We may not have Bobby to kick around anymore!
A number of news outlets are reporting that Bobby Mugabe is thinking of taking it on the lam, if he is guaranteed immunity from prosecution. It will be interesting to see how well thuggery pays.

Who cares what he drives?

Offered without comment from the Twilight Zone
The Telegraph (UK) reports Don't bother about burglary, police told:

Police have been ordered not to bother investigating crimes such as burglary, vandalism and assaults unless evidence pointing to the culprits is easily available, The Telegraph can reveal.

Under new guidelines, officers have been informed that only "serious" crimes, such as murder, rape or so-called hate crimes, should be investigated as a matter of course.

In all other cases, unless there is immediate and compelling evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA material, the crime will be listed for no further action.
...
Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, said last night: "This news will be regarded as the final nail in the coffin of this Government's policy on crime. Instead of zero tolerance it seems we are to be faced with total tolerance."

Kangaroo Court Alert!
Ken Parish has a nice summary of the antics of the Denmark's Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (UVVU in Danish or DCSD in English) in regard to Bjorn Lomborg.

As others have pointed out, the DCSD undertook no research or analysis of its own. It simply adopted in toto the criticisms of 4 environmental activist scientists published in Scientific American last year. They included Dr Stephen Schneider who, as John Daly observes, is "noted for his remark in Discover Magazine in 1989 - "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."

And they completely ignored Lomborg's rebuttal of the SciAm whine. Uh oh, sounds like some people have their heads up their UVVU's! And who are these paragons?

The DCSD Working Group on Lomborg consisted of Dr Nils Axelsen, MD, an orthopedic surgeon; Professor Finn Collin, a philosopher; Professor Jørgen Dalberg-Larsen, a legal academic; Professor Arne Helweg, an agronomist; and Professor Margareta Järvinen, a political scientist. No wonder they simply uncritically accepted the criticisms of Schneider and his mates in Scientific American: - not one of them appears to have any relevant expertise that would have allowed them to draw independent conclusions of their own.

And what's the big deal with Scientific American? Despite their pretensions, it's no scholarly journal - it's a popular science magazine for the masses that brags about its newsstand sales. On that basis, we might as well ask these people.

Whatever one might think of Lomborg and his book, no person of integrity could regard the DCSD's "finding", or the processes leading to it, as anything more than a shameful travesty of justice.

We're talking ecoweenies here - nothing new.

It's All Michele's Fault!
Over at A Small Victory, Michele has started comicblogging! Click the "thumbnail" to see my effort to appear au courant by jumping on the bandwagon:

Assembled via stripcreator.

Wholly Appropriate!
Scrappleface scoops everyone with Bin Laden Unveils Plans for Patty Murray Hospital

If global warming has you shivering...
Fidel can help according to Nelson Acosta at Reuters - Cuba Opens Up Virgin Keys to Lure Foreign Tourists:

CAYO COCO, Cuba (Reuters) - Watch out Cancun and Jamaica. When European charter airlines begin direct flights to this sandy key in the coming weeks, Cuba will be taking another step to recover its position as a premier tourist destination in the Caribbean.

Flamingos, iguanas and alligators on a nature reserve are an added attraction for tourists looking to lie on sun-soaked snowy-white beaches and sip daiquiris.

Last month, Cuba's communist authorities opened an international airport able to receive wide-bodied jets on Cayo Coco, the largest of a string of hundreds of keys along Cuba's north shore known as Jardines del Rey.

Cuba has already built 11 high-end hotels on Cayo Coco and neighboring Cayo Guillermo to draw vacationers from Canada, Britain, Germany and Spain.

And what about the Yankee imperialists?

Havana is also banking on the lifting of a U.S. travel ban some time soon -- a move that would bring Americans to the Cuban keys, which are 250 miles south of Nassau in the Bahamas.

"Twenty years from now these keys could be the premier resort in the Caribbean," said Philip Agee, director of the Havana-based online travel agency www.cubalinda.com.

"These islands go on and on for hundreds of miles and offer a fabulous combination of beach, scenery and wildlife. There is a huge market out there for almost virgin islands like these," said Agee, a former CIA agent.

I wondered where this wingnut ended up!

Which reminds me of an article from last September by Humberto Fontova - Yankee Doodle Castro:

Havana's Karl Marx Theater rocked and rolled last month. Cuba's Communist Party put on a rollicking Fourth of July party. "In honor of the noble American people on the anniversary of their independence," proclaimed Cuba's Communist Party newspaper "Granma."

Ted Turner's "Helluva guy!" was there, Fidel himself, declaring: "The cultural, spiritual and moral legacy of the American people is also the heritage of Cuba and of the Cuban people!" And a choral group sang "Old Man River."

