Taken from National Geographic News:
Photo in the News: Housefly Gets Glasses Made With Lasers
March 28, 2006—Pampering pets with designer goods isn’t so unusual—and now even your houseflies can get outfitted in style.
I want to meet the doctor that fitted the lenses. Wow!
RLR
Well, crap.
Literally.
Out of the last month or so, we residents of Hawaii have had more than our fair share of rain. Most residents of Waikiki are telling me that they’ve seen rain before, but not as much as this.
When it rains here this much, bad things happen. Typically, this means that sewage overflows and runs off… into the ocean.
And while that’s bad enough, it usually only happens during serious flooding times. But that’s what we’ve had an over abundance of lately: flooding.
Somewhere amongst all the rain, a major sewage pipe failed. And because Murphy’s Law has a sense of humor, the point of failure was in Waikiki: the gold crown, top of the heap location for the tourism industry here in Hawaii.
To fix the pipe, work crews had to start digging up concrete and a couple of streets. In the meantime, because the entire city of Waikiki can’t jump on one foot all day long, toilets continued to flush.
So what they had to do was funnel the sewage into the Ala Wai Canal. Residents near the canal have raised a stink over the stink. But unfortunately, and residents know this, there isn’t much that can be done. Repairs to the main sewage pipe take time, and crews have been working day and night to fix the problem.
The main on Kaiolu Street broke during heavy rains on Friday, leading to the diversion of untreated sewage into the canal. Officials estimate that more than 10 million gallons of sewage has been pumped into the canal since Friday.
As you might imagine, notices went up to anyone that was considering getting into a boat over at the Ala Wai that the water was not fit to be in.
“Welcome to the 1880s,” Director Jeff Mikulina said of the open sewer running past Waikiki and into the ocean past some of Oahu’s most popular beaches.
Environmentalists worry about damage to the fragile coral reef and other marine life in the area.
“It’s horrible. It’s just not acceptable,” said Melody Heidel of the Sierra Club. “That’s the kind of pressure on an ecosystem that’s hard to recover from.”
Fast forward about 5 days later. The pipe was fixed today. But new tests on the waters at Waikiki Beach have returned some rather unpleasant results.
Currents change. Waters move around the island in sometimes mysterious ways.
It turns out that the surfers and tourists have been enjoying bacteria levels 200 times higher than is acceptable in the waters of Waikiki Beach. Yikes. Notices went out today that it’s a bad idea to be in the water. My heart goes out to all the tourists and locals that have been enjoying the wonderful ocean waters during the last couple of days.
Well that’s bad enough. Over off of Magic Island, an extremely popular tourist location directly across from the Ala Moana Shopping Center, bacteria levels were measured at 10,000 times higher than acceptable levels.
Wow. Talk about swimming with the fishes feces.
Health officials strongly advise the public to stay out of the water in the affected areas.
Gee, now there’s an original idea.
Rest assured, tourists that are looking forward to visiting Hawaii and enjoying the sun and the surf: You can bet that the folks in charge will do whatever it takes to clean the mess up. It just might take a week or two to get totally cleaned up.
Added lifeguard Jeff Kozlovich, “I’ll swim with box jellyfish and sharks. But raw sewage, forget it.”
The Environmental Protection Agency has been notified, and health officials will be investigating how all of this occured. Heads will roll, and changes should be forthcoming.
I guess you could say that it’s hitting the fan.
Except most of it is in the ocean right now.
RLR
Links and Credits to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin:
Taken from my home town of Dallas (DallasNews.com):
Michelle Marquez (left), a student at Lamar Middle School in Irving, was criticized for having a U.S. flag during an immigration protest at Kiest Park in Dallas. “My heart is with the Mexican flag and Mexico, but I’m standing on American ground and I’m Mexican-American,” she said.
God bless Michelle Marquez and her family. They get it.
RLR
This was a photo taken on March 27, 2006 at Montebello High in Whittier, California.
Mexico is more important than America, according to the order of the flags.. but flying Old Glory upsidedown is a sign of distress, and a call for help.
Now, I doubt that the students knew that. My bet is that they flew it upside down as a sign of disrespect, not a call for help.
Gee, clueless students? Naw, that can’t be right. After all, they wouldn’t just walk out of class just to skip a day or two of school, and blame it on Bush, would they? (Or am I talking about the Democratic left?)
RLR
Hat tip: Michelle Malkin
In a previous post, I visited the Paramount Pictures website.
