Apparently I am not the only person disturbed by the inconsistances in Rumplestiltskin. I came across this book by an author who was equally perturbed and decided to re-write the story in six different versions. From the Amazon description:

"Why did the miller tell the king his daughter could spin straw into gold in the first place? The story of Rumpelstiltskin is full of holes, says young adult fantasy writer Vivian Vande Velde in the author's note to this delightful group of tales. For instance, why was the dwarf was willing to accept the girl's ring as a bribe when he already knew how to spin unlimited quantities of gold? And why did he want a baby at all? Not to mention the very peculiar ending in which he stamps on the floor, catches his foot in a crack, and in a fit of rage tears himself in two. Excuse me? says Vande Velde.
The skeptical author sets out to remedy these flaws in six different imaginative retellings full of sassy humor that teens will relish. Sticking closely to the spirit and setting of the original, she changes only one or two building blocks in the plot structure and comes up with some surprising results. In one story, the miller's daughter is an obnoxious groupie pursuing the polite and gentle king; in another, Rumpelstiltskin is female; and in a third, the dwarf appears as a troll with a yen to eat human baby who sets up the whole scenario as an attempt to get his hands on a toothsome infant. ("Tastes just like chicken," scoffs his brother-in-law.)"

Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab

"In a remarkable feat of tissue engineering, major parts of the penises of several rabbits have been replaced with segments grown in a lab from their own cells. The animals were able to use the reconstructed organs to mate.

The next step is to try to recreate the entire organ from scratch. The technique could make it possible to reconstruct the penises of men who have suffered injuries or those of children born with genital abnormalities."

My temptation is to make some sophmoric joke, but I am actually too amazed by the actual technology involved to do so. Nah, can't resist: so the next time you get one of those 'what women say behind your back/what women really want/enlarge your penis' spam emails, it may actually be the real thing.

A little color change for the blog since we've been running it for over three months now.

Meryl Yourish has taken the time to explain those Nigerian scam emails we all get spammed with.

This is amusing. In a site listing the Top 100 Monsters of all time (I think gathered from some sort of online vote they conducted), Michael Jackson came in at #11 beating out Freddie Kruger, Pinhead and Leatherface among others. The site also has the Top 100 Cool Actors and Top 100 Sexiest Cartoon Babes (via C&S)

It seems the Earth may have another moon, and it may be new. Originally detected and thought to be passing by us, it seems to be in a 50 day orbit.

According to this article, a discovery by US scientists based at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station that it is much colder over the South Pole than believed has exposed a major flaw in the computer models used to predict global warming. (via Best of the Web)

"For the 2005 Volume, The Journal of Bisexuality is planning a (double) issue on POLYAMORY AND BISEXUALITY: THEORIES AND PRACTICES IN RESPONSIBLE NONMONOGAMIES. Possible foci are polyamorous practices like polyfidelity, group eroticism, and compersion; polyamorous social and family organizations like triads, quads and pods, primary, secondary and tertiary relationships; as well as polyamorous styles of child bearing and rearing. Possible related topics are vegetarianism, veganism, nudism, naturism, neopaganism, ecology, holism, spirituality, as well as past and/or non-Western models of polyamorous social and family organizations. We are interested in theoretical, critical, and research articles, reports from the field, personal narratives, reviews, poems, and interviews. Please send inquiries, abstracts and/or submissions by January 31, 2003 to Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, P.O. Box 1941, Mayaguez, PR 00681 (USA)." (via the Corner)

Here's a good piece in the Middle East Quarterly by Martin Kramer about that all-around Islamic cheerleader, Edward Said who in reviewing Bernard Lewis' book "What Went Wrong" said (as quoted in this piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education about some of the newer voices in Islamic Studies):

An "intellectual and moral disaster," he called it, an "ideological portrait of 'Islam' and the Arabs" suited to "dominant pro-imperial and pro-Zionist strands in U.S. foreign policy." He objected to Mr. Lewis's argument, widely cited since September 11, that the Islamic world has become "poor, weak, and ignorant," ruled by a "string of shabby tyrannies" whose principal opponents are theocratic revivalists even more hostile to modernity than the despots who oppress them.

