Quote of the day

She called me a pathological neurotic!  You know how the imprecise use of medical terminology drives me crazy!

  - Northern Exposure S1E5

Really, really fast

 This is the perfect 21-century research topic!  We don't know how to build a warp drive, but we do know how to criticize any aliens who do.

Clough, Katy, Tim Dietrich, and Sebastian Khan. 2024. “What No One Has Seen before: Gravitational Waveforms from Warp Drive Collapse.” The Open Journal of Astrophysics 7 (July).

Add it up

I am skeptical of the notion that, from the age of 15 to today, Gordon Gano even once had trouble getting a fuck, kiss or screw.

Quote of the day

 The easiest moral place to stand is in the middle.

- Ben Shapiro

Losing the thread of things

From Wikipedia's "Sovetsky" article:

Modern Sovetsk has sought to take advantage of Tilsit's tradition of cheese production (Tilsit cheese), but the new name ("Sovetsky cheese") has not inherited its predecessor's reputation. 

Life in a country with no First Amendment

U.K. university (a member of the University of London) fires a professor without warning for politically inconvenient research, and confiscates her data while they're at it.

 https://archive.ph/DeWSK#selection-2759.5-2797.54

Trusting the elites

 A silver medal struck by the Kaiser's Lauer mint in Nuremberg, to celebrate the "liberation" of East Prussia. It features a naked, potbellied and anatomically correct Hindenburg, about to give a coup-de-grace to the Russian bear.

I presume that the same sort of people who thought that invading France was a good idea also thought that this coin was a good idea.

It's easy to get lost among the many graceful features of this fine work of art, but one feature you want to note is that the Great Man's broadsword is too long for the terrain; it is physically impossible for him to hit the bear without shifting his sword grip. On the other hand, Hindenburg's belly, testicles and anus are unprotected and each within a single swipe of the bear's claws, and the only things between his neck and the bear's teeth are Hindenburg's stout courage and body odor.

Nordstream sabotage

Russia's attitude seems to be that it's not in Russia's interest to sabotage their own pipeline, because they could have just as easily turned off the gas pressure. That's true, but it certainly wasn't in their best interests to invade Ukraine, or to send thousands of untrained soldiers into a war zone, or to mobilize their reserves for a fight in which reserve soldiers without trained officers are less than useless.

Furthermore, if Russia intends to use nuclear or chemical weapons in the Ukraine in the coming days, it wouldn't expect to get any hard-currency revenue from the pipeline for many years; thus destroying NordStream would send a pointed message about the seriousness of their intentions, at no expected cost to the regime.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/damage-nord-stream-pipelines-unprecedented-may-have-been-sabotaged

Quote of the day

The number −2 appears in several places in elementary geometry ... 

- Yoshio Agaoka, Degree of Triangle Centers and a Generalization of the Euler Line

Quote of the day

From an email this morning: 

I'm beginning to think that possibly the most catastrophic vulnerability a modern nation has is not hackers, nukes, plague, fake news or autonomous robots, but the act of attempting to upgrade the software that its infrastructure runs on.  - Richard James

R

Programming is to "nailing jelly to a tree" as programming in R is to "nailing jelly to a tree, when the jelly hates you and you're using a hammer instead of a rock and the tree turns out to be a guy in a tree suit."

Cheers

Proof of sorts that the 1980's weren't a complete cultural wasteland:

 Cliff:  You know Rebecca , I don't know why you're so concerned about your figure. You know, back in the Renaissance times, full figured women were revered.
 Norm: Get out.
 Cliff: It's true! Yeah, yeah, artists would only paint big, voluptuous women. In fact, that's how they got rid of a lot of their old paint.

Quote of the day

A mind like a mousetrap, only he ought to let some o' those poor mice go.

 - Poul Anderson, Hunters of the Sky Cave

Quote of the day

So now I think I finally know why people conventionally picture heaven as populated by harpists and not contrabassoonists.

- David Feldman

Leading a horse to water

Taak any bryd, and put it in a cage,
and do al thyn entente and thy corage
to fostre it tendrely with mete and drynke
of alle deyntees that thou kanst bithynke,
and keep it al so clenly as thou may,
although his cage of gold be never so gay,
yet hath this brid, by twenty thousand foold,
goon ete wormes and swich wrecchednesse.
for evere this brid wol doon his bisynesse
to escape out of his cage, yif he may.
his libertee this brid desireth ay.

- Chaucer, Manciple's Tale of the Crow.

Hey, it's 2015!

Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel.

- Homer Simpson

Happy Black Friday

MLLP (HL7 interface) buffer termination character in Python ...

... is '1C'.decode("hex"). In case you were wondering.

4,835,716,461,499 percent

... the question is: how much inflation has Argentina seen since 1940?  In case you were wondering.

Faculty time study

College faculty spend "17 percent of their work week in meetings – including those with students – and 13 percent of the day on email ..."

This is even more incredible when you consider that faculty now make up less than one-half of the payroll at universities nationwide.  At the turn of the twentieth century, almost all of the money we spent on higher education went to teaching and research.  What percentage of tuition, endowment and taxpayer money actually gets spent on teaching or research nowadays?  25%?  20%?  Nobody knows.

I just wanna testify

Modern living

Quote of the day

Those who make the nation's songs (so much more admirable than its laws) advise us to look for the silver lining, to seek the blue bird, to put all our troubles in a great big box and sit on the lid and grin. Alice Coker had been unable to follow this counsel. Old Man Trouble, that foe of the songwriters, had plainly conquered her proud spirit.

   - P.G. Wodehouse, Bill the Conqueror.

What a headline ...

... but terrifying for the victims:

Shipwrecked tourists swam 6 hours towards erupting volcano

From the New York Post: "Tourists who escaped a sinking boat in Indonesia swam to an island with an erupting volcano and survived by drinking their own urine and eating leaves."

First gay marriage, now this.

57% of all Americans now use the Oxford comma.  What next, grown men playing soccer?

Good enough for government work.

(from the Volokh Conspiracy.)

Macaulay Culkin eating a pizza

 And if that's not exciting enough, here's how to get pi in Macaulay.

