Archive for April 15th, 2007
Jackie Robinson
April 15th, 2007
Sixty years ago today Jackie Robinson became a Brooklyn Dodger. Today, George Will at Townhall.com pens a great tribute to this courageous man.
No one had trouble spotting the black man in the Dodgers’ white home uniform when he trotted out to play first base at Ebbets Field. Suddenly, only 399, not 400, major league players were white. Which is why 42 is the only number permanently retired by every team.
Only 25,623 fans went to the game on April 15, 1947 — 4,000 fewer than on opening day 1946 and 6,000 fewer than the ballpark’s capacity. Perhaps some white fans were wary of being with so many blacks. Usually blacks were no more than 10 percent of Dodger crowds but on this day they may have been 60 percent.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s middle name was homage to the president who said “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Robinson’s deeds spoke loudly. His stick weighed 34 ounces, which was enough.
Enjoy!
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What Would Have Been The Public Reaction If It Were a Koran?
April 15th, 2007
This appears to have happened in Minnesota.
A Mankato jail guard has been suspended after allegedly thumping an inmate with a Bible.
James Lee Sheppard, 56, has been charged with two gross misdemeanors for allegedly swatting a Blue Earth County Jail inmate with the book, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against steel bars on Feb. 8, according to the criminal complaint.
A video shows a guard entering the cell of inmate Jeremy Hansen, 26. The guard then takes Hansen’s Bible and strikes him in the side of the face with the book. The two exchange words as the guard walks away, said Mankato Police Officer Allen Schmidt who watched the video.
Are we going to see demonstrations by the peace activists because this man was hit in the face with his own Bible? It’s at least as holy to some of us as the Koran is to the Muslims.
Wasn’t this an insult to the prisoner too? It happened on Feb. 8 and we are just now hearing about it.
Where are the people claiming torture?
That’s what I thought.
How Much Is The Franchise Fee?
April 15th, 2007
First we had Al Qaeda, headquartered in Afghanistan, then we found out about Al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI, there is Al Qaeda in the Philippines, Al Qaeda in Bali,and now we have the official new Al Qaeda franchise, Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa, which seems to be headquartered in Algiers or Casablanca.
CASABLANCA, Morocco — Two brothers blew themselves up outside American offices yesterday, marking the third terrorist attack since Tuesday in what bears the hallmarks of a new al Qaeda campaign in North Africa.
The attack yesterday, which injured one woman, followed the self-inflicted deaths of three militants in Casablanca on Tuesday and a pair of suicide car bombings Wednesday in neighboring Algeria that killed 33 persons.
The U.S. Embassy in Algeria warned Americans on Friday to be on guard against further attacks.
The bombings have stoked new fears of Islamic extremism in the two counties, both of which have allied themselves with the United States in its fight against terrorism.
But the attacks yesterday — one just outside an American cultural center and the other about 200 yards from the U.S. Consulate in Casablanca, were the first to be directed against obvious American targets.
The blasts occurred about 20 seconds apart. The bombers were identified as Mohammed Maha, who was born in 1975 and had no previous record, and his brother, Omar Maha, who was born in 1984 and was wanted in connection with Tuesday’s explosions.
Police arrested a third bomber as he tried to flee the scene in a fashionable district of the port city.
“He threw down his explosives belt and ran away. Police chased him and caught him,” said the owner of a coffee shop in the neighborhood, who declined to be identified.
A security official told the Reuters news agency that police subsequently arrested the leaders of the group behind the explosions yesterday and Tuesday.
In the earlier incident, three would-be bombers killed themselves in a poor neighborhood of Casablanca after police raided a safe house and fatally shot a fourth suspect, setting off their explosives so as not to be captured alive.
A senior police source said yesterday’s bombers clearly intended to attack the U.S. buildings. He said the two could not get closer to the buildings because of security fortifications.
On Wednesday, 33 persons were killed and more than 200 were injured in suicide car bombings in Algiers that targeted the prime minister’s office and a police station.
With all these Al Qaeda franchises popping up faster than McDonalds I wonder how low the franchise fee is. It appears to be the loss of a couple of bombers and as many civilians as they can get.
Pretty soon we’ll have an Al Qaeda in North America franchise and they’ll show themselves by doing something spectacularly horrible on our continent. Oh, they already did on Sept. 11, 2001.
More About Bees
April 15th, 2007
Yesterday I posted this Omega Letter post about bees disappearing mysteriously and the effect this could have on our food supply.
Today I refer you to this article from the Independent in the UK, which postulates the problem of the disappearing bee colonies may be caused by radiation given off by mobile phones.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: “I am convinced the possibility is real.”
Until I read the two articles I didn’t realize how important bees are in our food chain. I guess I always thought of them as something I wanted to stay away from because I didn’t want to get stung, but I never thought of them pollinating anything but flowers, if I thought about it at all.
My husband and I each have a cell phone. To show you how much we use them we have 450 minutes we share monthly. We may use 30-45 minutes a month between us on a heavy month.
Naturally, if we are on a trip, we use them more because we don’t have to worry about long-distance charges. When we took a cruise in Hawaii we added minutes for that month so we could call our children and grandchildren on the mainland, but we cut back to our 450 shared minutes after the trip.
It is a pet peeve of mine to see someone in a doctor’s office, store or any other public place walking around with a cell phone while talking loudly enough it’s difficult not to hear what they are saying.
I prefer a land line to a cell phone and use my cell only when necessary.
Now, research is beginning to show cell phones may be more of a nuisance than just the examples I’ve given.
