Russian freighter Arctic Sea

The world recently witnessed a real life Hunt for the Red October as Russia scrambled air and naval forces, and even deployed satellites, in a intensive search for the Arctic Sea, a perfectly ordinary freighter which had departed Kaliningrad carrying a cargo of timber destined for Algeria, and was hijacked in the Baltic by an unknown group of armed men.

ABCNews:

The hijackers of a cargo ship that disappeared off the coast of France threatened to blow it up if their ransom demands were not met, Russian news agencies said.

Russia has arrested eight people on suspicion of hijacking the Arctic Sea off the Swedish coast and sailing it to the Atlantic Ocean, ending weeks of silence about the fate of a ship which has intrigued European maritime authorities.

Limited information from Russian officials has failed to satisfy sceptics (sic) who voiced doubts about whether the piracy actually took place or was a convenient cover story to conceal a possible secret cargo of arms or nuclear material. …

The Maltese-registered, Russian-crewed vessel and its $1.3 million cargo of timber disappeared from radar screens three weeks ago, prompting speculation ranging from an attack by an organised crime gang to a top-secret spy mission.

The Malta Maritime Authority said on Tuesday, without elaborating, that the Arctic Sea had “never really disappeared”, a comment which increased speculation that security services might have been involved in the affair.

Russia has said the eight detainees were citizens of Estonia, Latvia and Russia who on July 24 boarded the ship, forced the crew to change route and turned off its navigation equipment.

After heading through the English Channel in late July, radio contact was lost and the 4,000-tonne ship did not deliver its cargo to the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4.

The Russian navy found the missing ship on Monday in the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Verde.

The official version of events was questioned by Yulia Latynina, a leading Russian opposition journalist and commentator.

“The Arctic Sea was carrying something, not timber and not from Finland, that necessitated some major work on the ship,” she wrote in the Moscow Times newspaper on Wednesday.

During two weeks of repair works in the Russian port of Kaliningrad just before the voyage, the ship’s bulkhead was dismantled so something very large could be loaded, she wrote.

“To put it plainly: The Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and they were caught with it,” she said.

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CS Monitor:

Political analysts and maritime security experts remain skeptical that the hijackers were merely interested in the crew or the ship’s cargo – a load of lumber bound for Algeria.

That bulky, low-value cargo was worth about $1.8 million, which makes the danger and expense of a takeover hardly seem worth it. “Hijacking lumber … it’s sort of like counterfeiting one dollar bills,” says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a provider of defense and intelligence information. Mr. Pike calls the Arctic Sea incident an “out-of-pattern hijacking.”

Rather awful shirts.

The Boston Globe describes this as old news, but I had not heard. Harvard University is licensing its name to a division of Wearwolf Group for use in labeling a line of men’s clothing.

The clothing line, to be labeled “Harvard Yard” will obviously be marketed to people who are unaware of the existence of J. Press, the Andover Shop, and Brooks Brothers. They will think they will be dressing like preppies attending Harvard, but they will really be dressing in accordance with the idea some gay guys who didn’t go to college at all have of how men at Harvard should dress.

Is Harvard really so badly off that they need to sell their name to get money for scholarships? Couldn’t they just get Drew Faust and some of their female faculty out there in bikinis doing car washes?

The Harvard Yard line will arrive in stores next spring with shirts selling for $160 and up, pants starting at $195, and blazers selling for $495. Eventually the company plans to add women’s wear to the mix. None of the Harvard Yard clothing actually bears a Harvard logo. The clothes have subtle touches to show their pedigree, such as crimson stitching around buttonholes. Shirts, sweaters, and jackets are also named for buildings on campus and streets in Cambridge.

Jim the Realtor from California describes a house being offered in Brooklyn.

Occupying what used to be a driveway, it’s a 1br/1ba home on a parcel of land 7.25 feet wide and 113.67 feet long. The interior area is just under 300 square feet: …ONLY $479,900!

I can remember a similar packing crate sort of residence located on top of Belmont Heights in San Francisco, in need of complete renovation, selling to a surgeon for $450,000 a few years ago.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Correction, August 6:
John brings to my attention in his comment a Daily News story debunking all this:

The house is actually in Toronto, and the price is only $179,000.

It was probably built in Kenya, too.

In Santa Cruz, California (where people have a strong tendency to be stoned), a woman makes the kinds of public policy proposals that cause one to wonder how soon she will be elected governor of the left coast state.

2:34 video

Hat tip to Scott Drum.

Litigation explosion’s latest victim

This news item from the LA Times makes it clear that adoption of sharia law by western jurisdictions will only produce an increase in litigation in new and interesting ways.

A family in Saudi Arabia has filed suit in a religious court against an unnamed genie, or jinn, who sounds most unpleasant: It steals cellphones, whispers threats and occasionally flings stones.

“We began to hear strange sounds,” a family member who requested anonymity told the Saudi daily Al Watan. “At first we did not take it seriously, but then stranger things started to happen, and the children got particularly scared when the genie started throwing stones.”

