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Heh. Who was that speaker again?

From an email circular promoting think-tank events around Europe:

London

21/02/06 Policy Exchange "Why the Agenda of the Future cannot be delivered by a person stuck in the Past" - William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary

RSVP: info@policyexchange.org.uk

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Seeing as Perry is dabbling in the kingdom of Animalia, I feel I should wade in with my own weighty observations. As it is summer in Australia, cockroaches are making their presence felt in even the most salubrious of households. This must be so - I live in a shared-house dump and they are everywhere.

Tonight, as I was in the shower, I noticed three large brown cockroaches (not the more numerous but less offensive small types) scurrying about the bathroom. This convinced me to abandon my do-not-kill-if-not-necessary morals and I thus plunged the three big brown blighters into the tiles with a - erm - plunger. You know - that rubber implement you use to unblock the drains. Well, it was the first thing that fell to hand. Anyway, this did the trick and happily broke the cockroaches perfectly in half. Fine - let them dry out a bit, sweep them up in a few days and be done with it. I am a student living in a shared house; cut me some slack.

I leave the bathroom after performing my twice-daily cleansing rituals - it is summer in Australia, after all - to attend to this and that. I return two and a half hours later to find the upper part of each cockroach still wiggling its (remaining) legs lamely; unsurprisingly, for it's stuck on its back and missing half a body. The lower part - sadly disconnected from the mothership - was not returning calls.

Am I the only one who thinks this an amazing natural phenomenon?

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This item from America's satirical Onion site is too funny for words. Would advocates of "intelligent design" get the joke?

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Even Homer J. Simpson is affected.

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If I were a Dane I'd be getting more than a tiny bit sick of this whole "plucky little Denmark" meme that is evolving in line with current events. I cannot help but think of some small but tenacious dog - perhaps a Jack Russell - when anything is described as both "plucky" and "little".

This does not compute. As we all know, in the canine world Danes are rather greater.

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Linux has been growing in popularity, now enjoying a higher market share than Mac OS. However, I fear that in all the hype and hysteria, the dangers have not had enough attention. We face a real possibility that the future of the creativity will be a barren world: a "tragedy of the digital commons" in which no one will create any content.

The truth is that Linux is one of the biggest threats to human creativity worldwide Some of you will find that statement remarkable, but it is true. As Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer has said, "Linux is cancer." Ken Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has said that: "Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector."

Moreover, because it is uncontrolled by a single entity, and because the source code is freely available and open to modification by anyone, it is a key way that pirated content can find its way onto the internet. Put a copy-protected CD into a Windows machine, and the copy protection kicks in. (OK you can get round it at the moment by doing things like pressing Shift while you put the CD in, but that's just teething troubles.) But put a copy-protected CD into Linux and it just ignores the copy protection. The software on Linux to rip CDs does not check whether publishers want their CDs copied. It will be easy to legislate against Microsoft's and Apple's tools that allow copying, but Linux is just too uncontrolled.

Fortunately, the US Congress is waking up the the threat of the tragedy of the digital commons. A new bill introduced to the US House Judiciary Committee before Christmas would ban the "analog hole". In other words, any equipment that can play music or films, like a DVD player or CD player, would be banned from having analogue outputs that could be used to pirate the content. Any outputs would have to use a "rights signaling system". Of course, certain professionals need access to analogue outputs and of course they would be allowed to have them.

That's the hardware side. But we will not succeed in fighting the evil of piracy unless we also deal with the software side. At the moment it is too easy to write software that can pirate content. Linux is just an anarchy and we need to ensure that all computer motherboards sold prevent Linux from being installed. We need a licensing scheme, headed by the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization, for all programming tools so that only trusted individuals may use them, and that inappropriate use of them is communicated via the internet to the government. To put it simply, either Linux dies - or the whole of human creativity will become a stagnant swamp. Anyone who disagrees with this is a communist.

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"'We're not heroes. We're from Finchley".

A line from the film Narnia, based on the C.S. Lewis fantasy adventures. Strongly recommended.

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One of our team brought this bit of aviation humour to my attention.

It is guaranteed to give you a bit of a smile.

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I have long gotten a laugh from Dilbert, the socially inept engineer comic created by Scott Adams. Usually, Dilbert is harmless, but occasionally he causes real damage. Last Sunday's cartoon, which features Dilbert's mother in an excessive shopping adventure that ends with organ harvesting struck me as rather amusing, but according to Scott Adams' blog, dozens of people failed to see the humour in it:

Recently I killed thousands more people. I don’t have exact numbers yet. The problem stems from my comic that ran on 11-20-05, implying that retail stores might harvest organs from bad customers and sell them on eBay. I’ve received dozens of letters (long ones!) from very angry people who assure me that the Dilbert comic will reduce the number of organ donors. The concern is that people will think their parts will end up on eBay and so they won’t be inspired to donate.

This would only have an impact on exceptionally dumb potential organ donors. But as you know, that’s a large block of the general population. Now I have to wonder how many people are smart enough to read an entire Dilbert comic and still dumb enough to think that the first person on the scene of an accident might be there just to harvest organs for eBay. It can’t be more than 1%. Let’s see, we estimate 150 million people read Dilbert, so 1% would be 1.5 million. And only 10% of them might have donated an organ anyway, so I’m probably killing 150,000 people.

It’s times like this when “oops” doesn’t seem sufficient.

I bet you did not know that cartoonists could be so dangerous. If you ever meet Scott Adams, approach with extreme caution.

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Those strange-sounding financial entities known as hedge funds, which are sometimes depicted as the Darth Vaders of the modern market, often have rather odd or dull names. So I was glad to come across a firm in the United States with a name that proudly celebrates the free market with unabashed gusto.

The firm has a great merchandise selection, too.

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Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

- Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, and Noah Vawter of MIT, getting down to the really important research. I wonder what they think of lampshades? (Link from Scott Wickstein).

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"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."

Robert A. Heinlein. Sackloads of other quotes by the great man here.

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When you spend as much time reading think-tank proposals as some libertarians do, there is a danger of losing all sense of proportion. For instance, there is a proposal to "reform" the state pension system, because it is due to become bankrupt in the next twenty years. Unfortunately, it may cost more to implement the changes (and bankrupt the system anyway). There is the call for "social justice", using the term in exactly the opposite way that it is understood to mean, in the hope of confusing your opponents into voting for you. Instead, they call you a liar and your normally loyal supporters stay at home. Then there is railway privatisation. Instead of allowing train operators to own the track themselves, we end up with the shambles of "National Rail" (and no doubt more subsidies wasted in the long run).

I have been looking for a term to describe such cunningly silly policy-making. So here goes:

Willetts, n. [pron. whil-itz] A policy proposal that is exactly twice as complicated as the problem that it is designed to solve.

David Willetts is by no means the only culprit, and his policy proposals are not always wrong, but with a nickname like "Two Brains", you're asking for trouble.

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After returning from a few free drinks at an opening, care of a new venture of Slugger O'Toole (News and photos at 11... er tomorrow) I have returned and done some random reading. I highly suggest these two lampoons, another alternate history report set in 1944 from Rand Simberg and the Attack of the Blog by Iowahawk.

Enjoy!

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"Don't fear failure. After all, without aiming high and occasionally hitting something else entirely, we'd never have discovered how tasty Northern Spotted Owls can be."

Stephen Green, of Vodkapundit, making a wonderful line in the course of an article where he writes about learning about individuality from Cary Grant. (The article is in the latest edition of the Objectivist publication, the New Individualist. Not yet on the web, as far as I can tell. Cary Grant is the patron saint of all well-dressed guys the world over).

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The great Peter Briffa speculates on who should lead the Tory Party. He has three suggestions. Which one should we go for?

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I promise only mild amusement, but sometimes mild amusement is what one needs. And there's a subtle mordancy underneath.

The latest splendid animation from Will Flash for Cash Productions in aid of the UK campaign against ID cards is here, and will explain the title of the post.

For those who missed it, their earlier biting attack on Mr Secretary Clarke and the glorious scheme using a cute musical puppy is here.

Welcome to a strange world. Sound, and familiarity with British political figures, most definitely an advantage.

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"Hi, we're aliens from another planet and our intentions are purely hostile."

The Simpsons.

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I was sorry to hear that Robin Cook croaked. When he was alive I wanted to toss him into a vat of hot tar, to make him howl; but now he's a stiff I realise what a loss he is to our nation.
- Harry Hutton

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After watching this I just had to do a hatchet job on an old standard:

500 Pounds

If you miss the plane I'm on,
I will know that you are gone.
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.

Lord it's one, Lord it's two,
Lord it's three and Lord it's four,
Lord it's five hundred pounds upon your head.

Not a shirt on your back,
Not a penny left intact.
Oh, I will blow your arse to hell this-away
This-a way, this-a way,
This-a way, this-a way,
Oh, I will blow your arse to hell this-away

If you miss the plane I'm on,
I will know that you are gone.
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.

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A powerful tornado has swept through the city of Birmingham in the West Midlands.

The twister struck earlier today, cutting a swathe of devastation through the districts of Kings Heath, Moseley, Quinton, Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook.

Mercifully, there are no reports of any fatalities but initial estimates put the cost of the damage as high as £7.50.

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The Sage of Edmonton has been listening to the cricket, and has stumbled on Australia's dirty little secret:

The Australian networks are picking up the BBC feed, so the network observes a strict one-Brit one-Aussie rule at all times in the booth. This leads to a lot of barbed, culturally volatile exchanges covered by a transparent shellac of collegiality. The English are generally poor at hiding their commingled fascination and horror at the gusto and glowing health of the Australians. The Aussies, for their part, maintain a suitable Zarathustran superciliousness--but it sure seems like homo australis is awfully vulnerable to the verbal stiletto that every Englishman above the age of four carries in his boot. Every time the various English broadcasters start to wax acerbic, their Australian colleagues become flustered and try changing the subject to the events on the field (as well they might, since their squad is making England's cricketers look more like Scotland's). Has any attention been paid to the Australian sense of humour, or absence thereof? They seem to mostly export soap and pop stars to the wider world while their British and Canadian brethren airlift comedians. It's not a good sign when your most sophisticated national ironist is Dame Edna Everage.

Most Australians will deny it, but Colby Cosh is right on the money. In my own case, I never had a chance; not only am I Australian, but I am descended from Germans. I could not tell a funny joke to win the Ashes.

This is not to say that Australians do not have a sense of humour. Comedy is a big thing here, but Australian humour does not translate well, being full of allusions that only the locals understand. And I sadly suspect, the quality is not that good either.

Why is it so? Or is it obvious, and, me being Australian, I missed the punchline?

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Could this be linked to anything?

Plans by an alliance of rightwing extremists and football hooligans to exact "revenge" on Muslims after last week's bomb attacks are being monitored by police.

The Guardian has learned that extremists are keen to cause widespread fear and injury with attacks on mosques and high-profile "anti-Muslim" events in the capital.

And so another unfortunate spoke is added to the growing cycle of violence. But beneath the predictable roar of indignant outcry, it behoves us all to take the time and trouble to examine the plight of the native British working-classes; a plight which is all too often trodden underfoot in the wholesale rush to judgement.

Over the last few decades, the British working-classes have had to endure the indignity of watching their homelands colonised by foreign settlers, while oppressive "zero-tolerance" policing and so-called 'anti-social behaviour orders' have made them virtual prisoners in the few, dwindling communities that remain to them. At the same time, their jobs have been exported abroad, while the trade unions that used to promote their interests have been politically neutered. Thus despised, impoverished and persecuted, is it any wonder that some of their activists have taken it into their hands to strike back?

Nor should it be forgotten that they have no guns, no helicopters, no batons, no dogs, no infra-red detectors, no CS gas sprays, no tazers or other quasi-military means of defending themselves. Instead, they are forced to use what few pitiful resources they do have in a despairing bid to restore some dignity to their lives.

Of course, violence should not be condoned because it actually further damages the patriotic cause. But the victims of that violence would learn a great deal from an honest reflection of what role they may have played in driving these patriotic campaigners to such desperate measures.

Few, it seems, are prepared to face up to the simple truth, let alone articulate it. Instead, there is likely to be a chorus of demand for more security measures such as surveillance cameras, ID cards and oppressive police powers, all of which will merely add fuel to the fires that rage within the activists, reinforce their sense of hopelessness and humiliation and virtually guarantee further patriotic operations in the future.

We can all agree that the violence has to stop but in order to achieve that end we must urgently and sincerely address the legitimate grievances of the patriotic community.

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"A libertarian is a conservative with an acknowledged vice, like say, a teenage girlfriend."

The as-ever brilliant P.J. O'Rourke (hat tip Catallarchy)

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... hears that his friend, an economist, is in Addenbrooks [in the US version of this joke, in Mount Auburn] with a badly broken leg, and goes to visit.

Physicist: What happened?

Economist: I had just stepped off the balcony, and wham! -- I fell and broke my leg.

Physicist: You stepped... off... the balcony? What on earth for?

Economist: How was I to know there would be gravity failure?

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This story raised a dry smile.

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Sorry but this was too funny to leave languishing in the comments section. For our non-UK readers, the Eurostar train currently terminates at the railway station in London rejopicing in the name of Waterloo:

Now that our relationship with France has reverted to its traditional millennium-long condition, can we be assured that before the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is finally completed in a year or two, the Eurostar London terminus at St Pancras will be renamed to align it more closely politically, historically and emotionally with the name of the present terminus south of the river?

Trafalgar, Salamanca, Vittoria, Blenheim, Crecy or Agincourt are just a few of the most obvious candidates history has so bountifully provided us with. A rather more modern choice, from 1940, might be Mers-el-Kebir...

Would not the choice of name make a particularly fine subject for a referendum?

Heh! I vote for Mers-el-Kebir as we can probably fool the multi-cultis into thinking we are being 'culturally inclusive' by choosing a non-European name!