I wonder exactly what part of the above description of the current state of the Islamic world he objects to?

Kim du Toit fisks Nelson Mandela. (via Blog-O-Rama)

There are many unpleasant things we have to deal with in our lives. My point about the 'fat' suit is the absurdity of trying to correct ever annoying thing that happens to you with a lawsuit. Usually one that requests a monetary award way in excess of any possible damage done. What would the appropriate remuneration be? Maybe something on the order of the price of the airline ticket as an upper limit, since Max thinks the airline didn't hold up their end of the contract. While the plaintiff 'only' asked for $9500 in the case cited, it still seems to me quite excessive for the inconvenience of having to sit next to a fat guy for a 2 hour flight. And as for the specifics Max cites, there is no guaranteed size seat the airline offers. The contract is to provide you transportation from one location to another, not necessarily in conditions you consider comfortable. You're option if you don't like the service is to choose a different airline or pay more to fly in first class. The article doesn't mention if the man suing tried any other means to rectify the problem either like asking that his seat be changed.

Kimberly Swygert celebrates some truly heroic dissidents who face real censorship threats (imprisonment, torture, death) and contrasts them to the whining university leftists who cry censorship whenever anyone disagrees with them or points to the fallacies, logical and factual in their arguments.

Another case of tort idiocy, this time from Scotland:

"A man who suffers from epilepsy has been ordered to pay compensation to a student who was upset by his contorted face during a seizure.

In a case described by an epilepsy charity as "like something you would see on the Ally McBeal show", Edwin Young has been told to pay £3,500 to Yvonne Rennie for the mild post-traumatic stress that she suffered."

I wonder what's next, lawsuits by people who find you very unattractive? How about guys suing women who blow them off at bars? People suiing for having fat people sit next to them? (Oh wait, that's already been done)

(via Country Store) (and actually Max had already posted on this a few days ago, I knew I saw it somewhere before)

It seems Florida's new high tech voting systems are less reliable than the old chad-poking ones. (via Joanne Jacobs)

"Florida's first big test of its new voting system since the 2000 presidential election debacle turned sour as soon as polls opened. Ballots were chewed up in the new touchscreen voting system, some polling stations opened late and hundreds of would-be voters were turned away."

CNN has an interview with Richard Butler who basically calls Scott Ritter a liar and perhaps a bit of a lunatic. Quasipundit provided a fair amount of documentation for this assessment.

"Look, I want to make this clear. Until the day he left UNSCOM, Scott was robustly advising me, in writing -- you know, the papers are out there to prove it -- that Iraq continued to retain illegal weapons. He begged me to authorize him to go in and do what he called "kick in the doors and find those weapons." Sometimes, I authorized him to lead inspections; sometimes I rejected his proposals because, quite frankly, they were a little bit off the wall

Andrew Sullivan deconstructs Susan Sontag.

This is pretty funny. I have seen links at multiple other bloggers so it is making the rounds. I don't know if it constitutes a new art form but look for yourself at the creative and very amusing Amazon reviews of Henry Raddick. My favorite was the review of 'The Maltese: Diminutive Aristocrat'

Apparently, in the UK the right to self-defense no longer exists:

Man who killed burglar guilty of manslaughter
(Filed: 10/09/2002)

A father-of-two is facing a jail sentence after being convicted of the manslaughter of a "career burglar" he found in his family's home.

There were cries in the Old Bailey as Barry-Lee Hastings, 25, was cleared of murder but found guilty on 10-2 majority verdict of the manslaughter of Roger Williams, 35.

(via Natalie Solent)

Never underestimate the chutzpah of government officials. In the city of Winona, Minnesota, the city council has decided to tax residents for rainwater runoff due to costs imposed by new Federal regulations.

"Nelson said fees will be based on a complex formula that factors in roof areas, paved surfaces, lawns, wooded areas, agricultural land and other features in determining how much water runs off to be collected by city storm sewers."

I'm sure that will require the addition of multiple bureaucrats to do the appropriate assessments. (via Heretical Ideas)

WhackingDay has some tips on how to be a good Anti-American.

