Lake monster

Monster' prowling B.C. lake - Canoe.ca

Brigette Horvath knew she saw something strange in Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island two years ago. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brigette Horvath-HO)

VICTORIA, B.C. - Brigette Horvath knew she saw something strange in Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island two years ago and a team of researchers say she might be right.

Was it a fish, an eel or some kind of serpent-like creature? She says she didn't know. But Horvath grabbed her camera and managed to fire off one shot before the batteries failed.

The researchers who specialize in looking for so-called cryptozoological creatures - in other words, monsters - spent Saturday on the lake probing the depths with a sonar-like fish finder.

At first, they picked up a couple of large contacts at the bottom of the lake, about 45 metres deep, then something more pronounced on a second pass.

"Something just went 'ping' on the alarm on the fish finder and we saw this absolutely massive object in the midst of various fish," said John Kirk, president of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club.

They made four more passes and the contact held stable, making it unlikely that it was a school of fish, which tend to scatter eventually, Kirk said.


"We were quite stunned that there was something that big in the lake and it was in about 60 feet of water, less than 30 yards from shore, it was quite amazing," he said.

Horvath, who lives in Nanaimo, said she was driving along Highway 4 on July 30, 2007, when she saw a strange semi-circle in the lake.

"You could see like a serpent shape," said Horvath, who isn't the only person to report something strange in Cameron Lake.

"It wasn't logs," she said. "It wasn't waves. There were no boats in the area. It was, like, right there. You could actually see a large fish, (an) object, no, not an object, something alive."

Kirk, who admits his trip to Cameron Lake is being sponsored by the local Oceanside Tourism Association, said the team accidentally lost its underwater camera and was unable to explore further.

Because the weather will deteriorate in the fall and winter, another search will have to wait until next year, Kirk said.

But the team has narrowed the possibilities.

"Maybe it's a sturgeon, maybe it's a giant sterile eel....it could be a massive type of salamander," Kirk said. "Or it could be something that we're completely unaware of at this point."

However, it's unlikely the small lake is the home of a mysterious sea monster, Kirk said.

"I'm not going to the extent to say there's anything exotic down there, there's just something big."

Kirk has searched for the Ogopogo in Okanagan Lake in the B.C. interior, looked in coastal B.C. for the Sasquatch, tried to find the sea creature Cadborosaurus off Vancouver Island and has hunted for giant salamanders in swamps.

He's been to Scotland and the republics of Congo and Cameroon in search of strange dinosaur-like beasts.

But it's British Columbia waters that provide a fertile hunting ground for animal tales, he said.

Kirk said there are 41 different lakes in British Columbia where strange animal sightings have been reported.

"In B.C., we just seem to have a ton of these lakes where these things have been seen," he said.

Sawmill workers at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island reported seeing a large lake creature during the 1960s and a local fisherman said he hooked something that pulled him and his boat around the lake for an hour, Kirk said.

He said the Cadborosaurus, which has been adopted as an unofficial tourism mascot in the Victoria area, is real because fishermen found one inside the belly of a sperm whale in 1937 and sent it to the Royal B.C. Museum for identification.

"We've had what you might say in scientific terms is the type-specimen there," said Kirk. "Most people describe this thing as an elongated serpent-like creature. It has a camel-like head. That description comes up over and over."

A former clerk of the B.C. legislature, Henry William Langley and provincial archivist Fred Kemp, issued a joint statement in 1922 saying they'd seen a sea creature off Chatham Island near Victoria.

"These are not nut-case people. These are very serious people," said Kirk.

In 1951, Langley was crushed to death under the wheels of a Nanaimo-bound train as it was pulling out of the Victoria station.

Kirk said Cadborosaurus' range is not confined to the Victoria area. Reports of a similar animal have come from the Gulf of Alaska to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.

In Oregon, the animal goes by the name Colossal Claude.

But Kirk believes British Columbia is in a class by itself for what he calls cryptozoological encounters.