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This gem is of unknown true provenance but I found it amongst the Freepers:

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraqi theater during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm death ratio of 60 per 100,000.

The firearm death ratio in DC is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of ... WASHINGTON, DC!

Sounds like an excellent strategy to me.

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This arrived in my inbox via the Crikey email

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named ‘’Governmentium’.

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of four years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each re-organisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as ‘Critical Morass’.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

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Selected research on bread:

More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.

Newborn babies can choke on bread.

Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

Providing all the scientific support any nanny-stater will need to implement controls.

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Cricket will be suspended indefinitely at Albion College from now on, in order to preserve the playing fields, it has been announced.

Head Boy, Mr ARP Blair said: "The groundsman has explained to me that it is vital to maintain the cricket square and outfield that have nurtured Albion's spirit of fair play for nearly 300 years that we stop cricket immediately. Of course we must do what the groundsman says. His staff have have had great difficulties arising from boys running up and down on the pitch and using bats and balls in a most irresponsible manner. By stopping play indefinitely, he has explained, the mystery of the soil and their special gardening techniques (which he will explain to boys sitting the Rural Sciences exam), will allow them to keep the playing surfaces safe from any boys who might tear up the grass.

"We have to trust the groundsman in this. He, after all, knows more about fields than any number of cricketers. I've heard that some people are saying he only wants this so that he can spend more time drinking in the pavilion, and that I'm only supporting him to curry favour with those boys who have never seen the point of games or latin and would like this to be an agricultural college. Anybody saying such things is a traitor to the school's tradition, and if I find out who they are they will be very severely dealt with."

[Apologies to overseas readers for over-British allusions. Glossary available on request]

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The Great International Petroleum Exchange Uprising was noted here earlier, and plans for a T-shirt commemorating the event are in the works.

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According to Dutch health investigators, going to church can cause lung cancer and other respiratory problems, because of the carcinogenic effects of candles and incense. Dr Theo de Kok, says that it is "very worrying". With Christmas approaching, levels of pollutants would be expected to rise.

The solution is obvious. The European Union must immediately ban church-going for all children, impose a tax on adult church-goers, put health warning signs on the outside of all churches and copies of the Bible.

Oh, and ban Christmas.

Obviously, the EU must also impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on any country that does not comply with this (the USA).

In dreaming up appropriate health warnings for church-going, I like the following:

God kills!
Do not worship God in the presence of children
and cutest of all:
God can seriously damage your unborn child

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The Onion does not always crack me up like it used to, possibly because it grows more and more difficult to effectively satirize an increasingly bizarre world. But this piece, Housemates Reject Third-Roommate Debt-Relief Plan, is just devastating. They manage to sneak in a reference to virtually every conceivable critique of the IMF, from both the left and the right, from moral hazard to environmental degradation. They even address the topic of "conditional" loans whose conditions have nothing to do with improving debtworthiness or economic performance:

Although the donor roommates supplied additional aid in the months that followed, the AMF placed strict conditions on the loans. These conditions were designed to accomplish three goals: to prevent corruption and misuse of funds, to ensure that the monies were spent wisely, and to reduce third-roommate economic isolationism, integrating the debtor's personal economy more fully into the interdependent apartmental community.

"We only asked for three things, man," Huygens said regarding the structure of the loan. "First, that Chad quit partying so much. Second, that he open a checking account so he can budget his cash. And third, that he bring his kickass stereo system out of his bedroom and into the living room where we can all enjoy it. It was only fair."

The only way this could have been improved upon might have been to lampoon the "debt for nature" swap; Chad's debt might be forgiven in exchange for certain herbal products, for example.

Well done, gentlemen. More like this, please.

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According to recent reports, Yasser Arafat is in a state of superposition. Palestinian and French sources state he is dead and alive at present. If true, this represents the greatest breakthrough in applied quantum physics of the still youthful 21st century.

Professor Unzer N.T. Katz, a Quantum Mechanic, told reporters: "This is the most amazing event in the history of Quantum Mechanics! We experimentalists have managed to superpose an electron here and there, or perhaps a few measly atoms... but to superpose an entire human being! The implications are staggering! They are beyond imagining!"

French doctors were unavailable for comment.

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I have received this letter from an Iraqi concerned citizen, who wishes to remind U.S. voters of the historic importance of their choice on November 2.

Dear voter,

I am an elderly man. Under the Clinton administration I had an excellent well-paid job. I took many vacations and had several holiday homes. Since President Bush took office my life has completely changed, and in every respect for the worse.

I lost my job.

I lost both my sons in the terrible Iraqi war. I lost my homes. I lost my medical insurance. In fact, I lost practically all of my possessions and found myself homeless.

Adding insult to injury, when the authorities found me living in bestial conditions, far from helping me, they arrested me.

I shall do whatever Senator Kerry wishes to ensure that a Democrat is returned to the White House next year. Bush must go!

There. I thought that all Americans would like to know what a man of my years thinks of the Bush administration.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Best wishes,

Saddam Hussein

[thanks to the French libertarians for forwarding this to me from this blog.]

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I am really looking forward to seeing the new Alien vs. Predator movie, the tagline of which is...

Whoever wins... we lose

But I also find it very appropriate to see those sentiments applied here as well regarding the other big fight epic due to be released a few weeks hence. No, I am really not looking forward to that one.

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After a hard day of wearing a new butt-crease in my chair in our conference room refereeing various committees drafting policies and procedures, allow me to unburden myself of a few pet peeves regarding the use and abuse of the English language:

"Utilization" and "utilize" are a blot on the English language. They are polysyllabic abominations spawned by the regulatory/consulting complex, suffering, as well it should, from an inferiority complex that renders it too insecure to use the perfectly good word "use."

"Literally" is never used to mean literally. Rather, it is universally used to mean "figuratively," its exact opposite (e.g. "He literally tore my head off for utilizing bad data in my report").

Serial commas, by contrast, are God's gift to careful draftsman, and are scorned only by those too illiterate to comprehend that they do, in fact, serve a purpose.

When, and why, did people stop using two spaces after periods? For that matter, when, and why, do people use apostrophes before every single frickin' terminal "s" regardless of whether it is possessive? Or should that be irregardless of whether it is possessive?

No peeve too petty, that's our motto. Readers are, of course invited to submit their own peeves in comments.

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You've all seen trolls, and know that they come in various guises. You might even be a troll yourself. To find out which sort, some bright spark has put together the Internet Message Board Wandering Monster Table, an essential resource for any blogger with comments.

(Via A.E. Brain.)

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I cannot help but suspect that Babbage and Turing never really envisaged the marvellous uses to which computing devices would be set.

Cats? Fish? Click here.

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Here, at last, is the truth that the US Government tried to suppress.

They did not want the world to know but, thanks to the painstaking forensic skill and integrity of the Fourth Estate, the skeleton is finally out of the closet!

"We stand by the authenticity of this document" - CBS

".....the smoking gun" - Reuters

"...incontrovertible proof" - Guardian

"...a major setback for the Bush Whitehouse" - BBC

"What else are they trying to cover up?" - New York Times

Case closed.

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The old saying is that "dog bites man" is not news, but "man bites dog" is.

Well, how does "dog shoots man" fit in?

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James Lileks, riffing on John Kerry's nomination speech last month:

My life today would have been much easier if I hadn’t been struck with the vision of a former president taking the podium in Boston to announce “I’m Bill Clinton, and I’m reporting for booty!”

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God isn't interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time! Forty three species of parrot! Nipples for men! Slugs! He created slugs! They can't hear! They can't speak! They can't operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic? If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o'clock, Day One!
- from Time Bandits

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From David Carr's posting (quoting the Independent newspaper):

Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

I have a cunning plan.

Immunisation is crude and easy to avoid, especially for immigrants and people who move. What is needed is a form of treatment that is visible and difficult to fake. Vaccines can be expensive and there is a whole problem of producing and storing them. The paperwork involved in ensuring that all children have been vaccinated is complicated and errors can creep in.

So the obvious solution is a full frontal lobotomy with a tatooing on the forehead. Consider a few benefits of such a scheme.

1. The pharmaceutical companies lose some business, but they avoid being associated with any screw-ups from the scheme. (This could be spun as an anti-corporate greed measure)
2. No more juvenile delinquency, except the occasional suicides. (Blamed on tobacco companies)
3. No more worrying about education standards: all children will be morons.
4. Arguing about teaching methods will not matter. (Peace at last!)
5. Parents no longer need to pretend to raise their children.
6. The law can be changed: leaving a child alone at home will be no more dangerous than leaving the television switched on.

What is a little puzzling to me is how many schemes are being done to children which would be considered highly objectionable if applied to say 'black people'.

Part-birth abortion is virtual infanticide, we have NHS doctors calling for premature children not to be incubated. We have conscription into schools, prohibitions of all sorts, cameras in classrooms to allow parents to watch, ID cards for children. Child rapists and killers can get shorter jail sentences than a child has to spend at school, (and they sometimes gets jobs in schools). Child criminals are effectively told to "do it again, you have to kill someone before we do anything", so the honest children get preyed on.

The only short-term way of preventing this sort of abuse would be if children had the right to vote. Would four-year olds come up with worse lunacy than that which they have to endure?

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This is the best animation I have come across in a good while.

It it appears to be a genuinely non-partisan poke at the Bush vs. Kerry contest and although it may take a few minutes to download it is slickly produced and very funny, even for an Englishman.

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Now where did that come from?

Japan's economy is actually growing at more than a statistically obvious rate for the first time properly since the 1980s. The fact that a heatwave is being credited with boosting business leads to the obvious conclusion.

Global warming is Good for Capitalism. Light those brown coal fires now! Chop down those hedgerows! Hunt those whales! Bring back leaded gasoline!

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The New Yorker(!) teed off very nicely on the rather stuffy account of a certain testy exchange between VP Dick Cheney and Senate Minority Lead Pat Leahy.

The background: The Veepster has been accused by none other than The Honorable Mr. Leahy of profiting (via Halliburton) on the blood of American soldiers spilled in Iraq. When Leahy approached Cheney at Senate function recently, full of smarmy bonhomie, Cheney told him to fuck off, or to go fuck himself (accounts vary, but everyone agrees the F-bomb was dropped).

The Washington Times reported this as follows:

Vice President Dick Cheney cursed at Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in a confrontation on the Senate floor while members were having their annual group picture taken earlier this week. . . . According to [an] aide, Mr. Cheney . . . responded with a barnyard epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility.

The New Yorker, well, took it to the next level.

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And now the important news of the summer: a record crop is expected of grapes in the Champagne region [French link]. The absence of frost last Winter and mild weather in Spring is a hopeful sign for a good vintage, although quantity and quality do not necessarily follow. Over the coming weeks vines will be pruned of some of the grape bunches to ensure a greater concentration of sugar and acidity.

So the next time some tree-hugging Greens moan about penguin habitats, they can console themselves with a nice bottle of Veuve Cliquot.

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By now of course, all right (read 'left') thinking people are fully conversant with the theory that the Moon landings were faked by the US government in a warehouse decorated with papier-mache and pieces of screwed-up tinfoil somewhere in the Nevada desert. This elaborate hoax was perpetrated as an underhand PR attack on the Soviets, who would never have indulged in any such below-the-belt behaviour, being too busy with stuff like this (hat tip: The Bleat).

I don't know this for sure, but I am guessing that probably most of America's nukes were fake as well, and possibly even some of their presidents. We already know that Star Wars was fraudulent (the strategic defense initiative, not the popular sci-fi movie series, which was, of course, entirely true to life) and it has been suggested in the past that Ronald Reagan himself was actually a puppet from 'Spitting Image'. Although I suspect that particular theory may have arisen from some confusion about the difference between real life and what one sees on television. Clearly human evolution still has work to do.

Anyway, for those of you who have not seen this already (not new itself, but possibly new to others than just me) irrefutable proof of the faking of the moon-landings can be found right here. Those of British origin will particularly appreciate these pictures. Essential viewing for all human beings who still have brains.

(hat tip: Chicago Boyz)

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A mugger jumps out and threatens a well-dressed man with a knife, and shouts:
"Hand over your money!"

"You can't do this," says the outraged man. "I'm a local councillor!"

"In that case," replies the mugger, "hand over my money!"

(via the Adam Smith Institute)

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Some readers will have observed that I fight an often lonely battle against the forces of the militant lesbian, anti-humanist, fascist, tree-hugging puritan conspiracy to wipe out masculinity. We know as a scientific fact that the best lovers are larger men. I have previously commented on the sexual inadequacy of skinny types.

It is therefore clear that the current obesity obsession in this country is part of a nefarious conspiracy aimed at wiping out Great Britain. Was Henry VIII skinny? Did Winston Churchill eat tofu?

Help is at hand in the form of a marvelous new book Eat What you Want and Die Like a Man: The World's Unhealthiest Cookbook. The reason for this masterpiece is set out in the Foreword:

I wrote this book because I was tired of being told what to eat. I was tired of the Food Pyramid and vegetable oil and small food. I was tired of pinch-faced little people who actually got angry when I talked about lard and egg yolks. I felt it was time for a backlash. Time to celebrate things like bacon grease and heavy cream. Don't we have better things to feel guilty about? Like the resurgence of velour?

This is not a serious cookery book, says the author. No doubt he could be sued by the pinch-faced little people.

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Imagine the European People's Democratic Front.
Imagine their first press release...

We, the people of Europe, hold the following truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Unfortunately, we don't consent to a junket-ocracy, which is what the proposed EU will be.

As such, we undertake to occupy and subvert any referendum in Luxembourg, a country with a conveniently tiny voting population of less than 350,000. One residential mailing address (with 50,000 registered residents) later, and the constitution will be consigned, where it belongs, to the dustbin of history.

SlowJoe

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Michael Moore bans Michael Moore?

It seems the new stupid campaign finance regulations in the USA (the result of Michael Moore's years of vomit among others) are about to be used to restrict distribution of Moore's latest wind-up.

