Put a tiger in your tank

China has come under fire for allowing tigers to be bred for the production of so-called "tiger bone wine".

The drink is reportedly made by steeping tiger carcasses in rice wine. Those who drink the wine believe it makes them strong. . .

The argument centres on the existence of so-called "tiger farms" in China, which have bred thousands of captive tigers with the ostensible purpose of entertaining visitors.

But the conservation group WWF, which is chairing the symposium, says these farms are fronts for the production of tiger bone wine.

From the BBC. The article also notes:

On Wednesday, a more formal forum of government delegations will begin discussing the fate of the majestic beast, which a recent television poll declared to be the world's most popular animal.

"Popular" in what sense?

Idiot robber on the loose

From our local newspaper:

Detectives are especially concerned about an armed robber who held up Atwells Mini Mart on Federal Hill last week.

During the holdup he “racked” his semiautomatic pistol several times, pulling the slide back on top of the handgun, according to Capt. Hugh T. Clements Jr., detective commander.

That motion causes a shell to move from the magazine into the firing chamber of the gun.

More to the point, it also ejects the cartridge that's in the chamber, so if you do it enough, you'll end up with an empty magazine and your ammo scattered on the ground. It only makes sense to do it once, and only if you are carrying a gun with an empty chamber (a safety measure probably not widely observed among armed robbers). Even if you only end up leaving a few extra cartridges lying about the scene of the crime, that's a pretty nice gift for the police -- especially if you've left your fingerprints on the brass while loading the magazine. Then again, I don't think this guy will remain at large for long:

A surveillance video of the robbery was provided to a television station to enlist the public’s help in identifying the suspect, and still photos from the video were printed on a flier that is being distributed by patrol officers, Clements said.

Nor'easter sinks our sub

The Juliett 484, a Russian ballistic missile submarine and museum exhibit moored in shallow water in Providence Harbor, began to take on water during the storm that drenched the Northeast.

The stern of the boat is now under water, and the bow is arching out of the water at a 30-degree angle. The grounded submarine is listing to its port side in its berth at Collier Point Park. . .

This sub, commissioned in 1965, served in the Soviet Baltic and Northern fleets until its decommissioning in 1994. . .

In 2001, the submarine was used in the filming of the Cold War thriller K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford. It opened as a museum in Providence in August 2002.

From the Providence Journal.

Fossils and more at auction

A prehistoric Siberian mammoth fetched €312,000 (£212,000) at a dinosaur auction in Paris yesterday, but despite intense interest from bidders the sale was derided by scientists for dragging natural history into the gutter of commerce. . .

The dinosaur sale generated €1.13 million, prompting auctioneers to talk of repeating the initiative.

Other star items included the skeleton of a 10,000-year-old rhinoceros, which fetched €120,000: an Ice Age cave bear, which fetched €46,800: an unhatched dinosaur egg, which sold for €1,800; and two dinosaur teeth, which went for €600 and €1,440.

Christie’s also auctioned a bezoar, a type of stone found in the intestines of ruminant animals that was once thought to be a cure for depression and an antidote to poison. These were highly prized in 17th-century England, where a lawsuit over an allegedly fake bezoar gave rise to the doctrine of caveat emptor, which holds that purchasers are responsible for checking the quality of the goods that they buy. The Christie’s bezoar sold for €33,600.

From the Times of London.

Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm belltower near collapse

The bombed-out belltower of Berlin, a jagged and bruised symbol of the city, is crumbling fast and needs urgent restoration work if it is to survive as one of the most potent European memorials of the horrors of war.

That was the verdict yesterday of an architectural survey team, which has stirred the debate over the preservation of ruins from the Second World War. “We were stunned when we read the surveyors’ report,” said Matthias Hoffmann-Tauschwitz, building supervisor of the German Protestant Church.

Not entirely surprising: ruins are much more prone to deterioration than buildings that are intact. Read the rest here.

Posting hiatus, another Windows rant

What a week!
Taxes due, kids on spring break, Nor'easter blowing through and tearing chunks (small, luckily) off of the roof, pen show in Boston this past weekend, and -- perhaps worst of all -- setting up a new laptop for la professoressa preloaded with Windows Vista.

Why, oh why, can't Microsoft leave well enough alone? XP has quite enough bells and whistles, and according to all reports will run like lightning on this model -- which under Vista pokes along at a speed that almost makes me nostalgic for my old CP/M Kaypro. And what I also find difficult to understand is why the look and feel has to change so much from iteration to iteration. Burrowing down through the menus to select "Windows Classic" only gets you partway there. I am particularly annoyed and mystified by the love for fading in and out: aside from using up more system resources, it gives the impression that everything is running underwater. Cleanly snapping on and off makes operations look faster, even if they aren't.