While there, I watched the preview trailer for the Nickelodeon Movie “Barnyard.”
A computer animated feature, it’s rated PG for “mild peril and rude humor.” Just the sort of thing that should make young children - Nick’s target audience - happy. Hey, I got a couple of chuckles out of the trailer. Looks like good family fare to me. Set to release around October 2006.
But I also noted that the animators were detailed enough to include cow utters on their characters. Ok. That’s fine. Should provide no end of humor in the movie.
Except all the voices were male?
Huh? What?
I realize I’m slow on the uptake most of the time.. but this, I just don’t get.
RLR
Just saw this over on Craigslist:
Paramount Pictures Seeking Identical Twins for Feature Film
—
Reply to: twinscasting@yahoo.com
Date: 2006-03-24, 4:02PM HSTParamount Pictures is seeking identical twin boys ages 9-11 to play THE LEADS in “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” a new fantasy film based on the bestselling series of books to be directed by Mark Waters (”Mean Girls”, Freaky Friday”). No acting experience is necessary. Please send an email A.S.A.P to twinscasting@yahoo.com and we will send you all the information you need to submit an audition tape…. or you can visit our website www.spiderwickcasting.com which will launch the week of March 27th.
Well, apparently the website isn’t up yet. Instead of info about casting, it sent me to Paramount’s website.
While there, I checked out a couple of other sites for movies that are coming out soon. Jack Black’s Nacho Libre looks like silly fun. It should make about $13.72 before being shuffled off to DVD. (Having said that, it’ll probably be the hidden blockbuster of Summer 2006.)
Then there was this other movie…
RLR
This story makes me so mad, I don’t even know where to start.
Illegals immigrants are marching across the country today in response to a potential immigration legislation solution.
I find it interesting that these illegals believe in America so dang much, that those that are from south of the border are displaying the Mexican flag and - in some instances I’ve heard of - burning the American flag. These illegal immigrants that want to be treated as equals defile those that have worked [and are working] on being here legally, and providing for themselves and their family.
“This is not about legislation any more,” said Jorge Medina, an immigrant from Honduras now living in Charlotte, N.C. “This is about feelings now. We are Americans, too. We are not from Mars and we are not from the moon.”
Well I don’t know there, Jorge. This act looks more like a bunch of moonbats to me than it does a reasoned reaction to a serious American issue.
On Monday, hundreds of demonstrators, many waving U.S. and Mexican flags, marched through Detroit. In Huntington Park, Calif., several hundred high school students walked out of class as protests against an immigration crackdown continued on California’s Cesar Chavez Day.
I’m an ignorant ol’ redneck, so I thought I’d check up on this Cesar Chavez fellow. According to the America’s Library site:
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican American labor activist and leader of the United Farm Workers. During the 20th century he was a leading voice for migrant farm workers (people who move from place to place in order to find work). His tireless leadership focused national attention on these laborers’ terrible working conditions, which eventually led to improvements.
Was he illegal? Did he spout off anti-American rhetoric?
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, called the protests unhelpful, particularly since many of the slogans at the demonstrations carried an anti-American tinge.
The illegal immigrants need to understand that the needs of America is important. Their needs are too, but they need to respect the laws of this country that they “love” so much. (When they’re not out burning Old Glory, that is.)
A solution won’t be easy, and we know we’ll have reached one when no side is happy. Yes, I think those that are here illegally should be given a fair shake at changing that, but not first: they shouldn’t be rewarded for being here illegally. There are those that are waiting for green cards that should be addressed first. Those that are breaking the law will have to deal with the extra trouble of becoming legal immigrants of this country.
After all, if America is all that great, isn’t it worth all the effort? Or now that the illegals are here, are they too lazy?
RLR
[Links: Bush Presses Guest Worker Program for Illegals @ FoxNews.com]
Visit the “America Supports You” website, and support our troops. The following is what I sent, and I’m reposting it here, because I do support our troops.
Aloha from Honolulu!
Words seem insufficient to the cause for which you, our brave men and women, are doing for us everywhere. You represent the best that America has to offer.
It is not the politicians that meet and greet the people that are being assisted in the world. It’s you, our troops, that are the faces that are most seen, the voices that are most heard, the actions that are most appreciated, and the results that are most important. Yours are where the actual contact is made, when media refers to such general locations as “in Northern Iraq,” “somewhere in Afghanistan,” or any other faceless place.
