Party at the Starport - right now

If you're reading this post on Saturday, December 29, you're missing the party. If you're in the neighborhood of San Jose, come on over. The usual potluck bash.

Conflikt: travel plans

Have my plane tickets. It came to under $200, so I decided to just pay it and save the up-to-$500 points flights for a later occasion. Like maybe wedding guests.

Anyway, here's the itinerary:

    leave:  Alaska 339 SJC Thu 01-24 12:33 -> SEA 14:40	seat 23A
    return: Alaska 356 SEA Wed 01-30 17:45 -> SJC 19:54	seat 23A

... so I'll probably be checked in at the hotel by 5pm or so, and have the rest of Thursday evening free.

Tatiana[7]: The finger-pointing begins

More news articles. The LA Times has a few more details, with graphics. Here's a pair on chaos and delay: SF Chronicle, SJ Mercury. And here are the same two papers on the "animal activists" who say that zoos should be abolished: Chron, Merc. I wonder: are the anti-zoo activists vegetarians, too? I always start by looking at their shoes...

According to the Chron, Big-cat experts say a determined tiger could get over 12 1/2-foot wall. Yeah, we figured that out. They go on to say,

While there's little doubt that a tiger could escape over a 12 1/2-foot wall, experts said that thousands of the animals are kept in enclosures protected by walls roughly the same height, and yet they never escape. It's clear, they said, that something provoked Tatiana to climb the wall.

"The problem is not necessarily a 12-foot wall. I know tigers around the world that are perfectly safe behind 10-foot or 12-foot walls," said Martine Colette, founder of the Wildlife WayStation refuge for wild and exotic animals in Southern California. "The problem is the stimulus. There had to have been a tremendous stimulus that made the tiger react the way she did. If the wall was 20 feet tall, she still would have made the attempt."

Needless to say, some other zoos are re-thinking their tiger pens: Here's the Merc's article about Oakland.

A number of articles are blaming the zoo's director, Manuel Mollinedo. According to an opinion piece in the LA Times, "Mollinedo ran the L.A. Zoo in 2001 on the day that a Komodo dragon bit off a chunk of toe belonging to the San Francisco Chronicle's executive editor Phil Bronstein. That's a fact that may help keep the Chronicle's attention on Mollinedo as the probe of the tiger attack continues."

... and sure enough, here's the Chron with the headline, "S.F. Zoo's history of mismanagement; morale down under new director". They have another article today subtitled "Employees say many were aware of potential for animals to escape grotto". added 12-30 8:13am: The Merc (my local paper) weighs in with a more balanced article titled "Tiger attack exposes oversight weakness at the nation's zoos... 'But the Humane Society's Pacelle said that "sometimes these problems don't really get on the radar screen until there's an incident."' Yup.