jam side down

Worst Job in the World: Zimbabwe In-Person Election Reporter

2008-03-31T10:31:00.003-06:00

"Security officials were to meet to decide who would tell Mr. Mugabe that he had lost".

Read by Charlotte Gray on BBC Radio 4's PM news program, March 31, 2008.

Propane + Gophers is a Bad Combination

2008-03-27T20:14:00.005-06:00

The Calgary Herald said that a massive grass fire near Springbank (west of Calgary) destroyed vehicles and out buildings on the quarter section it burned last weekend. During the fire, radio reports said people were being evacuated from their homes.

The fire starter has confessed. He was trying to eradicate Richardson's ground squirrels (fancy name for prairie dogs, which is the local name for gophers) using a propane torch. This might have been, not a torch, but a commercially available gopher-killing device that mixes propane and oxygen underground, creating a small explosion which reportedly kills the gophers.

Some reports have mistakenly suggested that the device in use was the Gophinator, invented in Saskatchewan. Not true. The Gophinator is a 60 gallon tank of anhydrous ammonia with a long hose and a valve. It asphyxiates the animals by surrounding them with noxious, corrosive gas.

Interestingly, the Gophinator inventors had a hard time getting their simple product to market because it wasn't registered as a pest control device. That was in 1999 - 2000, and I see it's available on the Gophinator website, so it looks like the legal woes might be over.

Both methods sound ghastly from the gopher's point of view, but the propane model seems scary for a dry grassland environment.

The habitat preferred by the Richardson's ground squirrel is... the dry grassland environment.

Swarovski Crystals Threaten to Destroy Wedding Dress

2008-03-25T20:17:00.003-06:00

So, this is a problem I could never imagine having, but I read it on the Internet so I must accept that it's real.

A bride to be found out - before the wedding - that the little claws on the settings of the Swarovski crystals on her special wedding day shoes were catching on the hemline of her silk wedding dress. What to do?

Others sympathized and suggested painting over the sharp bits with nail polish, or going back to the vendor of the shoes for ideas - for surely this could not be the first occurrence.

One lady who did not try her ensemble on far enough in advance confessed to having used Scotch tape to dull the jewelley points.

This was all back in 2005. I hope the bride had a lovely wedding and that shoe problems are nothing but a happy memory now.

Fabio and The Goose

2008-03-23T14:07:00.004-06:00

How did I miss this story?

Back in 1999, supermodel Fabio was innocently riding a roller-coaster when he and a passing goose went beak to beak. The goose lost. Fabio had a lot of blood on his face, some of it his own, and had to get one stitch. Fortunately his good looks didn't suffer.

This story was even on The Daily Show, but that was before I became a Jon Stewart viewer.

What I like about Fabio is his sense of humour.

Photo: Gans in actie, by Wikimedia Commons contributor AutoCCD. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License 2.5. Thank you for sharing.

Eliot Spitzer Was Caught by Well-Meaning Investigators

2008-03-16T14:08:00.003-06:00

N.Y. Governor Eliot Spitzer's rapid fall from grace has more than a little irony to it.

Now, he wouldn't belong here on Jam Side Down except for the chain of events that led to his resignation. I am not going to say that Spitzer was standing by minding his own business, not exactly.

However, his involvement with a prostitute seems to have come to light because his bank account was monitored... for his own good? For the good of the people of New York?

Some news reports I heard said that large cash withdrawals from his bank account drew the attention of someone who thought they had better make sure the Gov. wasn't being blackmailed. It sounds like that someone wanted to protect him. Yet, the result has been politically decapitation. (Yes, others might choose a different anatomical metaphor).

Beware the unintended consequences of our actions, I suppose.

Block of Ice Falls from the Sky Through the Roof of A House

2008-02-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

Calgary, Alberta, Canada - Calgary Police, Fire, and Emergency Medical Services responded to a call in the 800 block of Riverbend Drive SE at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 7, 2008. The homeowner was shaken up but not injured by ice that dropped from the sky, tearing a hole about one foot square in the roof of the house. Debris including ice, shingles, plywood, drywall and insulation landed on the bed, narrowly missing the lady of the house.

Later media reports said that some pieces of ice hit Marian Liknes, a grandmother of four. She had gone into the bedroom to answer the phone when there was a huge explosive sound as what was later discovered to be ice came crashing through the ceiling. Her husband, Wade, was already at work when the ice landed on his side of the bed.

The Liknes home is on a flight path into Calgary International Airport. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board has been asked to investigate whether the ice fell from a passing aircraft. Sometimes faulty seals have led to leaks of toilet water from planes, creating ice cubes of the same size as this one.

Mr. Liknes put the ice into his freezer to preserve the evidence.