CBS3.com reports that a woman dumped by a lion in Second Life tried to kidnap the real life individual behind the offending game avatar armed with a taser, a BB gun, and duct tape.

A woman wanted in the bizarrely complicated attempted kidnapping of her former virtual boyfriend has been apprehended after a multi-state search.

New Castle County Police said 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan of North Carolina was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Delaware came to an end.

The pair apparently met online in “Second Life.” A virtual relationship began between the victim, whose character was a Lion, and Jerrigan, whose online persona was said to be a virtual woman.

When the two met in reality several months ago, police said the victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

In the beginning of August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. While she was unsuccessful, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim’s Delaware address.

Police said Jernigan posed as a postal worker in order to locate the victim’s new address, as he had recently moved. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

With her dog Gogi in tow, investigators said Jernigan cut and removed a screened window in order to enter her virtual ex’s apartment.

When the victim arrived home on Thursday, August 21, he told police he saw someone pointing an object at his chest that was projecting a laser beam. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted police.

Officers arriving at the scene discovered a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a Taser and a BB gun as well as the suspect’s dog.

Police said Jernigan had bound her dog Gogi with duct tape and put him in the bathroom as he was making too much noise. The dog was said to be uninjured, but the SPCA is looking into possible charges of animal cruelty.

Mac may be humiliating poor old PC in those amusing television commercials, but both of them have been caught napping by the penguin in the high tech world of special effects, Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols reports at ComputerWorld.

While top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it’s on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, “In the film industry, Linux has won. It’s running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects.”

Rowe’s not just being a Linux booster. It’s the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

The really short version for why this is so comes down to Linux clustering enables you to put massive computational firepower into rendering 2D and 3D images. It’s ironic. While getting the most out of NVIDIA and ATI graphic cards on a Linux desktop is still a pain and there’s always some trouble dealing with proprietary video formats on Linux, the top animated and FX-heavy videos usually have their start on Linux systems.

Specifically, most photo-realistic special effects are created with programs using Pixar’s RISpec (RenderMan Interface Specification) compliant programs. RISpec is an extremely detailed open-standard set of APIs (application program interfaces) for 3D graphics rendering programs. To be more precise, RISpec isn’t quite an open standard. While Pixar, the animation giant owned by Disney, has published the specifications for all to use, and no longer even requires a no-charge license to create a RISpec-compliant rendering program, Pixar doesn’t go out of its way to specify exactly how developers can, or can’t use RISpec.

That said, there are open-source RISpec-compliant programs like Pixie and other rendering programs such as Blender, which can be used as a source for RISpec software. Pixar’s RenderMan software suite itself, while it relies on Linux in most animation and FX shops, is unlikely ever to be open-sourced.

So, while you can’t point to animation and special effects software as a major win for open-source software, there is absolutely no doubt that every time you gasp at a breath-taking escape by Indy or grin at a particularly clever visual bit of fun in Ratatouille, you’re appreciating the power of Linux.

Effective anti-Obama ad highlighting his Bill Ayers connection. Now running in Virginia.

1:01 video

Jeff Schreiber reports:

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States.

Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. According to Berg, he filed the suit–just days before the DNC is to hold its nominating convention in Denver–for the health of the Democratic Party.

“I filed this action at this time,” Berg stated, “to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated.”.

Berg cited a number of unanswered questions regarding the Illinois senator’s background, and in today’s lawsuit maintained that Sen. Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. Berg also cites what he calls “dual loyalties” due to his citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia.

Even if Sen. Obama can prove his U.S. citizenship, Berg stated, citing the senator’s use of a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii verified as a forgery by three independent document forensic experts, the issue of “multi-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegiance to other countries” remains on the table.

In the lawsuit, Berg states that Sen. Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as the senator maintains. Before giving birth, according to the lawsuit, Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, “apparently a normal restriction to avoid births during a flight.” As Sen. Obama’s own paternal grandmother, half-brother and half-sister have also claimed, Berg maintains that Stanley Ann Dunham–Obama’s mother–gave birth to little Barack in Kenya and subsequently flew to Hawaii to register the birth. …

Should Sen. Obama truly have been born in Kenya, Berg writes, the laws on the books at the time of his birth hold that U.S. citizenship may only pass to a child born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent and non-citizen parent if the former was at least 19 years of age. Sen. Obama’s mother was only 18 at the time. Therefore, because U.S. citizenship could not legally be passed on to him, Obama could not be registered as a “natural born” citizen and would therefore be ineligible to seek the presidency pursuant to Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

Moreover, even if Sen. Obama could have somehow been deemed “natural born,” that citizenship was lost in or around 1967 when he and his mother took up residency in Indonesia, where Stanley Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen. Berg also states that he possesses copies of Sen. Obama’s registration to Fransiskus Assisi School In Jakarta, Indonesia which clearly show that he was registered under the name “Barry Soetoro” and his citizenship listed as Indonesian.

