A Great Weight Has Been Lifted

In reality a few medium sized weights have been lifted.

I had a cake topper project to sculpt and I had to prepare a 45 minute presentation for an advanced CIT class. I knew about both of these things since November. The cake topper had to be completed by the end of April and the presentation was last Thursday.

You would think that I would have started both projects in November and have been done since Christmas. Well, okay, you wouldn’t actually think that if you know me. Those who know me would correctly assume that I’d have waited until the last minute and then worked feverishly to finish both projects.

I’m a procrastinator. Yet I’m not one of those carefree happy-go-lucky procrastinators who fritter away the day on merriment and then whip something up at the last minute, confident that everything will work out fine.

Instead I’m the type of procrastinator who starts a project on time and works on it intermittently but obsesses about them continuously. Despite obsessing about it I will go to ridiculous lengths to avoid working on the project when I’m “feeling uninspired.”

What the hell does “feeling uninspired” really mean though? I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar but I definitely go through waves of enthusiasm for completing a task. If I’m not feeling inspired I have plenty of other stuff I could be doing.

As a kid whenever I told my parents I was bored they always came up with the same smart-assed suggestion (or sage advice) about cleaning my room or doing other housework. I learned not to claim boredom (if only to avoid housework).

Consequently when I have a project that needs doing now but I can’t get myself to work on it , I’ll actually do housework or make yet another attempt at organizing my stuff and eliminating all the crap I seem incapable of throwing away (Need a power cord for a Power Mac computer from the 90’s? I probably have one. That HP engineering calculator I bought when taking engineering classes in the 80’s? I think I still have that too. Remote controls for stereos I no longer own? Guilty. Although there are probably stereo components or VCRs in boxes that I never use which belong with those remotes.)

So I have plenty of stuff I need to get done anyway. And those Netflix movies aren’t going to watch themselves. Every day a Netflix movie goes unwatched reduces the number of movies I get for my monthly fee. We can’t have that.

And the best ideas for projects like stained glass or polymer clay come when I’m already working on three projects which need to get done first. I try to jot them down and stick them in a file but now I have a file of crap I need to sift through – whenever I get the time.

Well, now I have the time. The cake topper landed briefly atop the cake (pictures to come) and is now in the bride’s china cabinet next to her Waterford. Mission accomplished.

The presentation has been presented. Maltreatment and Brain Development in Children was my topic and I think I got my point across. Luckily I was the last presenter.

When I started this road through anxiety and panic attacks I would have pleaded to go first. Now I’m much more comfortable to be last. I can pretty much keep the anxiety away through self-awareness and sometimes half a Xanax (as prescribed). I’ve managed to become pretty good at doing last minute tailoring of my topic to hit on ideas mentioned in the other presentations and therefore tie everything together. Plus I an incapable of being entirely serious so my presentations usually include humor. Hit them with the light funny stuff at the end of the day to keep their interest, that’s why I’m all about. If all else fails, set a guitar on fire. It worked at the Monterrey Pop Festival.

So now I am temporarily project-less. I have stuff in mind but I’m taking a week off from obsessing about projects.

Plenty of other stuff to obsess over.

Old Car

162 shots snapped for fun, one which makes me smile

Podcasts and Horror

I have always loved listening to radio chat shows (as opposed to screechy political talk radio) and I love horror movies so I was pleasantly surprised to find The Horror Etc Podcast.

Ted and Tony are horror fans from Kingstown, Ontario, Canada, who have lively discussions about horror movies and post their podcast every Monday for our listening pleasure.

And a pleasure it most certainly is. Unlike movie review podcasts or juvenile shows dedicated to a lot of swearing and dissecting of kill-scenes from horror movies, the Horror Etc guys usually have a theme and then discuss horror movies from the early days of cinema to new releases on that theme. It’s always entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking.

This is not to say they don’t ever use bad language or discuss special effects but their discussions are usually much more intellectual than the standard fare.

If you enjoy horror movies and interesting discussions, check out the Horror Etc Podcast.

(By the way, I'm not in any way affiliated with these guys nor has anyone asked me to post something nice about them. this is just how I roll).

Condo Blues, Round 2

Here's the local news version of the story I told you May 15, 2008:

Insurance Shortfall Stalls Rebuilding After Fire, Anchorage Daily News April 18, 2009

and here's my original tale of woe:

My grandmother owns a 1 bedroom apartment style condominium unit in a two-building 100-unit condo association in a very desirable part of Los Anchorage. In 2007 her property tax assessment was $210,700.

