Silflay Hraka

News-Record.com - Greensboro, North Carolina: Sports: Pack students turn seats into restroom

The student sections at college football games are usually a little unruly, but student leaders at N.C. State just want the urinating to stop.

“They didn’t want to leave the section to go to the bathroom,” student body president Will Quick said. Complaints about urinating and vomiting in the stands soon followed.

First Images of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Cabin - Gizmodo.

Link via Defense Tech.

I went looking for more photos on VirginGalactic.com, but the site is over-designed to the point of uselessness.

Thieves take N.C. DMV computer.

Heard this on the radio this morning and it was the first headline greeting me at work today. A computer with the records of 16,000 drivers was taken from the DMV office in Louisburg, NC earlier this month. Louisburg is my hometown and my parents still live there. I’m sure they are affected and it’s possible that I and my siblings are also affected.

This doesn’t generate great good will with me towards my hometown or anyone who might steal equipment like that. I want to know why the computer equipment wasn’t secured in better fashion for one and I damn sure want to know how the investigation is going. I don’t worry so much about my own information as I already have a fraud alert in place at the various credit agencies. I’m paranoid that way. But I do worry about my folks. They’re old people and could be taken advantage of easily.

I mean, hell, they still rent their rotary phone from the phone company.

He’brew turns 10.

I’d buy a ticket.

The campaign director for Amendment 44, a statewide ballot measure seeking to legalize marijuana use for adults, on Tuesday threw down the bong . . . er . . . gauntlet to Mayor John Hickenlooper and Pete Coors.

Tvert argues that Hickenlooper is hypocritical for making his fortune by opening Wynkoop Brewing Co. and allowing the Great American Beer Festival to be held in Denver but opposing a city ballot measure that sought to legalize pot use within the city limits. That ballot measure passed.

Won’t work. I’d bet both men have a well developed tolerance for thier drugs of choice. What they need to do is switch beer for pot, then go head to head. I’m sure the results would be much more amusing.

U.S.: Afghan attacks way up since truce - Yahoo! News

The headline to the story above immediately suggests that Pakistan’s truce with Pashtun tribes in the Waziristan area is a bad thing. Now that the tribesman no longer have to worry about harassment from Pakistani troops, they are free to launch attacks across the border with Afghanistan.

I initially thought that a negative and then I started to think about it. I am not so sure it is a bad thing and might even be a good thing. The first positive is that it eases some of the pressure on erstwhile American ally Pervez Musharraf. I know it doesn’t always look like he’s on our side but it could be worse. Pakistan could have a government in place that actively, overtly supports Al Qaeda. Calling a ceasefire with border-area tribesman may allow Musharraf to hang on a while longer.

The second positive is that these cross-border attacks finally bring the bad guys out in the open where they can be hit. When they were hiding in Pakistan, they were practically untouchable, at least by NATO and Afghan troops. Pakistani troops may have been in the area but you have to guess that they probably weren’t 100 percent motivated to take on these rebels, mainly because some troops may have had split loyalties or may have been sympathetic to the rebels.

Now that the bad guys are crossing the border into Afghanistan, there are no political considerations when it comes to taking them out. They can be shot at, bombed, killed and captured without anyone raising an eyebrow. The attacks may have increased in number, but that might be good in the long run. It gives the U.S. and its allies an opportunity to thin the herd and kill some of its enemies. Only time will tell if we’re able to kill enough of them to make a difference.

New rules for snowy grouper, a deep-water species caught by long-line fisherman off the NC coast go into effect on October 23rd. These are powerful rules, so puissant that they have apparently reached back in time and idled a fishery before they even go into effect.

A line of fishing boats stood empty one recent sunny morning at the dock of one of Hatteras Village’s last fish houses, each vessel swaying gently on the swells of the Pamlico Sound, moored for want of work.

No one can say what will happen to the boats.

Not when life-altering federal rules changes can alter the very fabric of space and time, obviously. But enough of the lazy journalism.

The new rules would affect a subset of fishermen throughout North Carolina, including those who hunt for vermillion snapper and black sea bass. But perhaps no group will be hit as hard as the snowy grouper fishermen who make their living out of Hatteras.

The rule - known as Amendment 13C - would eventually prohibit fishermen from catching more than 100 pounds of snowy grouper per trip. That could mean just three or four fish - down from a current trip limit of 2,500 pounds.