Because the law attempts to prohibit all sorts of 'in kind' donations to the Republicans [I meant political parties], making a movie that plugs one candidate at the expense of another in election year could be ruled "interference" by the Federal Electoral Commission. I wonder how Michael Moore feels being felt sorry for by the US Libertarian Party.

Of course it is a shocking abuse of the US constitution. (sigh) How sad!

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Today I did something I do not normally do, but ought to do more often. I bought the latest issue of Viz, which looks like this:

What a fine British institution this is! Dirty jokes. Merciless send-ups of political and any other sort of correctness, attacks on the high and mighty (especially God), and lurking under its lewd surface is a fiercely freedom-loving political agenda, not unlike that pushed in a similarly subversive manner by the creators of South Park.

I have been feasting in particular on the wonderful Viz letters pages, where, in this issue, there is to be found a thoughtful exchange of views on the nature of the terrorist menace, and the concomitant threat to civil liberties posed by the various state measures that are allegedly being taken to curb it.

T. Harris of Leeds starts the ball rolling:

So the Home Secretary plans to force us to carry identity cards with our iris patterns encoded onto them. That's rich. How dare David Blunkett judge people on their eyes when his don't even work. It would be like the head of the DVLC not having a number plate on his car.

Les Barnsley of Barnsley pursues the theme of iris patterns:

Could the Home Secretary explain to me how biometric checks on iris patterns and fingerprints are going to help keep tabs on muslim cleric Abu Hamsa.

Good points both, I think we would all here agree.

Londoner Charles Nylon has this reflection to offer concerning the nature of terrorism:

These suicide bombers really get my goat. What an evil way to kill innocent people, running screaming into a crowded place like madmen, blowing themselves and everyone else to bits. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned gentlemen terrorists like the IRA, who'd quietly pop a nail bomb under a pub table and leave without making a song and dance about it.

But Bamber Ross of Ross ripostes:

Mr Nylon (above letter) does not know what he is talking about. Gentlemen terrorists, indeed. When you get stang off a wasp, it just flies off to sting again and again in the style of the IRA bombers that Mr Nylon so admires. However, when a bee stings, it pulls its arse inside out and, like a suicide bomber, dies. And I think we' all agree that bees are much nicer than wasps.

But Prof. J. Shiels of the Dept of Entomology, Maudling College, Oxford, rejects this bee/wasp metaphor in no uncertain terms:

I'm afraid Mr Ross's insect/terrorist analogy (above letter) doesn't hold water. The reason that we agree that bees are nicer than wasps is nothing at all to do with their stringing ability. It is because bees are furry, like little black and orange flying teddy bears that make jam. Wasps on the other hand are all hard and have them Darth Vader faces. And they chase you when you run off.

Good to see the academic classes contributing to the debate there.

And the profundities just keep coming. Says Tracey Cusick of Cumbria:

The NSPCC keeps going on TV and saying that unless I send them three quid a month, a baby called William won't be so lucky next time. I suggest that we don't give in to these extortionists and blackmailers, or they'll be back with a threat to top him if we don't send them a fiver.

Wise words indeed.

Viz. Gentlemen intellectual terrorists. At all good newsagents now. And I have not even mentioned the Fat Slags.

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Four people were bragging about how smart their cats are. The first was an Engineer, the second an Accountant, the third was a chemist, the fourth was a Government Worker.

To show off, The Engineer called to his cat, T-square, do your stuff. T Square pranced over to a desk, took out some paper and pen and drew a circle, a square, and a triangle.

Everyone agreed that was a pretty smart cat, but the Accountant said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, Spreadsheet, do your stuff. Spreadsheet went out into the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into 4 equal piles of 3 cookies each.

Everyone agreed that was really good, but the Chemist said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, Measure do your stuff. Measure got up, picked up a 500ml graduated cylinder, walked over to the fridge, took out a litre of milk, got a 300 ml glass from the cupboard, measured and poured exactly 275 ml of milk into the glass without spilling a drop.

Everyone agreed that was good too. Then the three men turned to the Government Worker and said, "What can your cat do"?

The Government worker called to his cat and said, Coffee Break, do your stuff. Coffee Break jumped to his feet, ate the cookies, drank the milk, pooped on the paper, screwed the other three cats, claimed he injured his back while doing so, filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions, put in for compensation, and went home on sick leave.

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It's a tough job but somebody has to do it.

I have been doing my bit for the War against woman-hating, religious bigotry by checking out the Miss Universe finalists. Personally I think the registered Republican Miss USA looked much better than Miss Australia, the eventual winner.

Useful sociological experiment: check out Miss Sweden and try to focus on horrible tax rates in that country. So if Sweden had the burqah, perhaps they would have lower taxes. Tough call.

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Cecile Dubois begins a longish post here with a discussion of the fact that her classmates, teachers, etc., have now found out about her blog, and are all reading it. Where will that lead? Somewhere interesting, I feel sure. Her English teacher is reading all of it.

So what will her English teacher make of this, which comes at the end of the very same post? Here's Cecile taking a pin to the Great Blimp bimself:

… Michael Moore is my idol. His posters plaster my walls, and I'm dying to see his next film. I seriously like want peace in the world, and we should so elect him as president. Kerry is such a Nazi for me – we should kick his arse, man! We shouldn't have any enemies at all! I think we should instate Muslim traditions so another 911 doesn't happen, that way those funny people (heh heh) over there don't nuke us, and can freely migrate over here. Don't you just love France? I want to bring their culture here! I love America – but to make it even better, we should have more diversity! Let's celebrate the Palestinians – I'm going to dress up as a suicide bomber – it would fit me so cool. Don't I look sexy in that belt? I'm da bomb! (Tee hee!) Ah, Michael Moore. Amen to him. We shouldn't have guns. If a burglar comes in with one, I'll just roast him a pig and kiss him on the cheek – let him come in and steal my TV set – I so don't deserve it. We should also welcome the proletariat to power! We rich people are scum. Yo dude? Yeah, I'll meet you in front with your Mercedes Benz. OMG, did I say Mercedes Benz? Whoa! I meant electric car – gas kills! Peace out! …

What she should make of it is that Cecile must be encouraged to stick with the writing.

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Gotta give Matt Drudge credit for these back to back headlines:

Putin fights off 'authoritarian' charges...

Report: Russia Guards Told to Smile More...

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The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has once again pledged to introduce a compulsory national ID card scheme saying that ID cards were an essential tool in the fight against global warming.

Speaking to the BBC today, Mr. Blunkett denied that ID cards were merely a fetish and emphasised that they were a much-needed response to a fast changing world:

"Everbody understands the need to take serious steps to tackle the growing menace of global warming but we cannot even begin to do this without a proper national ID card system".

Mr. Blunkett was also dismissive of the scheme's critics:

"These so-called civil libertarians who try to suggest that there is no link between ID cards and global warming are simply dangerous and deluded. They are terrorists in all but name."

According to a recent opinion poll, every single person in the UK has pledged that they will murder their own children and then kill themselves horribly unless the government issues them with a biometric ID card immediately.

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Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion
- Seen used as a signature on a games forum

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Europhile, n. (pronounced "yew-ro-file") Person or institution with an enthusiasm about the merging of the European States into a single State, usually regardless of any other considerations. A Europhile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.

Urophile, n. (pronounced "yew-ro-file") Person with an enthusiasm for being subjected to showers of urine. A Urophile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.

Now it would be easy and gratuitous of me to imply that both are one and the same, but this is obviously unfair.

One is a harmless pervert who engages in fantasies in private that involve no coercion against other people. The other is a dangerous pervert who conspires in private, and who needs to be exposed and subjected to public embarrassment.

The 'e' makes all the difference.

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Don't let's be beastly to the Germans!
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!
- Noel Coward

Former celebrity brain tumour sufferer and Labour politician Dr Mo Mowlem reportedly believes that we need to "negotiate with Bin Laden", along the lines of terrorism appeasement in Northern Ireland.

I agree.

In the spirit of reconciliation I propose the following gestures of good faith:

1. Remove all British forces from the Middle East and Afghanistan.


2. Break off diplomatic relations with all non-Islamic countries.


3. Ban women from holding any educational qualifications past primary school.


4. Ban women from holding any jobs other than primary school teacher, nurse or doctor in women only clinics. Especially remove all women from political office.


5. Ban all Jews from holding political office, working in the public sector, the media and the legal profession.


6. Prohibit the sale or consumption of alcohol between 3pm on Fridays and noon on Saturday.


7. Release all Moslem terrorist suspects.


8. Order the Archbishop of Canterbury to publicly abjure Christianity [Editor's note: is this not already the case?] and exhalt the supremacy of Islam. Convert the established churches of England, Scotland and Ireland to Islam.


9. Prohibit all religious education in schools, except Islam.


10. Order the abdication of Her Majesty the Queen in favour of a male relative (her husband perhaps).

Obviously, we should hold back on some Islamist demands until we have some reciprocal agreements from Mr Bin Laden, for instance:

1. No mass public executions of homosexuals and female adulterers.


2. No public flogging of drug or alcohol addicts.


3. No enforcement of the veil for non-Moslem women.


4. No declaration of war on Israel and the USA.


5. No handing-over of British nuclear, biological and chemical weapons technology to al-Qaeda.

After all, we must have something to bargain with!

Just an after-thought. Am I confused, or did negotiating with the IRA lead to a split with even more violent factions launching even more deadly bomb attacks?

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The Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sayid Qutb, former leader Muslim Brotherhood, quoted by Barbara Amiel.

Well I disagree with the conclusion, but I must admit that the pantheon of evil is pretty exhaustive.

Marx: the inspiration for all the best serial killers
Freud: the apologist for all the best serial killers
Durkheim: serial killer of brain cells
Sartre: creep

Hmm...

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The good Professor Bunyip has a modest proposal for reforming the welfare state:

Fire all the public servants, social workers and ministers of the new and godless Christianity and replace them with the very people to whom they have been sending everyone else's money.

The newly uplifted wouldn't actually have anything to do, since there would be no further funds to distribute, but they would have salaries and somewhere to go in the morning. Meanwhile, those laid-off social engineers could sample the poetic justice of penury -- the very condition they have encouraged in the underclass whose positions at the bottom of society's ladder they would assume.

We taxpayers would notice no difference but a positive one: Bureaus of social engineers would cost less to support while achieving just as little. And we could also expect to see crime rates diminish, since the pool of formerly downtrodden malefactors would be otherwise occupied giving each other tattoos with government-issue ballpoints and microwaving infants in their departments' lunchrooms -- a kinder, quicker, cheaper and altogether more efficent way of squandering human potential than the current method. As a final advantage, the newly designated poor, being composed of a better class of person, would be less likely to burn down railway stations.

I say its worth a try.

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Every decent and right-thinking person must surely condemn today's tragic events in Madrid.

BUT...while our thoughts go out to the families of the innocent victims this must not cause us to forget that horrible incidents such as we have witnessed today are the wholly predictable result of the Spanish government's wrong-headed, meddling foreign policy and their continued brutal occupation of the Basque homeland.

Of course, no one can ever condone such senseless acts of bloody violence but that does not mean we cannot sympathise with the plight of the ruthlessly oppressed Basques who are struggling for dignity and nationhood beneath the jackboot of Spanish domination. Such people, who are condemned to a future without hope or self-worth, can hardly be blamed for the state of desperation that may have forced some of them to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of people on public transport. What choice do they have?

While the rash and the thoughtless among us may seek scapegoats here, a more mature and nuanced analysis is required. The truth is that there are no perpetrators here, just different types of victim. The real culprit is Spain's ultra right-wing fundamentalist Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar whose lunatic extremist policies are the root causes of today's shocking violence.

This dangerous demagogue (who some have compared to Hitler) has surrounded himself with a sinister, shadowy cabal of Neo-Conquistadores and, together, they have hijacked this country and brought the shame and opprobrium of the world upon it with their wicked plan to establish a Global Iberian Empire. It is the policies of Aznar and his government that are driving Spain, and maybe the whole world, into catastrophe. Until they are stopped, there will be more horrific carnage of the type unleashed on Madrid today.

The Spanish people would do well not to squander the sympathy they have earned as a result of this attack. They must immediately distance themselves from their own deranged leaders and join in with the efforts of the rest of concerned humanity in ending the occupation and bringing Spain back into the fold of civilised, peaceful nations.

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The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, held a press conference today outside No.10 in response to the nationwide strike by civil servants.

Mr. Blair informed the assembled members of the press that the Government had decided to respond to the threat of industrial unrest among public servants by arranging for the entire British state sector to be outsourced to India.

Stunned journalists pressed Mr. Blair for an explanation for this radical and controversial move. Mr. Blair said:

We have considered the matter carefully and we have consulted with various experts in the field. The conclusion we have come to is that it is simply too expensive to go on governing Britain from Britain.

The news was greeted with a mixture of boos and cheers but the Prime Minister continued undaunted:

It is the only logical solution. Young, well-educated Indians are quite capable of running the British state at a fraction of the current cost. We have taken steps to ensure that there will be no reduction in either the quality or quantity of public services while saving the taxpayers money.

Though confronted with some angry questions about the fate of the NHS, Mr. Blair declined to comment further:

Look, I'd love to help you but the simple fact is that the NHS is no longer my responsbility. If you have any questions about the continued provision of public sector health care in the UK then I suggest you telephone 08700 4568000 and speak to Jasvinder in Bombay.

Mr. Blair then ended the conference and, ignoring the protests, walked back into No.10.

A spokesperson for the Civil Service Trade Union, Unison, said he was "shocked and saddened" by the news and that he would be ballotting his members on further industrial action.

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We Brians must stick together, so here is a plug for this campaign by Brian Whiley (linked to by b3ta.com) to replace either Greg Dyke or That Bloke From The City as BBC DG or BBC Chairman, whichever.

