The incident at the Munich airport occurred today at 3:30 PM. What’s scary about this story: A passenger had a laptop that tested positive for a possible explosive by a security device. The man then “dodged” security then ran into a closed section of the airport then apparently escaped.

The incident was serious in that 1200 police officers searched Terminal Two, which was closed down for a short period of time.

“At least 17 domestic and international flights were delayed because of the closure. Airport spokesman Edgar Engert said more delays or cancellations were also possible.”

Destinations of international flights originating from Munich include Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles (LAX), JFK, New York (Newark), Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington (IAD).

Munich airport reopens after security scare

image: Popsci

Long live Gumby…

Gumby creator and animator Art Clokey has died at age 88:

LOS OSOS, Calif. —

Animator Art Clokey, whose bendable creation Gumby became a pop culture phenomenon through decades of toys, revivals and satires, died Friday. He was 88.

Clokey, who suffered from repeated bladder infections, died in his sleep at his home in Los Osos on California’s Central Coast, son Joseph told the Los Angeles Times.

Clokey’s creations included the claymation series Davey and Goliath which came to claymation life after the Lutheran Church commissioned Clokey to make Davey and Goliath “shorts”.

Clokey’s creations were often satirized such as Mad TV’s Davey and Goliath’s Pet Cemetery, a irreverent take on Stephen King’s book.

From Youtube:

Dreamed up by Art Clokey (from a small town called Millington, Michigan), Gumby had its genesis in a 1953 theatrical 3-minute short called Gumbasia[1], while studying at the University of Southern California under the direction of Slavko Vorkapich. It was a surreal short of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music, in a parody of Fantasia. Gumbasia was created in a style called Kinesthetic Film Principles that Vorkapich taught. Described as “massaging of the eye cells” this technique based on camera movements and editing is responsible for much of the Gumby look and feel. In 1954, Gumby first appeared in “The Gumby Pilot”.[2] In 1955 Art showed Gumbasia to movie producer Sam Engel who immediately funded a 15 minute short film later titled Gumby Goes to the Moon. This was ultimately seen by Tom Sarnoff at NBC who loved it so much that he put the wheels in motion for a full audience test during the Howdy Doody Show. Gumby himself first appeared on the Howdy Doody show in 1956 and was given his own NBC series in 1957.

Gumby animator Art Clokey dies at 88 in California

Florida pot plants held for ransom

The note read “Thanks for the grow! You want them back? Call for the price … We’ll talk.”

The ransom: $200 negotiated down from a higher price for six large pot plants stolen from a wooded lot in the Florida Keys.

The victim: Steven Locascio, 48, who called the number on the note.

The “crooks” who held the pot for ransom: Undercover cops who confiscated the pot after a citizen’s tip led authorities to the wooded lot.

The outcome: Locascio was arrested after handing the $200 over to the cops who had the pot plants in the back of a pickup truck.

A court-approved search of his apartment turned up 20 smaller pot plants, four pounds of freshly harvested pot in a freezer and several 80 milligram Oxycontin pills. Detectives also seized $1,380 in cash.

Locascio and his wife, Christine, 50, were charged with cultivation of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and sale of marijuana.

“The detectives left the note as a last ditch effort, thinking he would never call,” Ramsay said. “But sometimes people do stupid things.”

Police leave ransom note for pot plants, nab alleged grower

A chartered Quantas A380 Airbus filled with 450 passengers is scheduled to take off from Melbourne, Australia, for a “midnight sun” New Year’s Eve flight. Accompanying the passengers, an onboard jazz band, as the carbon emission spewing plane circles over melting icebergs and the shrinking polar ice cap:

An onboard jazz band will keep passengers entertained on the flight as they cruise over icebergs, mountains, glaciers and Antarctic research bases.

Maryline Morini, a spokeswoman for Croydon Travel, which has chartered the flight, said passengers could see in the new year several times as the plane crosses various datelines flying figure-of-eight circuits over the icy continent.

New Year’s party flight over Antarctic

Kudos to Matt Lauer who, this morning on The Today Show grilled Napolitano over the remark she made during the Sunday morning news shows where Napolitano claimed the “system worked”. When Lauer stated the obvious, that the system “failed miserably”, Napolitano agreed.

