Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea…

(Thanks to everyone who sent me this today)

A Hollywood producer has been charged after allegedly taking $5.5m (£3.3m) from investors for a TV drama he said was backed by US President George Bush.

The US attorney’s office alleges Joseph Medawar, 43, collected money from investors for two years but spent the majority of it on himself.

It said Mr Medawar had falsely claimed the White House had endorsed the proposed series, called DHS.

More than 70 investors, including churches, had invested money in the series on the basis that DHS – Department of Homeland Security – had been personally approved by Mr Bush…

Streaming-only, but go here for The Year Zero’s newest song, a quiet warm-late-night thing called “Holland, Say Hello.”

The Year Zero features Lili De La Mora of Sidecar.

Yunyu has a fun, cranky piece of altpop up for free download at the link: “You Are Expendable” also features the line “my brain cells migrate/I think through my ass..”

So often I’ve wanted to just sit on the roof alone with my thoughts and an old fashioned telescope, the big unwieldy kind with all kinds of lenses and mechanical gears. Someday when I am eccentric and rich, I’ll have a whole house decorated with the theme of “Alice In Wonderland”. There will be old-fashioned astronomy equipment mounted on the roof. I’ll have an unwieldy old telescope and I’ll gaze at the stars. It will have gears and lenses I can turn and adjust. I’ll make notations of my observations in big dusty books. Eventually, the telescope and I will turn inward upon ourselves so many times, we’ll just disappear. For years the children and old people will talk about the lady up the street who spent her fortune on this big crazy house, and then one day she just disappeared… and the only thing missing was the telescope.

– Leticia Blake, 1973 – 2005

Received in email from Mark Carroll:

I live here in Austin. A great town, as you know, and we’ve taken a lot of the Katrina survivors in. We’ve put them up in temporary housing or apartments, made sure they’re clothed, fed, that they’ve got something to pick up here, since going back to the Katrina-hit areas isn’t feasible.

The media here is hitting the panic button hard for Rita – finding a bottle of water in Austin is damn near impossible, canned goods are flying off the shelves. Hell, yesterday in the local grocery store near me, I saw a pair of well-to-do yuppie women get into a fistfight over a 4 pack of D-cell batteries. When Rita hits, if it makes landfall as Cat 5, it’s going to whack Austin with Cat 2 winds and rain. Given that the local power grid goes off if someone sneezes funny, the situation here has the potential to turn into a disaster of mythic proportions.

The lights will go out; that’s a given. What worries me are the knuckleheads thinking they’re survivalists, buying up energy bars and shotguns. Later on today, I’m accompanying a friend’s wife to the grocery store near them, so she doesn’t get mugged for medication or supplies.

Something apocalyptic is pretty likely to happen… but not because of heavy weather. It’s because people are convinced it will. Things in town are at the breaking point, panic barely restrained. When the storm hits Friday or Saturday, it’s going to be like touching a match to a hydrogen-filled balloon.

Found on Flickr:

Nasa has announced the closure of the Johnson Space Centre in Houston and has transferred control of the international space station to Russia.

A field reporter for a new Dutch television talk show plans to use heroin and other illegal drugs on the air during the weekly program on issues that concern young people, producers said Wednesday.

The announcement of “Shoot Up and Swallow,” scheduled to premiere as a late-night show Oct. 10, sparked an outcry. Even in the liberal Netherlands, where marijuana is sold and used openly, the proposed drug use by reporter Filemon Wesselink is illegal.

Justice Ministry spokesman Ivo Hommes said it was not immediately clear whether Wesselink could be prosecuted. Possession of any amount of heroin is illegal, but in practice police usually do not arrest anyone with less than a half gram of the highly addictive narcotic…

I’m hearing reports that my friend Leticia Blake, also known as Eva Lux, died yesterday afternoon. She was 32.

I’m going to miss you so much.

My friend the photographer Siege is down in the K-Hole to try and help his family. He’s covering it on Operation Eden. Here’s the deal. He sank his life savings into getting his mother a trailer. Katrina annihilated it a week later, before the insurance kicked in. And his mother’s first reaction was to spend four days volunteering in a hurricane shelter. His family have nothing, and no-one’s going to help. All he’s got is his art and his friends.

Buy a print from Siege, or one of the items donated by his friends — like a signed copy of PROZAC NATION, or the shot of Scarlett Johansson that she lied about her age on.