Babies, bathwater, potato, potahto

As a public rebuke to Donald Sterling's vile racism, UCLA is giving $425,000 back to Sterling, and is refusing to accept the rest of the three million dollars he and his wife donated to them for research into kidney disease.  Kidney disease affects African-americans much more than white americans; for example, McClellan et. al. recently noted that:

Age-adjusted [End-stage Renal Disease] rates are 982 people per million among black and 256 people per million for white individuals, a 3.8-fold racial disparity.

This sounds more traumatic that it was

This sounds more traumatic that it was; bear in mind that it was the 1980s.

Werther at the Met

What an odd place to store your pistol.

Quote of the day

En vérité, avec tous ces cônes, on dirait d'un temple baroque dédié au dieu Suppositoire.

  - Dubois (1911) Our beautiful Niger

Beat that, Occupy Wall Street

An anti-bureaucracy protester has nailed his scrotum to the pavement of Red Square.

Quote of the day

To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That's literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary.

- Scott Adams,

Wile E. Coyote, Super-genius

I spent much of the weekend trying to debug a strange Saxon XSLT bug.  There was a unit test that failed with the mysterious message:

 Variable Code has not been declared

This error message is nowhere to be found in the Saxon Javadoc, or anywhere it the Saxon source code, and according to Google nobody has ever reported it before.  Nor could I find any hint about what a "Variable Code" could be.

This morning I looked at my own code and, yes, I used an XSL variable which I called "Code" and which I neglected to declare.

Swiftboating Adolph Hitler

An article on Spiegel Online discusses the new German translation of Thomas Weber book Hitler's First War.  In his book, Weber debunks many of the heroic war stories that Hitler spun about himself when he was running for office in the thirties.

Actually, it seems that people who actually served with Hitler tried to debunk his fibs while he was spinning them, but millions of German citizens decided to believe the politician's flunkies rather than the evidence of soldiers who had actually been there in battle at the time.

Strange but true.

Quote of the day.

Have you tried apathy? It's awesome.

Quote of the day

We parents of young kids think that our children are the most precious things in the world, but it seems that, at least statistically, few other adults want them. 

 -  Philip Greenspun

Nature abhors a vacuum

From "News of the Weird"

An atheist "church" in Lake Charles, La., run by lapsed Pentecostal Jerry DeWitt, conducts periodic services with many of the trappings expected by the pious -- except for the need to believe in a supreme being.

Such "churches" (reported The New York Times and Washington Post in coincidental stories the same day in June) can help soothe the "biological" needs for survival and avoidance of loneliness by congregational rituals (such as celebrating a sabbath) and in helping find meaning "in something other than (oneself)."

For example, atheist Sigfried Gold praised a "rigorous prayer routine" (beseeching a "vivid goddess he created") in overcoming his weight problem. [New York Times, 6-24-2013; Washington Post, 6-24-2013]

It's difficult to imagine the personal pain or trauma that would cause somebody to reject God, and then make up a new god to fill the void that's left.  You picture mothers who abandon their babies and then start playing with rag dolls.

Loaves and Fishes, a lifeline for the homeless in New Milford

Some quick notes on a political controversy in New Milford:

Loaves and Fishes is a lifeline for many of the homeless in New Milford.  Their soup kitchen feeds about 100 people dinner each day.

It is easy walking distance to the HART bus stop, and also to the camp that the homeless have set up in recent years near the Housatonic bridge (which I am told the police regularly raid, and the homeless for some reason regularly come back to.  Don't they have better places to be?)

Since February, the mayor of New Milford has been trying to move the soup kitchen to a location 6 miles from the center of town.  Does she think that this population needs a 12-mile walk each day to stay fit?  The poet Neil Silberblatt compared the Mayor's proposal to Jonathan Swift's modest proposal to eat the poor.  He notes that most of the homeless "are residents of New Milford and are no less residents than those who have gorgeous country homes in that town."

In the words of Rachel Sampson:

"There but for the grace of God go I" -- anyone could be in need of social service assistance, even the mayor, some day.

 And in the words of my Aunt, Penny O'Gorman:

My son is Major Robert Kitchen, a New Milford High School graduate who went into the U.S. Air Force and became a high-ranking, highly decorated officer and veteran of two wars.

Recently, my son passed a homeless man on the street while he was on his way to work. He brought the man to a coffee shop, bought him breakfast and chatted with him.
 
I am as proud of him for that action as I am of his many military accomplishments.

Business advice of the day

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that when your competition is using "We Won't Sue You" in their promotional materials, you might be doing something wrong.

 - Jack B, commenting at Popehat.

наименьший в мире скрипок

The Washington Post reports that Americans who seek asylum in Russia don't lead very happy lives. The cases they examine include Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin and Mitchell, and Joseph Dutkanicz. You have to ask though: were any of these people particularly happy before they betrayed their country?

Like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, irony is still dead

Janet Napolitano named president of the University of California.

"Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers"

"Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers" notes George Will.  Some graduates of public schools might question whether this is in bald point of fact a bad thing.

And, as we go, with joy we shout: "Long live Dieskau and his house!"

Quote of the day

We ought to be living in a golden age of public discourse, given how many people now have the opportunity to attend college. But we are not.

- Catherine Sevcenko

"Good luck readin' Beowulf, ya monsters!"

Quote of the day

No one should have an excuse not understanding this book.

- Martinus Veltman, in the preface to his book Diagrammatica: The Path to Fenman Diagrams.

A very New York story

 

Yesterday afternoon I took a city bus to the Metro-north train station in Manhattan. There were only a few passengers, including two guys with two small children.  The older child was four or five, and was eating cookies out of a cardboard containter.  He was stretched out on the seat using his dad as a backstop.

The younger child was about 6 months old.  His father was obviously exhasted, but every time he tried to sit down the baby cried.  So he kept standing, and the baby got to look out of the bus windows at the cars and people.

After about a mile, the father with the baby got off the bus.  The kid who was using his father as a day-bed looked up and said: "Boy, was that baby spoiled."

Quote of the day

The primary design goal [of] MUMPS was to create code that, once written, can never be maintained by anyone ever again ... At the company Bryan worked for, they didn’t just use MUMPS, they used it cleverly. Partially as a result of MUMPS’ limitation and partially because they had all gone insane.

