terrorism, and failing to act or speak out against numerous cases of egregious human rights abuse.
�The new council makes only superficial changes to the former commission structure and falls far short of the standards envisioned by President Bush and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The new council will not prevent serial human rights abusers from gaining membership and cannot be relied upon to monitor human rights abuses throughout the world.
�I applaud the administration for opposing the creation of the new council and urge it to oppose U.S. participation in and support of the council in order to uphold America�s own credibility and deny the council unwarranted legitimacy.
�If the U.N. refuses to make meaningful changes to the council structure, the U.S. should lead a group of like-minded democracies with a demonstrated commitment to the protection of human rights to create an effective and accountable human rights oversight body outside the U.N. system. The U.S. must adhere to its principles and continue to demonstrate its commitment to meaningful reform and to the protection of human rights.�

(Emphasis mine.)
Marion Edwyn Harrison, National Ledger;

It rather defies the imagination to visualize how any UN entity designed to promote human rights could do so when UN membership, and disproportionately UN leadership, consists of nations and politicians from nations which are the human-rights culprits. United States Ambassador John Bolton, with considerable (but insufficient) support from UN member nations, proposed a set of reforms that arguably would have breathed some morality and effectiveness into this new Council. Not surprisingly, the UN member majority rejected these efforts.
There now appears to be an effort to induce the Bush Administration to provide money for this new UN Council, possibly to seek a United States seat (only to be outvoted, as would happen if the inmates ran a prison).

Wet Sanding

Reader Tips 42 Comments

As the title suggests, my hands are busy elsewhere today – my punishment for being a little too aggressive with the base clear.
So, drop your tips in the comments.
Our tax dollars at work I’ve received a private note advising that CBC and its lawyers are combing the blogs looking for CBC clips with the objective of filing suit . (Why do I think they’re more likely to be combing right-leaning sites than left?) If someone at CBC can confirm or deny, drop me a line privately.
In a WaPo interview, gun control poster couple Jim and Sarah Brady have “[repudiated] many proposals which the Brady Campaign (formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc., and before that known as the National Committee to Control Handguns) has previously advocated.”
The US is pressuring China to respond to reports of organ harvesting from imprisoned Falun Gong.
Bob Tarantino spots a good one in the Star ;

“I’m willing to bet there’s journalists out there who wonder why people think they’re pushing their own agenda; I’m willing to bet those same journalists will read that quote and hardly bat an eye.”

Breaking – April 1, 2006: reports of a mushroom cloud sighted over scheduled Juno host Pamela Anderson have turned out to be erronious. A spokesperson for Ms. Anderson has stated it was not an explosion, but a “nasty hydraulic leak”.
A reminder – please refrain from dropping unrelated links in threads dedicated to specific topics. And stay on topic. This is not a chat board, and I’ll begin removing comments if the privilege is being abused.

March 30, 1981

Political Animal 59 Comments

Twenty-five years ago yesterday, Wayne Allyn Root was sitting in a political science class when the door of the lecture hall swung open;

That day at Columbia University, over 20 years ago, I got physically sick. I ran out of class, the CHEERS of my classmates at the possible death of Ronald Reagan reverberating in the halls behind me. I ran into the bathroom, got on my knees and vomited.I cried and shook violently for what seemed like an eternity.
And I felt sick for America, for the people I had just watched cheer and celebrate the shooting of our president were undoubtedly the future leaders of America.

Lorne Calvert’s Old Boys Parliament

Little Known Facts 39 Comments

The Saskatchewan Youth Parliament has a colourful history;

[I]it wasn’t until 1945 that Youth Parliament in Saskatchewan began to consistently meet again. At this time, the Older Boys Parliament began its evolution towards what we now call SYP. There were many spirited debates on whether to admit females, non-Christians and smokers. The members at the time decided to allow smokers to join but not females or non-Christians. In 1959, there was a resolution debated on permitting females to join the organisation. At the time, current Saskatchewan premier Lorne Calvert was a member and gave a passionate speech against admitting females, while his then girlfriend watched from the gallery. Apparently, they broke up soon afterwards. [emphasis mine]

You don’t say!
(note: the 1959 date seems to be in error)
Update – Saskatoon SP picks up the item.