Twenty-fours ago Napolitano made the Sunday news show rounds repeating the government’s claim that the “system worked”:

Janet Napolitano on CNN:

“What we’re focused on is making sure that the air environment remains safe and that people are confident when they travel. One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. Within, literally an hour to ninety minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred.”

As we pointed out yesterday, the one entity who “failed to work” was the federal government, i.e, Homeland Security who is in charge of airline safety, and therefore, should be held responsible for the system “failure” that occurred Christmas when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the passengers and crew of Flight 523.

In yesterday’s post we included a really creepy video of a “hypnotizing” mullah at Australia’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

Janet Napolitano Claims ‘System Worked’, Attempts Damage Control over Flight 523 Bombing

Alaskan officials are playing Death Squad Scrooges this year to live Pacific Chorus frogs found in Christmas trees.

Christmas trees for sale in the Anchorage area are adorned with something truly different this holiday season — live Pacific Chorus frogs.

While the small frogs are very cute with lovely moss-colored green sides and black spots, state officials are asking residents to practice some tough love.

If you find a Christmas tree frog, kill it.

Pacific Chorus frogs, as known as Pacific Tree frogs, are less than two inches long. The frogs are known for carrying fungi and viruses. One such virus, chytridiomycosis, or the “Ebola for Frogs”, which has been responsible for wiping out amphibian populations “around the globe”:

First discovered in 1998, the fungal disease called chytridiomycosis has been implicated in the collapse of amphibian populations in Central America, Australia, Europe and other places. Researchers documented its march across Panama and the carnage left behind. In North America, the fungus is rampant in California’s Sierra Nevada. It has been linked to die-offs in Colorado, Wyoming and Arizona.

But in other parts of the world, notably South America and the Northeastern United States, the fungus is present but doesn’t seem to be fatal, Wake said.

“In some places, when it arrives it’s a death knell. Then there are places where it doesn’t have an epidemic effect, and we don’t understand why.”

Christmas trees showing up with live ‘ornaments’
Fungus threatens state’s frogs, salamanders

Porn must not be as lucrative as we’re led to believe….

Taleon and Keyontyli Goffney, Porn Star Twins and Failed Cat Burglars

It was “All in the Family” for 27-yr-old porn star Taleon Goffney in regards to a string of burglaries that stretched from Pennsylvania to Florida. According to authorities, Goffney was the “mastermind”, his mother the “lookout”, and his twin brother-who starred with Goffney in porn films-as the co-burglar.

Nicknamed Spider-Man by the cops, Goffney sawed through roofs then shimmied down a wire to score a heist. After one arrest, Goffney managed to kick out the rear window of a cop car then swim across a pond while handcuffed in 2006.

‘Spider-Man’ burglar gets 3 years in prison

And the taxpayers aren’t too happy about their request.

The Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement Fund said today its “plan net assets” used for calculating future pension subsidies shrank to $43 billion at June 30, from $63 billion a year ago.

As a result, PSERS is calling for an 8.22% payroll surcharge on all school payrolls in 2010-11, to be financed by state taxpayers and local property taxpayers, up from this year’s 4.78% levy.

Here’s just a sample of the comments on the article:

Ridiculous. At least they still have retirement funds unlike most of the rest of us-and I don’t see anyone else stepping up to help replenish our 401Ks….and then to go about it by taking our money? Forget it

End all pensions….today. Re-direct into 401K’s and go with the market. In today’s world NOBODY is owed a pension. Nobody.

Deferring pension payments. Didn’t the Legislature allow the City of Philadelphia to do the same scheme earlier this year? Wait until that bill comes due. Let’s face it. We’re broke.