What was Gilligan's crime? That, early in the morning – at a time when nobody except insomniacs and farmers would be listening – a bleary-eyed journalist embellished a report that, in all honesty, probably needed it. My first duty would be to defend to the last BBC journalists from a Government that feels the need to hound reporters whose only error has been to make a boring story a little more interesting by inventing conversations that never took place.

I particularly like the promotional products peddled on this website, which downplay the "Whiley" aspect of the situation in a way that will surely meet with widespread approval here.

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I last logged out leaving the Samizdata just as I like it. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. Yes, it may have been a bit shambolic and démodé but it was comforting and familiar like an old friend or a favourite armchair.

Only look at what has happened! I turn my back for a few hours and some anally-retentive busybodies have gone and called in the Feng Shui consultants. Now my loveable, historical old Blog has been has been consigned to the scrap heap and replaced with this ultra-hi-tech, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art thingy which they are probably going to tell me has been conceived for 'balance' or 'harmony' or 'enhanced Chi' or something.

And as if that act of wanton cultural vandalism was not enough they have also furnished me with a new-fangled set of coding instructions with 'stylesheets' and 'javascript' and 'xhtml' this and 'attribute' that. The whole thing reads like stereo-assembly instructions. How is this old dog supposed to learn all these new tricks? It took me look enough to programme me the first time round. They will doubtless have to ship me off to the manufacturer now to be re-chipped and re-booted.

Or maybe they are planning to give me a make-over. Yes, I bet they are. After all age and experience counts for nothing these days. It's all about image, image, image and daresay I am no longer regarded as sufficiently 'happening' anymore. I can see myself now, being prodded and poked around by a squadron of invidious design-gurus ("Dahhling, that haircut is just sooooo 2003").

I would write a letter of complaint to these soulless technocrats but what good would it do? Besides they have all probably swanned off to some fashionable Islington eatery where they are quaffing down the polenta with rocket salad and feeling very smug about being so 'cool' and a la mode.

Bah! It's all humbug.

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See what happens when I do not pay attention to what The Dissident Frogman is doing? He sneaks off goes and makes another side-splittingly funny flash animation. I visit his site often but for some reason I neglected to 'press the red button'. Big mistake.

I suggest you go and do so... right now.

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Clearly nothing escapes the hawk-eyed attention of these rapier-witted and attentive public servants:

A tax office official in Finland who died at his desk went unnoticed by up to 30 colleagues for two days.

The man in his 60s died last Tuesday while checking tax returns, but no-one realised he was dead until Thursday.

Getting a fiddled expenses claim past them must be a doddle. Let's all move to Finland!

He said everyone at the tax office was feeling dreadful - and procedures would have to be reviewed.

From now on, mandatory pulse-checks every 24 hours.

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I check this site day by day, and found this cartoon today.

By the way, there is a curious transatlantic rift over the Beagle: the British media call it a 'British Mars probe' and the US media call it a 'European Mars probe'.

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A few weeks ago, i was looking through old issues of The Spectator and I found a piece by Mark Steyn from a little over a year ago. He was talking mainly about his dislike of the UN, and the silliness of Libya being at the time the newly elected chair of the UN Human Rights Commission and Iraq being about to become president of the UN Conference on Disarmament. (Looking back, I think Iraq and Libya have both learned quite a bit about disarmanent and human rights since then. But I digress).

However, Steyn went on to say that some international organisations were okay.

I’m all in favour of the Universal Postal Union and the Berne Copyright Convention (America was a bit late signing that one), but they work precisely because Sy Kottik and his chums weren’t involved.

I'm not so sure, actually. Certain aspects of the Berne Copyright Convention are somewhat controversial, and I would argue that parts of it are more about certain countries attempting to implement protectionist policies more than anything else. No doubt we could now have one of those long heated arguments in the comments section as we often do when intellectual property issues are brought up. But let's not. It's Christmas.

For it was the other one of those international organisations, the Universal Postal Union, that made me think about Steyn's article when I was posting Christmas presents too my family in Australia a couple of weeks back. You see, there are three postage rates for air mail. The most expensive is the "standard letter rate", which can be used to send anything, other than items considered actually dangerous to send through the mail. The first of the other rates is "printed matter", which is defined as

advertisements, books, calendars, catalogues, diaries, directories, greetings cards, illustrations, magazines, maps, musical scores, newspapers, order/subscription forms, leaflets and pamphlets, plans, postcards, price lists, printed drawings and notices, proofs, prospectuses and timetables, but not letters, including personal messages or greetings (other than five words allowed on greetings cards), handwritten receipts, photographic negatives, slides or film, postage stamps or blank stationery

Got that? The other is the "small packet" rate which is defined as

goods, gifts and trade samples, audio/video tapes, magnetic tapes, and photographs. You can include a letter, invoice or other document, if it relates to the contents of the item

These definitions are defined by the treaties that created the Universal Postal Union, and it is impossible for any one country to change them. This is what happens when you put representatives of lots of governments together to negotiate anything. They come up with stupid, overly bureaucratic definitions and rules. But somehow the idea that it is their business what I choose to put in the mail is taken as a given.

They probably had some reason for setting rules like this, at least theoretically. Were books and newspapers considered morally virtuous and letters and photographic negatives not (huh?), or was is considered desirable for people to write their letters on thin paper but it was not considered desirable for people to send light gifts rather than heavy gifts?. In any event, letting people who send things from one almost arbitrary list of things subsidise people who send things from a different list seems somewhat peculiar to me.

But I suppose the international postal system does work on the whole. And even if it does produce silly outcomes like this, multilateralism is generally better than bilateralism

And things are changing. I cannot remember the last time I sent a personal letter to anyone. Business letters occasionally, and occasionally Christmas cards, but otherwise I use the mail service entirely for sending packages. Perhaps the letter rate will fade into non-existence and the costs of sending packages will revert to something resembling the actual costs of sending them because there is no other mail. I suppose we can hope.

But I still have this peculiar vision of somebody working for the post office whose job is to open people's packages to check that they haven't written any more than five words on their greeting cards. Clearly this is important. Civilization would obviously collapse if it was not done.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone.

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The following is taken from a list of authors names as published in the British Library Catalogue:

Florence A Bagelhole
Ole Bagger
Ludwig Von Baldass
Willy Bang
Juana Bignozzi
Petr Bitsilli
Jaime Bleeda
Don Bolognese
Wallop Brabazon
Knud Bugge
Hieronymus Cock
Ellsworth Prouty Conkle
Lettice May Crump
Dee Day
Roger A Destroyer
Arsen Diklic
Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd
Kersi D Doodha
Gottfried Egg
Bernt Eggen
Gordon Bandy Enders
Otto Flake
Mercedes Formica
Vladimir Fuka
Gergeley Gergeley
Biserka Grabar
Romulus Guga
Frederick Stuft Hammer
Odd Bang Hansen
O Heck
Jup Kastrati
Per Klang
Hieronimus Knicker
Bent Koch
Jacques Olle Laprune
Moses E Lard
F Leflufly
Manfred Lurker
Agogo Mago
Pilgrim Mangles
Santiago Nudelman
Henricus Pisart
Antwerp Pratt
Willem Quackelbeen
Fritz Rotter
Flora Schmulz
Johann Von Schmuck
I M Sick
Count Jacques de Silly
Negley Teeters
Wade Toole
Matilda Wrench

I am reliably informed that these names have been checked and that these people do indeed exist.

[My thanks to Dr Chris Tame for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum]

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Nobody who has read The Road To Serfdom will have been in the least surprised at the increased use these days of the word "Czar" in political discourse. It signals the quite deliberate, conscious and explicit demand for governmental tyranny, not for its own sake, but to cut through all the crap deposited everywhere by previous government officials. Czarism signals the demand that government cease playing even by its own rules, let alone anyone else's.

To dig a bit deeper into the subject I tried typing "czar" into Google.

I actually didn't get as many different Czarships as I was hoping for. Not really hoping, you understand, but hoping for the purposes of this posting. I had in mind a posting along the lines of this one, which lists all the different ways in which "the public needs to be educated". Googling reaped a rich harvest with that one. But czardoms proved to be in relatively short supply. So, in a way, I have good news to report. Not as many czardoms as you might think.

I found this Privacy Czar and a call, reported on here, for him to be replaced by the current US administration. And inevitably there is this personage, who is genuinely scary of course, to be laughed and sneered at only as part of the deadly serious business of running him out of office and abolishing his job, and strangling the fatuous ambitions it is based on.

There is this cybersecurity czar. Apart from that, very little, apparently. Is there a list of czardoms somewhere that I have missed?

In other words, and I'm really very pleased about this, truly, what I actually discovered was what these people at the Cornell University Computing Science Department, way ahead of me, had long ago spotted, which is that czardom in your average democracy is usually only a word, not to say a poisoned chalice. A czar is a commissioner, an under-secretary with special responsibility for, a "co-ordinator", a gopher, with a grander and scarier sounding title than those, but with none of the means on his desk actually to solve the problem he has been put in charge of, which in any case has only reached the czar stage because it is insoluble.

The Cornell computerfolk would seem to have been watching all this, because they've taken to calling their own functionaries "czars" also.

In their case the insoluble problem is somewhat different to those confronted with czardom by your average government. Their problem is to get people to do boring things without being paid anything. And it seems that the thrill of being a czar doesn't work any better there than elsewhere, as they foresaw.

Replacements have been requested for the following czarships. If you are interested in taking up one of these positions, or would like to have a position listed as available, please contact either the current czar listed for that position or the Czar Czar. Please remember that it is the current czar's responsibility to find a replacement when they wish to give up a czarship, though the Czar Czar can offer suggestions of people who might be available to fill the position.

Czardom as slavery! You have to find some other poor sap to do it before you are allowed to stop. It would seem that the current Colloquium Czar is anxious to replace himself. He's got fed up with doing this.

The Colloquium Czar unlocks the lecture hall for the weekly department colloquium and makes sure that any overhead projectors or other equipment that is needed is available. They also close up the room after the colloquium is over.

Well, at least the job is doable, for as long as you can stand doing it.

But of course, having to replace yourself is only a rule, which can be Cut Through like any other piece of Red Tape. The people in charge of these arrangements can't actually do anything if the slave simply buggers off the plantation while neglecting to entice any other slave to perform his ex-duties. And if there are no volunteers in the first place, what do you do then?

The following czarships are no longer active, due to lack of interest or judgment that they are no longer needed. If you would like to see one of these czarships reactivated, contact the Czar Czar.

That has to be the job description of the century so far:

The overseer of the czarships, the Czar Czar maintains the current list of czarships and their corresponding czars. In addition, they keep track of any information about performing particular czar duties. If a czar wishes to retire from their position, the Czar Czar can help find possible replacements.

The name of the current Czar Czar is Stephen Chong. I know, he/she should be called "Gabor" – glad we've got that out of the way. But how long before a "Czar Czar" pops up for real, in a real public sector, somewhere?

Seriously, I congratulate these Cornellians (?) for having (a) spotted something seriously funny and funnily serious going on out there in the real world, (b) deciding to take some appropriate piss out of it, and (c) doing so by having some fun with their own arrangements, thereby proving that they are not taking themselves and their own activities over-seriously either.

A true understanding of the world? A sense of their own relative unimportance in that larger scheme of things? A sense of humour? Can they really be students at all?

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GREETINGS!

LET ME START BY INTRODUCING MYSELF PROPERLY. MY NAME IS ALI KAMAL BISHARA AND I AM A SENIOR OFFICIAL IN THE IRAQI FINANCE MINISTRY. I WAS ALSO CHIEF ADVISER TO FORMER PRESIDENT OF IRAQ, SADDAM HUSSEIN WHO IS NOW IN THE AMERICAN CAPTIVITY.

WE ARE CONTACT YOU FOR TO ESTABLISH VERY URGENTLY A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP BUT ONLY WITH A FOREIGN PERSON OF MOST HIGH RELIABLENESS AND REPUTATION FOR WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO A FOREIGN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

LET ME EXPLAIN: BEFORE HIS DETENTION THE PRESIDENT HUSSEIN DEPOSITED THE SUM OF $28,500,000 IN A SECRET BANK ACCOUNT IN A SAFE COUNTRY. THIS MONEY WAS OIL REVENUE WHICH I HAVE PERSONALLY CHECKED AND FOUND AS AN ACCURATE FIGURE.

NOW THE FORMER PRESIDENT HUSSEIN CAN NO LONGER ACCESS THIS MONEY WHICH IS MUCH NEEDED BY MY COUNTRY FOR DISBURSEMENT TO CHILDREN AND HOSPITALS. IF THIS MONEY IS NOT CLAIMED IT WILL BE TAKEN BY AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.

SO HUMBLY WE BEG AN HONEST AND DILIGENT PERSON TO WHO THE UNDISCLOSED BANK WILL TRANSFER THIS MONEY AS TRUSTEE. IN RETURN FOR THIS SERVICE YOU WILL KEEP 30% OF THE SUM AND REMIT TO US THE 70% REMAINING. IN ORDER THAT WE MAY COMPLETE THIS MOST SECRET TRANSACTION YOU MUST SEND TO US YOUR DETAILS BUT MOSTLY YOUR BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER AND ADDRESS SO THAT WE CAN ARRANGE THE SUBSTANTIAL MONEY TRANSFER TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT.

YOU MUST REPLY QUICKLY WITH FULL DETAILS FOR US TO BE CONVICTED THAT YOU ARE GENUINE AND SINCERE.

YOURS MOST HUMBLY IN GOOD BUSINESS FAITH.

ALI KAMAL BISHARA.

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The French Government has reacted with fury to the news that Saddam Hussein has been captured by US forces.