TIP #2: The "Either/Or" method

A tried-and-true tactic is the fabulous "either/or" method: whenever trouble develops in the world, you can immediately begin squealing at the Americans for not doing anything about it, about being isolationists, selfish capitalist pigs and whatnot.

If the americans do act, you can howl outrage about warmongering, American cultural imperialism, oppression of the third world, and suchlike.

(via Cato the Younger who got it from Cut on the Bias)

Bruce S. Thornton has a fine article on Frontpage about malevolent Anti-Americanism:

"For example, the doctrine of cultural relativism — the idea that all cultures are equally valuable, that no basis exists for saying one culture is better than another, and that to say one is better is insensitive ethnocentrism or even racism — on September 11 was exposed as a dangerous lie. The perpetrators of that mass murder were the products of a specific civilization's dysfunctional view of the world, a civilization whose values are opposed to Western ones such as sex equality, liberal democracy, individual autonomy and freedom, and a limited political role for religion. We hear endlessly about the American fear of the "other," but the WTC murderers were the real cultural chauvinists, so fanatically convinced of the rightness of their way of life that they were willing to kill themselves and 3000 innocents, including fellow Muslims — an act sanctioned by numerous verses in the Koran.
...
Yes, there exist Islamic moderates who want their civilization to enter the 21st century, but whether or not Islamic culture will or can adapt to the modern, that is, Western way of secularism and individual freedom is a question ultimately to be answered by Muslims themselves. But the question itself is meaningless without some recognition that the Western way is simply superior in key respects, for it creates the greatest freedom and prosperity for the greatest number of individuals; and that cultures that suppress individual freedom and keep millions of its people in penury aren't just different, but inferior.
...
In the months after the attack numerous American and European intellectuals opined that America had in one way or another "deserved" the attacks, that it was reaping the bitter harvest of its numerous imperialist and racist crimes. This irrational superstition, whose ultimate origins lie in communist propaganda, has become a set of cliches and an unthinking reflex fueled by self-loathing, envy, and resentment. Worse, it has no basis in the facts of history.

The truth is, no society in history wielding the cultural, economic, and military power possessed by the United States has been as restrained in using that power. Even if one accepts the usual anti-American indictment — Chile, Nicaragua, Vietnam — these alleged offenses pale beside the good America has done in the world, and the blood and treasure it has lost in fighting tyrannies like Nazism, Japanese militarism, and communism. We hear much about Vietnam, but the abandonment of our allies there meant that Vietnam today looks more like the starving police state of North Korea than a free and prosperous South Korea. But the real refutation of America's supposed evil is the sheer numbers of immigrants who risk their lives to live among their presumed oppressors. "

I had to stop myself from just 'excerpting' the whole thing. Follow the link and read it.

From a letter to the WaPo:

My Public Spirit Stops at My Daughter

Sunday, September 8, 2002; Page B08

My daughter began private elementary school this year. Our decision to pay for something not everyone can afford immediately raised painful questions of social and economic class.

"Are you ashamed of us?" my mother-in-law asked my husband. Perhaps her son had become too big for his family's blue-collar britches, she suggested.

But that wasn't it. Our local public elementary school ranks near the bottom of the Anne Arundel County system. Its test scores confirm the stories I have heard from discouraged neighbors: Their children, who had adored nursery school, soon came to dread kindergarten. They were bored by repeating material they had already learned. They wanted to stay home.

The test scores combined with these stories persuaded my husband and me to start looking into private schools for our daughter.

My mother-in-law didn't approve. She said it wasn't right for us to send our daughter to private school. If we kept her in public schools and worked to make the system better, everyone would benefit -- including people who don't have the option of sending their kids somewhere else.

For a card-carrying liberal, I was surprisingly unapologetic about our decision. Why should I sacrifice our daughter's future to an abstract principle? I wasn't up to battling the school system about class size, curriculum and extracurricular activities. And by the time any changes could be made, our daughter would have already missed out on a vibrant education.

One wonders if she still signs petitions opposing school vouchers for the children of those who can't afford to send their children to private school or other measures opposed by the teachers unions which might actually introduce competition into the public educational system. As James Taranto said in the Best of the Web today:

"Here in a nutshell is the definition of an American liberal: one who is willing to sacrifice the future of other people's children to an abstract principle."