Last June a plumber’s apprentice, not being supervised appropriately, accidentally started a fire which caused one of the buildings (approximately 50 units) to be considered a total loss. Luckily my grandmother lives in the other building. 50 families have no homes now but still are required to pay their condo dues (which are in excess of $400 per month).

Here’s where her luck stops:

It turns out the condo association was drastically under-insured – somewhere between $4,000,000 and $10,000,000 under-insured. Guess who is going to make up the difference?

Winner, winner, chicken dinner – you guessed it: grandma (and 99 of her closest neighbors). She was just notified by the condo board of directors that all owners should expect a special assessment of about $70,000 (middle ground of the two ends of the shortfall continuum).

70,000 dollars. That’s a lot of tall green.

Who can afford to write a $70,000 check? Chances are if any of the condo owners in her association could write such a check they’d be living in an even more desirable area of town.

After the fire (but before the consequences of the fire were fully known) my grandmother obtained “special assessments insurance” which would cover such a check but it’s doubtful they’d cover an assessment for an event which occurred before coverage started.

Either way there are lots of people who are not merely screwed but really most sincerely screwed.

For the foreseeable future no one will be able to sell their condo. Who’d buy such a thing with that special assessment time bomb coming? And since they don’t have any real idea how much that assessment is going to be, how would you put a value on the property? Would any title company clear the property for a mortgage company?

Speaking of mortgages, my grandmother owns her condo outright. For those who still have mortgages on their property they will need to take out and additional $70K loan. Ouch.

This will take years to sort out. A lot of owners are elderly and frankly a lot of them will be dead and buried before the final bill becomes due. Imagine the estate nightmare.

The only positive thing is that her 2008 tax assessment is $160,000. Hooray. Sort of.

***

Fun fact: if you are under-insured you are soundly penalized. It’s called “co-insurance” and what it means is that if you are under-insured then the insurance company assumes you are self-insuring the rest. If you have a claim they will pay based upon the percentage of co-insurance they cover.

It breaks down like this. Say when you bought your house it was valued at and insured for $150,000. But now say your property has appreciated (through natural market forces or by improvements or whatever) such that the house is now worth $200,000 but the insurance was never modified to reflect that. The insurance company is going to assume you meant to be only 75% insured.

So let’s image that Hurricane Jimminy comes by and blows part of your roof off. The cost of the roof repair is $10,000. The insurance company is only going to pay $7500 less your deductible.

Who’s responsible for keeping up with whether you are properly insured? You. If it’s a condo association then it’s the condo association board of directors. In the case of my grandmother’s condo the insurance broker might have some liability but that’s only if he didn’t follow his rules and responsibilities to notify. I’m certain that each board member will be sued. Another reason not to be on the board.

I Met A Rat Of Culture by Jack Prelutsky

I met a rat of culture
who was elegantly dressed
in a pair of velvet trousers
and a silver-buttoned vest,
he related ancient proverbs
and recited poetry,
he spoke a dozen languages,
eleven more than me.

That rat was perspicacious,
and had cogent things to say
on bionics, economics,
hydroponics, and ballet,
he instructed me in sculpture,
he shed light on keeping bees,
then he painted an acrylic
of an abstract view of cheese.

He had circled the equator,
he had visited the poles,
he extolled the art of sailing
while he baked assorted rolls,
he wove a woolen carpet
and he shaped a porcelain pot,
then he sang an operetta
while he danced a slow gavotte.

He was versed in jet propulsion,
an authority on trains,
all of botany and baseball
were contained within his brains,
he knew chemistry and physics,
he had taught himself to sew,
to my knowledge, there was nothing
that the rodent did not know.

He was vastly more accomplished
than the billions of his kin,
he performed a brief sonata
on a tiny violin,
but he squealed and promptly vanished
at the entrance of my cat,
for despite his erudition,
he was nothing but a rat.
~Jack Prelutsky

found on www.arizonabutterfly.com

photo: LaTimes

You know times are tough when the vultures don’t wait until you are dead

Vulture Crashes Thru Minivan, Maims Woman

Updated 12:12 PM EDT, Fri, Mar 27, 2009

State police say a turkey vulture injured a passenger when it crashed through a minivan's windshield Friday.

