Tis the Black Pearl, MeThinks!

Pirates anchor hijacked Saudi supertanker off Somalia coast:

The Saudi Arabia-owned supertanker called The Sirius Star was hijacked by Somali pirates in a raid several hundred miles out to sea, and is understood to have anchored off the coast of Somalia. It is fully loaded with crude oil.

The owner of the ship, Vela International Marine, said the 25 crew members on board were safe. The company said response teams had been established and were working to ensure the release of the crew and the vessel, which was seized by pirates on Saturday.

Nato and other international warships have increased patrols around northern Somalia to try to deter the heavily armed Somali pirate gangs who have seriously disrupted one of the world busiest shipping lanes. The pirates are holding about a dozen vessels hostage and more than 200 foreign crew. They are believed to have already netted more than £20m in ransoms this year.

Most of the captured ships were attacked in the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea. But the seizure of the Sirius Star, a new ship more than 300 metres long and weighing three times as much as a typical aircraft carrier, took place in unpatrolled waters, hundreds of miles south of Somalia, at a latitude intersecting with Tanzania.

Sirius Star - Ye ship o' Black Gold!

So lucrative is the crime - a typical western-owned ship can fetch more than £1m - that there are now at least five Somali pirate gangs employing more than 1,000 gunmen, according to the East African Seafarers’ Association in Mombasa. Between July and September there were 47 attacks off Somalia’s coast, the longest in Africa, and 26 were successful.

Pirates Demand $10 million ransom:

Pirates are expected to a record ransom of more than $10million for the release of the Saudi oil supertanker hijacked off the Kenyan coast, as the spate of hijackings gathered pace with two more ships seized today.

Two more vessels, a Hong Kong cargo ship and a fishing boat, were seized in the Gulf of Aden. The Delight, a Hong Kong-flagged ship, loaded with wheat bound for Iran, was captured off the Yemen coast, the latest raid in the Horn of Africa’s perilous waters. A U.S. Navy spokeswoman said the Hong Kong-registered ship belonged to Iran’s state shipping lines. The other vessel, a fishing boat registered in Kiribati, was carrying a crew of 12, the International Maritime Bureau said. Its owners lost contact with the IMB this morning.

Somali pirates holding crewmembers of the Chinese fishing vessel FV Tian Yu 8

Yea, feast yer eyes on the magic video as to why the world is powerless to stop the Somali pirates!

Turn ye ears to these yellow-bellies:

Commanders from the US Fifth Fleet and from Nato warships in the area said that they would not intervene to retake the vessel.

Operations undertaken by the coalition fleet are fraught with legal difficulties, ranging from restrictive rules of engagement to rights of habeas corpus, as the British Navy discovered when it detained eight pirates after a shootout last week.

The waters are simply too big, there aren’t enough western vessels, the pirates are too numerous…

MeThinks the Somali Pirates do not adhere to the Code!

Yee God! He look nothing like Jack Sparrow! Or Ahab! Or Queequeg, for that matter!

No word from the Dutch East India Company about recent events! Tis a strange thing!

Now she gets off easy:

A judge sentenced a former teacher to two days in jail for having sex with one of her students. Sarah Joel, 31, has already served that time. She pled guilty last month to starting a sexual relationship with one of her eighth grade students at Narcoosee School in St. Cloud. Joel was also sentenced to eight years of probation and she must register as a sex offender.

Dumbass Daily has info on Joel’s arrrest last January:

Deputies began investigating Narcoossee Community School Sarah Elizabeth Joel, 31, Friday morning, after a Harmony High School teacher told deputies that one of her students was suspected of having sex with his former teacher.

During a tape-recorded interview, the student told an investigator that he and Joel stayed in touch after last school year and he became a friend of her family. When he called Joel to talk about his problems, Joel would pick him up and take him to her home. “One thing led to another,” the teen told investigators. He said the encounters took place at Joel’s St. Cloud home during September, when he was 15.

Transvestism, along with six other sexual behaviors, will be struck from Sweden’s official list of medical diagnoses starting on January 1st, 2009. The National Board of Health and Welfare (AKA Socialstyrelsen) took the decision to declassify the behaviors as illnesses in order to avoid strengthening prejudices about them, said agency head Lars-Erik Holm.

The other diagnoses which will soon disappear from the disease registry include fetishism, fetishistic transvestitism, sadomasochism, gender identity disorder in youth, and multiple disorders of sexual preferences.

“These diagnoses are rooted in a time when everything other than the heterosexual missionary position were seen as sexual perversions,” Holm said. It was 30 years ago when Socialstyrelsen took a similar step in removing homosexuality from Sweden’s list of diagnoses.

The agency’s decision was met with joy by transvestite Sara Lund/Claes Schmidt, who is known as Sara-Claes. “We’ve been fighting for this for a long so this is really great news,” said Sara-Claes.

Gender Identity Disorder? Or merely Swedish?

Two interesting factoids coming out of Sunday’s Steelers-Chargers game.

First, the 11-10 score is something of a record, considering it has never happened in NFL history. You can thank the Steelers’ safety and 3 field goals for that.

It’s the final play of the game that had the biggest repercussions on gamblers. See the USA Today article for a full description of the play and the officials’ mistake.

The officiating mistake and touchdown that wasn’t at the end of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 11-10 victory over the San Diego Chargers didn’t change the result. From a betting standpoint, it was huge. “It didn’t have an effect on the outcome of the game NFL-wise, record-wise, but it definitely was a big difference for people that had (bets on) Pittsburgh,” says Sean Van Patten, odds maker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, which provides point spreads to Las Vegas casinos for legal sports betting.

Van Patten said the big winners to the tune of millions of dollars were the sports books, which take the wagers, because the public tends to bet on favorites. His firm had the Steelers favored by 4½-points.

Off Beat 2: Judgment Day

Ok, so the image comes from the new Star Trek trailer, but anyway.

It looks like JJ Abrams created a cheesy piece of sci fi fluff strictly for the WB/Dawson’s Creek crowd. How nice.