The Counterrevolutionary suggests what a news article about the Johannesburg summit might contain at the end of the conference:

"Separately, the US was chastised for the abnormal amounts of particulate matter released into the atmosphere when the Twin Towers of New York were allowed to collapse in September of last year. Sven Lingh of Sweden said that it was “the direct consequence of American hegemony, unilateralism and arrogance.”

Some participants blamed the American use of highly combustible jet fuel in its aircraft as the cause of the Towers’ collapse. “Had Kyoto been ratified, and followed, the jet fuel would not burn at such a high temperature and the buildings would not have crumbled,” added Lingh."

Another take on the proposed Haggis ban from David Carr at Libertarian Samizdata:

"First, they came for the Haggis and I said nothing, because I did not eat Haggis
Then, they came for the Oysters, and I said nothing, because I did not eat Oysters
Then, they came for the Pheasant, and I said nothing, because I did not eat pheasant
Then, they came for the Venison, and I said nothing, because I did not eat Venison
And finally, they came for the Pate de Fois Gras, and there was nothing left worth eating!"

Chris Kanis of Spoons Experience posted this piece which was the talk of the blogosphere yesterday of how he met his fiance through the blog.
We offer our hearty congratulations to Chris. For any attractive, female readers of this blog, alas I have already met and married the woman of my dreams. Jerry is similarly attached to a wonderful woman. Max, however, is quite eligible and a catch. So have at him, ladies.

Great new Lileks screed posted.

"The hard left, on the other hand, demonstrates all the symptoms of anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure - there’s a rancid bitterness, a pissy miserablism that makes you feel very, very sorry for them. The world is going to hell, and they’re stuck in the last car with a newspaper they’ve read six times already; the only person they can harangue is sleeping off a skinful of lager, and they’re trying to work up a hot batch of hatred for the woman in the skin-cream ad above the traincar’s window, but she is rather pretty, in a Sloany way. (Bitch.) They’ve given up on convincing the rest of us fools that we’re trampolining with scissors and knives - all they can do is sneer, whine, mope and spit. In high school terms, they’re the skinny spotted unpopular kids who cannot believe the cheerleaders don’t know how wretched their empty lives really are. Sure, they have dates. Sure, they’re going to college. Sure, they’re going to meet big beefy guys with MBAs and end up in a nice house with a big garden, but don’t they know how empty it all is? Don’t they know that their very existence on the planet causes poverty in Peru and kills fish in the Atlantic?"

A Prayer for Johannesburg
by Robert C. Hinkley and John Karvel

Mother Earth, we thank you for your wisdom in bringing our wisest leaders together in South Africa to discuss the problems we have wrought upon you and each other.

We pray you will guide them to find solutions to these problems so that the planet with which you provide us nuture may be sustained.
[more]

If these guys think the motley crew of bureaucrats in Johannesburg are our wisest leaders who will solve anything other than which fork to use with their caviar or lobster then we are in really serious trouble. Read the rest of the "prayer" just for the same head-shaking bemusement you feel when you see someone wandering down the street wearing tinfoil on his head muttering about how the CIA trying to control his brain. (via The Corner)

President says 'Liberals Right All Along'

At a press conference this morning the President announced that the constant stream of criticism from journalists, academics and left-wing organizations has caused him to see the light. He announced a major shift in US foreign policy. Now made aware of the growing US hegemony around the world the President announced that the US will no longer be the worlds policeman. He has ordered all of our armed forces home and announced that from now on the US military will only be used for the defense of the United States.

With the US occupation forces removed from Europe the Europeans can now once again realize their full potential without the shackles of US control. Germany, where the Schroeder government recently lost the election to a coalition of ultra-right groups, has secretly been building up it's own military forces and declared that it has signed a co-defense treaty with Vladimir Putin and Austria's Haider. Claiming violations of multiple EU regulations Germany has invaded Poland and France with the aid of Putin's forces. The US also returned Slobedan Milosevic to Serbia saying that it regrets the illegal use of force used to remove him from power. And in Asia, Chinese military forces have taken over Taiwan and installed a military government there and is reported to be massing ships around Japan. North Korean forces have poured into the South, casualties are said to be approaching 500,000.