As a single voice, and a conservative one at that, I speak as loudly as I can in this blue state of Hawaii. I write a political blog column highlighting stupid people and situations in politics. (There is, unfortunately, an abundance of things to write about, and often.) The support of our troops is truly one of my missions in my column, and I do so knowing that I enjoy the freedom of speech: something else that makes America the best country on this planet.
I cannot thank you enough for what you do. Do not believe the rhetoric that media outlets spout.
Know that you are supported! You are appreciated! And your efforts are respected!
Mahalo (thank you)! God bless! And stay safe!
RLR
From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, February 15, 2004:
On June 15, 1944, [Harry] Warnke, then 23, took off from what was then Barbers Point Naval Air Station in a single-seater F6F Hellcat fighter. Warnke, who had enlisted after attending college in Gary, Ind., was part of an eight-plane flight that had already qualified for daylight carrier landings on the USS Benjamin Franklin.
The training mission of eight single-seat fighters was to test dive angles on a truck at Kapahi Point that had been placed four miles south of Kaneohe Naval Air Station, now called Marine Corps Base Hawaii. None of the planes carried rockets or bombs.
After making four runs, Warnke failed to rendezvous with his flight leader, Lt. J.D. Petersen. As they are on many days, the peaks of the Koolaus were covered in moderate overcasts for the early-morning training exercise.
On Feb. 11, 1999, the Star-Bulletin accompanied a nine-member Joint Task Force Full-Accounting team that found the wreck of Warnke’s Hellcat in a steep ravine. The debris was scattered on a 65- to 70-degree slope. The crash site covered an area estimated to be 330 feet by 82 feet.
Two 90-pound propeller blades were found and carried out. Two other pieces of the wreckage bore the number “82,” Warnke’s aircraft number. Also recovered was a part with “F6F” inscribed, noting the type of aircraft — a Hellcat; large pieces of the wing and two tires.
No attempt was made to dig for remains. The team mapped the area, noting where the wreckage had been found.
From another article in the Star-Bulletin’s May 11, 2005 issue:
This week the Navy announced that it is seeking comment on an environmental assessment to recover the remains believed to be buried near the wreckage of the World War II fighter on state conservation land owned by the state departments of Transportation and Hawaiian Home Lands. The comment period for the assessment runs through June 7.
Warnke’s remains are believed to be at the 2,600-foot level of a ravine in the Koolaus, near the southern entrance to the H-3 tunnel. The military hopes to begin the search and recovery by late summer.
I did a quick search for an update to this story at both the Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser, the major newspapers here on Oahu in Hawaii. However, I couldn’t find the following story, which was written for the Chicago Tribune on March 14, 2006:
Because of the crash’s remote location, Warnke’s Hellcat was left to deteriorate in the tropical heat and rain.
Because of an extraordinary confluence of events, including the fact that Warnke had crashed into what are considered sacred Hawaiian grounds, his remains never were recovered, though they lay within miles of four active military installations where troops are indoctrinated to never willingly leave a fallen comrade behind.
… In the late 1990s, when the military first began planning to recover Warnke’s body, it had no inkling of the controversy that would ignite.
At the time, a sovereignty movement was in full swing in Hawaii. Some groups wanted Hawaii to secede from the United States; others wanted a nation-within-a-nation status similar to that granted to American Indians. Virtually all of them felt resentment for the U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893, an event for which the Congress and President Bill Clinton had apologized in 1993.
The recovery mission became embroiled in the sovereignty debate, a movement that remains alive today.
Because the Koolau Range is a protected watershed, the military was required to request public comment on its planned mission.
The reaction from native Hawaiians was swift and negative. Many claimed the land was sacred. They cited native Hawaiian religious belief that the higher you go in elevation — Warnke’s remains are at about 2,600 feet — the closer you get to the waoakua, or gods.
“That land is kapu,” said Cypher, the activist, using the Hawaiian word for “taboo.” “Maybe you might pass through there, but you do not disturb.”
… Hawaiian groups also have expressed concern that the mission will have adverse effects on native plants and animals already endangered because of commercial and military overdevelopment of the islands.
Because of all the objections, the military will execute the Warnke mission — planned for June or July — in a kid-glove manner it never has used before, even in the hundreds of recovery missions it has undertaken in places such as Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia and Laos.
