The Blue Man Lake

Gippsland lake near Victoria, Australia is home to the bluest waters in the world--and I do mean blue. A species of plankton, Noctiluca Scintillans, that lives in the lake, but have grown much larger in population due to the extreme weather that has rained down on Australia these past couple years have caused this simple form of organic life to grow, or is that glow?

The species turn blue, and give off bio luminescence when exposed to movement. And Phil Hart, engineer by day and plankton photographer extraordinaire by night, took the pictures you see here. They are not manipulated in any way. But, no need to worry, climate change, extreme weather and the rest of the strange happenings these last couple years are just part of a natural cycle according to ideological non-scientist politicians. And politicians never lie.

From The Age:

He said the conditions required to generate the deep sulphur-coloured glow emerged over many months - starting with the December 2006 alpine bushfires.

Within months of the fires, which left the landscape scarred and dusted with nitrogen-rich ash, came rain. More than 100 millimetres fell on parts of Gippsland in June 2007, flushing nitrogen and other nutrients into the Gippsland Lakes.

####

Monkey Business Japanese Style

Japan is known as an international business powerhouse and for it's non-nonsese police force but one thing keeps evading the Japanese: a macaque monkey named Lucky. Her luck ran out on Oct. 18 of last year after she was caught in a residents home in Mishima and her crime spree came to an abrupt end. She is accused of biting over 118 people in addition to being disorderly and stealing food, mainly bananas.

Lucky made her daring escape from Rakujuen Garden in Mishima, which she probably had planned for weeks, when a a zoo keeper who was cleaning his cage took her eye off the feisty little gal for a second and left the door unlocked. Lucky was gone after she looked up from her cleaning duties.

"It was a human error," Rakujuen head of Shizuo Sugiyama (the zoo she was kept at) said in an apology during a news conference held by city officials.

Lucky's was spotted JR Mishima Station and 20 workers tried to capture her but were unsuccessful. It is not known whether she boarded a train, but, if she did, there is no record of her purchasing a ticket.

Mishima City city officials have put out an APB for lucky and have urged residents to stay in doors. As of the time of this report, no new thefts have been reported as Lucky is probably laying low, or, maybe flying high, evading capture by stealthily hanging from trees.

One thing is for certain: Lucky will be captured again. The only question is when, who will be bit and how many more bananas will to be stolen beforehand. The garden she was being held at did see an increase in visitors as a result of Lucky's stay but the monkey was losing hair due to stress from captivity, which probably led to Lucky planning this daring escape.

Anne Hathaway Gets Catty!

Anne Hathaway, who first came to the Hollywood scene in The Princess Diaries, has is been cast as the Catwoman in Christopher Nolan's third, and last, series in his Batman films. Throughout the vast and unedited world of commenting on yahoo! stories the reaction was quicker than a cheetah: Hathaway apparently has no business in a catsuit as she is no Kiera Knightley, the supposed runner-up for the role.

However, Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight was nothing short of brilliant and the late actor pushed the envelope and in my opinion, did a far better job as the Joker than his predecessor, Jack Nicholson. And that says a lot since I saw Tim Burton's Batman in the theater with my mom and my brother John and it is a shining memory from childhood.

But, to my point: Ledger was most well-known in the 2000s from Brokeback Mountain and 10 Things I hate About You. And guess what? Both those movies targeted women. They were love stories. One high-brow, one more teeny bobberish. So, Ledger didn't exactly have a bona-fide bad guy resume at all before the joker, yet he excelled. So, I think the same leeway should be afforded to Hathaway. Moreover, the young actress has at least one high-brow bad girl role: Rachael Getting Married. In it she plays the sister of Rachael, and she is just home from rehab and was a pretty bad girl who brought the usual torment to her family that drug addicts bring to the table. Granted it was a chick-flick, but she made the movie enjoyable and shined in it. She also starred in Havoc, a film about a rich, spoiled teen from a wealthy area in LA and she pulled that role off too, by changing from a teen looking for fun to full-fledged girlfriend of a dangerous gangbanger from East LA. She received praise from Christopher Null, of filmcritc.com, who wrote that Hathaway's performance proved "without a doubt that she has been underutilized as an actress for far too long."

Ironically, she was a voice in the anime movie, The Cat Returns. Yes, she does so Michelle Pfeiffer meet Anne Hathaway. I, for one, think Hathaway will, at the very least, scratch at the threads of Pfeiffer's much praised performance from Batman Returns and give her a run for her money--or, in this case, milk.

I Hate To Burst Your Bubble, But Inflation In The Yaun Aint Nutin' But Trouble

China only officially raised interest rates one time last year but in December 2010, for sixth time last year, they raised the Reserve Ratio Requirement (RRR) to a record 19 percent. It is 10 percent in the United States. For some background, the RRR is that amount of money that a bank must hold in ratio to it's liabilities (i.e. deposits). China uses the RRR as an inflation-fighting tool and if China was a Mortal Kombat avatar it would be the easiest move to make: Rawr, Raise that ratio again. The problem is it doesn't appear to be working; as of November inflation was at 5 percent.