The bird crashed into a red Dodge Caravan at about 8:15 a.m. on Interstate 80 in Parsippany. It whopped 32-year-old Vanessa Hurtado in the face, causing minor cuts. Shards of glass got caught in her eye.

The turkey vulture landed in the middle seat behind the driver, 35-year-old Jorge Hurtado, who wasn't hurt. He told police that the bird was alive for a brief time following the crash; the responding officer pronounced the animal dead at the scene.

Eagle Towing (no pun intended) towed the vehicle away. Vanessa Hurtado first asked that the vulture be removed from the car, lest it marinate in the heat.

Turkey vultures, which are not related to turkeys, generally soar in circles on wind currents and are often seen on highway shoulders eating road kill.

This isn't the first time a turkey vulture has left its mark on a New Jerseyan. In June 2004, one hit a motorcyclist in the head. While attempting to get the live bird off of him, the man lost control and struck another car. He died of his injuries.

Story: NBC New York



photo: http://animalwisdom.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/turkeyvulture/

Can Journalism Be Saved By A Fake News Show?

I am a news junkie but lately I have a pretty low opinion of journalists. Okay, maybe not journalists personally but the news outlets who feed us crap and call it news.

My political and social views were formed post-Nixon and pre-Reagan; therefore I mistrust the government, corporations, rich people, religious institutions, radical groups, and zealots.

Perhaps it’s because I watched too much Lou Grant and 60 Minutes and listened to years of Herb Shaindlin but I have always though that the job of a journalist is to keep an eye on those aforementioned institutions (and others) and to report when they are lying to us and/or causing us harm.

Apparently that’s too much to ask these days.

But wait, all hope is not lost. Leave it to a fake news show to sum up the problem with the real news outlets.

Jon Stewart’s interview with Jim Cramer (or actually Jon Stewart’s lambasting of Jim Cramer and CNBC) hit the nail on the head.



Here’s part of a transcript (by Darcy Logan at Mahalo.com) edited and emphasized by me. Click on the YouTube link up top to see the video itself.

Jon Stewart: I gotta tell you. I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it’s not a f---ing game. When I watch that I get, I can’t tell you how angry it makes me because it says to me, “You all know.” You all know what’s going on. You can draw a straight line from those shenanigans to the stuff that was being pulled at Bear and at AIG and all this derivative market stuff that is this weird Wall Street side bet.

Jim Cramer: But Jon, don’t you want guys like me that have been in it to show the shenanigans? What else can I do? I mean, last night’s show---

JS: No, no, no, no, no. I want desperately for that, but I feel like that’s not what we’re getting. What we’re getting is… Listen, you knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months. The entire network was and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.

JC: But Dick Fogle(sp?) who ran Lehman Brothers, called me in when the stock was at 40 because I thought that the stock was wrong, I thought that it was the wrong place for it to be. He brings me in, lies to me, lies to me, lies to me. I’ve known him for twenty years.

JS: The CEO of a company lied to you.

JC: Shocker stock trading.

JS: But isn’t that financial reporting? What do you think is the role of CNBC? …

CNBC could act as—No one is asking them to be a regulatory agency, but can’t—but whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile as their audience the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day-to-day for short term. These guys companies were on a Sherman’s March through their companies financed by our 401ks and all the incentives of their companies were for short term profit. And they burned the f---ing house down with our money and walked away rich as hell and you guys knew that that was going on.

JC: … I think we have reporters who try really hard. We’re not always told the truth. But most importantly, the market was going up for a long time and our real sin I think was to believe that it was going to continue to go up a lot in the face of what you just described. A lot of borrowing. A lot of shenanigans and I know I did, I’ll bring it up, I didn’t think Bear Sterns was going to evaporate overnight. I didn’t. I knew the people who ran it, I always thought they were honest. That was my mistake. I really did. I thought they were honest. Did I get taken in because I knew them from before? Maybe to some degree. The guy who came on from Wachoviawas an old friend of mine who helped hire me.

JS: But honest or not, in what world is a 35 to 1 leverage position sane?

JC: The world that made you 30% year after year after year beginning from 1999 to 2007 and it became—

JS: But isn’t that part of the problem? Selling this idea that you don’t have to do anything. Anytime you sell people the idea that sit back and you’ll get 10 to 20 percent on your money, don’t you always know that that’s going to be a lie? When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work. That we’re workers and by selling this idea that of “Hey man, I’ll teach you how to be rich.” How is that any different than an infomercial?