- Alex Papadimoulis

Quote of the day

In every walk in life, whether among the coarse, rough and ragged, untidily mouldering ranks of the lower orders, or among the uniformly frigid and tediously tidy higher orders -- in every condition of life a man is likely to behold at least once in his life a vision unlike anything he has ever seen before, which for once rouses in him feelings unlike those he is destined to experience all the rest of his days.

  -- N. V. Gogol, Dead Souls (translated by George Gibian)

Happy New Year

"Happy New Year" from our family to yours, either in your current form, or as a pitiable undead banshee, howling your own damnation from an obscene and impotent throat.  Go Red Sox too!

Moms are such killjoys

I only used scalp electrodes on my daughter, since my wife wouldn’t let me drill holes in my daughter’s head.

 - Dr. Chris James, University of Southampton, via ExtremeTech and the Times of India.

Second-best headline of 2012

People’s Daily Quotes the Onion: Kim Jong Eun ‘Sexiest Man Alive’

Best headline of 2012

Cloned dogs run wild in Central Park, attacking other pets and people

Headline of the day

"Twins Involved In The Petraeus-Allen Scandal Once Cooked Alligator On Food Network Show"

Quote of the day

What about the generals? The women couldn't have made any progress in the role of "social liaison" if the generals didn't want to be liaised.

- Ann Althouse

Headline of the week

Jeffco "Democrat of the Year" Convicted of Felony Theft

Sex and the single personality cult member

The Obama campaign released this incredibly creepy campaign commercial to attract young female voters.  Because, ya know, nothing's better for attracting women than desperation.

Reading faces

I went for a walk in the Ornamental Gardens today during lunch, partly because I am a lover of the cultured and beautiful, but mostly because I wasn't watching where I was walking and wound up there.  At the north entrance into the park from the garden, there's a bench in front of a low brownstone wall, with a grassy hill in back of the wall.  Sitting on the wall with his feet on the bench was a man holding a baby.  His wife was holding a camera.  She was trying to get the baby to sit still for the picture.

"Stop wiggling.  That's it.  Don't you look nice!  Now say 'Cheese!'"

"No!"  (this was the baby, not the man)

"'Cheese!'"

"No!  No!  No!"

The man had the sheepish "aw come on, I'm not that bad" look that guys have when they have something to apologize for, but I assumed that I'm just not any good at reading faces.  As I walked past the woman said, "I'm going to kill your mother for teaching him that word."

Two dedicated employees

According to the Hour, someone reported suspicious activities on the roof of the UPS building last night. When the police got there, they surrounded the building and then caught a man and a woman on the roof.  Their excuse? The man said that they were UPS employees:

The suspect went on to say that while he and his coworker have an alarm code to get into the building, he couldn't get his keys to open the front door, so he hopped on the roof in an attempt to drop the package through a window leading to his boss's office.

When asked why he had to drop off the package on a Saturday night, the suspect said it was time sensitive and that his boss needed it

Pretty lame, huh? But here's the rub: the police called UPS security and found out the man's story was true. He couldn't get in to deliver the package, so he went up on the roof to throw the package in through a window. Now that's a dedicated delivery company.

Quote of the day

Well you've got to hand it to Mitt Romney, 'cause President Obama sure did.

- Seth Meyers, after the first Obama-Romney debate.

Quote of the day

 Sales are down because no-one knows who to bribe.

- Beijing salesman, quoted by the Wall Street Journal's China Realtime Report.

Quote of the day

Obama and Clinton are currently starring as the Siskel & Ebert of Pakistani TV, giving two thumbs down to Innocence of Muslims in hopes that it will dissuade local moviegoers from giving two heads off to consular officials.

- Mark Steyn

Dr. Strangelove

News headline of the week:  Missile defense workers told to stop surfing porn sites. (via Christopher Fountain.)

Quote of the day

If you want to live forever, then don't stop breathing, like I did.

- Val Patterson

Where's a good Third Amendment lawyer when you need one?

A British judge rejected a suit by tenants of a big apartment building who were upset that her Majesty's army was placing missiles on the building's rooftop to protect London during the 2012 Olympics. 

Residents of the 17-story tower, about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the Olympic Park in east London, say the missile battery could make their homes a terrorist target.

But the judge said the missiles presented no real threat.

The government would have a problem doing this here in the US.  The Third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says that "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

Of course, according to Justice Roberts, I suppose that the feds can make you pay a tax if you don't allow the soldiers in your house. And another penalty if you don't give them broccoli every night.

You win some, you lose some.

US violent crime rate down for fifth straight year.
    - MSNBC

Hitchhiker writing 'The Kindness of America' memoir shot by motorist in Montana.
    - Christian Science Monitor 

The late unlamented al Quaeda

Today, everyone's an anglophile.

Universities around the world

Some Australian social science researchers at the University of Melbourne have ranked the higher education systems of countries around the world. The US came up number one. Bet you can't guess who was number two.

Playing detective

A teenager was arrested yesterday afternoon in Norwalk, climbing his neighbor's roof in a wig.

The teen, who was still wearing the hoodie and the wig, told police that his actions were based on a dare, police said. He said his classmates had levied the dare at him, but did not specify the contents of the dare, police said.

There are rumors that the dare involved climbing a roof in a wig.

McDonald's on Route 1 in Fairfield

Yesterday afternoon I was in Fairfield and I noticed I was insufficiently decaffeinated. So I pulled into the McDonald's on the Post Road to get some coffee and an apple pie. There were six or seven employees, but nobody was paying any attention to me. (Sniff. Poor me.) Three of the girls were listening to another girl tell a story.

I imagine that the story-telling girl was just getting off her shift, since she was wearing a coat. She was leaning on the table where the apple-pie machine was, with her back to me. In the middle of a sentence, she sneezed full on on the apple-pie machine and wiped her nose. None of the other employees batted an eye.

I had my coffee at Starbucks.

Economics joke

Ian Cowie relates a joke to help explain the Greek credit crisis:

Some years ago a small rural town in Spain twinned with a similar town in Greece.

The Mayor of the Greek town visited the Spanish town. When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Spanish mayor he wondered how he could afford such a house. The Spaniard said; “You see that bridge over there? The EU gave us a grant to build a four-lane bridge, but by building a single lane bridge with traffic lights at either end this house could be built”.