Speaking to reporters in Paris this evening, the Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, denounced the arrest of the former Iraqi leader as 'an act of international piracy':

"Saddam Hussein has been kidnapped by America. You cannot simply seize and detain people without proper negotiations. The Americans should have given more thought beforehand. This situation requires the careful application of justice not cowboy tactics"

His words were echoed at a meeting of EU Ministers in Brussels this evening. Speaking on behalf of the assembled ministers, Dutch Commissioner Willy Van Der Pimp issued a warning to the Americans not to 'go it alone':

"If the Americans think that they alone can administer justice, then they are very mistaken. The international community will not tolerate being ignored in this fashion. Europe has a vital role to play in deciding the future of Saddam Hussein"

The Council of Ministers will meet again tomorrow in emergency session to draw up an action plan.

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Gabriel's last post brought irresistibly to mind another letter that was orbiting the planet via email several years ago (this was before the Planet Blog emerged from ether). As with Gabriel, I apologize if you have already seen this, but it is not only hilarious, it is funny in such a kind and gentle way that I have used it in several classes as an example of how to write a letter in which you are saying "no, no, a thousand times no!" while making a new friend.

The letter, from the Smithsonian Institution to a backyard archaeologist, follows:

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Harvey Rowe

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Chris Addison of the Guardian shares a letter from tax authorities he received as a reply to his earlier missives on the topic of tax gathering. The Guardian? Tax authorities? This does not bode well for the entertainment potential of this post. Nevertheless, I reproduce the letter below in full as it made my day¹:

Dear Mr Addison,

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more-than-prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.

I will address them, as ever, in order.

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter". It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand". This is how we, at the Inland Revenue, have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the "endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat" has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer, I would cautiously suggest that their being from "pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers" might indicate that your decision to "file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies" is at best a little ill-advised.

In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a "lackwit bumpkin" or, come to that, a "sodding charity". More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay "go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services", a moment's rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to "stump up for the whole damned party" yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor's disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on "junkets for Bunterish lickspittles" and "dancing whores", whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, "that box-ticking facade of a university system".

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries: 1. The reason we don't simply write "Muggins" on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system; 2. You can rest assured that "sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give" has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn't render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to "give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India" you would still owe us the money. Please forward it by Friday.

Yours sincerely,
H J Lee
Customer Relations

Notwithstanding the purpose and the origin of this letter, I think its style is commendable².

Note (1): This article has been published on 27th September, so it may have circled the planet Blog by now. Please skip, if I am merely reposting the 'joke of the month' from two months ago long after the party.

Note (2): Yes, it is a joke and not a real letter.

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Achtung! Achtung!

The Slovene Red Army has finally broken through to the leafy suburbs of London!

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A famous Texan is over here in town. So, given the rude noises coming out of the bottom-feeders of the 'peace' movement, with their oh-so original cracks about the 'cowboy Bush', here's a quotation to ponder taken from Ian Fleming's first, and arguably best, James Bond adventure, Casino Royale:

Bond reflected that Americans were fine people, and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.

No rudeness implied, by the way, to citizens of any state outside the Lone Star State, just in case folk get upset!

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James Lileks' Bleat, usually devoted primarily to domestic bliss, today gets a little screedy. James has peeked inside the sausage factory that is the US Senate.

The spleen, she hurts. I think it had to do with listening to the Senate debate, if that word applies, and wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world’s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we’d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up.

Unicameral house! Two year term! One term limit!

There's more, on such perennial faves as the French, Michael Moore, and the angry anti-war lot. I started to excerpt, but when your cursor is hovering over "Select All" it is time to just say "read the whole thing."

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Time for me to take a break from all this lofty philosophising about the state of the world and indulge in a little bit of schoolboy humour, made possible by this BBC report on the death of the former Zimbabwean President, Canaan Banana:

A former Methodist minister, professor of theology and diplomat, he was 67 years old. He leaves four adult children and a wife with whom he separated in 2000.

The Bananas Split!

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Plato's Utopia has long served as a double-edged sword to any aspiring totalitarian. Many of the world's greatest adventurers, explorers and thinkers have sought the fabled Lost City of Atlantis, coming up with many convoluted theories as to where and how it really existed. Now an expedition to the Strait of Gibraltar may solve one of the world's greatest mysteries.

Next month, an expedition to hunt for its remains among submerged Gibraltarian islands will be unveiled at the Royal Geographical Society, London, by a renowned geologist, Prof Jacques Collina-Girard, and the leaders of the Titanic expeditions. Prof Collina-Girard believes that generations of Atlantis obsessives overlooked the most obvious location: Plato's account suggests Atlantis lay before the Pillars of Hercules - today's Strait of Gibraltar.

Plato said the island kingdom was larger than Libya and Asia put together. It was paradise: peaceful, cultured and unspoilt. A golden age continued for centuries, but eventually corruption got the better of its inhabitants and the gods punished them by submerging Atlantis.

In our fast-paced modern times, the EUropean utopia skipped the golden age to move directly to the corruption phase. If gods wish to retain any shred of their shattered credibility, a total submerging of all EU institutions would be well in place. And they'd better hurry, or they will have their work cut out by the European Directive on Submerging, Flooding and Destroying Continents that is soon to be approved by the EU Commission.

Directive 03/360BC/UTOPIA specifies that any destructive activities by the certified Deities, defined as protest to the political, social and cultural developments of Mortal Citizens (EU Directives 98/3740BC/NOAH and 99/2350BC/SOD&GOM), are to be closely monitored by the relevant agencies using the consolidated global experience and drawing on a long-term state-funded research of such occurrances. Or they could just apply retrospetive fines to penalise Mr Plato for unclear, inconsistent and misleading labelling of his products and services and insufficient specification of their location.

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For those who find Mondays blue and tired and for those who might be inspired to a change of career... Ladies and gentlemen I give you:

Dissect a frog online!

Via Monkeyfarts

Note: Any resemblence to characters real or imagined is purely coincidental and the editorial team of Samizdata.net shall not be held responsible for any dissections of the insinuated individual.

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ATTN: THE SAMIZDATA TEAM
FROM: THE HONOURABLE PRESIDENT
OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, ROMANO PRODI

Dear Sir/Madam,

Good day Sirs. I hope my letter does not cause you too much embarrassment as I write to you in good faith and the transaction is of mutual benefit. Based on the contact address given to me by a friend who works at the Nigerian chamber of commerce attached to your embassy in my country.

Please excuse my intrusion into your private life. I am Romano Prodi, the appointed President of the European Commission and my friends and I are in danger of losing a lot of money due to vindictive investigators and their friends in the media who are bent on ruining us financially. Consequently, my friends in the Commission have asked me to seek for a foreign partner who can work with us to move out the total sum of €75,000,000.00 ( seventy five million Euros), presently in their possession.

This money was of course, acquired by my friends through hard work and enterprise. The Swiss government has already frozen all our accounts in Switzerland, and some other countries would soon follow to do the same.

This bid by some political rivals to deal with this my friends and I has made it necessary that we seek your assistance in receiving this money and in investing it on behalf of our behalf. This must be a joint venture transaction and we must all work together. Since this money is still in cash, extra security measures have been taken to protect it from theft or seizure, pending when agreement is reached on when to move it into a secure and anonymous territory pending on our agreement.

I have personally worked out all modalities for the peaceful conclusion of this transaction. The transaction definitely would be handled in phases and the first phase will involve the moving of €25,000,000.00 (twenty five million Euros).

My friends are willing to give you a reasonable percentage of this money as soon as the transaction is concluded. It will, however, be based on the grounds that you are willing to work with us and also all contentious issues being discussed before the commencement of this transaction. You may also discuss your percentage before we start to work. As soon as I hear from you, I will give you all necessary details as to how we intend to carry out the whole transaction. Please, do not entertain any fears, as all necessary modalities are in place, and I assure you of all success and safety in this transaction.

Please, this transaction requires absolute confidentiality and you would be expected to treat it as such until the funds are moved out of Europe to where you intend to receive them.

In compliance with this you are to forward to me the following details: your complete names and addresses, confidential telephone and fax numbers, bank account details and all relevant account numbers. This is to enable me perfect all the necessary documentation with the security firm and move this money across to your country of choice.

Please, you will also ignore this letter and respect our trust in you by not exposing this transaction, even if you are not interested.

I look forwards to working with you. Thank you.

Truly Yours

Romano Prodi.

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In a shock move, last night, the UK's Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, spectacularly failed to resign when given an open goal opportunity to do so. In a powerful and sometimes moving soliloquy from the floor of the House of Commons, Mr Hoon looked on as someone else made a dramatic speech demanding the Defence Secretary's resignation. This was Mr Hoon's reply:

I don't know what all the fuss is about. I didn't fool anyone important when I lied to the intelligence and security committee, just the proles.

Under strong media pressure, UK Premier Tony Blair also defended his beleaguered colleague:

Come on, guys, look, well, you know. Geoff can't resign now, I need him to resign when the Hutton Report comes out. If I throw his body out the back of the plane before then, there'll only be me left to carry the can, and I'm not having that. Don't worry, you'll get your scalp, but only when Mandy, Alastair, and I decide you will. We've got all the 'least worst' resignation moments mapped out on the grid, and it's not Geoff's turn yet. So can we draw a line under this, guys, and move on?

When pressed on whether it was a disastrous though retrievable situation for British troops to be in the line of fire, in Iraq, while their Ministry of Defence Chief hid in a hole in the ground in London waiting for his resignation grid appointment, a furious Mr Blair went on to add:

Look, come on, do you really think Geoff Hoon is the real Secretary of State for Defence? He's just a stooge, a figurehead, a nobody. I've got one of my Downing Street boys running the real operation, and he's reporting back directly to me. It makes the lines of control much easier.

Mr Archie Scroggins, 17, a former apprentice gas-fitter from Lewisham, was later revealed as this vital kitchen cabinet insider. His mother, Mrs Olive Scroggins, was as surprised as anyone:

Archie got this job installing a new boiler, in 10 Downing Street, and Mrs Blair took a shine to him. Archie's been there ever since. He told me he was an assistant masseuse, when I saw him on telly in the back of a car with Tony. But to find out he's Secretary of State for Defence is a mum's dream come true! I'm made up for him! And he hasn't even started shaving yet!

Archie Scroggins was later said to be unavailable for comment, as he was on a plane to Iraq to discuss British and American troop deployments. His father, Mr Reginald Scroggins, 74, was said to be down the pub.

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Where archaeology meets politics - on the banks of the Potomac, of course:

Archeologists digging near the Potomac River report they have found a partial human skeleton from the Magnusregimentumian era, also called 'the era of big government.'

Scientists have dubbed the creature Homo Republicus.

"The cranium is rather large, but the spinal column doesn't seem strong enough to support it," said an unnamed archeologist working at the dig site. "Despite its impressive thinking capabilities, it apparently crawled along on its belly, often carrying opportunistic vermin on its back."

Scott Ott of Scrappleface generally hits the mark with his satire, and in the fine tradition of going after the big slow targets first, his mark is often governmental fecklessness and political cowardice.

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While academicians fruitlessly debate the influence of cosmic rays, water vapor, and so on, it looks like the true source of global warming has been identified, and it is . . . France!

A Met Office spokesman said: "There’s very hot air over France, which has engulfed the Channel Islands, and we are expecting it over here."

Astute consumers of British journalism will note that this story, which was broken in the Sun, is appropriately illustrated in the Sun's inimitable style.

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Alex Singleton respects Peter Cuthbertson enough to bother trying to set him straight.

But Cuthbertson has two problems, the first of which being that he seems to think that all authority comes from the state (therefore we need must laws on which hand to hold our forks in when eating fruit salad, and whether to set boiled eggs on the Big or the Little End).

But the second problem is if anything worse. Recently I was in the coffee bar area of the swanky suite of offices where I make a living (at the tax-payer's expense) whilst two fortysomethings were sorting out teas and coffees for a business meeting taking place on the same floor, but with a different (private sector) company. The woman, was better dressed in her brown-checkered suit than most British female politicians (which is to say that she didn't look like a dressed-up showjumping horse on steroids or an English sheepdog with dyed hair wearing Nancy Reagan's padded shoulder suits) without being a glamorous trendy. She was chatting to the man, who was dressed rather like my bank manager did ten years ago. As I was scrambling for teabags, milk etc, the man described how his daughter had invited her boyfriend to meet the parents. The woman then asked if it looked like a serious relationship and did the man approve.

After saying that it could be a promising relationship the man hesitated before adding "He's quite a promising chap: he's got a good well-paid job, drives a nice car, has a home in a nice neighbourhood, he looks presentable enough..." The father's voice trailed off.

The woman interjected: "...but..."

And the man blurted out: "He's a member of the Tory Party!"

And the woman said: "Oh dear!" with sympathy. The conversation ended: the poor man's daughter was sleeping with a weirdo.

This story ends on a happy note. Last week I saw the man and he seemed to be in good spirits: it looks like daughter wised up...

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Not that there is any Deep Libertarian Significance to this story, but no opportunity should be missed to revel in the humiliation of a bureaucrat.

Superintendent of Schools Wilfredo T. Laboy, who recently put two dozen teachers on unpaid leave for failing a basic English proficiency test, has himself flunked a required literacy test three times, The Eagle-Tribune reported Sunday.

. . .

Laboy, who receives a 3 percent pay hike this month that will raise his salary to $156,560, recently put 24 teachers on unpaid administrative leave because they failed a basic English test, which has been required since voters passed a law last fall requiring English-only classrooms.

[State Education Commissioner David P.] Driscoll said he is willing to give Laboy more time to prepare for another retest.

''He's not a native language speaker, so a formal test is something he needs to prepare for,'' Driscoll said. ''It doesn't mean anything now. It will mean more as time goes on because there's an expectation that he'll pass.'

I suspect the really scary part of this is that the Lawrence school district had 24 teachers who lack basic English proficiency. The other scary part is that the failure on multiple occasions to demonstrate basic language skills "doesn't mean anything" if the individual in question is already enfolded in the forgiving arms of the civil service.