Poster advertising a rally by a group of radical Islamists in London to celebrate the 9/11 event. (via Best of the Web)

Bernard Lewis has a great op-ed in the WaPo today.

"The motive, clearly, is hatred, and from then until now the question is being asked, with growing urgency and bewilderment: "Why do they hate us so?" Some go further and ask the very American question: "What have we done to offend them?"

At one level the answer is obvious. It is difficult if not impossible to be strong and successful and to be loved by those who are neither the one nor the other. The same kind of envious rancor can sometimes be seen in Europe, where attitudes to the United States are often distorted by the feeling of having been overtaken, surpassed and in a sense superseded by the upstart society in the West. This feeling, with far deeper roots and greater intensity, affects attitudes in the Muslim world toward the Western world or, as they would put it, the infidel countries and societies that now dominate the world. Most Muslims, unlike most Americans, have an intense historical awareness and see current events in a much deeper and broader perspective than we normally do. And what they see is, for them, profoundly tragic. For many centuries Islam was the greatest civilization on Earth -- the richest, the most powerful, the most creative in every significant field of human endeavor. Its armies, its teachers and its traders were advancing on every front in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, bringing, as they saw it, civilization and religion to the infidel barbarians who lived beyond the Muslim frontier.

And then everything changed, and Muslims, instead of invading and dominating Christendom, were invaded and dominated by Christian powers. The resulting frustration and anger at what seemed to them a reversal of both natural and divine law have been growing for centuries, and have reached a climax in our own time. These feelings find expression in many places where Muslims and non-Muslims meet and clash -- in Bosnia and Kosovo, Chechnya, Israel and Palestine, Sudan, Kashmir, and the Philippines, among others. The prime target of the resulting anger is, inevitably, the United States, now the unchallenged, if not unquestioned, leader of what we like to call the free world and what others variously define as the West, Christendom and the world of the unbelievers."

GOC suggests some tough questions he would like to see the press ask.

Bigwig wonders if French and German opposition to military action against Iraq has anything to do with the fact that they were the largest suppliers of nuclear components there.

Having trouble finding that perfect mate? Here's a new 'dating' service that matches people in therapy based on their shared problems. Let's see, first put the psychotics in one pile and the neurotics in another. The first dates of the obssessive-compulsives must be a hoot as they each spend the entire time adjusting their dinner silverware.

This is pretty amazing. A self-organizing electronic circuit created by a combination of software using evolutionary programming techniques controlling 10 transistors connected by programmable switches evolved itself into a radio receiver.

A Swedish politician says there should be more porn on TV to help boost the country's population. Finally, a Swedish political position I can support.

Mary O'Grady has a piece in the WSJ about evidence of Castro's attempts to develop biological weapons Hmmm...didn't our great national boob er, statesman, Jimmy Carter say that there were no bioweapons being developed in Cuba.

Kimberly Swygert posts some comments by a parent on the "New Ageism" prevalent at her child's middle-school:

"While my son is graced with several dedicated teachers, New Ageites abound. His geography teacher pledges to teach him to "think outside the box." Dear woman, the purpose of geography is to teach the box, or at least a flat surface map. Geography once meant learning of cities, rivers and countries blessed with bauxite. Instead, my son will learn Socratic latitude and longitude, environmentalism, and AIDS."

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created an atomic-scale memory using atoms of silicon to store the 'bits' of information. If made practical it would have a storage density about 1 million times that of a CD. [More]

Arab ministers have warned that attacking Iraq would 'open the gates of hell'. Minuteman suggests that this is a good thing as Saddam has been expected for quite some time.

Here's an update on an item I posted previously about a Russian scientist who claimed to have invented an anti-gravity device. Here is an interview in the Atlantic Monthly with Nick Cook who is a fairly well respected military and aerospace journalist who writes for Janes who has just written a book about 'black' research into anti-gravity. I am still very skeptical, but this is a much more respectable source than the previously referenced Russian scientist who seemed like a bit of a quack. As I said in the previous post anti-gravity is not theoretically impossible but still consider this pretty dubious. Anyway I have ordered his book which looks pretty interesting, I will see if the he can change my mind.