The genie — or genies — had demands: “A woman spoke to me first, and then a man. They said we should get out of the house,” said the family member, adding that his clan fled their home near the city of Medina. …

Sheikh Amr Al Salmi, head of the local Sharia court, said he will investigate the family’s claims that it has been harassed for two years: “We have to look into this case and verify its truthfulness despite the difficulty of
its consideration,” he told the Saudi daily. “What is interesting is that the complaint has come from every member of the family, and not just one.”

42 year old Tatiata Kozhevnikova has made her mark in the Guinness Book of Records by lifting 14 k. (30.8 lbs.) without using her hands.

News Bizarre

Daily Loaf

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Some kind of tip to Ed Modestino.

Contemporary Britain is competing very seriously with California in the contest for the best nonsensical ideas applied in daily life.

Newcastle’s onebestway, a small design and marketing firm facing tough economic times, took serious steps to deal with the crisis. It hired a swami, excuse me! a business psychologist, to help in improving morale.

The Telegraph reports:

David Taylor, a business psychologist, told workers at design and marketing onebestway, in Newcastle upon Tyne, that a Naked Friday idea would boost their team spirit.

He was called in to help the firm after six staff members were forced into taking redundancies at the start of the credit crunch.

Mr Taylor told them that, by stripping off their clothes, staff could also strip away inhibitions and talk to each other more openly and honestly.

He said: “Inviting an organisation to go naked is the most extreme technique I’ve used. It may seem weird but it works. It’s the ultimate expression of trust in yourself and each other.”

Despite some initial reluctance, nearly all the staff took off all their clothes – except for one man, who wore a posing pouch, and one of two female workers, who kept on black underwear.

Sam Jackson, 23, the house manager, was the only woman to go fully naked. She said: “It was brilliant. Now that we’ve seen each other naked, there are no barriers.

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The Daily Mail reports that careful preparations had to be made, but assures us that the experiment proved a grand success.

During the week leading up to the strip-off, the workers were encouraged to photocopy parts of their bodies to make them more confident about themselves.

A nude model was also brought in for the workers to sketch and talk to.

Sam added: ‘It took a week of David being in the office for us to build up courage. The first few steps were very nerve-wracking, but once I got to my desk and got used to it, I felt totally comfortable.

‘It was emotional but we found we were much more able to talk to each other honestly – and have been since. The company

Managing Director Mike Owen, 40, said: ‘We’re either brave or mad. But I did tell everyone they didn’t have to do it -only if it felt right.’

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Naked Office, a television program which filmed all this, will be aired July 9th on Virgin1.

When a BMW Z4 hits a deer at 140 mph (225.3 kph), this is what happens.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Wouldn’t a poison dart from a blow gun be more to the point? Shouldn’t they be asking to be allowed to shrink Jared Diamond’s head?

New York Post:

Two New Guinea tribesmen described by The New Yorker magazine as vengeful, bloodthirsty killers are settling their score with the venerable publication the nonviolent, American way: with a lawsuit. …

In an April 21, 2008, article on blood feuds by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond… a hired thug shot Isum Mandingo… in the back with an arrow, leaving him paralyzed and in a wheelchair. …

When media watchdog group stinkyjournalism.org sent a team of fact-checkers to New Guinea to check the article’s veracity, they found Mandingo, who disputed reports of his paralysis by walking on his own two feet.

“No matter what The New Yorker says and what Diamond says, the fact is that he is not paralyzed and is not confined to a wheelchair,” said Rhonda Shearer, the site’s founder.

“It seems The New Yorker was so naive as to think that this article would not reach these supposedly primitive people in New Guinea.” …

Mandingo told the researchers he had no involvement in any blood feuds. In fact, he’s a peace officer in his village. Neither Diamond nor the magazine reached out to him for confirmation, he said.

The entire article is “untrue,” Mandingo told the group.

Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall stage before Obama

Georgetown University complied with a White House request to cover up the IHS on a pediment on the stage of the university’s Gaston Hall.

IHS is a monogram of the Holy Name of Jesus Christ and appears in the seal of the Jesuit Order which founded and operates Georgetown University.

News reports fail to indicate whether Georgetown was asked to cover up mirrors and crucifixes as well.

CNS

Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall stage prepared for Barack Obama

Erika Eiffel cheating on tower with bridge. (Get a room!)

Same sex marriage was recently legalized in Iowa and Vermont. Why stop there? If the definition and purpose of marriage can be modified in accordance with the tides of current political fashion to accommodate non-reproductive relationships formerly regarded as perverse, there is no reason beyond mere size of constituency to deny happiness and fulfillment to the objectophilic, to people like Erika La Tour Eiffel whose soulmate is a certain tower in Paris which has proven to be a complaisant spouse turning a blind window to the young lady’s special bond with a certain bridge in San Francisco.

Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale web-site

John Tyler (1790-1862), 10th President 1841-1845

Mark Krikorian, at the Corner at National Review Online, provides the astonishing news that not one, but two, grandsons of President John Tyler, born 1790, are living today in 2009.