Month: October 2004

Someone At NASA Has a Sense of Humor

My wife IMed me a link to this NASA page about tonight’s total lunar eclipse. NASA notes that,

According to folklore, October’s full moon is called the “Hunter’s Moon” or sometimes the “Blood Moon.” It gets its name from hunters who tracked and killed their prey by autumn moonlight, stockpiling food for the winter ahead. You can picture them: silent figures padding through the forest, the moon overhead, pale as a corpse, its cold light betraying the creatures of the wood.

NASA then goes into detail about the lunar eclipse, when the moon will enter the Earth’s shadow, and why the moon appears to be red. And then they add this note,

Warning: While you’re staring at the sky, you might hear footsteps among the trees, the twang of a bow, a desperate scurry to shelter. That’s just your imagination.

Source:

Total Lunar Eclipse. NASA, October 13, 2004.

Seagate Pocket Hard Drive

As regular readers know I’m obssessed with hard drives — show me a new hard drive announcement and I start salivating like a Pavlovian dog — but even I don’t understand what Seagate is thinking with its 5gb Pocket Hard Drive.

It’s not that I don’t like the device. It’s got a 5 gb hard drive in a 3″ diameter enclosure with a nice retractable USB 2.0 cable. But the problem is the darn thing is going to retail for about $200.

Who is going to buy one at that price point? It’s probably overkill for people who are already using those small flash memory USB thumb drives. Seagate says people can use it to store music and photos, but why? For $250 you can get an iPod Mini that will not only store but let you play the music as well, and I’m not sure how many people there are who want to carry around a 5gb drive just for photos.

Looks to me like a product in search of a market.

Source:

Seagate hopes for big splash with small drives. Dinesh C. Sharma , CNET News.Com, October 25, 2004.

France Deports Imam Who Defended Domestic Violence

After a miscue earlier this year, in October France deported Muslim imam Abdelkader Bouziane after Bouziane made comments in defense of domestic violence in a magazine interview.

Bouziane, who has Algerian citizenship, was quoted in Lyon Magazine in early 2004 as saying that “beating your wife is authorized by the Koran.”

Bouziane was arrested in February and deported in April for inciting violence against women. That deportation was overruled by courts, however, and Bouziane was allowed to re-enter the country in May. The government appealed that ruling and on October 4 a higher administrative court ruled that the deportation order was proper, and Bouziane was arrested and put on a flight to Algeria on October 5.

Bouziane’s lawyer told Agence-France Presse that his client disputed the accuracy of the quotes in the interview saying, “Mr. Bouziane contests the passages which caused trouble or infuriated women in France, for he was only making reference to the Koran.”

Mohamed Bechari, the head of the National Federation of French Muslims, told Agence-France Presse that his organization did not approve of the comments attributed to Bouziane,

The associations should sack imams like him. We condemn this type of slip, which shows a fundamentalist reading of the Koranic text that is not part of Islam nor the Muslims in France.

Bechari added that Bouziane’s views do not reflect those of the general population of Muslims in France.

Source:

France deports controversial imam. The BBC, October 5, 2004.

Imam’s claim that wife-beating is Koranic earns him deportation from France. Agence-France Presse, April 21, 2004.

Radical Muslim Cleric, Deported For Backing Wife-Beating, Returns To France. Agence-France Presse, May 22, 2004.

France Deports Muslim Cleric Who ‘Defended Wife-Beating’. Jean-Pierre Benoit, Agence France Presse, October 6, 2004.

Ringling Bros. Vandalized; PETA's Requests Investigation of Circus After Death of Horse

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ appearance in Grand Rapids, Michigan in early October was marked by the unfortunate death of a horse and vandalism of the arena the circus appeared at as well as of circus property.

A 14-year-old palomino gelding died after it was charged by a stallion while the horses were being unloaded from a train. According to the Grand Rapids Press, an autopsy showed that the palomino suffered a ruptured vena cava blood vessel from the stallion’s charge.