JC: Well, I think that your goal should always be to try to expose the fact that there is no easy money. I wish I had found Madoff (sp?)—

JS: But there are literally shows called “Fast Money.”

JC: I think that people…There’s a market for it and you give it to them.

JS: There’s a market for cocaine and hookers. What is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street? Who are you responsible to? The people with the 401ks and the pensions and the general public or the Wall Street traders, and by the way this casts an aspersion on all of Wall Street when I know that’s unfair as well. The majority of those guys are working their asses off. They’re really bright guys. I know a lot of them. They’re just trying to do the right thing and they’re getting f---ed in the ass, too.

JC: True. True. .. I’m a commentator. We have—and you can take issues with the fact that I throw bulls and bears and I can still be considered serious. I’m not Eric Sevareid. I’m not Edward R. Morrow. I’m a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch. But it’s difficult to have a reporter to say I just came from an interview with Hank Wilson(Sp?) and he lied his darn fool head off. It’s difficult. I think it challenges the boundaries.

JS: Yeah. I’m under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I’m under the assumption that you don’t just take their word for it at face value. That you actually then go around and try and figure it out. So, again, you now have become the face of this and that is incredibly unfortunate.

JC: I wish I had done a better job trying to figure out the 30 to 1 and whether it was going to blow up. It did. Once it did I was late it saying it was bad.

JS: So maybe we could remove the financial expert and the “In Cramer we Trust” and start getting back to fundamentals on reporting as well and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces.

JC: I think we make that deal right here.

JS: Mad Money airs on CNBC weeknights at six.

The Last of The Glass (for now)

I am putting away the glass for a bit to focus on a polymer clay sculpture I promised to a friend.

In the meantime here are the last couple of pieces. Click on the pictures to see them jumbo sized.

I gave the blue plane to my dad.



The mirror is my Grandmother's. She asked if I could fix the backs of the mirrors (they were plastic mother-of-pearl discs which had decayed over the years). Kelli and I came up with the mosaic idea.

Fear of Commitment

I could never commit to a … hobby, lifestyle (?) for as long as this woman:

Woman's record-length fingernails broken in crash

Feb 12, 9:14 PM (ET)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A Utah woman listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for her long fingernails has lost them in a car crash. Lee Redmond of Salt Lake City sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries in the accident Tuesday.

Redmond's nails, which hadn't been cut since 1979, were broken in the crash. According to the Guinness Web site, her nails measured a total of more than 28 feet long in 2008, with the longest nail on her right thumb at 2 feet, 11 inches.

Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Don Hutson says Redmond was ejected from an SUV in the crash and taken to the hospital in serious condition.

Redmond has been featured on TV in episodes of "Guinness Book of World Records" and "Ripley's Believe It or Not."

So, note to self, if you don’t clip your nails for 30 years, God might just do it for you.

God or a mid-sized late model sedan.

Separated At Birth

There’s a new Republican National Committee chairman and his name is Michael Steele.

Being a liberal who is not a member of any political party, you’d think the new guy at RNC would not even be on my radar but .... it’s eerie:

Michael Steele, Republican National Committee Chairman

Jeffrey Tambor, actor who appears in Arrested Development, The Larry Sanders Show, and in at least one episode of nearly every popular TV series since Kojak.

Tabasco Pepper Stained Glass

I wanted to do something 3D, something I hadn't seen before, something fun.

Here is version 1 of 3D stained glass.



Yes that's an actual unopened bottle of Tabasco.

No, the project didn't come out quite as expected. The gap at the bottom bothers me but there has to be some gap because the bottle is not affixed to the stained glass, it's held in by pressure.

I didn't account for the fact that you cannot see through Tabasco sauce. It might as well be a bottle of barbecue sauce for all the light that gets through. While the green and red glass is brilliant in the sun, the bottle becomes a silhouette. Plus I'm told the sauce will eventually turn brown with age, even unopened.

Oh well. Live and learn. I think I'll try a mini bottle next time or drain the bottle and fill it with colored water.

Step Off, Punk-Ass Peach

A few days ago a coworker was commenting about the deliciousness of the apple she was eating.

When asked if the apple was a Fuji she said, “no, it’s a Cripps.’