This must come as a surprise to some people as the unlimited China growth dragon flies high in the minds of most Americans who regard it as some type of super economy that holds America hostage with T-Bonds. To clarify, China holds about $2 trillion of them. We use this money to finance operations (the deficit); they use it to peg the value of the Yuan (RMB) to the dollar. If China were to dump Treasuries en masses it would hurt us but it would crush them. Unlike China, the Untied States isn't a fairy tale and our country holds a lot of welth in its assets alone. The problem is we have a lot of debt which is never good as it puts to be in the position of having to at the very least entertian Cjineses demands and at most to give in to them. But that sounds so adversarial, and the Unitied States and China are undergoing some current friction in regards to trade but war is hardly imminent.

But this story is popular in Asia and if you watch movies from the 1980s you'd think that by now Japan would be our feudal overlords when in fact they have been mired in deflation and a no-growth slump for decades.

The problem is that rising inflation in China in commodities, like food and gas, kill their consumer sector which is barely a fetus right now. It also kills jobs. China has a jobs policy ever since Tienanmen Square in order to quell protests and riots--one person, one job. But, if the current pace keeps up, China will burst big time, just like the Tulip bubble back in the 1600s. Tulips once went from being worth thousands of dollars in today's money to being worth, well, the price of a tulip.

From Peter Tasker, in a Financial Times article:

"The China story that has been sold so skilfully all over the world is simply another version of the “new era” thinking that has characterized every investment mania from the South Sea bubble to the dot-com frenzy

"If China were to follow Japan, the next stage would be labor strife and inflation. The best way to avoid that outcome would be a radical tightening of the current super-easy monetary policy. But that would risk a serious slowdown and probably necessitate a large revaluation of the Renminbi – both anathema to Beijing. Meanwhile, China’s reliance on a cheap currency is helping to fuel a trade war, in the words of the Brazilian finance minister."

I fear the biggest threat right now in finance comes from China and the mania that goes along with it. Whole cities sit empty. Don't beleive me look up Ordos City on YouTube; it's quite creepy. The South China Mall is the titanic of commercial properties built to be the best and right now it is a sunken shell of dreams too big to have been dreamt.

The point is is that if you believe the China story, you will be in for a big surprise this year or sometime soon as inflation finally takes off to the moon. And just today the China decided for the first time to offer the Yuan to U.S. traders in FOREX markets, which is something that before now would have been unthinkable as it takes away power from the party leaders in China. But things are happening fast so before you go buying a bunch of Yuans, you might want to consider building a fireplace in order to keep you warm because you could lose all your money and need those Yuans to keep warm.

Grumpy Old Swedes

Well, Philadelphia can breathe a sigh of relief this snow brawl didn't involve Santa or parking chairs (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a parking chair). Anyhoo, in Jönköping in southern central Sweden, two elderly men, who probably had icy relations to begin with, took a disagreement about shoveling their driveways to a new level: they attacked each other with their shovels. It was a real cage match.

"Something happened that upset one of the neighbors, who then attacked, while the other one defended himself. It started out with a little shove, then some chaos ensued," Nils-Erik Eriksson, media relations officer at the Jönköping police force, told the local newspaper J-Nytt.

It's certainly not the news of the day with the tragedy that struck our nation yesterday, but this is a little something to add some levity to these times as no one was seriosly hurt and it just seems like something out of a bad B-movie. Here's the link: Grumpy old Swedes.

Does anyone else get the feeling Russel Brand is in BIG trouble?

Ok, this happened days ago but i like to keep the pop flowing like lava, or mud, since that is what Katy Perry Should have been wearing on her face to hide her different she looks sans Loreal. In all seriousness, what was Russell Brand thinking taking a photo of his new wife sans make-up and putting it on Twitter. Did he not understand the meaning of the site Gawker.com. Uh, it's fairly obvious. They gawk. And in this case they haven't laughed so hard since Heidi Montag took on robotic proportions. Seriously Heidi, why? why? why? I remember your cover shot from back in 2007 in Stuff, a now deceased mag, like so many other formerly great publications that bit it with Lehman Bros, and you were gorgeous. I could have loved you even with all your personality faults. Alas, here is Katy perry...sorry Katy:

OMG, It's Raing Blackbirds

Blackbirds are dropping out of the sky in Beebee, Ark. (5,000 of them), and now, another 500 suffered they same fate yesterday in Louisiana. Is it time to panic? Were the Mayans a year off in their 2012 prediction? OMG, run, panic, hide.

Well, maybe you should stay put. As Pres. Calvin Coolidge said, and he didn't say much, four-fifths of your problems will disappear from just sitting still. From the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission: "Results from preliminary testing released today by the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission Veterinary Diagnostic Lab show that red-winged blackbirds died from massive trauma on New Year’s Eve.

"It’s not apparent what caused the bird’s unusual behavior, although loud noises were reported shortly before the birds began to fall from the sky. Blackbirds have poor night vision and do not typically fly at night."

There, problem solved. Oh wait, no one believes any form of government these days. So it must be chemical testing by the evil wings of the secret government that runs the government. Possibly it's God's admonition to us. Maybe a cloaked UFO that the birds run afoul of in flight? Hey, the second season of V starts tonight. And it's raining red that show. Maybe this is just some over the top PR for ABC.

But incidents like this have occurred as recently as four years ago in Australia.

So, while the jury is out on what is causing birds to die en masse, it's safe to say you shouldn't run for the hills just yet. A caveat: culture throughout history have believed that birds are omens and birds falling from the sky are the worst kind. But, if you were living in 900 B.C.E., and saw 10,000 birds fall from the sky, that might just get passed down and become human myth. After all, they couldn't just log into Google and find all they needed to know, now could they?