People have actually started to embrace the strange animals to the point where they are showing up in tourism brochures, he said.

"Like Moberly Lake up in the (northeast) area, the First Nations there got in touch with me and told me about the creature that they had been seeing with a horse's head swimming around in the lake, and now they've given it a name," Kirk said.

"They call it Moberly Dick.

Socialists

Dolce Miami: Who Were the Real Socialists?

Who Were the Real Socialists?
[This entry was cross-posted on Facebook. It's rather informal.]

I made a comment recently in one of my classes recently saying that, yes, I believe the tax rate for the highest earners should be 40% in order to pay for social services and other government services. This elicited surprise from some, but is it really so surprising?

Obama's "tax increase" isn't so much of one as it is rolling back a tax break for the rich instituted by Bush immediately after the Clinton Administration, which had the tax rate for the highest earners at 39.6%.

Let's take a look at some facts from history.

-IRS information regarding tax rates is available from 1913 to 2009, a span of 95/96 years.
-Since 1913, we have had 17 presidents: 8 Democrats, 9 Republicans.

All eight of the Democrats had tax rates of 39.6% or more as did seven of the nine Republicans.

The highest tax rate, of 92%, belongs to Democrat Harry Truman. However, this tax rate also carried over into Republican Dwight Eisenhower's term. Oh, sorry, no...like a true conservative, Eisenhower lowered taxes.

To 91%.

GOP President Hoover, after years with a tax rate of 25%, decided, "Hey, what the hell, let's tax people 63%" right before leaving office. That's an increase of 38 percentage points. The increase by the Republican is higher than the actual tax rate now (35%).

The United Socialist States of America? Perhaps. (Credit: Bill St. Clair)

Since the post-World War II period, the maximum tax rate has trended downwards, but remained high even amongst the staunchest conservatives:

Eisenhower: 91%
Nixon: 70%
Ford: 70
Reagan: 50%

Taxes for the highest-earners hit a 77-year low with Bush Senior at 28% and was then increased to 31% and subsequently 39.6% by Bill Clinton. Bush Junior then immediately enacted the tax break that set it at 35%.

So compared to historic levels of taxation, by both Democrats and Republicans, of levels beyond 60, 70, 80, even 90%, why is Obama the socialist?

In fact, "socialist" Sweden's maximum tax rate right now is 59.09%, while Denmark's is 63%. By that logic, those states being considered "socialist", Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, FDR, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter were also socialist presidents. Oh no, that means 10 of our last 17 presidents have been pinko Commies!

It must be all part of a vast left-wing conspiracy to infiltrate America and bring the United States under strict authoritarian rule, right?

Those damn lefties, they'll ruin us with their taxes, just like they caused the downfall of the United States all those other times. Better start moving to Monaco, people.


Sources:
US Presidents/Terms
US Tax Rates
World Tax Rates

Celeb Children's Names

Star’s New Baby - Another "Original" Celebrity Baby Name

The daughter of singing star Lionel Richie, Nicole Richie, 27, rose to fame thanks to her high-profile position as the (ex) best friend of Paris Hilton. Richie was once engaged to DJ AM, the celebrity DJ found dead of an apparent drug overdose in August, a year after miraculously surviving a plane crash that killed four others.

In 2008 Richie welcomed her first, daughter Harlow Winter Kate, with boyfriend Joel Madden, 30, lead singer of the pop-punk band Good Charlotte. Hilton briefly dated Madden’s twin brother, Benji.

On the celebrated date 09/09/09 the couple welcomed a second child with a bird-inspired name. It’s a boy, but the couple named the new baby Sparrow, which seems kinda girly.

The baby’s full name is Sparrow James Midnight Madden, so at least he can call himself James if he grows up and decides he’d like to be, well, normal.

Richie and Madden founded a charity, the Richie Madden Children’s Fund, but the website hasn’t been updated since before Obama was elected. Guess they’ve been too busy with their own family.