Wow. What happened to the U.S. as "a vulture preying on humanity!" circa 1960? What about the U.S. as "the cancer of humanity!" circa 1968? And let's not forget: "Worse than Hitler's Germany!" a Castroite staple for 40 years.

"Come on, Humberto," you say. "That's Cold War stuff. Knock it off. He's mellowed recently."

Oh? Then how about his "We will bring America to her knees!" That was last year in Teheran.

What a difference one year - and going bankrupt - make.

What a difference the end of that nasty ol' Cold War - and running out of creditors to stiff - make.

What a difference a fresh and enlightened view of the brotherhood of nations - and getting a credit rating below Somalia by Moody's and below Haiti by Dun & Bradstreet - make.

What a difference a genuine longing to lessen international tension by engaging in dialogue - and having your ships impounded in foreign ports by furious creditors - make.

If you need flannel sheets, it must be global warming
The Telegraph (UK) notices that the emperor is sans duds in Predictions fall foul of reality:

Commuters shivering in last week's bitterly cold weather could be forgiven for wondering whatever happened to global warming. The whole northern hemisphere, from Florida to Finland, Germany to Japan, was in the grip of a cold snap that seemed more in line with a new Ice Age.

Aid agencies in Bangladesh handed out blankets to stem the toll of cold-related deaths, which has already topped 100. In Vietnam, baffled villagers came out to study the inch-thick layer of odd, cold white stuff that was blanketing the countryside. In China, a 700-mile stretch of the Yellow River turned to ice.

Advocates of global warming last week insisted that the recent cold weather is just a blip that says nothing about long-term climate change. Instead, they pointed to the recent announcement that on a global scale 2002 was the second-hottest year ever recorded.

Yet in recent weeks information has emerged that is sending an icy blast through the climate research establishment. It shows that the Earth is refusing to follow the script climatologists have written for it.

Funny how that works out.

Details by following the link, but here's a sample:

Last month a team led by Professor Igor Polyakov, of the University of Alaska, published its study of recently released weather records kept by Russian scientists based in the Arctic from the 1870s onwards. The results flatly contradict the computer models. They show that - far from warming up faster than the rest of the Earth - the Arctic has actually been cooling since the 1920s. Put simply, say the researchers, "The air temperature and ice data do not support the proposed polar amplification of global warming."

In a report of their findings in the leading climate research journal Eos, they conclude: "The Arctic poses severe challenges to generating credible model-based projections of climate change."

Project Sapphire (enough for 24 or more Hiroshima type bombs)
(Via Free Republic) In a little noticed series of articles over the holidays, Chris Flores of the Lynchburg (Va.) News & Advance, tells the tale of Project Sapphire - how a large load of fissionable material from the former USSR was discovered in Kazakhstan and brought to the USA to be made harmless. The story has everything: crumbling Soviet communism, secret nuclear laboratories, Iraqi and Iranian spies, clandestine missions, dangerous nuclear materials, bureaucratic bungling, and ecoweenie complaints. Some highlights:

In the summer of 1993 Andy Webber's vehicle needed work.

Webber, a Department of Defense employee, was attached to the U.S. embassy in the newly formed republic of Kazakhstan.

But he and his mechanic talked about more than cars when he visited an auto-repair shop in the city of Almaty. The mechanic told Webber about something he'd heard, rumors really, about the once-secret nuclear city in the northern corner of the country. At Ulba, there was a stockpile of nuclear material. Webber passed the rumor on to U.S. Ambassador William Courtney.

It would prove a crucial slice of a puzzle that, when pieced together, became the genesis of Project Sapphire, a secret mission that spirited more than half a ton of nuclear material from Kazakhstan to the United States and eventually to the BWXT plant near Lynchburg.

This was highly enriched uranium, weapons grade. Enough for two dozen or more Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.
...
Ulba was where many of those minerals were processed. Under the Soviet system, it was a closed city with security perimeters and restricted travel in and out.

Andy Webber was with the first Americans to see the "vault" area of the Ulba plant where the Sapphire material was stored.

The vault was a brick warehouse with dirt floors in a fairly segregated part of the Ulba complex. The six doors to the warehouse were wooden and only secured by padlocks.

"Chills went up and down our spines when we heard it was protected by a padlock in what some called a 'vault,' " said Starr.

The guard manning the entrance in the fence when the Americans went to the warehouse for the first time was an older woman, a "babushka."

"Babushka" is Russian for grandmother. It wasn't clear if she was armed.

If you can navigate the annoying Flash interface, it is well worth the long read. And kudos to the people who pulled this off despite all the impediments.

"Project Sapphire is one where the good guys won."

That they did, but

But the most controversial and lingering problem was the loss of enough highly enriched uranium to arm two nuclear weapons. Whether this was an accounting problem or theft probably will never be known.

There's a home on the web for everything!
Including http://www.celebrities-eating.com/. Actually, I'll have to take their word for it, since this is about the only one I recognize.