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This is from the 'The Basra Rose', the Iraq deployment section of the Red Rose, the newsletter of the 1st Battalion The Queen's Lancashire Regiment:

WEATHER
Mon - HOT
Tue - VERY HOT
Wed - UNBELIEVABLY HOT
Thu - SO HOT YOU'LL CRY
Fri - AS HOT AS THE SUN
Sat - SO HOT LOCALS BURST INTO FLAMES
Sun - AS HOT AS THE DEVIL'S SCROTUM

In other words, it is a tad hot in Basra. Just so you know.

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Sometimes, the gods of the internet just give you a gift.

A new panel charged with finding ways to make Connecticut government run more efficiently will release its report six months later than scheduled.

Yeah, I want to take advice on efficiency from these guys.

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hehehehehehe. Just click the damn link, I am laughing too hard to write anymore.

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In reverse order, they are:

10. You can trade an old .44 for two new .22s

9. You can keep one handgun at home and have another for when you're
on the road.

8. If you admire a friend's handgun, and tell him so, he will probably
let you try it out a few times.

7. Your primary handgun doesn't mind if you have a backup.

6. Your handgun will stay with you even if you're out of ammo.

5. A handgun doesn't take up a lot of closet space.

4. Handguns function normally every day of the month.

3. A handgun doesn't ask "Do these new grips make me look fat?"

2. A handgun doesn't mind if you go to sleep after you use it.

AND.....THE NUMBER ONE REASON WHY A HANDGUN IS BETTER THAN A WOMAN....

1. You can buy a silencer for a handgun.

[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]

(5) (13)

Following the recent diplomatic spat between Italy and Germany, the EU Commission has moved to ensure that there is no repetition of such unfortunate incidents with a 'Draft Directive on Cross-Border Insults'.

The new directive sets out a regulatory framework which will, in future, require all citizens of all EU countries to follow appropriate guidelines before publicly uttering any sort of cross-border insult.

The guidelines provide:

1. Any insult which includes reference to national stereotypes can only be directed against a person or persons who is/are permanently domiciled in or citizens of the country to which the said stereotype is applicable. Insults may not be directed at persons who are merely resident in such countries.

2. Insults which include reference to multiple stereoptypes such as 'Arrogant beachtowel-hogging Schnitzel-brained Kraut metalbasher' and 'Pizza-munching dago wop greaseball monkey' shall first obtain a written approval to utter the insult from the appropriate licensing body in the jurisdiction in which the insulter is a citizen or permanently domiciled.

3. For the purposes of enforcement of these provisions, each member state of the Union shall establish an appropriate licensing body.

4. In the case of a person wishing to utter a cross-border insult for reproduction in any print or electronic medium they must first provide a draft copy of the proposed insult to the proprietors of the said medium not less than three days before publication of the insult is due. This is to ensure that fair representations can be made by the person or organisation against whom the insult is directed.

5. In the case of general insults or non-national stereotype abuse, the words used by the insulter must be words or terms that are recognised as being of an abusive or insulting nature in at least one or more Union member state. The use of Americanised insults such as 'dickwad', 'dog-breath', 'asshat' and 'freakazoid' are strictly forbidden as being inconsistent with European cultural values.

6. Once a cross-border insult has been uttered (in accordance with these provisions) the person or organisaton against whom the insult was directed shall have a right of reply. In order to permit such right to be exercised the insulter shall allow a period of at least seven days before uttering any further insults.

French EU Commissioner Bertrand Maginot expressed his satisfaction with the new rules:

"We cannot simply allow insults to be traded in this uncontrolled cowboy fashion. If they are not subject to proper democratic control they could disrupt the harmony of European institutions."

Critics of the new rules say they do not go far enough as insults that remain within national borders are still totally unregulated. However, a Commission sub-committee is expected to convene early next year to examine methods of regulating domestic insults as well.

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Samizdata.net's many spies have told us that these are being stockpiled in Iran for use during the coming 'transitional times'.

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The inimitable Alice (well, only by herself) sums up some 'lightbulb blogs'. In the spirit of pro-Samizdata bias I select two for your amusement:

How many David Carrs does it take to change a lightbulb?

I had thought that the madness of last week's lightbulb-blowing could not be toppled. I was, of course, wrong. Things are much worse than I thought then, in my light-hearted, innocent, Morris-dancing kind of way, and it is now perfectly apparent to all of us here at Samizdata.net that today's lightbulb lunacy is tomorrow's Mysteron plot to destroy the universe. Those who disagree must be conquered in the strongest terms. I refuse either to change the bulb or not change it. It is an outrage that anyone should dare to ask such a thing in the first place. I personally refuse to compromise and demand that they cease forthwith!

How many Brian Micklethwaits does it take to change a lightbulb?

Yesterday I posted about this article. Tomorrow I am going to post about this blog, which related to an earlier posting of mine here, about this rather interesting subject from last Thursday, which I've been wondering about for weeks, to do with car parks. I wonder whether anyone will comment or not? Sometimes they comment many times, and other times they don't. It's hard to predict these things. In the meantime, I might watch Friends tonight. Not sure yet, depends whether or not I blog about lightbulbs.

Heh.

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In the last few days Britain has been depicted as the Paradise (soon to be) Lost in the clutches of the Federasts. Hope has been expressed that the British public may stir eventually and oppose Blair's finishing touches on handing over the country's sovereignty. The word "bovine" has been mentioned in descriptions of the UK public and the adjective is excruciatingly close to the truth.

Only with a public as sleepy and 'tolerant' of the destructive antics of its politicians and bureaucrats as the British public has been, a particular breed of Homo politicus characteristic to these isles could have evolved.

The species, known as Bureaucrat idioticus can be found in most governmental bodies, with highest density around local councils. In the last 50 years, it has adapted to a change in its original natural habitat from large forested ministerial departments to smaller, murkier quango marshlands.

It belongs to a larger family of Homo collectivicus, sub-group Homo nonsensicus, indigenous to Great Britain, a genetic dead-end variation on Homo socialist (see below).

However, the most famous branch of Homo collectivicus family is Homo communist, spread around the globe in the last century but currently experiencing an evolutionary hiatus.

The ubiquitous Homo socialist, another influential branch, occupies the same evolutionary niche in its biological family as the cockroach in the insect family. Finally, the recently prospering Homo transnationalis has made some headway to the top levels of the British public institutions, the Government and the Courts.

In the last decade, the Bureaucrat idioticus has been inter-breeding with Bureaucrat corruptus (its continental variety, as well as with its closely related Bureaucrat sanctimonis), which resulted in a virulent Bureaucrat federalis whilst facilitating deeper and wider entrenchment of Homo transnationalis in Great Britain.

Oh, we are so ready for the EU primeval soup!

Note: The 'family tree' for Homo Liberalis (original meaning) to follow.

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In case our esteemed readership has not yet heard of FLAIR (the Far-Left Alliance of Indignant Revisionists) I have the pleasure to relay an interview taken from its case files.

The interview was conducted by Barry Fest, a long-time associate and one-time student of Brummagem Groat, who agreed to interview his erstwhile mentor on behalf of FLAIR. The occasion was the publication of Dr. Groat's latest book, I Dunno: The Working Person's Guide to Postmodern Relativism by the Belverton University Press. Dr. Groat is professor emeritus of Talkmatics at Belverton.

An Interview with the Relativist

FLAIR: Thank you for your time today, Dr. Groat. I'd like first to ask you about the subtitle of your new book, "The Working Person's Guide to Postmodern Relativism." Why does the working person need a guide such as this?

GROAT: For too long the working person has played victim foot soldier for the corporate conglomerates and their Pentagon enablers. Whenever the corpagon has wanted to go to war to protect profits, it has used absolutes - most notoriously the absolutes of "right" and "wrong" - to persuade the working persons of one nation to take up arms against the working persons of another. And whenever working persons have seemed ready to establish a government for working persons, the interested powers have eliminated the threat by appealing to the absolutes embedded, like post-hypnotic suggestions, in the subconscious of the working person. The rote inculcation of these absolutes is performed at an early age by traditional family units, which act as manufacturing plants for the corpagon's future pawns and patsys.

The result is that by the time the working person is old enough to actually start working, he is a thrall of these absolutes and does not even know it.

I Dunno is intended to persuade the working person that he is better off without absolutes. - What we in the West consider right and wrong is not what everyone else in the world considers right and wrong. I try to make it plain that, in fact, one man's wrong is another man's right. Until working persons learn to accept this they will continue in their roles as ad hoc button men for their corporate bosses.

FLAIR: At what point did you realize there was a need to convince Joe - if you'll pardon the colloquialism - Sixpack of the need to trade in his old absolutes for new ones?

GROAT: I've always - Wait a minute, I think you may be missing a very important point. It isn't that this so-called Joe Sixpack needs newer or what you might even call better absolutes. He needs to discard the notion of absolutes entirely.

FLAIR: And what is the most compelling reason for him to do that?

GROAT: As I said, it will be impossible for him to find that his notions of right and wrong will be accepted by everyone. A notion of virtue produced by the Western process of reason will not be accepted in those societies that reject reason. - And how can you have a universal truth that is not endorsed universally? The Westerner, and that includes the working person, needs to take another approach: the approach I describe in I Dunno.

For the full text of the interview visit The Radical Capitalist.

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The hunt for the fugitive Texas Democrat legislators has intensified with a set of playing cards being issued to troops in Iraq in case any of them turn up there.

[Alan K. Henderson rocks]

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Others already having remarked that it is a slow news day here on Samizdata, I share the following extract by Harry Turtledove in the spirit of a sunny Friday evening. Have a good weekend.

30th November 1491
To: Their Hispanic Majesties Fernando II and Isabella
From: The Special Committee on the Quality of Life
Re: The environmental impact upon Spain of the proposed expedition of the Genoese navigator Cristóbel Colón, styled in his native Italian Cristoforo Colombo.

The commission of learned men and mariners, established by your Majesties under the chairmanship of Fr. Hernando de Talavera, during the period 1486-90 studied exhaustively the proposals set forth by the Genoese captain Colón and rejected them as being extravagant and impractical.

In the present year a second commission, headed by the great cardinal, Pedro González de Mendoza, has also seen fit to decline the services of Colón. The present Special Committee on the Quality of Life finds itself in complete accord with the actions of the previous two bodies of inquiry. It is our unanimous conclusion that the rash scheme advocated by this visionary would, if adopted, do serious damage to the finances and ecology of Spain; that this damage, if permitted, would set a precedent for future, more severe, outrages of our environment; that even if successful it would unacceptably alter the life-style of the citizens of Spain; and, most important, that the proposed voyage would expose any sailors engaged thereon to unacceptable risks of permanent bodily illness and injury, and even death.

Complete text of the report appears in Departures, short stories by Harry Turtledove.

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The Anglosphere is divided over the metric system... sure, it makes vastly more sense but, damn it, it is just too damn French!

But do not despair! That scholar and wit, the inimitable Diamond Geezer, has come up with a new and vastly superior system of measures suitable for the 21^st Century. For example:

Length - the freedom
Definition: the distance one tank can advance in one minute

• the distance from Basra to Baghdad = 1 megafreedom

And who says genius is dead in Britain? Oh, yeah, that was me. Sorry.

Update: As usual, blogspot's archives are phuked up, so just go here and scroll down.

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Burglars and street robbers are to benefit from new rights under proposals announced today by the government.

The extension of the existing rights regime is contained in the Employment (Non-Lawful Activities) Consolidation Act 2003 which has passed its second reading in the House of Commons and is due to take effect from 1st January 2004. Under the new legislation, all burglars are street robbers will be entitled to a maximum of six weeks paid paternity leave and a similar period of statutory sick pay. If any burglar or street robber is a member of a gang or criminal organisation, they will also now be able to claim compensation for unfair dismissal.

A government spokesperson rejected criticisms of the new legislation:

It is simply an administrative measure designed to extend basic protections that already exist for all other employees.

The Equal Opportunities Commission broadly welcomed the new legislation but said it did not go nearly far enough. Spokesperson Elaine Simper-Sweetley said:

The lack of rights for workers in the crime industry is nothing less then scandalous. We believe that this is a step in the right direction but the government must do more to protect burglars from negligent and exploitative householders.

Ms.Simper-Sweetley added that the Commission would continue to campaign for existing Health & Safety legislation to be extended to protect both full and part-time criminals.

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Crispin Blunt MP, a frontbench Conservative spokesman on trade, has resigned and called for Iain Duncan-Smith to be deposed as party leader. Having the largest share of the vote, more councillors and more councils than any other party just isn't good enough.

IDS responded to the resignation by sacking frontbench spokesmen called Burgess, Maclean and Philby, just to be on the safe side.

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In a dramatic development, under-fire British MP George Galloway has stunned an audience of journalists at a press conference by stripping off all of his clothes and posing for photographs whilst completely naked.

The controversial left-wing MP for Glasgow Kelvin had called the press conference in order to answer allegations that he accepted substantial payments from the former Iraqi regime. However, during a particularly heated round of questioning, Mr.Galloway suddenly stood up and began to undress himself. The attendant journalists watched in bemusement as Mr.Galloway eventually got down to his underpants which he whipped off with a flourish and draped over the ITN sound-recordist's boom-mike.

It is the only way for me to fight back against this wicked right-wing American Zionist conspiracy to discredit me...

Said Mr.Galloway who was unrepentant about his unorthodox and shocking gesture:

Sorry? Of course I'm not sorry. It's one of the most liberating things I have ever done. In fact, I'm already talking to the Guardian about a centrefold spread as part of a special colour-supplement next month.

Mr.Galloway's gesture was warmly welcomed by a new left-wing organisation called the Campaign for Hindbrained Political Stunts (CHiPS) which is dedicated to pursuing a variety of 'progressive' causes with public displays of nudity. Denouncing all clothing as an oppressive construct of late-stage capitalism the group also intends to use bodily functions such as urination, defecation and induced vomiting as a means of protest. The group's motto is: "Other people discuss, we just disgust".

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For those interested in royal genealogy, you could do worse that check out this scholarly work from a sober blogger who is destined for greater things. This chap could well be the next David Starkey.