The following year the Spaniard visited the Greek town. He was simply amazed at the Greek Mayor’s house, gold taps, marble floors, it was marvellous. When he asked how this could be afforded the Greek said; “You see that bridge over there?”

The Spaniard replied; “No.”

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to explain how this relates to Connecticut's current budget situation.

The humblest thing that V.I. Arnold ever said

This attempt to produce something useless ended with a failure.

- Arnold (1998) Higher dimensional continued fractions, Regular and Chaotic Dynamics (3) pp 10-17.

Arnold died last year at the age 0f 72.

A tough act to follow

Woman read Bible for more than an hour to attacker who had just slashed her throat

Newt dodges another bullet

Donald Trump endorses Mitt Romney for Republican nomination.

Depends on your point of view

From Best of the Web Today:

Putting Everything in Perspective

"I want to cut his nuts out."--Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2008

"The ultimate insult."--Jesse Jackson on Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's pointing her finger at Barack Obama, quoted by the Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 28, 2012

Attention, please!

"What's he telling me?"

Monday, the New Zealand Herald reported that in a video taken at the Wellington Zoo,

Sofia Walker, 3, was dwarfed by Malik, a 7-year-old "stroppy" lion, as she pressed up against the glass that separated her from the enclosure.

The close encounter happened last Wednesday morning, just after Malik had been given his breakfast.

Sofia and Malik looked directly at each other before the lion angrily pawed at the glass - upset someone disturbed his meal - which seemed to surprise the young girl, but not scare her.

Sofia was called away from the glass by her mother, Sharon, but instead the girl stood her ground and asked: "What's he telling me?"

One of the zookeepers said that Sofia had a "lot of spunk." But her father doesn't think she wants to grow up to be a zookeeper herself. "She'd much rather be a fairy."

Handy translation tool ...

... for your next Egyptian voyage. (This nice page is due to Chip Ahoy, which I strongly suspect is an assumed name.)

Quote of the day

Experts say that people need to try new challenges to keep their minds sharp. That's especially important in my case because I plan on living to 140, and I don't want to spend my last 60 years trying to find the TV remote.

- Scott Adams in The Wall Street Journal.

Americathon

Barack Obama is so eloquent.

Happy New Years, Tokelau!

The nation of Samoa, and the US dependency Tokelau, are now west of the International Date Line rather than east. This means that they are now the first to see the new year, instead of the last. According to theWashington Post:

The date line dance came 119 years after U.S. traders persuaded local Samoans to align their islands’ time with nearby U.S.-controlled American Samoa and the U.S. to assist their trading with California.

But the time zone put Samoa and Tokelau nearly a full day behind neighboring Australia and New Zealand, which are increasingly important trading partners.

Santa Claus came late this year

Donald Trump leaves the Republican party.

A very Wisconsin rear bumper

Here. (via Ann Althouse's blog.)

Kim Jong-il dead at 69

I doubt that Santa was bringing him anything nice.

Quote of the day

All other things being equal, we would not expect a 2% resurrection rate.

- Bill Ricker, commenting on the breast cancer survival curves produced by Edward Tufte.

The end of days

If the above image doesn't convince you that the apocalypse is just around the corner, try looking at this. Grim times. (And if this isn't a sign of the antichrist, then I'm not sure what would be. H/t Overlawyered.com)

Aren't kids cute?

The stop of defendant’s car was with reasonable suspicion that it was involved in a bank robbery. After the stop, defendant’s three year old daugther was found in the car, and she was asked where they were coming from, and she pointed toward the bank. Asked if they were at the bank, she said yes. The registration of the car was expired, and its impoundment was valid. United States v. Brumfield, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 137834 (N.D. Ga. February 17, 2011).

- from FourthAmendment.com

Um, Congratulations

It seems that Greg Skidmore and two of his colleagues won a $254,000,000 lottery jackpot.

I was Greg's mathematics professor in college. Since the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, I have mixed feelings: my position is roughly the same as that of a Sunday School teacher who finds out that one of his former pupils has won critical acclaim in the pornographic film industry.

Still, he was one of my favorite students, hardworking and honest. So I guess I'm happy about the whole thing.

U.S. National Debt reaches 100% of GDP

Did anyone throw a party?

Bohemian Rhapsody ...

... performed by Queen:

... and by the Muppets:

... just in case you've stumbled on my blog and don't want to think about Wall Street or Washington.

You say you want a revolution?

Open Letter to Herman Cain

Dude, I love you and I hope to vote for you. But unless you are John the Baptist or Arthur son of Uther Pendragon, musing about your conception isn't uber-cool. Maybe I'll feel differently when I'm 45, though.

Sincerely,
Jeff

Historic picture from East Norwalk: 1961-2011

Here's a picture that Bob Shriver took this afternoon of Karen Cooke and Floyd Powers at the Community Advent Christian Church in East Norwalk. Karen is the current choir director, and Floyd directed the choir in 1961.

Look for the union label,

... when buying a coat, dress, or blouse. Or T-shirt.

T-shirt war!

Oh! Best ... headline ... ever ...

Al-Qaida calls on Ahmadinejad to end 9/11 conspiracy theories

(h/t BotW.)

9/11/2001

Rivers after the Hurricane

Two days after hurricane Irene, the Norwalk and Silvermine rivers are still pretty high. Here's a picture of the Silvermine River, looking south from the James Street bridge:


Here's the Norwalk River, looking north from Merrit 7:


and here's the Norwalk River looking towards Glover St. and the old Perkin Elmer building:

Visiting the Supreme Court

A Russian translation of the booklet that tourists get when they visit the Supreme Court.

How can this go wrong?

Draft transitional Libyan constitution makes Islam the state religion. but protects non-muslims.

Oh, what a surprise

The two guys who hassled and assaulted (60-year old) law professor Ann Althouse on Friday turn out to be union rent-a-thugs. (There are videos on her blog.)

Fender-bender last week

The Daily Mail reports that there was a little fender-bender last week in Monte Carlo, at the Place du Casino. It seems that a woman driving a Bentley hit a Mercedes and then, obeying the cruel but firm law of conservation of momentum, went on to hit a Ferrari, a Porsche, and an Aston-Martin Rapide.

I can't think of a title for this post ...

... but "pricks suckling the public teat" sort of fits. Probate Judge David Szymanski was the anti-hero of a horrific censorship case in 2008.