Forget East Coast - West Coast conflict, now we have fruit gangs.

It’s the Cripps Apples vs. the Blood Oranges.

I foresee drive-by juicings.

Nothing good can come of this.

~~~

Cripps Apples http://www.bestapples.com

Blood Oranges http://www.harvestwizard.com

A Heart-Warming Story to Make You Smile

Baby moose falls through Spokane family's window

Associated Press - January 9, 2009 9:04 PM ET

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - A Spokane family got a surprise arrival when a moose calf fell through a basement window and into a bedroom.

The Spokesman Review reports that the baby moose was apparently foraging in the shallower snow close to the house when it fell into a deep window well on Thursday. As it tried to get out and join its mother and sibling, the moose kicked in the window and ended up trapped in the bedroom.

Washington state wildlife biologist Woody Myers got the call, thinking at first the police officer who phoned him was joking. Myers managed to shoot a tranquilizer dart into the moose's rump. Then he and four other men used a tarp to haul the 375-pound baby up a narrow stairway.

Wildlife officers were later able to track down the calf's mother and sibling and trucked the reunited family out near Mount Spokane for release. The area has gotten more than 6 feet of snow in the past three weeks.

Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesmanreview.com

What makes me smile is at my agency we would have no doubt not have been able to have reached a wildlife biologist in a timely manner.

Which means we would have to "dispatch" the moose.

After inadvertently shooting the plasma TV, the Wii Fit, and a water bed, we would have reloaded and shot the moose 4 dozen times with two calibers of ammunition and exhausted 2 packs of Tazer batteries.

Then we'd have called a charity to harvest the meat from the rec room. Baptists with chainsaws and boning knives would show up and drag the moose parts up the stairs and through the patio to their trailer.

Finally we'd have told the home owner that we were not allowed, by policy, to recommend a company to clean up the blood from the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Doesn't Spokane seem nice?

C's Plane

Of the three planes I finished before Christmas, this was my favorite.

I'm taking orders if anyone wants one.

Lucky 13

Today (and yes, I’m posting this a little late) marks my thirteenth anniversary with my department.

Who’d have known? I had no inkling that I’d be answering 911 this long.

The nice this is that I like my job most days.

I get to occasionally help people and they pay me to do it.

I occasionally get training in areas not easily available to the Joe Six-Pack, Sarah Palin crowd.

And did I mention they pay me? I’m feeling pretty good about the whole deal.

Only 17 years to retirement.

Well, unless the economy continues to tank and I have to work until I die.

Wheeeeee.!

Story Flashback: This is why I cannot write fiction

The day before yesterday a woman called the police appalled and feeling violated because one of her neighbors, who all hate her, drugged and castrated her favorite horse.

An officer responded and, after a very un-CSI-like investigation determined that, and I mention now that this is a completely true story, the horse had not been violated but instead was very cold.

The junk just disappears inside the body cavity apparently

No wonder those guys can run so fast. I could too if I could raise and lock my “landing gear” away.

You never see a grandfather clock running down the street

Something to consider.

~~

Photos:
http://www.imh.org
http://black-glass.org/
http://www.tech.purdue.edu/At/Courses/AEML/
http://www.theclockdepot.com/ashley.html

Snow Removal Jobs, Vampires Need Not Apply

From KNXV-TV Phoenix, AZ

Iowa city uses garlic salt to melt snow and ice

Reported by: Associated Press
Last Update: 12/18 3:49 am

No, it's not Pizza Street -- but it smelled like it.

Road crews in a Des Moines, Iowa, suburb used garlic salt to melt snow and ice after a storm this week.

The spicy road treatment was donated by Tone Brothers, a company headquartered in the area.

The spice company says the nine tons of garlic salt would have ended up in a landfill.

Public Works Administrator Al Olson the says the city mixed the garlic salt with regular road salt and it works just fine.

He adds some members of the road crew said using the spicy mixture made them a little hungry.

From the DeMoines Register

Story of garlic salt on Ankeny's roads is national hit

GUNNAR OLSON • REGISTER STAFF WRITER • December 19, 2008

That Ankeny’s road crews were sprinkling the streets with smelly, expired garlic salt that was donated to the city instead of dumped in a landfill was too much for media to resist.

The story with a simple moral and a funny twist has been carried by major newspapers and bantered about on television and radio stations coast to coast, ever since word got out that Tone’s Spices of Ankeny donated nine tons of garlic salt to be used on city streets, not on your neighbor’s mashed potatoes.