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Apparently I am...

So which LOTR Villain are you? Hmm??
made by Michelle at EmptySpace.

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The Iraqi Minister of Information, whose ability to defy reality has made him something of a cult figure in the West, has had a website dedicated to his pronouncements which is already drawing massive numbers of hits.

His ability to work for a doomed cause and show fortitude in the midst of great strain is already triggering commentators to wonder about where his talents may be most usefully employed in future. Here are some of my suggestions:

• Manager of Sunderland Football Club (with apologies to Iain Murray)

• Tory Party campaign manager (no explanation really required)

• The manager of George Galloway's campaign to be known as a great British patriot

• Tony Blair's humility counsellor

• Spin doctor for the Democrat's presidential candidate (that's my top choice)

• George W. Bush's elocution coach (sorry Dubya, I could not resist)

• Robert Fisk's psychiatrist (a tough assignment, admittedly)

• Michael Moore's obesity counsellor (another tough one)

• Chief coach to the English cricket team

  And finally,

• Management consultant to the BBC's news service.

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Breaking news - Kuwait.

Iraq has launched a new type of Scud missile at the coalition forces deployed in Kuwait. Details are sketchy at this time, but it appears to be a new and improved Scud type missile. The CIA is investigating just how and from whom Saddam acquired this new technology.

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A trifling distraction in the scheme of things, but this is so hilarious that I just had to flag it up here.

It appears that a small group of British 'indymedia' squirts tried to halt a convoy of munitions by chaining themselves to the trucks. Turned out to be a very bad idea:

The convoy was successfully halted on the west bound slip road at Chievely junction (M4/A34) north of Newbury. One group blocked the lead vehicals [sic], whilst others attempted to lock on to the bomb transporters. Police and lorry drivers seem to be under orders to keep the convoy moving at all costs. Activists were forced to unlock as the lorries kept moving despite the drivers being told that there were people under their vehicals [sic].

Kumbaya, My Lord, Kumbayyyaaaaaa...stop...stop....aaaahhh.......

[My thanks to Little Green Footballs for the link]

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This has been posted on the Command Post:

British backtrack over general We had a misidentification of the rank of the officer concerned," Group Capt. Al Lockwood said on Monday. "What I can say today is - and can confirm - that we have five senior Iraqi officers as prisoners of war.

And this on the Inn of the Last Home

British Backtrack Over General

In related news, a Moroccan troop transport backed over a colonel today, leaving him with multiple injuries and contusions. It was believed monkeys were at the wheel of the transport which was last seen heading to the sea to pick up some errant dolphins. A visiting foreign ambassador was quoted as saying, "When will monkeys ever learn to use rear-view mirrors?".

France has lodged a protest with the UN.

I just love the blogosphere...

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The tranquil, family atmosphere of 'Ocean-World' was rudely interrupted today as 'peace activists' stormed the aquarium during the dolphin display in what they described as 'direct action against war'.

Dressed as Japanese Fisherman and waving tuna nets, the protestors surrounded the dolphin tank chanting "baby-killers" and "No attack on Iraq" as the performing dolphins, Cocoa and Buddy, were ushered back into their pen by their handlers.

Eventually, security guards managed to remove the protestors from the aquarium enabling the show to resume.

One of the protestors said afterwards:

"We're against dolphins, man...cos, like...dolphins are...like...stupid".

The dolphins handler confirmed that neither of the animals was in any way harmed and that they would both still be available to assist the military if required.

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There has been some speculation about why the Australian military contribution to the war in Iraq has not received anything like the coverage that the American (obviously) and British forces have.

Well the reasons are twofold: firstly, the size of the force is a great deal smaller as it is made up of the elite Australian Special Air Service (which is operating in conjunction with their British SAS and American Delta Force & SEAL counterparts)... and secondly the fact they are special forces means operational security is paramount. The Aussies are famous in Special Forces circles for their ability to survive without resupply for long periods of time, something very useful when operating behind enemy lines. Just how they do this is a closely guarded secret.

However there is another more... puzzling... aspect to the lack of news, considering the Australians are the only group to invite the Al-Jazeera TV channel to embed journalists with them. A recently broadcast signal from a Australian SAS unit 'somewhere in Iraq' made mention that they had run out of embedded journalists and could they send a couple more out, preferably less stringy ones this time. It is unclear what the significance of that last remark was.

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In a horrifying, senseless and brutal attack on innocent Iraqi mothers and toddlers, a British ship carrying more than 500 tonnes of aid for Iraqi civilians has docked in the southern port of Umm Qasr.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Galahad, carrying food, water and other essential supplies, arrived at the quayside just before 12.30pm British time. The ship had been delayed for several days while mine sweepers and American forces using specially trained dolphins cleared a path through a minefield in the approaches to the port. That’s right. Dolphins. I am not joking. These people will go to any lengths to ensure their sick plans are carried out, even to the extent of training charming sea-creatures to perform impressive tasks. Is there no end to their evil cunning?

Aid agencies grudgingly described the shipment as "a meagre and pathetic attempt to steal our thunder" and expressed concerns over British soldiers distributing the supplies, suggesting that maybe trained idiots would do the job better than them. However, the Americans explained that although they had managed to train dolphins to do quadratic equations and sew patchwork quilts now, their attempts to communicate basic reason to people such as themselves had utterly failed, and they were even beginning to lose interest in trying.

There are fears that the most needy Iraqis are in areas outside army control where deliveries are not being made. The Americans suggested that maybe even more of their troops should risk death in order to be able to get food to the people whose country they were liberating? But the aid workers completely missed their sarcasm and agreed.

Military planners have yet to decide where this delivery will be sent, but there is little prospect of it reaching the centre of Basra, where Ba'ath party paramilitaries have forced a stand-off with British troops. The delivery is seen as central to coalition hopes of winning over critics of military action around the world as well as ordinary Iraqis.

Alex Fentoon, spokesman for a big food-aid charity, said:

We welcome any aid that can be delivered to the people of Iraq. They needed it before the war and they will need it all the more as the war goes on. But it is terribly obvious that civilians in a war are tools, whether used as human shields or propaganda. It would be better to let them starve than to give them food and tell anyone about it. Charity should always be done in secret.

While we welcome this aid, a few boxes chucked out of the back of an army truck may look good but it is not the same as organised distribution to the 16 million in Iraq who needed it before the war even began. Why weren’t the Americans feeding Iraq before? Whose fault do they think it is that this country is in such an economic and political mess anyway? Don't they realise it is their job to deliver food to all the peoples of the world who are hungry, in a huge Marixst wave of wealth redistribution?

The Americans told Mr Fentoon to fuck off.

(Thanks to The Telegraph)

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Michael Jennings links to this, at William Gibson's, which Gibson heard on Sky News:

"Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton", UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday. "He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr", said one British soldier, informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr. Another added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."

Jennings also prefers Southampton, for real ale reasons. I wouldn't know.

I get the feeling the Brits are doing quite well out there. Is this the impression they are making in the USA? Or are our soldiers merely seen as doing menial stuff while the USA guys win the war?

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In accordance with its already stated policy, Samizdata.net offers the comment section under this item for discouraging messages to our BBC TV reporters serving to attack our freedoms and to encourage tyranny over the people of Iraq and the world. The many TV media personnel who read Samizdata.net regularly are sure to forward this to their colleagues.

[Note: If you are supportive of BBC TV coverage in Iraq or elsewhere, you are welcome to post a comment under a relevant story, but please leave this comment section to those who want to heap discouragement, abuse, hatred and curses upon our BBC media personnel.]

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Concerning a recent posting from humorous internet content provider Scrappleface, inviting Scrappleface readers to comment in support of US service persons involved in the current war, a Samizdata.net spokesman had this to say:

Scrappleface has established itself over the last few months as a fearless provider of jokes and piss-taking. By its unflinching refusal to take the serious issues of the day seriously, it has built itself a growing reputation for triviality. It is thus especially disturbing to see this hitherto wholly frivolous media organisation rise to such heights of normality and decency. Let's face it, blog-readers, one solemn and serious Scrappleface posting is one solemn and serious Scrappleface posting too many.

He added:

I suppose when Scrappleface does lapse into profundity like this, it's up to the rest of us to pitch in and take up the slack and fill the hole in the dyke with it. We in Britain have a special role to play here. What we lack in numbers we can make up in irony. We must step up to the plate and break it into fearless bits with the straight bat of British satire. We must adapt their piety and earnestness in order to make other worthwhile points, thus pricking the worldwide balloon of pomposity with the fearless banner of sit-down comedy.

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I saw something interesting in the Sunday Times today:

People in show business circles are puzzled by Foreign Office warnings to British subjects to stay away from Jordan...

Jordan: not very popular with the Foreign Office these days, it seems

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As the decibel count rises amid the drumbeat of war, we try to do what we can to see the cheery side of things. These are grim times, but my fervent hope is that in a few decades, Baghdad will be the Hong Kong of the Middle East, al-Quaeda and Saddam will be a distant memory, Iraq will be one of the richest countries on the planet, Jacques Chirac will have been put behind bars, the EU will be just a free trade zone and Samizdata will have more readers than Fox, CNN and the BBC combined.

But what has really fired my determination to be optimistic is the report, in today's Financial Times (only available in print edition), that quintessential British media megastar Basil Brush, emblem of all that is finest about this island, is to release a pop record. Magnificent.

(Apologies to non-Brit readers. The last paragraph will be totally meaningless).

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Peter Briffa is absolutely smoking tonight... and I hope he puts me in touch with his supplier! He has a series of 'future quotes' from a veritable constellation of leading Tranzis, such as this gem from Germaine Greer:

This is not a war about oil. This is not a war about blood. Forget all that male, patriarchal propaganda. No, this is a war, above all, about the penis. The penis of war versus the vagina of compassion. Not since I was sitting on the dunny on Bondi Beach, and a whole team of beer-swilling Collingwood footballers came in and gang-raped my great grandmother have I witnessed such bloodlust.

Outstanding.

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Here is a game to fill the time between newsflashes - Dr. Strangeblix...Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Look for Bombs.

You are ice cool Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector, Dr. Hans Blix. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to enter a not-so-secret PacMan-style Iraqi laboratory and hunt down weapons-grade plutonium canisters, all the while avoiding the sentries and trying to keep your stress level at a minimum. You can try and distract the guards by throwing volumes of your 'U.N. Resolutions' around, but beware, there are only limited copies available. If you should fail your mission, Dubya's gonna start "bomberizing" Iraq. Phew! Talk about pressure...

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President Bush today announced that the "War on Transnationalism" was going even better than expected, with all three of the EU, UN and NATO about to collapse at the first sign of an American gun.

"Our troops are ready and waiting," said Mr Bush, "and we are confident that all they need to do is stroll into Iraq sporting their latest combat gear, and the Tranzis will immediately start begging to be taken prisoner."

"But how will we know when this so-called War is actually won?" asked a news reporter.

"Nothing short of the total collapse of political globalisation will satisfy our troops," said Mr Bush. "Iraq is only the beginning. But we are developing better and more effective Weapons of Mass Happiness so that people can get liberated more quickly and easily, and have more fun when it happens. Did you know McDonalds is offering 15 minutes of internet time with every Extra Value Meal now?"

"Yeah?" The reporter eyed the clock.

"That’s right. Prime Minister Blair thought of it one day when he went out for an Egg McMuffin and had a sudden urge to catch up with Samizdata.net, only he'd left his ibook at home."

"And is it true that you are really just Blair’s pet poodle, so desperate to please him that you jump on planes at a moment’s notice in order to be at his side?"

"We have a special relationship," said Mr Bush, giving the reporter a Very Hard Stare until his victim almost fainted.

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Struggling into the office via the Tube (London's subway system) this morning, I distinctly thought I heard the following announcement over the public address system. I may have been hallucinating, but I am not sure:

Ladies, gentlemen, buskers and beggars, London Transport regrets to announce that in addition to the Central Line being closed until Hell freezes over while we check to see if the nuts and bolts have been screwed in correctly, the Piccadilly Line has been suspended. So I suggest you suckers get outside and into the fresh air for a bracing walk. Let's face it, transporting you people is more than our jobs are worth

As I say, I may have been imagining things.

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Lastminute founder Martha Lane Fox admitted to a little indiscretion. The dotcom kept a record of all men who had ordered red roses for Valentine's Day 2002 and then sent them an email this year asking if they'd like to do the same thing.

Lane Fox revealed that, since some ended up going to home email addresses, the result was "quite a few phone calls from wives who didn't get any flowers from their husbands last year, demanding to know where we'd sent them".

Now we know why exactly is data collection bad. Sod privacy and civil liberties - there is a threat of confronting wives 'foxed' over missing flowers...

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The entire world, apart from a few evil American warmongers plus Tony Blair, took part in an anti-war demonstration in London yesterday with millions of inter-galactic aliens joining other peace protests around the galaxy. Organisers claim that the march is sure to topple well-known right-winger Blair, allowing him to be replaced by the cuddly lovable Ken Livingstone, Mayor of the People's Republic of London.

"We never liked Blair in the first place," said some bloke in a scruffy jacket with corduroy arm-patches. "The whole way he managed to get elected was always suspiciously un-socialist. But now we are really hoping the country will rise up in revolution and institute Ken in his rightful role at last. If the Houses of Parliament spontaneously fall today, maybe the Americans can get rid of their president tomorrow and let Hillary Clinton take over the world! Erm, their insignificant burger-ridden country."

"But don't Americans like their president? I mean, they chose him in an election, right?" asked a reporter for extreme rightist media propagandists, Fox News.

"No, the whole American electoral system is rigged by right-wing Capitalists to help them win despite having only a minority of the vote," explained the corduroy guy. "Real democracy would prove that the people want Marxism, obviously, as Marxism is for The People; it's self-explanatory!"