The Hawaiian birth certificate, Berg says, is a forgery. In the suit, the attorney states that the birth certificate on record is a forgery, has been identified as such by three independent document forensic experts, and actually belonged to Maya Kasandra Soetoro, Sen. Obama’s half-sister.

Read the whole thing.

I doubt that this lawsuit will succeed, or that Barack Hussein Obama will be proven to have been born in Kenya or to have lost his citizenship via adoption by Mr. Soetero, but I would not be prepared to dismiss completely the possibility of there being substance in any of these contentions. Barack Obama is a peculiar candidate of very unusual background, and is remarkably little known. We have no Office of Eligibility for Public Office in the United States which routinely investigates the qualification of candidates with respect to citizenship. Frankly, with respect to many offices, I doubt that anyone would care very much. In the case of the Presidency, though, questions about major candidates with a serious possibility of being elected really should be investigated and resolved by impartial and responsible authorities.

Barack Obama is almost certainly going to be found to be, yes, Virginia, really a US citizen, but I tend to think American voters would prefer to know for sure.

Maybe he’ll defend you against Islamic terrorists

The Telegraph reports that the British Legion was obliged to cancel plans for an annual Veterans Day Parade when the Doncaster Town Council claimed it lacked “the amenities.” Imagine their surprise when Doncaster hosted its first Gay Pride Parade last Sunday.

Obama says McCain forgot how many houses he owns, and he owns seven houses.

0:30 video

McCain replies mentioning Antoin Rezko assisting Obama buy his house:

0:30 video

Actually, it’s John McCain’s wife and her family trusts which own 8, not 7, residences, of which some are only condos used by her children and by an elderly relative.

John McCain spent five years in a Vietnamese prison cell undergoing torture. When he got out, he came home and married the proverbial passionate rich blonde whose father owned a beer distributorship. The universe has a way of seeing to it that things even out.

If I were Barack Obama, and I’d acquired a $1.65 million mansion with the aid of a sinister figure recently convicted for political corruption, I’d stay away from discussing houses.

Paul Collins at Stale tries some recipes from Vincent Price (Y 1933)’s 1956 cookbook.

My wife and I—she being the Mary to my Vincent—began our day of all-Price cooking with one of his great culinary loves: pancakes. They’d already come a long way from the days of a 1935 cookbook like Someone to Dinner, where the recipe for crêpes Savannah reads, in full, “Pancakes, the ordinary size, served with hot maple syrup.” No such fainthearted stuff for Vincent: The name Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge alone murders all culinary competitors. You wrap sautéed bananas into crêpes, vigorously stab strips of bacon atop them, and flambé it all in banana liqueur. It’s a dish that rewards sleepy incompetence: If you don’t flambé it properly, the pancakes immediately soak up copious amounts of hooch, leaving you woozily imitating lines from The Abominable Dr. Phibes while you twirl a villainous moustache and choose your victims for lunch.

Amusingly enough, we’ve got a sinister bottle of banana cordial (inherited from Karen’s mother) right here in the house. It is certainly an appropriate elixir for Price-ian crêpe preparation. I often hear it whispering, whispering very softly, to me as I pass the liquor cabinet.

What’s that? What is it saying?

It wants me to show Karen’s new basset hound the special amontillado in the basement?

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers (Y 1975).

Barack Obama is campaigning on the slogan: Yes, We Can. But, as Thomas Lifson points out, in his role as head of the Annenberg educational foundation in Chicago, Obama had a chance to prove that he could effectuate change in a failing public school system by enfusing money into the system intelligently. He failed.

Barack Obama’s most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project’s own final report. …

The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.

Meanwhile, so unsavory were Obama’s associations with extreme radicals (and former revolutionaries) Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky that a cover-up, denying media access to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records has been making headlines.

Earlier “Ayers Connection” posting here.

The Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, The Swamp, and even the news-agency-not-to-be-named are all commenting sardonically on the over-up.

The wraps are going to come off. The beans are going to be spilled. What Thomas Lifson calls “the cloak of media invisibility” is beginning to lift.