“Devoted Teacher” weighed in:

Teachers pay into their pensions to the tune of 7.5 percent of their paycheck – they’re not getting anything for free. Everyone hired at any job who was originally promised a pension should get one. If employers don’t want to offer new employees pensions, that’s up to them, but despite the claims of some bitter posters, everyone who was promised a pension as a result of loyal service deserves to get what they were promised. As for the posters who imagine teachers only work six hours a day (which immediately reveals an inability to tell time, as hours are generally from 8:20 to 3:09), this may be true on the planet where you reside, but in Philadelphia and, I’m sure, around the country, teachers spend extra hours lesson planning, grading papers, designing and preparing projects to the tune of what amounts to at least an extra day’s worth of work every week. On top of that, we have to pay to spend our off-time getting advanced degrees. Your ignorance speaks to what happens when people “assume.” I’m sure you know that old saying.

And got a response:

TO DEVOTED TEACHER, JUST A COUPLE THINGS: As taxpayers, even with your contribution, we still pay over 80% of your pension. In the private world we pay for our own – with minimal or zero contributions from our employer. If the market goes down, we the taxpayers do not tax ourselves to make up the difference. You can’t get fired as a teacher. By example, In Los Angeles, with 40,000 teachers, not one was fired between 1990 and 2000, I’m sure the numbers in PA are similar — are you guys really that good? All of you? How many layoffs have their been in the public teaching field in PA? You get premium health coverage, including dental, vision, disability etc. for you and your family for life paid by us stiffs.

Your work time after you subtract for lunch is about six hours per day. I don’t recall ever working less than 10 hours per day. I start before 8:20. If I ever left at 3:00, I would consider that working just about a half day. Would wonder what to do with the time. Although you work only 180 days per year compared to the 235 or so that the rest of us work, you continue to receive approximatly 17 days of sick and vacation time per year. And since you don’t need to use it, because you get every holiday and summers off, you are allowed to accrue it forever and get a nice lump sum payment when you decide to retire or leave. Can you please let us know anyone in the private sector that receives anything remotely close to that? You want to be treated like professionals such as lawyers and doctors, which is kind of ridiculous, but I don’t know any that have virtual lifetime contracts, cannot get fired, do not receive reviews of their work, take no risk, work about 1,000 hours per year, can retire at 53 years of age and receive lifetime benefits for longer than you actually worked.

PA teachers’ pension fund wants billions more from taxpayers

Male or female escapee, we’re not quite sure. Either way, a Louisiana inmate from the Grant Parish Detention Center overpowered a transport guard while on the way to Huey P. Long Hospital. A Monroe Louisiana paper warns residents to be on the lookout for:

Erica Burnaman, 32, overpowered the transport guard taking him to Huey P. Long Hospital. He escaped in the Sheriff’s Office vehicle – an unmarked gray Crown ictoria with Louisiana license plate FGX 222.

According to the Daily Star, Erica Burnaman is 32 and has “several tattoos”.

Escapee last seen driving north on Interstate 49

Another Obama “Birther” case bites the dust. This time in Tennessee.

Despite a brief media frenzy, indictments sought against President Obama, a grand jury foreman and an assistant district attorney were not returned by the Monroe County grand jury.

Walt Fitzpatrick has been seeking to indict President Barack Obama on treason charges, but the grand jury failed to grant his request. Grand jury proceedings are kept secret until indictments are handed down, and when the December session for Monroe County was released, neither the president’s name nor Gary Pettway or Jim Stutts was on the list.

Fitzpatrick is claiming President Obama is actually Barry Soeto and was not born in the United States and is therefore serving illegally.

If this had been Bush, where do you suppose MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, and Joe Klein would be today? Here’s the answer: On the steps of the Monroe County Tennessee court house reporting Bush had “dodged a bullet”.

No indictment for President Obama from Monroe County grand jury

Neighbors call Hitler spray-paint job “graffiti”

Anyone who’s had a dispute with their neighborhood association might relate to the homeowner who, using his right to free speech, spray-painted on his home in red, “Hitler would be a welcome neighbor here”, stop the harassment to my family”, then added, “Merry Christmas”.

According to the report, the police had been called to the home several times to investigate “ordinance” violations. The police were called back after the “rant” appeared on the home, which, according to the cops, may not be illegal.

One wonders whether one of the neighborhood “ordinances” covered “graffiti”. If not, it’s a sure bet the issue will be brought up post-haste at the next neighborhood association meeting.

Beachside dispute prompts spray-painted rant