The US also announced it has dropped all plans to invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein interrupted his invasions of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran and night and day bombing of Israel to say that now that the US has come to it's senses he thinks we can begin a constructive dialogue to resume trade between our two nations.
Oil prices have hit $315/bbl since hostilities began sending plane and auto travel to a virtual standstill. Many cities have had to idle their emergency vehicles because they cannot afford the fuel costs. While there have been numerous reported deaths due to people being unable to afford winter heating costs, the president said that these deaths while regrettable would be more than offset by the lives saved by the delay of global warming.

The president also announced that we will no longer try to influence foreign governments with grants of money. All foreign aid will end immediately. Egyptian president Mubarek announced that they will have to shut down many anti-US newspapers because of insufficient funds to keep them running. The President apologized for removing our support from Israel, but announced that we would no longer attempt to restrain them either so they should do as they wish with their Arab neighbors. India and Pakistan have resumed massing troops on the Kashmir border and have each announced their intention to launch their nuclear arsenals before weeks end.

After numerous complaints of unilateralism from the Democrats, the President also signed and submitted to the Senate for ratification the Kyoto Treaty, ICC Treaty, CEDAW, CRC, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Ottawa Land Mine Treaty and the ABM Treaty. Unfortunately none of the treaties were ratified by the Democratically controlled Senate.

One high-ranking administration official said privately how relieved he was that the US is no longer a global bully, "I will sleep much better at night knowing that we are no longer pushing our weight around the world to further the interests of the oil companies and other corporate interests".

Paul Krugman in a NY Times editorial wrote a piece lavishly praising the president and his actions.

(© Copyright John Hudock 2002)

The EU is threatening to ban *gasp* Haggis. What's next? English Blood-Pudding, Norwegian Lutefisk, Chinese Sea Cucumber, Monkey-Brains, Marmite, Spam, Spotted-Dick ...? This is the top of a slippery slope...soon all disgusting food products will be gone and then what will we describe to our children when trying to get them to eat spinach? "You may think you don't like spinach, but in Scotland they make their children eat sheep intenstine stuffed with oatmeal and organ meats, we could move to Scotland".

And another reason Public Schooling is Better Than Homeschooling:

LA Schools to Vote on Banning Soda [more]

No progress on banning gun or heroin sales though.

Why Public Schooling Is Better Than Homeschooling (from Scrappleface)


* Most parents were educated in the underfunded public school system, and so are not smart enough to homeschool their own children.
* Children who receive one-on-one homeschooling will learn more than others, giving them an unfair advantage in the marketplace. This is undemocratic.
* How can children learn to defend themselves unless they have to fight off bullies on a daily basis?
* Ridicule from other children is important to the socialization process.
* Children in public schools can get more practice "Just Saying No" to drugs, cigarettes and alcohol.
* Fluorescent lighting may have significant health benefits.
* Publicly asking permission to go to the bathroom teaches young people their place in society.
* The fashion industry depends upon the peer pressure that only public schools can generate.
* Public schools foster cultural literacy, passing on important traditions like the singing of "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg..."
* Homeschooled children may not learn important office career skills, like how to sit still for six hours straight.

Building a nuclear weapon or even a dirty bomb is not as easy as it's often made out to be as this amusing article in MIT Tech Review points out:

"I log on to Ask Jeeves and type, ``Where can I buy some uranium?''. Jeeves responds: ``You can find anything at eBay. eBay has everything you're looking for. Find it all at eBay''. So I type uranium into the eBay search box, and discover that there will be a uranium auction in exactly two hours and 46 minutes. The description of the item being auctioned reads: ``This is uranium-238. The vile (sic) and the uranium weighs 22 grams.''There have already been three bidders, the top bid being $18.41. I call Matthew Bunn and ask him if 22 grams of uranium-238 would suffice for a dirty bomb.

``Not very interesting,'' he says. ``It's used for ballast in ships. The US has thousands of tonnes of it that it is desperate to get rid of. I haven't even thought about uranium-238. If I was building a dirty bomb, you know what I'd get my hands on?''

``What?'' I ask.

``One of those machines they use to kill bacteria in meat in a food-processing plant. It contains cobalt-60. If you burst one successfully, blam! That would be a really big disaster. Although they emit shards as opposed to inhalable particles. But there are clever things you can do to turn shards into inhalable particles.''"