Instead of camping on-site for the several-week excavation, as it does in most places, the forensic team will be airlifted in and out daily. They are taking in far fewer personnel than they customarily use. And rather than sift through the soil there, leaving behind dirt tainted by forensic chemicals, they will haul out about 100 cubic meters of excavated material, all of which will be sifted through at a lab on nearby Hickam Air Force Base to remove the human remains.
The bottom line looks like the recovery mission will go forward. I’m a little concerned that, living on Oahu, I haven’t heard more about this story. Now, I’m more apt to tune into the national news than local, so that may be part of the problem. But that still doesn’t explain why I haven’t seen an update to this story in the local big papers.
Nevertheless, the recovery of the pilot will resolve the issue for the family. Myrtle Tice, 85, sister of Harry Warnke, is waiting for her brother to come home:
In Arizona, Warnke’s sister knows little of this debate. Recently released from the hospital after a bout with pneumonia, she has a Midwestern practicality about her.
“There’s a good chance there’s not much of him to be found up there,” Tice, 85, said candidly. “But if there is something, I want to see it recovered. I want to see it taken care of while I’m, well, still around.”
Tice’s daughter, Patricia Turner, who lives about 50 miles from the family plot in Indiana, will oversee the burial of whatever is found of her uncle.
“My mom stopped flying years ago,” she said. “But I think she would make the trip from Arizona up here for this.”
RLR
Pardon me while I wander down memory lane.
Once upon a time, there was a little country band. They played some grand music in the old style of country and bluegrass. The band was 4 members strong, all girls, and friends to one another. They started off on a street corner of Dallas, Texas, but got gigs playing local bars and country joints, stretching between Houston and Dallas.
The name of the band?
The Dixie Chicks.
Hold on partner… Don’t go throwing things around the room and cussin’.
Before the days of Natalie Maines - the current loud mouth lead singer for the Chicks… [in the words of Yoda]… “there was another.”
In fact, two others.
Robin Lynn Macy, Emily Erwin, Laura Lynch, and Martie Erwin
These are the Dixie Chicks that I grew up with. I met them, years ago, when they played at my college. How could I forget these four girls playing a new single from their next album [at the time]. The single was “Pink Toenails.” (Trust me; no way to forget that one.)
But since those days, we’ve lost Robin, who decided to depart and head off in her own direction.
Then Emily and Martie decided that the band wasn’t hip enough, or maybe they just didn’t like the cowgirl clothes. They bought out Laura’s stake in the band, and basically kicked her out. After all, Laura was only the founding member of the band. If not for her - and her naming the band after a song from another country group called Little Feat - it’s unlikely the Chicks would have ever reached anything more than a local band that never made it out of Dallas.
Whatever your opinion, Laura was “released,” and then - almost immediately - Natalie Maines was hired.
One cannot deny the fact that they have made some number one songs in the country music industry.
I can, however, argue with the political overtones that Natalie spouted off. Saying that she was “embarrased” that President George W. Bush was from Texas drew a very clean line between where the band now stood, and where most conservatives - and fans such as myself - now viewed them: an unpatriotic bunch of rich girls that have forgotten their past and, in some cases, tried to erase it. Natalie and the band tried to backpedal their way out of the situation, explaining that they got caught up in the moment. ( See the Drudge Report regarding an interview in 2003 with Diane Sawyer.)
And now the Dixie Chicks are coming out with a new album, and they’ve returned back to their original attitude that they showed at that London show in ‘03.
The first song to be released off of that album is titled “Not Ready To Make Nice.” As if Natalie had alredy done so. But instead of making a decision to say something and stick to it - wrong as it may have been - now it’s just a matter of putting a finger in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing. It’s like watching Democrats during an election year.
Will I buy the Chicks’ newest album? Hard to say. Having been there from the first album, I’d hate to stop listening now. But at the same time, I’m not interested in being preached to by a group that hasn’t got a clue what the real issues are facing the world today. Certainly they’re welcome to say what they like; freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. Actions, however, speak louder than words. Or music. And their actions tell me that they don’t care about their past. They don’t care about their President. And while they get to enjoy the benefits of this country, they question those that are in the best position to make the best decisions, based on the current state of affairs of this troubled world.
They should enjoy the company of the left wing wackos, who seem to share their same attitudes. Martin Sheen. Tom Cruise. Cindy Sheehan. Richard Belzer. (In fact, anyone from the Hollywood left wing wacko moonbat party.)
For a view into the history that the Chicks would rather you not know about - or at least forget - check out this article from the Dallas Observer back in 1998.
RLR