Rush Limbaugh explains exactly how the democrat party may very possibly have snatched for itself another opportunity for landslide defeat by nominating a leftwing radical with little more than an undistinguished record as a State Senator from a safe-seat minority district for the Presidency on the basis of a single speech.

It is striking how unqualified [Sen. Barack] Obama is and, and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh went on to say: “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them.

It is almost that simple. Obama’s candidacy, of course, also benefited from his personal ability to operate as a pop culture celebrity and his consequent utility as a fashion statement. Alas! he is rapidly becoming so last week. But, there is the consolation, that while while the Obama craze lasted, so many people could be proud of America for the first time.

Former State Representative (54th District Texas, R) Dr. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp testifies before a Senate Committee including Chuck Schumer to her own tragic experience with the consequences of gun control restrictions on law-abiding citizens carrying concealed weapons, and concludes by identifying the most important basis for the Constitutional right of citizens to keep and bear arms.

5:23 video

Hat tip to Rich Duff.

J.R. Dunn, at America Thinker, identifies Obama’s fatal flaw.

Barack Obama will be defeated. Seriously and convincingly defeated. Not due to racism, not due to the forces of reaction, not even due to Karl Rove sending out mind rays over the national cable system. He will lose for one reason above all, one that has been overlooked in any analysis that I’ve yet seen. Barack Obama will lose because he is a flake.

I’m using the term in its generally accepted sense. A flake is not only a screwup, but someone who truly excels in making bizarre errors and creating incredibly convoluted disasters. A flake is a “fool with energy”, as the Russian proverb puts it. …

Here’s a young man who graduated from Columbia with high marks, with a choice of positions anywhere in the country. He comes from a state generally held to be a close match to Paradise. One, furthermore, that can be characterized as the most successful multiracial society in the world, with harmonious relations not only between whites and blacks, but also Japanese-Americans and native Hawaiians as well. To top it off, a state controlled in large part by a smoothly-functioning Democratic machine. So where does he choose to go?

To Chicago. One of the windiest, coldest, most brutal cities in the country. One that is also infinitely corrupt in a sense that Hawaii is not. One that remains one of the most racist large cities in the U.S. (Cicero, Al Capone’s old stomping grounds, a suburb that is effectively part of the city, is completely segregated to this day.) It would be nice to learn which of these aspects most attracted young Obama to the city. But if you’d asked at the beginning of the campaign, you’d still be waiting.

And what does he do when he reaches the city? Why, he joins a cult. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church has been turned inside out since the videotaped sermons appeared early this year, without anyone ever quite explaining exactly what Obama was thinking of when he joined up in the first place. Street cred, so it’s claimed. But there are a plethora of black churches that would have provided him that without the taint of demented racism that Wright’s church offered. …

Back at school, Obama got himself named editor of the Harvard Law Review. This is a signal achievement, no question about it. The kind of thing that would be mentioned about a person for the rest of his life, as has been the case with Obama. But then… he writes nothing for the journal.

Now, let’s get this straight: here we have one of the leading university law journals in the country, one widely cited and read. Entire careers in legal analysis and scholarship have been founded on appearances in the Review, including some that have led to the highest courts in the country. Yet here’s an individual who, as editor, could easily place his own work in the journal — standard practice, nothing at all wrong with it. But he fails to do so. And the explanation? There’s none that I’ve heard. We can go even farther than that, to say that there is no explanation that makes the least rational sense.

We follow Obama down to Springfield, where as a state legislator, he voted “present” over 120 times. What this means, as far as I’ve been able to discover, is that he voted “present” nearly as much as he voted “yes” or “no”. ..

We turn eagerly to learn what his term in the U.S. Senate will reveal, only to be disappointed. But it’s not surprising, really. After all, he was only there for 143 days.

And there lies one of the keys to Obama’s rise. David Brooks pointed out in a recent New York Times column that Obama spent too little time in any of his positions to make an impact one way or another. This is what saved him from the normal fate of the flake: he was never around long enough for his errors and strange behavior to catch up with him.

There’s more truth than poetry here, I suspect.

Surprise, surprise.

Last week’s story of the discovery of a deceased Sasquatch in northern Georgia has been debunked. When the block of ice enclosing the alleged body was melted, a rubber Bigfoot suit emerged. California Bigfoot “researchers” claimed they had been deceived and were disappointed. George’s Clayton County Police said they were going to fire the police officer involved.

An unnamed news agency reports.

You can buy your identical Sasquatch suit.

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Original story.