Fourth of July

The first, and last, great Hapsburg, Otto, passed away yesterday at the age of 98.

Pearl Harbor, Shmerl Harbor

The TSA is trying to fire 36 Honolulu screeners because they allegedly neglected to screen certain flights properly for explosives, for several months in 2010.

20 of them have asked their union to appeal their termination. No word yet on what their defense will be; maybe their lawyers can make an ADA argument?

"Please don't Taser the cow"

Everyone was kinda yelling, ‘Please don’t taser the cow, it’s only going to make it worse.'

Happened in Pelham, NH. 'nuff said. (H/t Simple Justice)

Arabian justice

I had nightmares, but only once. Then I got used to it, Allah be praised.

- MEMRI, via Passport

Worker's "rights" vs. citizens' rights

John Gage, president of the union that wants to represent TSA agents, complains that the Republicans are being mean to his workers.

Frankly, my heart completely fails to bleed for them.

Economics tutorials

Blood banks and cupcakes and fiat currency. Oh my.

Four immortal chess games

Garry Kasparov vs Veselin Topalov (1999)
Donald Byrne vs Robert Fischer (1956)
Adolf Anderssen vs Lionel Kieseritsky (1851)
Robert Fischer vs Pal Benko(1963)

Double points

It seems that we got Fidel Castro angry when we shot Osama Bin Laden.

One of the great things about living in Norwalk

One of the great things about living in Norwalk is that you never have to leave notes on your windshield like this one:

Dear Officer,

I have temp plates because someone keeps stealing my front plate. NOT because I'm a drug dealer, but thanks for telling my little brother you suspect me of being one. Also, my FACTORY tints are legal and all 7 tickets you've written me for them have been dismissed. Please find another vehicle to harrass.

Thank you, Corrine.

P.S. If I were a drug dealer, I
could afford a garage!

A picture of the note is at Soignorant. I wonder if Corrine lives in Westport?

Shuffling out of Buffalo

Per the Buffalo News: Buffalo police are apparently still looking for John Caesar,a 58-year-old man who escaped from custody last week:

Downtown police are looking for a man who is handcuffed to a chair.

The man escaped shortly after 4 p.m. today from the Central District station at Tupper and Main Streets.

A robbery suspect, he apparently fled out of a back door onto Washington Street, according to police radio transmissions.

Described as tall and muscular, he was dressed in black clothing and wearing a white hat.

Police think he still has the chair with him because it is missing from the station.

They handcuffed him to a chair? They should have handcuffed him to a toy poodle; then at least they could have found him by following the dog's yapping.

h/t Lowering the Bar, who shamelessly copied from Fail Blog.

The power of love

The power of love in a university town ...

United States of Awesome

Four maps: a map of the United States of Awesome, a map of the United States of Shame, and two maps of the United States of the Environment.

Happy May Day

Best fucking May day ever.

Ow.ly down this morning

Injustice Everywhere's links don't work this morning. In fact, no Ow.ly links are working this morning. The master DNS servers for .ly domains are located in ... Libya. Is this "Colonel" Gadhafi's idea of a subtle counterstroke? Strange world, strange world.

Update: Hootsuite.com has a profoundly uninformative service message on its website: "We'll be back in action shortly -- in the meantime go outside and flap your arms around, you may find that flying ain't very easy."

Gilbert and Sullivan fans didn't even make the list

Scientists have discovered that Coldplay fans are the least likeliest to have sex on a first date.

Quote of the day

Chessplayers have been setting down rules ever since they discovered it was easier than following them.

- Andrew Soltis, Karl Marx Plays Chess

Thanks, guys

The first sentence of Lonely Planet's description of Medical Services for tourists in Cuba:

Cubans famously enjoy far better free health care than their far-wealthier US neighbors, and continue to set high standards for developing nations with excellent hospitals and doctors throughout the country.

The last sentence of Lonely Planet's description of Medical Services for tourists in Cuba:

The free health care in normal Cuban hospitals should only be used when there are no private clinics available.

Funny how the "far better" health care in these socialist paradises always seems to disappear when it's time to actually use it. Before the Berlin wall fell, we always heard that health care was free and better in communist eastern Europe, but the reality turned out to be much grimmer. Even two decades later Europe is burdened by two generations of bad environmental and health policies there.

Fun fact of the day

The U.S. economy actually grew more between 1930 and 1940 than it did during the decade that recently ended.

Quiz of the day

There are now only two states left in the US with more manufacturing workers than government workers. Which two states are these?

(Answer is here. H/t http://althouse.blogspot.com.)

Three things that I really didn't want to know this morning

Three things that I really didn't want to know this morning ... but found out anyway.

• Moamar Qaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi have the same plastic surgeon.
• The strongest supporters of Israel in Norway "seem to be the Evangelical Christians and the gay community."
• The police in Ft. Lee, New Jersey are as incompetent as their reputation suggests.

A very Tennessee story

If he's guilty, Deputy John Edwards has to be the stupidest crook ever. He's accused of taking stealing stuff from his wife and giving them to his girlfriend, and stealing stuff from his girlfriend and giving them to his wife.

You may need to read the following sentence a few times to get the drift of this story. It seems that Officer Edward's wife was giving his girlfriend a tour of their house, and the girlfriend noticed that some of the his wife's things had previously been stolen from her (the girlfriend.) That's no doubt also when his wife realized that John had a girlfriend.

Deputy Edwards was arrested shortly thereafter for a "domestic incident" with his wife. He was later charged with theft of goods over $10,000.00 in value.

I wonder two things about this story. (1) If the allegations are true it is reasonable to assume that the wife attacked the husband when he got home. So why was the husband arrested for the "domestic incident"? And (2) why do alleged creeps like this get two girlfriends when nice guys like me are single? Deep waters, deep waters.

(H/t Injustice Everywhere.)

Mark Smith cartoons

William Jacobson likes Mark Smith's cartoons. He has good taste.

Oddly, Smith's political cartoons seem funnier than his non-political cartoons. Maybe that's a sign that we live in absurd times.

All the men are in Benghazi

An old woman, in her late 70s at least, I'm told, entered the bank to collect her 500 Libyan dollars ($410; £253) in state aid announced a couple of weeks ago.

There were two long queues - one for men and one for women. She stood in the men's queue.

