Evolution in action
It was either that headline or something about going off half cocked.

A botched kidnapping ended with one of the assailants shooting himself in the groin, police said.

The man had just stuck the gun in his waistband when it fired, shooting him in the left testicle, authorities said. He cringed, causing the gun to fire again and strike him in the left calf, they said.

Nature story with a bad ending
Shelley Batts over at Retrospectacle! points us to this unfolding tragedy in the far north.

Arctic hunters reluctantly gathered their harpoons and rifles Thursday to kill dozens of beluga whales that have been trapped for weeks in saltwater lakes and now have only one small air hole through the ice remaining.

Inuit living near Tuktoyaktuk, in Canada's far Northwest Territories, had hoped the belugas would find their way back to the Beaufort Sea before ice blocked the way out. Many did not make it and they are trapped, having to share a small hole in the ice.

[...]

About 200 beluga were first spotted in early August by hunters in the Husky Lakes area south of Tuktoyaktuk, a string of saltwater inlets north of the Arctic Circle that are linked to the ocean through a 300-meter-wide [980-foot-wide] channel.

There still were about 80 of the white mammals left in the lakes by late October, but the lakes and the channel are quickly freezing over and the whales' air hole shrinking.

Residents were cheering for the belugas to escape, even though each animal could provide enough meat and "muktuk" -- skin and blubber usually served raw -- to last a couple of large families through the winter.

But officials determined that escape was now impossible and the whales would suffocate or starve.

The beluga is nothing more than a big white dolphin. They are white and clean looking that they are quite stunning to see in the wild. My family's cabin in Alaska is at a place called Beluga and we can see dozens of them feeding during the salmon run each summer. Although we call them whales, belugas are small enough for orcas and even polar bears to kill and eat. There are about 35,000 belugas worldwide, but some individual populations, like those in the St. Lawrence River and Cook Inlet have declined to the point where they are considered endangered by biologists.


The article doesn't exactly make clear why the Tuktoyaktuk Inuit are reluctant to kill the belugas. After all, this is free food to them. Leaving aside the spiritual aspect, which is still very real for most Inuit, there is a tragic, practical aspect to this. Most native northern peoples are to some extent still subsistence hunters. They know that next year's food supply depends on enough belugas escaping to breed and return next year. There are fewer than a thousand people in Tuktoyaktuk. This number of whales is more than they can eat. At the most practical level, killing these whales is wasted food.

When I lived in Alaska, I would see this tragedy of a bunch of belugas getting caught in the ice happen every few years. It always made the news. In 1985, 3000 belugas were trapped off the coast of Siberia. Local hunters alerted Moscow and the Soviets dispatched one of their giant ice-breakers to open a path. The noise of the ship frightened the whales, but they were finally induced to follow the ship when the crew played classical music over the ship's loud speakers.

There is nothing unique to the north about that attention. Endangered animals bring out the empathy in people. Two weeks ago the attention of the Dutch was riveted on a group of horses trapped on a tiny island by a heavy winter storm. Animal abuse stories in the local news always generate enraged letters to the editor.

It looks like there will be no dramatic rescue for these belugas. The best that the hunters of Tuktoyaktuk can offer is to stop their suffering.

No more hunger in the USA
"What?" you say. "When did that happen? I'm sure there are still hungry people in the USA." According to the US Department of Agriculture's annual report 35 million people could not provide food for themselves or their families for at least part of last year. In the past, the USDA described that condition as "hungry." This year those people are merely experiencing "low food security" or "very low food security."

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

The USDA said that 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people -- could not put food on the table at least part of last year. Eleven million of them reported going hungry at times. Beginning this year, the USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.

[...]

Three years ago, the USDA asked the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies "to ensure that the measurement methods USDA uses to assess households' access -- or lack of access -- to adequate food and the language used to describe those conditions are conceptually and operationally sound."

Among several recommendations, the panel suggested that the USDA scrap the word hunger, which "should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation."