That’s a big reduction, but stocks of snowy grouper are considered overfished, as are many of the other species targeted by the rules change, so the change itself shouldn’t come as much of a shock, though the degree might be, and from a recreational fisherman’s perspective, the change might be seen as too little, too late, though there will always be debate about numbers.

Rhode said snowy grouper, an offshore reef fish, “are gone” and the fishery is almost non-existent. Snowy grouper are concentrated in deep water, as much as 600 feet, and commercial operators used “bandit” (heavy electric) reels to fish for them.

Rhode said because snowies are so difficult to fish for, he suspects data about their actual numbers may be shaky — there may be more snowy grouper than show up in commercial and recreational catches.

Sucks to be a commercial fisherman nowadays, but to be one requires facing the fact that federal regulations are going to err on the side of the fish stocks for the indefinite future. Not too would increase the chance that other fisheries would go the way of the cod fishery, and a slow decline in comemrcial fisherman is far better than throwing them all out of work at once.

Welcome to version 3.0 of the Carnival of the Vanities. It’s been much rumored that the 209th edition of CoTV would be its last. I’m happy to say that isn’t the case. In the two weeks since that annoucement was made and I made the offer to continue the Carnival, I have received 26 entries for this edition. After sifting through all the entries, I was quickly able to determine that maybe 12 of those weren’t suitable for CoTV. Most of those 12 were submitted through Blog Carnival and are not examples of the author’s best writing, but are examples of commercial writing. I am not going to exclude those this week. I’m going to post links to them at the bottom of this post and let you all vote in the comments section as to whether similar entries should be included in future editions of the Carnival.

It’s been much discussed that the Carnival of the Vanities is obsolete and no longer serves a purpose. I don’t think that’s so. The value of CoTV may have changed and CoTV may have to evolve a little, but the purpose of CoTV has not changed. Carnival of the Vanities has always been intended to shine the spotlight on works that might not see the light of day otherwise. It is meant to highlight writings that the author feels at least deserve a reading. Whether entries are truly the best that the blogosphere has to offer is debatable, but CoTV at least preserves a platform for writers to air their views and highlight their talent. Judging from the number of entries I received, the interest in using CoTV as that kind of platform is still there.

The question remains as to whether CoTV is still capable of delivering readers, however. At four years of age, CoTV is a little long in the tooth and many readers have long since abandoned CoTV for niche Carnies like Carnival of the Cats and Carnival of the Capitalists. CoTV is no longer likely to deliver the landslide of traffic that people have come to expect.

I have a different philosophy on this than most. Whereas I value a good traffic spike as much as the next blogger, I realize that the value of those spikes is fleeting. Most of those readers will never visit your blog again. They aren’t really fans of great writing as they are followers of fashion, following whatever link Instapundit might decide to throw up next. To me, those readers hold less value than the one that comes back every week or every day or even every hour. Those readers, the ones that are fans of your writing, will find you if you are patient and keep writing every day. If your vanity is well-founded and your writing actually does deserve the recognition you think it does, readers will come. It may not happen overnight and it may not be as rewarding as heavy volume, but the value is still there.

Because of that, Carnival of the Vanities lives still and will continue to live as long as there are writers who want their works to shine in that spotlight. Readers may not come in droves, but those that are fans - true fans - will come and those are the people CoTV values the most.

So, without further Ado, lets get this Carnie started.

Mad Kane has two entries in this week’s Carnival. Her first is an Ode to Spinach. It seems to me that she takes needless delight in the recent E.Coli scare. Some of us like spinach, Mad!

She also writes on How to Disorganize Your Life in 15 steps. This one I do not need help with. Mad, like myself, is obviously a list maker. I love lists. It’s the OCD, I’m sure.

Also in the humor category, Buckley F. Williams from The Nose on Your Face reveals the forementioned Spinach scare as a terrorist plot by Al Defeqaeda, “a dangerous vego-fecal terror network that spans the nation and possibly beyond.”

In other news, i, squub bought a new TV. Holy crap did he buy a new TV. All that work just to watch the Steelers lose to Jacksonville. It’s a shame.

