Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Eminent Domain - Imminent Disaster

Evan Coyne Maloney at Brain-Terminal points to an article at Free-Market News Network titled, EMINENT DOMAIN BUYBACK MORE COSTLY.
Here's the short version :
a)The Caffe Appassionato in Seattle, Washington had it's property confiscated by the city to make way for a mono-rail extension they had planned.

b)Seattle confiscates the property of Talki Hong Lee, the owner who immigrated from Korea.

c)The city paid Mr. Talki $600,000 for the property.

d)The mono-rail extension plans go belly up.

e)Seattle want to sell the property back to Mr. Talki but the value has increased $70,000 in the year the city owned it, so the city wants more than they paid for it.

This is how we do things here. Welcome to America Mr. Talki.
---Larry Everett

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Bad Hare Day

This brings to mind the time a rabbit swam out to attack President Carter and a boatload of his handlers while fishing.
The article is from Aftenposten, a Norwegian news site, and can be found HERE
---Larry Everett
Angry hare attacked dogsled
A large and unusually bold hare was apparently so irritated when a dogsled team entered its territory that it went on the attack, in an otherwise peaceful forested area of northern Norway.
Dogs are better known for chasing hares. It was the other way around in northern Norway last weekend.

PHOTO: JON SUPER/SCANPIX

Wenche Offerdal, who was driving the dogsled team in the Reisadalen area of Troms County, had never seen anything like it.

She told newspaper Nordlys that she and her team of huskies met the hare while travelling between Saraelv and Seima Saturday evening. The hare appeared fully grown and quite aggressive.

"It was sitting 10 meters from the trail and I figured it would run off, and even that the dogs would go after it," Offerdal said. "I was wrong."

Instead, the hare came running towards the dogsled team, which came to a halt. Then the fearless hare jumped right into the middle of team.

That prompted the lead dog to turn around, which left the hare surrounded by the huskies. The hare's odds worsened when another dogsled came up behind Offerdal's. That left one hare facing 13 dogs.

"It was an absurd situation," Offerdal told Nordlys. "The dogs were completely perplexed. The hare stared at them and they stared back, like they were all frozen."

Suddenly the hare seemed to reconsider its position, and leaped out of the ring, hitting a few of the dogs over their noses with its paws on its way.

"It was an enormous leap, the hare landed outside the ring of dogs and ran off into the woods," Offerdal said.

Aftenposten English Web Desk
Nina Berglund/NTB
Read the Whole Thing