Another review of Martin Amis's "Koba the Dread".

Another Children's Book Rant

Last week, we took a copy of Rumplestilskin out of the library for the girls. A lovely version with nice illustrations which both girls enjoyed. For those who don't remember the story let me recap. A miller boasts to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king orders the girl be brought to the castle and locks her in a room filled with straw and demands, on penalty of death, that she spin it into gold. Of course she cannot, but Rumplestilskin appears and agrees to do it for her in exchange for her necklace. The following day the king very pleased with all the gold locks her in an even larger room filled with straw. This time Rumplestilskin does it in exchange for her ring. On the third day the king locks her in an enormous room and tells her if she succeeds in spinning all this straw into gold she will become his queen, if not she will die. When Rumplestilskin appears she tells him she has nothing left to offer, so he asks for her first born to which she agrees assuming it is an event far in the future and that when the time comes Rumplestilskin will forget all about it. The king, delighted, marries her. Years later they have a son and when he is a few months Rumplestilskin appears to collect. The queen offers him anything else in the kingdom he wants but he is adamant. After much wailing he agrees to let her keep the child if she can guess his name within three days. She has servants scour the countryside gathering unusual names but of course none of them is correct. On the third day she goes out searching herself and comes upon his cabin deep in the woods and hears him singing a song in which he reveals his name. She returns to the palace and when he comes to get the child she reveals his name at which point he stamps his foot in fury so hard that he goes through the castle floor, presumably straight to hell. A classic children's tale, so what is my problem with it? It is that Rumplestilskin is presented as the villain in the narrative, but as far as I can tell he is the only blameless one in the entire story. Let us deconstruct. The miller is a boastful ass-kisser who endangers his daughters life by telling lies to the king to get in his good graces. The king is a greedy, power-hungry lout who threatens the life of one of his subjects if she doesn't make him richer. The girl starts out pretty blameless, but it is she who agrees to give up her child to save her skin. Not particularly evil, but not really a model of selflessness either. It is also not clear that she had no other bargaining chips. Even though she gave up her ring and necklace she was after all a pretty young maid, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Short and ugly Rumple probably doesn't get laid very often if at all. I'm sure they could have come to an arrangement. But instead she prefers to offer her first born hoping that he will forget about it (ie that she can cheat him). Now lets look at Rumple. He agrees to help a girl in dire need first for some trinkets. She was after all a poor millers daughter so her ring and necklace couldn't be very valuable especially to someone who can spin straw into gold. When she tells him she has nothing to offer on the third time he asks for her first-born. He doesn't say he wants to eat it or do anything horrible to it. Perhaps he is just lonely living like an outcast deep in the woods and wants a child of his own which he can't get any other way because woman threatened with death won't even sleep with him. He fulfills his part of the contract not even knowing if he'll ever be paid since he has no way of knowing if she'll ever have a child. When he comes to collect he agrees to give her an out. Something which is not required by any means. He has a binding contract already, so giving her a way out can only be out of the goodness of his heart. Which leads me to my conclusion that the only truly virtuous character in the whole tale is Rumplestilskin. Now I am basing this assessment on this particular telling, I didn't go back and check the original Grimm version to see if it makes a clearer case (maybe he does want the child for stew) but as I recall it, this is a fairly close representation of it. And so we have another case of an unfairly maligned Capitalist who is disparaged for offering valuable services in exchange for voluntarily offered goods and services.

Another great piece by Rand Simberg:

"Washington, April 3, 1944 (Routers)

Fissures are starting to appear in the formerly united front within the Roosevelt administration on the upcoming decision of whether, where and how to invade Europe. Some influential voices within both the Democrat and Republican parties are starting to question the wisdom of toppling Adolf Hitler's regime, and potentially destabilizing much of the region.

"It's one thing to liberate France and northwestern Europe, and teach the Germans a lesson, but invading a sovereign country and overthrowing its democratically-elected ruler would require a great deal more justification," said one well-connected former State Department official. "The President just hasn't made the case to the American people."

Indeed, some are querulous at the notion of invading France itself.

They argue, correctly, that the German-French Armistice of 1940 is a valid international treaty, and the Vichy government is widely recognized as the legitimate government of France, even by the US. (The British government doesn't recognize it, but much of that is a result of antipathy to the Germans from the Blitz.)"