Busy busy. None of your bloggery today. Go and read PERFECT STARS or something instead. Send me pictures and music and fluid-stained declarations of your wrong love for my resonating, flourescent headbones while I slave, slave over a hot writing machine for your entertainment, edification and masturbation-fodder.

Courtesy of Laura:

“Mister Schrathe” is the blog of a New York police officer:

I was called to my first suicide of the semester… a white American kid who committed Seppuku. He apparently tried twice to get the daito up under his abdomen but I imagine the pain response was too much for him. He finally placed the blade under his sternum and simply leaned forward on it. I spent a great deal of time explaining to the detectives what this all looked to be. He even went so far as to write a haiku suicide note. The concept of a Haiku was like explaining binary molecular compounds to (my rabbit)….but eventually it sunk in.

I have to admit I never thought I’d see a ritual suicide…

You heard me.

(Yes, I’m having one of those days, today. — W)

…at the start of August, the NHC predicted an exceptionally busy North Atlantic hurricane season, with 18 to 21 tropical storms, 9 to 11 of which would become hurricanes. So far that forecast has been borne out, and it could yet prove an underestimate.

The record tropical storm season saw 21 cyclones, and occurred in 1933. If that number is exceeded, the NHC will use up its list of names and turn to Greek-letter designations.

(Get that? So many storms that THEY’RE RUNNING OUT OF NAMES FOR THEM!)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he has documentary evidence that the United States plans to invade his country.

Chavez, interviewed on ABC’s “Nightline,” said the plan is called “Balboa” and involves aircraft carriers and planes. A transcript of the interview was made available by “Nightline.”

He said U.S. soldiers recently went to Curacao, an island off Venezuela’s northwest coast. He described as a “lie” the official U.S. explanation that they visited Curacao for rest and recreation. “They were doing movements. They were doing maneuvers,” Chavez said, speaking through a translator.

He added: “We are coming up with the counter-Balboa plan. That is to say if the government of the United States attempts to commit the foolhardy enterprise of attacking us, it would be embarked on a 100-year war. We are prepared.”

While some argue that Japan is caught up in an “Otaku Bubble” where the value of the nerd business has become over-inflated, Hamagin’s Shinichi Shinano, who drew up the initial report on the sector says, thanks to gal geeks, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

(Note: the reporter seems to screw up his numbers here.)

“This 88.8 billion yen market is only comprised of otaku publications, movies and games. It didn’t include related merchandise or contents directed at women,” Shinano tells Spa! “I don’t know the exact figure, but I guess if you added these markets on, the worth of the otaku business might even go over 10 billion yen. You’ve got to note, though, that men’s and women’s are always blending further together and that women buy a lot more merchandise than guys. The female otaku market is certainly one worth watching for the future.”

Shinano may be right. About 30 percent of all readers of Shonen Jump, Japan’s biggest selling weekly manga with a circulation of millions, are women. Gals also account for about 70 percent of attendees at Komike, the huge biannual trade show of the amateur and semi-professional comics, manga, anime and games that are collectively known as dojinshi…

NASA is set to unveil today details of its new space architecture, a “how-to” response to President George W. Bush’s Moon, Mars and beyond vision speech made in January 2004. Last week SPACE.com and Space News reported that NASA will announce today plans to send four astronauts to Moon in 2018.

On the list: A re-usable vehicle that’s safer than the shuttle; technology for extracting fuel from the destination; and an airbag landing upon return to Earth. Plans were also detailed for sending robotic scouts first.

Aspects are somewhat vintage Apollo in approach, but with numerous technical twists. For example, a four-person lunar expedition crew would make use of a Crew Exploration Vehicle that is outfitted with solar panels. The astronauts would rendezvous in Earth orbit with a pre-launched Earth Departure Stage, and then make the outbound voyage to the Moon. Once in lunar orbit, all four crewmembers would ride down to the Moon in a lander. They would depart the Crew Exploration Vehicle, putting it in autopilot mode as they spend seven days on the lunar surface.

Each team of Moon explorers would leave behind essential components for later use, as well as equipment that could constitute a lunar station. That base could well mirror the type of encampment now situated in Antarctica…

…from others more senior, “yawn of a new era” seemed to rustle through the audience. “It looks to me like the Alzheimer’s program…for those that don’t remember Apollo,” said one participant.