The men urged her to move to the women's section. "Why?" she challenged.

A man told her: "Ya haja [a term of respect for an elderly woman] this line is for men, women is the other one".

She loudly replied: "No. All the men are in Benghazi."

The room is said to have been stunned into silence and she remained in her place until her turn came and she walked out with her money.

- BBC coverage of Libya uprising

With friends like this ...

Ariel Melendez has a problem. Up until a few weeks ago he was a New Haven Assistant Police Chief, but then he resigned shortly after being accused of tampering with evidence, among other things.

One of the men questioned afterwards was his recent colleague Sgt. David Guliuzza. David sound like a very loyal guy, and he offered the police the following absolutely wonderful defense of his ex-boss:

Mr. Luna's cell phone was an Iphone and is a complicated piece of equipment. Sgt. Guliuzza believed that if someone did not own that type of phone, then you would not be able to operate it. A.C. Melendez has a Blackberry cell phone. Sgt. Guliuzza does not think that A.C. Melendez has the knowledge to work an Iphone, let alone erase data from it.

That's right, he believes his pal is innocent because committing a crime involves using an Apple product, and Apple products are too complicated for the accused to use.

(The whole police report is on Scribd.)

Quote of the day

By the way, what is "hands-on, interdisciplinary study"? Do we get to fondle a sociologist?

- Wisconsin law Professor Ann Althouse, commenting on a speech by Erwin Chemerinksy.

University of Manitoba turning into a "diploma mill"?

Earlier this month Gabor Lukacs received two letters from University of Manitoba president David Barnard. One invited the assistant professor of mathematics to a dinner in acknowledgement of his teaching excellence award. The other informed him that he was being suspended without pay. (Macleans)

Prof. Lukacs' crime was to publicly dissent from Manitoba's awarding of a PhD to a mentally disabled Mathematics student who failed his comps twice and didn't finish his coursework. The Faculty Association is aghast, but the Graduate Student's Association supports the administration. Eighty-five mathematicians, including Michael Barr, wrote a letter supporting Prof. Lucacs.

There are more details here.

Merry Christmas

(h/t Joanne Jacobs)

Hi, I'm Wil Wheaton. I am required by law to tell you that I am moving into the neighborhood

Do not click here, or here, unless ye be men of iron with nerves of steel.

Lunar eclipse tonight

Remember to take a nap this evening so that you can see the lunar eclipse. And wear lotion: you don't want to get a nasty case of moonburn.

Quote of the day

Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. - Keith Bostic

Money, what a concept

The great news is that, despite borrowing more money in two years than all of the previous presidents in history combined, Pres. Obama has actually produced a balanced budget.

The bad news is that it isn't ours.

San Fransisco Giants

I'd always thought that "too much information" and "baseball" were incompatible ideas, but it turns out that I was tragically wrong.

Reductio ad absurdum Rex

The Democrats' message, in short, is that the Democrats are really lousy at delivering a convincing message. Since nobody finds this message convincing, it has a certain surface plausibility.

- James Taranto, Best of the Web Today

Economics

Thomas (age: 8): Mommy, when Santa brings us presents, does anyone have to pay?

Mommy: Yes, dear.

Thomas: How does that work?

Daddy: He sends us a bill.

Thomas: So did you send Santa his money?

Mommy: No, not yet.

Thomas: Well, that can't go on forever.

Chicago

Emma (age four): Uncle Jeff, have you ever been to Chicago?

Jeff: Yes, I have.

Emma: Did you go to the American Girl store?

Jeff: No, I've never been there.

Emma: You went to Chicago but you didn't go to the American Girl store?

Jeff: Nope.

Emma: What stores did you go to?

Jeff: I don't think I've ever been to a store in Chicago.

Emma: You went to Chicago but didn't go to any stores?

Jeff: That's right.

Emma: I think that must have been a different town.

One for you, and one for me

A headline in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal reads Democrats Look to Cultivate Pot Vote in 2012.

That seems fair to me. The Democrats can concentrate on the pot vote, the Republicans concentrate on the human vote, and at the end of the day everyone's happy.

Speak up

Paul Caron notes that the IRS only answered 8% of 352,758 calls it got from deaf taxpayers last year.

Glenn Reynolds makes the predictable and scary corollary point: don't worry, government healthcare will be fine.

To be thought a fool

Prof. Eugene Volokh describes why I don't blog very much.

Have a great ...

... belated Constitution Day.

Overheard in the men's room of an I-95 rest area

The southbound rest area off I-95 was full of college athletes of some sort tonight. I heard the following conversation in the men's room:

Athlete with camera: Hey, look at this great pic I took last night in Boston. I'm putting it on my Facebook page.

Athlete at urinal: We played in New York last night.

Athlete with camera: No, we're on our way to New York right now.

Athlete at urinal: Man, bars all look the same nowadays.

Hartford vs. Bucharest

Lowering the Bar gives its take on the latest news from Romania:

Romanian lawmaker Alin Popoviciu is blaming fear for the failure of a bill he sponsored that would have imposed new regulations and taxes on witches and fortune tellers. He claimed that the legislation had failed because lawmakers were afraid they would be cursed if they passed it.

I'm sorry that Mr. Popoviciu wasn't able to pass his bill. Maybe he could send some of his country's witch lobbyists over here to curse a few members of the Connecticut General Assembly? I could send him a list if hexing works long-distance.

Yes, Ms. Althouse, this is too creepy

Gee, a girl sure plucked a lemon in

Being born so weak and feminine.

Google's animation today

Google's annoying unusual bouncing-balls animation caused some buzz this morning. In the Washington Post, it was suggested that it celebrates the 12th anniversary of Google's founding or the 15th anniversary of Javascript.

I wonder if it celebrates the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm/ Markov chain method? It looks like the location of each ball is being randomized and then bounces around its natural position. Towards the end, the x and y error (perturbation away from the natural position) of each ball would look like a fuzzy caterpillar if plotted against time.

Redecorating ideas

... assuming you have a very big office of course.

Quote of the day

Does the Left really cherish the rights of Islam, or is theirs but a short-sighted alliance with the enemy of their enemies?

- Andrew Klavan

The Amazon

I wanna be like Ed Stafford when I grow up.