“I Should Be Keeping This A Secret”

Media 24 Comments

He calls papers like The New York Times �a tablet of stone, it is a paper of great authority. And if you ever go to a New York Times editorial meeting, it�s a bit like a religious ceremony.� He talks about the effort and resource that goes into the front page. ��Believe us,� is the message. If it goes onto the front page of The New York Times it�s there because it�s important�. �You may not want to read it but it�s our opinion.� And this is a model that has existed again for a hundred years�.
�This is journalism as revelation: �We are the figures of authority. All these important people at the top speak to us. You can�t speak to because you�re too little�. We are the conduit and we tell you what�s important. It�s like this. Believe us.� And occasionally, the little people would write a letter�. And we�d print a few of these letters very graciously. But most of them we�d drop in the bin�. This was the paper I inherited in 1995, which had been printed since 1821�.�
Then came technology that enabled the conversation, first in the form of email. �This was a big challenge to journalists because they didn�t know quite how to respond and some journalists got quite huffy about this and said, �Look, push off, I�m the figure of authority here� Our job is to tell you what�s what. We don�t want to hear from you because frankly we�re the experts around here.�� Others, he said, found it valuable to improve their journalism.
But often, the people were ignored, so: �What happened next is that these people started talking to each other. They didn�t ask our permission to do this at all� And they started forming little groups of people who began critiquing newspapers� They went behind our back to our sources because, increasingly, the information that we were using was available on the internet�. A bit cheeky of the readers to do that�� (Remember my warning about irony, folks.)
He says it got to the point where he would come into the office and if the paper had made �a mistake about anything, dozens of people around the world had already spotted this and were challenging this. This was a different kind of audience. The old audience� were willing to take on trust your view of a wide range of information that we were saying is important. And these people are, to a much greater degree, self-selecting�� That is, they follow the news that interests them. �Now they�re not wrong, these people, because the internet now does an awful of information on an awful lot of subjects that�s better than newspapers. I shouldn�t be saying this, live, to the world outside. I should be keeping this as a secret.�

Who is “he”? Alan Rusbridger – editor of The Guardian.
Jarvis writes;

I recommend that every American journalist and news executive listen to this speech on newspapers in the age of blogs…

The mp3 file is too large for me to contemplate downloading over dialup, but it comes highly recommended.

Show Of Support

Military 35 Comments

Discussion in the comments of the magnet “ribbons” displayed all over the US prompted a reader to email privately with information on where you can get your own. (I had to look for one in North Dakota a couple of years ago).

yellowribbon.jpg A few places you can order them in Canada;
Military Family Resource Centre Meaford and Royal Canadian Regiment Kit Shop, Or contact your local Royal Canadian Legion. A few private businesses also offer them – I would guess that if you’re interested in helping out by offering the magnetic ribbons at your own place of business, the Legion is the place to start.

A small gesture, no question – but in a country where such displays are rare, I suspect they are appreciated.

Denial Isn’t Just A River In Ottawa

Media 81 Comments

As I work here at the shop, I’ve been watching a panel of journalists and ex-politicos on CPAC navel-gazing about the current wrestling match between the Ottawa press and the Harper PMO.
There’s been some interesting general discussion, including a laughable half-denial/dismissal of “perceived” liberal bias in the Canadian media – “(oh, it exists, of course that’s acceptable, because that’s the enlightened small-l liberal world view – unlike the propoganda on FOX and US talk radio”). This was followed by – I’m not making this up – ironically revealing comments from David Halton on the “docility” of the American press towards the Bush administration, and their supposed practice of labelling anyone who disagrees with their policies as “unpatriotic” – confirming suspicions in some quarters that Canadian media uses Democratic Underground forums as a source on US politics.
Just in case you thought these people were capable of meaningful self-examination. I suggest you catch it, if it’s still on. If anyone digs up a transcript, there’s blogging gold in there….

Jill Caroll Safe

Terrorism 30 Comments

American journalist Jill Caroll has been released by her Iraqi captors.
As always, the Jawa Report is the place to go for details on stories of this type.
Speculation watching at The Corner;

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the instinct in the New York Times newsroom and all over the MSM. But I have an itch that suggests not.
I may have misheard–was doing other things at the time, but as I turned on FNC a few minutes ago, Bret Baier, Pentagon correspondent at Fox, seemed to immediately assume in his rapid-response commentary on Fox and Friends that the rescue of the Christian peace activists last week might have played a role in Carroll’s release.

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