Mark A. Rayner over at The Skwib starts to delve into religion and politics as the leader of the First Church of the Noodly Norsemen lashes out at the Pope, suggesting he and other priests are child molestors. But he’s just saying. On something of a related note, my mother traced our geneology to Denmark or Norway. We, honest to God, have an ancestor named “Halfdan the Aged”. It’s what I’m going to name my first son.

While we’re on the topic of religion, me-ander explores The Magic of Tshuva and explains how every day can and should be lived in the spirit of Yom Hakippurim. Repent for the end is near!

Well, it could be anyway. You never know. And that’s his point.

Speaking of Judaism, Wa Salaam manages to equate Secularism, Communism and Zionism with Judaism. He uses somewhat spurious logic to make the case while asking “Is this My America?”. Go forth and debate, my children.

Christians don’t get off lightly either. Leslie Carbone writes about the recent execution of Christian militants in Indonesia and the violent reaction of their Christian followers against Muslims.

Trending away from religion and into politics, Abe Linkum decries Hugo Chavez’s supporters in America’s black community in a post called “Jiggy Lube”. That’s just asking for trouble.

Also addressing recent news items, Fearless Philsophy for Free Minds presents a Treatise on Treaties. In it he manages to equate the Geneva Conventions with the arrest of Duane “Dog” Chapman in Mexico. No shit. Give it a read.

Getting local, Riversider reflects on a ramble down the Ribble at Frenchwood Rec. Say that five times fast.

While not adressing a particular headline, Koranteng speaks to the culture of fear created by the Department of Homeland Security and Recent Non-Specific General Threats.

And that’s it for the 210th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities. There were more entries but I am exerting a little editorial control henceforth. It’s one of the things the previous CoTV caretaker, Zeuswood, suggested as necessary if CoTV were to proper into the future. I am going to link the remaining entries below. They are, in my mind, overtly or covertly commercial or not representative of the original spirit of the Carnival of the Vanities. Please feel free to post comments below if you disagree with my classification of a particular item. I am open to reconsidering all posts.

The 211th edition of CoTV will be right here at Silflay Hraka next Wednesday, October 4th. You can submit posts to me via email at kehaar at this blogs URL or through Blog Carnival. Many thanks to everyone who submitted an item for this week’s CoTV and to all of you who have supported CoTV through the years. God bless you.

The Rest:

Personal and Humor

The October Solunar tables, for Ocracoke and Baghdad.
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And a request for tips, from Texas, from reader Kevin M.

Emailing for N Carolina fishing tips. We have a team installing some gear at Cherry Point air base. They have rented a house with a lighted pier at temple point. They have all their tackle from Texas, but I don’t know if Texas techniques work in Carolina.

They also relate catching a bunch of panfish sized fish with big dorsal fins and spines. Any idea what they might be? (besides crabtrap bait)

Temple Point? Small world. If they look straight across the river, they’ll see the sailing camp I worked at in the 80s.

I think most Texas techniques will work fine, though there’s no need to wade in up to one’s waist, like many fisherman do in the Gulf down that way. This time of year, there’s lots of speckled trout in the Neuse, as well as red drum–the limit here is one a day per person, between 18-27 inches. You’ll also catch a bunch of croaker and spot, as well as Pinfish–the spiny panfish your friends mentioned. Aside from crab trap bait, there’s not a lot of use to them. Bottom rigs, spoons and top water plugs should cover most of your lure needs. Cut mullet is your best bait, followed by shrimp. There are tarpon stll around, and it’s not unheard of for them to be caught from a pier, but most are caught from boats close to the mouth of the river. If they can manage to find one of the numerous creek mouths feeding into the river down that way, trout and flounder usually hang out there.

If they manage to get time to go out to the beach, Fort Macon at Atlantic Beach is the closest public area. There’s also Ocracoke, if they have time for a 2.5 hour ferry ride and a 4WD vehicle to get out to the beach in. I’ll be out there Oct 21-26 if they manage to find the time. Once out on the beach, little spoons or minnows are good for flounder if they have lots of patience. Lots of pompano and bluefish around, so rigs for those two species will work as well. Otherwise, do what I always do, put out a fishfinder rig and crack open a beer.

Defense Tech: The ‘Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province’

A Marine’s Eye-View of Fallujah

Most Surreal Moment - Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. I had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.

Good stuff from a Marine in Iraq. Go read the whole thing.