Never say I-told-you-so

"US warnings on Megrahi release have come true" - headline of a story this morning on the (Scotland) Herald's web site about the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

True daughter of old time

On Pajamas Media, Frank Tipler asks:

According the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia, “science,” and indeed “scholarship” in general, is no longer an attempt to establish truth by replicable experiment, or by looking at evidence that can be checked by anyone. “Truth” is now to be established by the decree of powerful authority, by “peer review.” Wasn’t the whole point of the Enlightenment to avoid exactly this?

You silly mathematician. Don't you know that whole point of the Enlightenment was to provide Merchant Ivory actors with an excuse to dress up in powdered wigs and frilly dresses? Or was that the Renaissance? I forget. Which one starred Helena Bonham Carter?

State Department releases Lockerbie letter

From the State Department's web site, via Powerline:

August 12, 2009

Rt Hon Alex Salmond, MSP
First Minister for Scotland
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh
EH99 1 SP

Dear First Minister:

I have enclosed a copy of a communication from my government that was passed to the Scottish Ministry of Justice on August 9. I am aware that competence for the decision on the matter discussed lies with the Scottish Minister of Justice, but given the gravity of this matter, I thought it important that you receive directly and be aware of the views of my government as your authorities approach a decision.

I am at your disposal to discuss this matter further.

Sincerely,

Richard LeBaron
Chargé d'Affaires

Enclosure: as stated

BEGIN TEXT OF ENCLOSURE:

-- We greatly appreciate the Scottish Government's continued willingness to solicit the views of the United States and the families of its victims with respect to a decision on Megrahi's transfer. This issue is of great importance to the United States.

-- We understand that Scottish law permits the Scottish Government to release individuals in Scottish custody on license if there are compassionate grounds justifying the release, and that as a matter of practice such release is not granted unless the prisoner has a life expectancy of less than three months. We also understand that the Scottish judiciary has the ability to grant bail, and in the case of Megrahi the judiciary has indicated that it is prepared to entertain a renewed bail application on compassionate grounds if Megrahi's prognosis worsens and becomes more certain.

-- The United States respects that decisions concerning compassionate release and bail are reserved to Scottish authorities and are to be made in accordance with Scottish law and policy.

-- The United States is not prepared to support Megrahi's release on compassionate release or bail. We understand that Scottish authorities are ensuring that Megrahi receives quality medical treatment, including palliative care, while incarcerated. The United States maintains its view that in light of the scope of Megrahi's crime, its heinous nature, and its continued and devastating impact on the victims and their families, it would be most appropriate for Megrahi to remain imprisoned for the entirety of his sentence. This was the understanding and expectation at the time arrangements were made for his trial in Scottish Court in the Netherlands, were he or his confederate to be convicted and their appeals upheld.

-- Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the U.S. position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose.

-- If a decision were made by Scotland to grant conditional release, two conditions would be very important to the United States and would partially mitigate the concerns of the American victims' families. First, any such release should only come after the results of independent and comprehensive medical exams clearly establishing that Megrahi's life expectancy is less than three months. The results of these exams should be made available to the United States and the families of the victims of Pan Am 103. The justification of releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds would be more severely undercut the longer he is free before his actual death.

-- Second, the United States would strongly oppose any release that would permit Megrahi to travel outside of Scotland. We believe that the welcoming reception that Megrahi might receive if he is permitted to travel abroad would be extremely inappropriate given Megrahi's conviction for a heinous crime that continues to have a deep and profound impact on so many. As such, compassionate release or bail should be conditioned on Megrahi remaining in Scotland.

-- Again, while we are not able to endorse the early release of Megrahi under any scenario, we believe that granting compassionate release or bail under the conditions described (i.e. release with a life expectancy or less than three months and with Megrahi remaining in Scotland under supervision) would mitigate a number of the strong concerns that we have expressed with respect to Megrahi’s release.

-- We appreciate the manner in which the Scottish Government has handled this difficult situation. We recognize that the prisoner transfer decision is one that the Scottish Government did not invite, but now must take. We hope that the Scottish Government would consider every available alternative before considering the granting of Megrahi's prisoner transfer application.

Quote of the day

(pro se defendant cross-examining his accuser)

DEFENDANT: You sell drugs out of your house, don’t you?

WITNESS: No.

DEFENDANT: I know that’s a damn lie. I’ve bought weed and crack there myself.

- Overheard in Court, via Legal Antics.

Quote of the day

Kill them all, starting with the math teacher!

- Professor Farnsworth, Futurama (Season 6, Episode 5.)

Futurama	Thursdays 10pm / 9c
Doomsday Machine
www.comedycentral.com
Futurama New Episodes Futurama New Episodes It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Quote of the day

Maintenance is a dirty word around a DVB sign.

- Jackie Lightfield, yourct.com

Happy Friday

Every compliance manager's nightmare

A British oil broker spent $520,000,000 of his clients' money while in a drunken haze. The drunken binge happened last June. Apparently, this caused world oil prices to jump $1.50 a barrel last summer. His employers' procedures failed to stop or even notice the half-billion dollar trades made late at night from his laptop.

Thank goodness things like this don't happen with medical devices.

Bridgeport courthouse found too corrupt for Madoff

... 'nuff said.

Spokeswoman: "it was something we decided to address and make the edit"

New Haven's high school grads are getting their diplomas Thursday.

Superintendent of Schools Reginald Mayo confirmed through a spokeswoman that this year’s diplomas were printed without the phrase “in the year of our Lord.”

“That was a complaint that came in from a parent last year and it was something we decided to address and make the edit,” said schools spokeswoman Michelle Wade.

(Abbe Smith in the New Haven Register.)

Erk

I've been sick all day, and learning about what women find attractive in men hasn't helped my mood much.

Magnificent quote of the day

.. the Church by the gang of liberticides and libertines that misrules this country ...

- Fabio Paolo Barbieri

Quote of the day

Obama would rather the Gulf die than anger his Big Labor buddies

- Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom

We live in Lenin's country

Мы живем в стране Ленина.