I know that condition might sound like hunger to you or to me, but we lack the scientific and political sophistication that permeates the Bush administration. These are the same people who dealt with global warming by changing all of those alarming statements that melting ice caps "will" cause coastal flooding into much more comforting statements that melting ice caps "might" cause coastal flooding. These are the same people who make sure the Untied States isn't a torturing country by periodically redefining torture.

The USDA has a goal of cutting the number of people experiencing "low food security" (hunger to you and me) in half by the year 2010, despite the fact that the number has been rising since the Bush administration took over. Maybe they can meet that goal by redefining hunger to "pain equal to or greater than that experienced during major organ failure."

It's been said before, but it always bears repeating: 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a how-to manual.

I have a question
I was reading the New York Times this morning and noticed a story about the Florida prison system. It appears that the state courts have ordered the prisons to give better mental health care to the prisoners, but with the state mental health system overcrowded, the prisons have been slow to do so. Now the court has declared the prison system in contempt and has begun to levy fines.

Here's the question: when one branch of the government fines another, where does the money go? I've never thought about this before. Is there a special fund that fines go to? I now have my co-workers puzzling over this, so if you know the answer, please help us.

Olduvai George is back!
Olduvai George, AKA Carl Buell, is posting again after an eight month absence. It sounds as if his life isn't all beer and skittles yet, but it's in enough balance that he can give us some landscapes, fish, and, my favorite, some big quaternary mammals. Here's hoping things continue to get better and we hear more from him. Go say hi and welcome back.

What's next
I suppose most of us would like a respite from electoral politics for a moment. Unfortunately, nowadays elections never really stop. We have a few months before the serious campaigning begins, but here are a few questions we should keep in the back of our minds until we get sucked back into the maelstrom.

• The Presidency. This one will be the first to shove it's way into our lives. Heck, the pros started handicapping possible contenders two years ago. Santorum and Allen have already been knocked out of the running by their disastrous Senate races. The press narrative is already portraying this as a Clinton and McCain race with the primary anti-Clinton and anti-McCain yet to emerge. When I look at the potential Democratic slate, I see a lot of great vice presidential candidates and no outstanding presidential candidates.
  
• The House. I see two questions here. The first is what will the party do to protect its new members and help their re-election. This is highly dependent on what the final convention wisdom from the election is. If it's the victory of common-sense conservatism, expect a very cautious House and an agenda to the liking of the pundits and DLC. If the lesson is seen as the rejection of Bush and the far right, expect a little more liberal and adventurous House. The other House question is which seats will be the main targets of both parties in two years. We can expect a few Republicans, who don't want to be in the minority, to announce their retirement and we can expect a few more to resign in disgrace as some of the current scandals play out. Other than that, the House is way too early to predict.
  
• The Senate. Since only a third of the Senate runs in each election, we will have a completely different slate next time and it's a small enough group that we can begin handicapping them now. One wild card is who might drop out to run for the Presidency. Kos has handicapped the seats already and I pretty much agree with his evaluation. A Franken / Coleman race in Minnesota is sure to be the most fun. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is probably the most endangered Democrat, John Sununu in New Hampshire the Republican. The only thing that will remove Ted Stevens of Alaska would be retirement or death, and even the latter is iffy since Alaska is one of that select group of states that has elected a dead man to congress (Nick Beigich in 1972). Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is the Republican I most want to see eliminated.
  
• The States. This could be interesting. The Democrats picked up six governorships and a couple hundred state house seats this year. The governors elected in '08 will be the ones in office during the redistricting following the 2001 census. I think both parties are now forward-thinking enough to plan for that.

Besides picking our candidates and races, I think the most valuable thing most of could do is to help shape the conventional wisdom. We blog, we write letters to the editor, we talk up our relatives, neighbors, and co-workers. We should try to take down the straight talking St. McCain and the weak-on-defense Democrats narratives. It's never too soon to start casting doubt on the Republicans we plan to target; broken promises are the most effective critique. And, of course it's never too soon to start talking up the candidates we support.

