Los Angeles To Intensify Hunt For Loose Albino Cobra -- September 3, 2014

Active rigs in North Dakota:

	9/3/2014	09/03/2013	09/03/2012	09/03/2011	09/03/2010
Active Rigs	193	186	192	198	146

The Wall Street Journal

Apparently a "Jihadist Highway" runs through Turkey, connecting the western world with Syria, ISIL (ISIS). Turkey is being pressured to close the highway. [US/Mexico has a similar highway: Mexico Highway 15/US I-19 running from Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, to Tucson, Arizona, United States.]

Putin is getting ready to partition the Ukraine. Just yesterday I posted that the Ukraine is the "new" East/West Germany. Okay, so I get lucky once in a (great) while.

Attorney General Holder will investigate Ferguson police. I assume the findings are already in draft form.

Hmmmm... Kansas democrat withdraws from US Senate race, upending contest. Republican could be formidable candidate.

Hmmmm... New York rail hub's cost is soaring -- eight years behind schedule and at least $2 billion over budget. At some point, fracking (and the natural gas royalty money) is going to look really, really good. By the way, is the "Big Gulp" still banned in New York City?

Hmmmm... the French might actually think twice about sending a state-of-the-art warship to Russia. No. They need the cash. At some point fracking the Paris Basin (and the natural gas royalty money) is going to look really, really good.

Okay, let's raise the ante -- let's push the world toward another world war -- NATO will join Ukraine military exercises. Who thinks these things up? Next we will hear that South Korea plans to join North Korea in war games/military exercises.

Tesla picks Nevada for battery 'gigafactory.' The oldest profession meets newest technology.

Demand ebbs for electric, hybrid cars. Posted elsewhere, earlier. And this was during a period of robust auto sales: August auto sales aim for record.

Pimco's flagship fund shrinks (again). Is it 16 consecutive months? Something like that.

The Los Angeles Times

Even the Los Angeles Times sees the politics in this one. The top story: Attorney General Holder will probe Ferguson police department.

Yes, here it comes: Germany's Merkel is starting to "go wobbly" with regard to sanctions on Putin. Predicted. Deep down Obama is hoping so. This gives him an "out" and someone to blame.

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Best story on the front page: apparently there's a loose albino cobra in Thousand Oaks (Los Angeles); the hunt will "pick up" (as "intensify") at night. Photograph at link with Los Angelinos frantically running in all directions.

Authorities have deployed a three-man search team to Thousand Oaks to hunt for an albino cobra that has been on the loose for two days and is expected to most likely emerge again at sunset, officials said.

The albino monocled cobra -- which can grow up to seven feet long as an adult and has venom that can kill within an hour of a bite -- has been slithering undetected since at least Monday, when it bit a dog in the 1300 block of Rancho Lane. The size of the snake being searched for is not known.

The dog would know but he's not talking. And, yes, the dog will survive.

The big question: is it a pregnant female released by ISIL?

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Okay, I thought the cobra story was pretty unique, but the next story in The Los Angeles Times might be better. Headline: "13 injured with fake-tornado experiment explodes at museum." One would think with all the angst over global warming, the last thing we should have to worry about is a fake tornado experiment.

President Obama is heading for Estonia to reassure the citizens that NATO policy will be invoked if Russia invades Estonia. President Obama is sending "boots on the ground." Yes, that's the quote in the article, "boots on the ground." Nice duty if you can get it. Memo to President Obama: Estonia is not a member of NATO.

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Despite global warming, we keep finding new species.

This week, scientists described a mushroom-shaped sea creature that may be in a phylum all its own.

Two species of the newly described animal were found along the bottom of the ocean as deep as 3,200 feet beneath the surface.  One is a about 10 mm in length, the other is 17 mm; both are slightly smaller than a button mushroom.

The Danish research team that described the animal named it Dendrogamma, but in a paper published in PLOS One, they acknowledge that they are having trouble deciding exactly how to categorize it. It has features similar to animals in the phylum Ctenophora (the comb jellies and their relatives) and Cnidaria (sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish), but it doesn't fit neatly into either category.

The article did not say how rising sea levels would affect this new sea creature, but my hunch is that the Danes have already submitted a research proposal to the EPA for continued research. The researchers, no doubt, want to continue their research in the South Pacific, preferably near a 5-star hotel on the big island of Hawaii.

And just when I was losing interest in the article, I came across the paragraph which might explain why the researchers are having problems studying the carcasses of these sea creatures:

Unfortunately, these specimens were not ideally preserved. They were accidentally kept in pure alcohol rather than 80% ethanol, which resulted in them shrinking and almost completely drying out. They are also unsuitable for molecular analysis.

"It is of course very disappointing to us, but that's life!" Just said.

I remember when I was in college doing research for Dr Tieszen, our biology instructor: we, too, had to be cognizant of 80% alcohol vs 200 proof.

White Lighning, George Jones

And with that, I'm heading to bed.

Just the first minute and a half:

Pulling troops out of Iraq was not my decision, LOL