Book cover of the day

Blog post headline of the day

IDF Boards Another Flotilla Ship, Crew Amazingly Cooperative This Time

- Doug Powers

Quote of the day

Your views and mine are currently very much the same on the euro. . . . What most troubles me as it does you is that members of the euro have thrown away the key. Once the euro physically replaces the separate currencies, how in the world do you get out? It’s a major crisis. As a result, I would strongly agree with your view that the euro should be abandoned before January 1, 2002. At the same time, the odds are very great that it will not be abandoned. The defects of the euro will take some time to show up; nothing happens very rapidly in this area. There are fewer than three years to go. Even if difficulties deriving from the euro occur in those three years, the political system is unlikely to react quickly enough to end the euro. As a result, I think it would be very desirable for some systematic thought to be given to devising some way to get out of the straitjacket of the euro after 2002. The least Italy should do is to keep intact the plates which are used to produce lira.

-Milton Friedman, from a letter to Antonio Martino, in 1999 (!). Quoted by Christoper Fountain.

My teenage nephew visited last week

(via Ann Althouse.)

Quote of the day

Dr. Rekers, if you’re listening, I want to tell you two things: (1) I am, among other things, prideful, wrathful, slothful, and gluttonous, and (2) I’ve always wanted to take a three-week trip to Australia.

- Ken at Popehat (this post is NSFW)

Health care and the 27th amendment

Congressmen seem to be surprised that a provision of the kazillion-page health bill they voted for after a few hours debate ends their taxpayer-financed health plan. The Democrats might understandably want to get back their health benefits by quietly amending the bill after the election, or by bullying some poor bureaucrat into interpreting away that part of the law.

But the twenty-seventh amendment to the Constitution says that

No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

So unless the twenty-seventh amendment means something very different than its plain text (*), it seems to me that Congress can't get fed to the wolves like the rest of us until after the 2010 Congressional election, and they can't vote to save their coverage unless they opt themselves out before the election.

(*) this phrase may a sure sign that I have scientific mind and not a legal mind. Hallelujah!

James Joyce lives on at the Connecticut Department of Transportation

Driving to Simsbury this morning, I realized that I forgot my laptop and had to go back. By the time I got on I-91 it was pouring so heavily that it was tough to see the car in front of me. Passing under a digital information sign, I noticed that there was a traffic message. I took my eyes off the road for a moment to try to read it through the rain.

It read:

Distracted driving kills.

Selling stolen property on EBay

Klaus, whose nom-de-eBay is "game_seller88", is selling a ring that his uncle plundered from Dachau. (He bills it as an "ORIGNIAL JEWISH Holocaust RING".) The Simon Wiesenthal Center reported this transaction to eBay 3 days ago; but they haven't canceled the transaction yet.

If the Simon Wiesenthal Center after three days can't get eBay to cancel an auction of property stolen during the most thoroughly documented crime in the history of mankind, then what chance does an ordinary person have of recovering their stolen I-Pods and cell phones when they are auctioned on eBay?

Quote of the day

Yes, I'm a man possessed by many demons. Polite demons that would open a door for a lady carrying too many parcels: but demons nonetheless.

- Kevin McDonald, Kids in the Hall, Season 2 Episode 2.

The "vice" in middle-school vice principal

If you don't home school your kids, you might want to consider it.

(H/T: Volokh Conspiracy, Boing-Boing.)

Happy Valentine's Day Eve

When Linux guys fall for Windows chicks.

How many communists does it take to row a boat?

Luo Yuan, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, gave an interview with Reuters (via Best of the Web):

"Just like two people rowing a boat, if the United States first throws the strokes into chaos, then so must we."

(Note to self: never, ever row a boat with this guy.)

Dealing with our government

February 3, 2010

Submitter

United States Patent and Trademark Office
Notice of Document Faxed Upside Down

Your request to record a document in the United States Patent and Trademark Office was received via electronic fax on XXXX.

The faxed submission was received upside down. We are unable to continue processing these images.

Please resubmit your document.

If you have any questions, you may contact our customer service center at XXXX.

Office of Public Records
Assignment Division

Source: Eric Sherman at Bnet.

Mel Gibson

On the New York Times' website, Neil Genzlinger writes about Mel Gibson's newest film. His little blurb begins

Despite the occasional foray into biblical interpretation or drunken anti-Semitic outburst, Mel Gibson has always been about fighting injustice, and his latest film, "Edge of Darkness," which opens on Friday, is no exception.

I presume that the "foray into biblical interpretation" is Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. Thus it seems that the New York Times is a newspaper that thinks that executing convicted criminals in an injustice, but that the Crucifixion wasn't.

Groundhog day?

I just saw a school pass pass another school bus with its lights flashing. Does that mean 6 more weeks of winter?

Fairfield County Realtors behaving unethically

Who'd have thought?

War on Christmas vs. the war on H1N1

Taunton, Massachusetts's town website announces that, in order to combat hospital infections, children under the age of 18 aren't allowed to visit people at Morton Hospital anymore. No exceptions, "including siblings and children of patients."

So if your mom is dying and you want to see her one last time before Christmas then tough luck, kid. And if that bothers you, leave. Taunton is no place for cry-babies.

War on Christmas gets nastier

In Taunton Massachusetts, some second-grade children were drawing holiday pictures. One little boy drew a picture of Jesus on the cross. His father says that this was probably the picture:

It seems that his principal asked "why did you use x's for his eyes?" The little boy replied "because he's dead." So naturally the principal consulted with the school psychiatrist and refused to let the 8-year old return to school unless his family got a letter from a psychiatrist certifying that he wasn't a threat to the school.

The rest of the story is predictable. The kid's dad was angry, the school superintendent wrote a smarmy response, and the traumatized kid was transfered to a new school (which is probably traumatic in itself for most 8-year-olds.)

Want to fight back for this little boy? Tell someone "Merry Christmas" today, and mean it.

War on Christmas gets weirder

The War on Christmas is getting weirder: the Obama White House has moved the White House creche to a less prominent spot, to try to make Christmas "more inclusive".

Actually, according to the New York Times they were going to get rid of the creche altogether, but then decided that that was too provocative, and then finally changed their mind again and moved it into a dark corner. I would be remiss if I failed to point out that this is a repeat in miniature of the President's Afghanistan policies over the last year. Let's hope that bin Laden is less competent at defending himself than the baby Jesus.

Quote of the day

All around me people cough. I particularly object to bronchitis as a substitute for incidental music.

- Alexander Wolcott, Mr. W's Little Game