Public Works Administrator Al Olson has been a popular guy, giving six or seven interviews that have picked up nationally.

“It’s crazy – just crazy,” Olson said, recalling the friends and family who have heard his interviews in New York, Texas and California. “It’s been such a feel-good thing. It’s amazing the different takes the news stations have had around the country. … Some of them are just hilarious.”

The list of media to carry the story includes USA Today, The Los Angles Times, “Good Morning America” and National Public Radio.

photo: Lawry's

Dear Mr Jobs,

On behalf of 911 operators everywhere I wish to congratulate you on the wildly popular and successful iPhone.

This lovely device is not only easy to use normally but it affords the owner the option of dialing 911 with their buttocks more easily than other cell phones. Blackberry owners have some similar problems but the numbers of ass-dialed calls from iPhones are increasing.

Not only can one use the internet, listen to music, and make phone calls from a single device but one can also have a nice surprise conversation with me or one of my ilk. A conversation which will go something like this:

iPhoner: Hello?

911: Hi, this is the 911 operator, your phone called 911. Is there an emergency?

iPhoner: I didn’t call 911.

911: Actually, yes, your phone called 911.

iPhoner: But I didn’t call 911.

911: It’s not a problem if you accidentally called us, we just need to make sure you are okay.

iPhoner: But it wasn’t me.

911: is your phone number XXX-XXXX ?

iPhoner: yes…

911: and did you order sweet and sour sauce with your 10 piece McNuggets?

iPhoner: you heard that?

911: and a Diet Coke

iPhoner: Wow, I guess I did call. I must have bumped it. Imagine that…

911: Indeed. So you are okay, you don’t need the police, fire department, or paramedics?

iPhoner: No. But thank you for calling. You people do a great job.

911: Why thank you. Have a nice day.

Next call:

911: 911, what’s the location of your emergency?

a different iPhoner: (background noise and voice talking to her friend Becky about some other girl’s big butt)

911: (slightly more testily) 911, what’s the location of your emergency?

iPhoner: (more background, laughter. Probably some good natured swearing.)

911: (initiating the loud screechy TDD tones to no avail)

911 sighs and hangs up. Re-dials

iPhoner: Hello?

911: Hi, this is the 911 operator, your phone called 911. Is there an emergency?

iPhoner: I didn’t call 911.

iPhone pic from http://www.techdigest.tv/

Stress reduction picture: http://www.j2fi.net/

Invasion of the Alien Jellyfish

!! Shock Horror !!

Perhaps due to my recent mauling by sea-life at the Atlanta Aquarium or perhaps due to the fact I’m been reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft lately, I find this story upsetting.

Jellyfish gone wild ruin tourist spots, report says

Fri Dec 12, 6:16 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Huge swarms of stinging jellyfish and similar slimy animals are ruining beaches in Hawaii, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, Australia and elsewhere, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

The report says 150 million people are exposed to jellyfish globally every year, with 500,000 people stung in the Chesapeake Bay, off the U.S. Atlantic Coast, alone.

Another 200,000 are stung every year in Florida, and 10,000 are stung in Australia by the deadly Portuguese man-of-war, according to the report, a broad review of jellyfish research.

The report, available on the Internet at http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/jellyfish/index.jsp, says the Black Sea's fishing and tourism industries have lost $350 million because of a proliferation of comb jelly fish.

The report says more than 1,000 fist-sized comb jellies can be found in a cubic yard (meter) of Black Sea water during a bloom.

They eat the eggs of fish and compete with them for food, wiping out the livelihoods of fishermen, according to the report.

And it says a third of the total weight of all life in California's Monterey Bay is made up of jellyfish.

Human activities that could be making things nice for jellyfish include pollution, climate change, introductions of non-native species, overfishing and building artificial structures such as oil and gas rigs.

Creatures called salps cover up to 38,600 square miles (100,000 sq km) of the North Atlantic in a regular phenomenon called the New York Bight, but researchers quoted in the report said this one may be a natural cycle.

"There is clear, clean evidence that certain types of human-caused environmental stresses are triggering jellyfish swarms in some locations," William Hamner of the University of California Los Angeles says in the report.

These include pollution-induced "dead zones", higher water temperatures and the spread of alien jellyfish species by shipping.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Philip Barbara)