Outside of actual election campaigns, the best thing any of us could do would be to work to clean up the whole election process and help restore confidence in the system. Get rid of touch-screen systems. Even if no one was cheating, the systems are still crap; they don't work as advertised. Get rid of partisan redistricting and off-decade redistricting in all states (it has to be all states, just reforming our states and letting them cheat in their states is suicide). Reform registration and voting processes to help the largest number of citizens vote, not to disenfranchise the "wrong" voters (according to the party in power).

There's lots to do, but first we need to take a few days off. I'm going to go read about mammoths and Nazi flying saucers.

Here's a ticket I can get behind
I just saw a "Stewart / Colbert '08" bumpersticker.

Fair is fair
If they're not winning, they're whining.

A Mississippi congressman says Rep. Charles Rangel of New York owes the Southern state an apology, and he asks if insults are what Mississippi should expect when Democrats take over leadership in Congress.

Rangel, a Democrat, was quoted in The New York Times on Thursday saying: "Mississippi gets more than their fair share back in federal money, but who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?"

Rangel said he didn't intend to insult the state, but Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Mississippi, issued a sharp statement criticizing the choice of words.

"I hope his remarks are not the kind of insults, slander and defamation that Mississippians will come to expect from the Democrat leadership in Washington, D.C.," Pickering said.

I think the Democrats in congress should give Mississippi the same respect that the Republicans in congress gave to Massachutsetts and San Francisco when they were in charge. It's all about mutual respect.

The real Hindrocket
This just in from Sunderland Today:

AN idiotic prank backfired when a man tried to launch a firework from his bottom in a movie-style stunt.

The dangerous stunt mimicked a shocking scene from the controversial film Jackass: The Movie.

The 22-year-old is understood to be recovering at Sunderland Royal Hospital after sustaining horrific internal injuries.

[...]

A spokeswoman for the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) said: "We received a call at 9.38pm and a crew from our Pallion station was sent out.

"The report stated there was a male who had a firework in his bottom and it was bleeding. He was attended to and taken to Sunderland Royal Hospital."

For more details (because inquiring minds need to know) we turn to The Times:

Witness Daniel Kassim, 16, said: "There were around 40 of us at a bonfire on Dundas Road.

"After the fire had finished we were hanging around setting off fireworks. The lad was saying, ‘This is boring, what can we do?’ He then decided to put a rocket up his backside and set it off.

"Everyone was just laughing and didn’t believe he would do it but he pulled his trousers down, placed the firework and someone lit it.

"It exploded within a few seconds and he fell to the ground. No one thought he was hurt, we all thought it was hilarious.

It's all fun and games until someone blows their ass off.

A spokesman for the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) said the prank could have been fatal.

Douglas McDougal, from the NEAS, said: "We received a call stating there was a male who had a firework in his bottom and it was bleeding.

"He sustained fairly significant injuries in the fact that there's huge damage to that particular area."

Mr McDougal added: "Potentially it could have been a fatal incident.

"There's a lot of major blood vessels round that area, so infection would probably be a huge problem for him.

"And also the body naturally produces methane gas, so combine that with the firework and the exploding effect with methane's flammability - it certainly could have been a lot worse than it really was."

A spokesman for the Firework Association described the bizarre prank as "beyond belief".

Remember kids, Smokey's friends don't play with matches and there's a reason why they call that show Jackass.

Happy news
Rumsfeld has resigned and Bush has nominated Robert Gates to replace him. Gates was the head of the CIA in daddy’s administration. The best thing about this nomination is that he’s not Lieberman. I had feared that Bush might nominate Lieberman to the Defense Department. If Lieberman left the Senate for a cabinet position, the Republican governor of Connecticut would get to name his replacement, returning a seat to the Republicans. This would have given Lieberman the chance to support the war to his heart’s content and screw over the rest of the Democratic Party. But, since Bush nominated someone else, that bit of treachery won’t happen.