That didn’t stop People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals from asking Kent County Animal Control to investigate the death and the circus further for possible animal welfare violations. The agency declined to pursue such an investigation. Sarah Houwerzyl, kennel supervisor for the Kent County Health Department animal shelter, told the Grand Rapid Press,

We can do one [an investigation] if we feel it’s necessary, but I don’t see any reason for it in this situation. It seems to be a very unusual thing and, by and large, circuses take good care of their animals because they know they’re intensely scrutinized and they know the stakes in it.

The Grand Rapids Press noted that Houwerzyl did perform a routine inspection of the animals and found no problems.

After the circus finished its run, Grand Rapids Police officials called in the FBI to investigate acts of vandalism directed at the circus and the Van Andel Arena where the circus performed. According to the Grand Rapids Press, a glass door and two parking booths at the arena were damaged and graffiti was painted on the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The Michigan Independent Media Center site contained a message purportedly from those who committed the vandalism which read,

Insane Asylum
Animals in their Cages
Sleep, Eat, Pace, Eat, Sleep

For a real circus
you look at the audience
Insane Asylum”
Lysandra

In Grand Rapids, MI Saturday October 2nd, a group of concerned humanimals acted instinctively, but not without premeditation, to expose the oppression of once wild beings who are now caged, starved, taunted, rode, beaten and otherwise forced into obedience by the slaveholders that are the circus and its trainers.

The tired old tactics of humanitarian pacifism has lost its bite, that is why we chose property destruction, because it hurts. You can’t argue naturalness, respect and compassion to those whose heart is a wallet and the depth of their conscience is synonymous with the depth of their bank accounts. Bite deep, lock your jaw and they might feel entrapped.

We backed up toilets with sponge, superglued locks, etched circus truck windows, and smashed windows in Van Andel, and painted circus traincars. All agents in animal imprisonment and torture are appropriate targets and Van Andel is no exception. Maybe they will think twice before hosting a violent circus of slaves.

Sources:

GRPD and FBI investigating circus vandalism case. Wood TV 8, October 2004.

Animal control officials see no abuse in circus horse’s death. Nate Reens and Sue Merrell, The Grand Rapids Press, October 2, 2004.

USDA Files Complaint Against University of California at San Francisco Over Treatment of Animals

U.S. Department of Agriculture filed a complaint against the University of California at San Francisco in late August, charging the university with at least 60 violations of the Animal Welfare Act between 2001 and 2003.

In its 18 page complaint, the USDA charges ranged from failing to provide post-operative anesthesia to failing to properly clean cages. A UCSF spokesman told the San Francisco Chronicle that the complaint appeared to be a compilation of citations the university had received during its biannual USDA inspections.

The UCSF filed a response to the complaint in October denying almost all of the charges made by the USDA. In a press release, the UCSF said,

The University questions the timing of the Complaint, which is a compilation of citations issued by a local USDA inspector during inspections at UCSF between May 2001 and February 2003 — nearly two, to three-and-a-half-years, ago. All of the allegations were addressed by UCSF at the time and, where appropriate, remedial measures were implemented. Corrective actions were reported back to the USDA or verified by the USDA at its subsequent inspection. The USDA has so far failed to explain why it has issued an aggregate Complaint at this time.

The University notes that the number of allegations contained in the USDA Complaint is misleading. The local inspector reported 26 citations for the May 2001-Feb. 2003 period. However, the Complaint, issued from Washington, DC, was structured in such a way that most of the citations were restated multiple times, under different categories, raising the total number of allegations to 61.

In its report on the legal action, The San Francisco Chronicle, repeated a false claim by In Defense of Animals that the USDA charged UCSF with performing a craniotomy on a primate without using anesthesia. In fact, the complaint alleges that the primates were not given post-operative analgesics. The UCSF responded to that particular complaint by claiming that post-operative analgesics were only withheld for clinical reasons.

The full complaint by the USDA can be read here (PDF).

Sources:

U.S. agency cites UCSF for abuses of animals. Julian Guthrie, San Francisco Chronicle, September 15, 2004.

USDA files animal welfare charges against leading research facility. Press Release, In Defense of Animals, September 15, 2004.