In his speech at the Labour spring conference later yesterday, Mr Blair told delegates that if they want to send him to the Tower of London and let Saddam have his way and produce the bloody nukes and give them to Al Qaeda then, fine, he is sick of the lot of them, and he just hopes their bunkers will hold if they get enough warning to climb inside before the bombs start flying. He stressed that if they want to support evil dictators why don't they all bloody well go and live in Baghdad and see what it's like, or they could try Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or that Korea place whichever one it was, any one of a number of countries on the US's list for upgrading sometime when they get round to it.

Mr Blair then requested a large bowl of warm soapy water water, and washed his hands on the rostrum, while everybody watched not knowing quite what to think. Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, called on the entire party to get behind Mr Blair and give him "full support" as he is worried about what might happen to his own job if Blair is beheaded.

Yesterday Downing Street urged the protesters taking part in the anti-war demonstrations around the country and the world to remember the brutality in Saddam's regime and see how they would feel about having their civil servants routinely executed, before realising this was not a very good argument, and going back indoors for toasted muffins.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said that if a million people turned out to march against the Government - as some are claiming - they would equal the number of Kurds who fled Iraq after the Gulf War because they were being oppressed by Saddam. However, he assured the British people that they would not be gassed by their own government at this stage.

Last night Downing Street denied reports that Mr Blair was angry at the protesters and rejected claims that he was trying to avoid them. "He believes that they have an absolute democratic right to protest and if they want to they can," a spokesman said. "He just wants them to f*** off."

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British soldiers currently stationed in Kuwait have broken with military tradition in order to deliver what they believe is a powerful message to the world.

Stripping off their desert khakis the men of the 7th Armoured Brigade laid down in a sand dune and spelled out the phrase, 'SADDAM IS TOAST' by arranging their own naked bodies to form the letters.

Lance-Corporal Steven Rowsley said afterwards:

"We were a bit embarrassed at first. And doing the 'S' was a bit tricky. But we think it was worth it in the end. My whole unit was really up for it."

The officer in charge of the demonstration, Captain Roger Hackwood said:

"We realise that it's a bit unorthodox and we know that some people will be shocked. But we couldn't think of any better way to get the strength of our feelings across to the anti-war movement back home"

The Ministry of Defence has declined to comment.

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Heard this rather good gag at a financial conference this morning:

A parish vicar dies and goes up to the Pearly Gates where he is greeted by St Peter. St Peter bids the vicar to step aside and sit on a wooden bench and wait for some formalities to be dealt with.

About half an hour later a farmer comes up, dressed in his overalls. "Ah, Mr Jones, welcome to Heaven! Please do step through the gates," St Peter says. The vicar looks on, a mite baffled, but keeps quiet.

An hour later, a hospital surgeon of brilliant renown comes up, and again St Peter joyfully waves the good doctor through. Again, the vicar bites his tongue and waits to see what happens.

Suddenly, a sleek young man in a suit carrying a copy of the Wall Street Journal steps in. "Wonderful to see you Mr Gekko!" shouts St Peter. "So good to see you at last."

At this point our vicar can contain himself no longer. "Why have you let in that capitalist pig through the gates while I, a humble servant of God, have to sit outside on a wooden bench?" the vicar exclaims.

"Well," St Peter replies, "We let folk into Heaven these days because of results. You see, the farmer gets in because he produced food. The surgeon got in because he healed people. And you, dear vicar, produced no results. In your sermons most of the congregation fell asleep."

"What sort of results did that hedge fund manager give, then?" asked the vicar.

"Well, that guy produced money for his clients. And unlike you, vicar, when he was at work, his clients were praying."

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...or how to ensure your kids are more technologically literate than you.

One of the best ways to motivate someone is to present the person with a challenge. For children, forbidding something works equally well, if not better. So when I came across this product in one of those little catalogues that come with Sunday newspapers, I immediately realised its potential to do an amazing service in further advancing the technological awareness of the young generation.

Achieve total control over TV time

Worried about the hours your children spend watching TV or playing computer games? This remarkable new British invention hands back control to parents. Using the electronic Parent Key, you program the child's daily viewing allowances into Screenblock - say, 7-8 am and 5-7 pm. As the TV mains cable is routed via the locked compartment, Screenblock controls the power supply, turning it on and off at the times requested. But here's the best bit! It also comes with two electronic cards which act like a football ref's cards. Wave the yellow one at Screenblock and today's allowance is reduced by 15 mins - and red means the TV stays off until tomorrow. The all-important Parent Key also overrides all settings when the kids are in bed and it's time for grown-up viewing.

So far, so good. But if parents led by the desire to curb their children's TV-viewing habits succumb to the advertising and purchase such devices en masse, pretty soon many a technologically gifted whizkid will be popular, spots or no spots. Not only ways to disable the screenblock will be devised, but kids will be 'instructed' in how to do that themselves without their modifications being detected. Part of the solution will have to be the inability of parents to notice the 'adjustment'. Aren't you just grateful to the screenblock inventors for broadening your children's technological horizons?

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I came across this little comment on man's foibles in the middle of the chaos known collectively as "the holidays". At the time I couldn't do more than check the validity of the article which, I'm sorry to say, was accurate. While the date would now classify it blogospherically speaking as an archeological anecdote, I felt the issue it addresses is still poignant.

This article appeared in a local US newspaper on Nov. 15, 2002 but it's importance may well be global.

Absolutely the Least Substantial Reason for a Knife Fight:
Police in Mansfield Township and Hackettstown, N.J., charged Emmanuel Nieves, 23, with aggravated assault on Nov. 13 after he allegedly slashed the face of his friend Erik Saporito, 21, as the two men fought after arguing over which one had more hair on his buttocks. [Express-Times (Easton, Pa.), 11-15-02]

As with any criminal act, there is something we as a society can learn. The lesson here is obvious: the bruised male ego can be a violent thing.

The more tickilish question, and the one we must answer if we are to prevent future attacks of this kind, is what finally triggered the assault? Was it ridicule (ha ha. your butt's hairer than mi-ine!) or was it envy (my butt's hairer than yours! nah na nahna na.)?

Its a sensitive issue.

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The wonders of capitalism, or the false needs of the alienating consumer society? This gadget is designed to fulfill a role which is obviously important in badly ventilated homes and offices.

The question I would like to know is, does this methane filter reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore should it be made compulsory under the terms of the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty?

Three pints of gas a day for an average person? You mean it's more for politicians?

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Do you have left-wing friends and relations? Are you stuck for ideas on what to buy for them this Christmas? Then fret no longer. Just hurry along to your nearest major retail outlet and pick up the latest version of 'EEZI-SCREED', the fast and trouble-free method of constructing perfect left-wing articles.

The EEZI-SCREED kit comes with a drawstring bag and a series of small plastic tablets printed with words like:

'BUSH', 'CORPORATE', 'GREED', 'RACIST', 'ENRON', 'ZIONIST', 'RIGHT-WING', 'IMPERIALIST', 'OIL', 'SELFISH', 'AFRICA', 'SOCIAL', 'JUSTICE', 'INEQUALITY', 'CARING', 'ENVIRONMENT' and 'THIRD-WORLD'

together with a generous supply of prepositions and definite and indefinite articles.

All you have to do is to put all the tablets into the drawstring bag, give them a good shake and then empty the bag of its contents onto a table or other flat surface to create the perfect left-wing rant ready for publication in the Guardian, the Independent or the Democratic Underground.

'EEZI-SCREED' is the ideal Christmas present for the journalist, college professor or activist that you love. It's the gift that's guaranteed to provide endless hours of malcontented wailing and defeatist misery.

Get 'EEZI-SCREED' now, while stocks last!

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Mark Steyn is in rare form, delivering a splendid satirical roasting of the detestable Harold Pinter.

'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,' Pinter continued. 'You know why that is? Depleted uranium'?

[...]

"George W Bush says he's dreaming of a white Christmas," sneered Mr Pinter. "But for the rest of us it's a nightmare. I wake up feeling like a man trapped in a snowy knick-knack with his face pressed up against the glass howling, 'Let me out of here', only to be buried under another ton of artificial flakes."

Splendid stuff. It is a continuing marvel to me that Pinter can still appear in polite society in Britain without having doors slammed in his face.

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It's healthy to have a small amount of paranoia, but these guys have more than their fair share. Regrettably they no longer produce material but that said there is still nine years worth of the funniest (and sickest) cartoons I have ever run across to while away a lunch hour.

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One of the things I like about America, is that Britain is far too stuffy, po-faced and politically-correct for this kind of thing. (Media player required)

[My thanks to Samizdata reader Boris Kuperschmidt for the link]

[Update: the link seems to have been withdrawn]

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The irreverent Brainstrust reports how "devastated victims on all sides of the Miss World riots have claimed that they were merely trying to make an amusing point in an ironic manner and that their opposite numbers 'have no sense of humour at all'."

Read here about a comedy fatwa and call for a full-scale ironic jihad... It's Friday, for God's sake!

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"This is my open letter to the Great Satan America.

You may ask, why do I hate America and fight against it? I answer, because America is the propogator of all the evil in the world and you worship only Jewish Usury and Krispy-Kreme Donuts. What kind of a culture is that? Only America sends coach-parties of Senior Citizens to desecrate and despoil our Holy Lands. I can but weep for despair amidst an ocean of Land's End polo shirts and stretch pants. Is there no end to your cruelty, America?

Until now, I have been content with making rude gestures to them behind their backs and grossly overcharging them for bogus relics and bottled water. But no more can I suffer these indignities. Now is the time to act.

I now declare endless jihad on the Great Satan but, you have one last chance, America, to avoid this eternal war which will lead to your destruction, by agreeing to meet my demands:

1. Bill Clinton is not black and he must get over it.

2. Britney Spears must perform her next music video wearing chador

3. Do something about Michael Jackson. Now!

4. It is time for Barbra Streisand to retire. Nothing worth so much as a camel-dropping has come out of that woman's mouth since 'Funny Girl'

5. You must arrange a guest starring role for me on 'The Simpsons'

6. Please tell Al Gore to shut the f*ck up about the Florida recount. He lost! Enough whining already.

7. You must immediately refund the sum of $275 that was outrageously stolen from my cousin, Musal, by a Jew-inspired tax audit of his dry cleaning business in Chicago.

Unless you accede to all of my demands, America, then I will be all over you like a cheap burqa. You will know no respite from me. I will haunt you both by day and by night. I will take the women from your homesteads, the cattle from your farmsteads and the knobs from your bedsteads.

You have been warned, Infidel.

Osama"

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I have come across a useful list of terms that I post herewith for the benefit of our US readers. For more insults regarding the common language which divides us, please click on the link.

Via Monkeyfarts.

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An interesting hysterical historical document has come into the possession of Rand Simberg.

It is a good thing this sort of idiotic nonsense would never happen in our more enlightened era, right? Right?

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We are due for some fun. The Independent has reported a most extraordinary trial going on in the High Court at the moment in which a man named Chrysler is accused of stealing more than 40,000 coat hangers from hotels round the world. He admits his guilt, but in his defence he claims that... well, perhaps it would be simpler just to bring you a brief extract from the trial. We join the case at the point where Chrysler has just taken the stand.

Counsel: What is your name?

Chrysler:> Chrysler. Arnold Chrysler.

Counsel: Is that your own name?

Chrysler: Whose name do you think it is?

Counsel: I am just asking if it is your name.

Chrysler: And I have just told you it is. Why do you doubt it?

Counsel: It is not unknown for people to give a false name in court.

Chrysler: Which court?

Counsel: This court.

Chrysler: What is the name of this court?

Counsel: This is No 5 Court.

Chrysler: No, that is the number of this court. What is the name of this court?

Counsel: It is quite immaterial what the name of this court is!

Chrysler: Then perhaps it is immaterial if Chrysler is really my name.

Counsel: No, not really, you see because...

Judge: Mr Lovelace?

Counsel: Yes, m'lud?

Judge: I think Mr Chrysler is running rings round you already. I would try a new line of attack if I were you.

Counsel: Thank you, m'lud.

Chrysler: And thank you from ME, m'lud. It's nice to be appreciated.

Judge: Shut up, witness.

Chrysler: Willingly, m'lud. It is a pleasure to be told to shut up by you. For you, I would...

Judge: Shut up, witness. Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Now, Mr Chrysler, for let us assume that that is your name, you are accused of purloining in excess of 40,000 hotel coat hangers.

Chrysler: I am.

Counsel: Can you explain how this came about?

Chrysler: Yes. I had 40,000 coats which I needed to hang up.

Counsel: Is that true?

Chrysler: No.

Counsel: Then why did you say it?

Chrysler: To attempt to throw you off balance.

Counsel: Off balance?

Chrysler: Certainly. As you know, all barristers seek to undermine the confidence of any hostile witness, or defendant. Therefore it must be equally open to the witness, or defendant, to try to shake the confidence of a hostile barrister.

Counsel: On the contrary, you are not here to indulge in cut and thrust with me. You are only here to answer my questions.

Chrysler: Was that a question?

Counsel: No.

Chrysler: Then I can't answer it.

Judge: Come on, Mr Lovelace! I think you are still being given the run-around here. You can do better than that. At least, for the sake of the English bar, I hope you can.

Counsel: Yes, m'lud. Now, Mr Chrysler, perhaps you will describe what reason you had to steal 40,000 coat hangers?

Chrysler: Is that a question?

Counsel: Yes.

Chrysler: It doesn't sound like one. It sounds like a proposition which doesn't believe in itself. You know, "Perhaps I will describe the reason I had to steal 40,000 coat hangers... Perhaps I won't... Perhaps I'll sing a little song instead..."

Judge: In fairness to Mr Lovelace, Mr Chrysler, I should remind you that barristers have an innate reluctance to frame a question as a question. Where you and I would say,"Where were you on Tuesday?", they are more likely to say, "Perhaps you could now inform the court of your precise whereabouts on the day after that Monday?". It isn't, strictly, a question, and it is not graceful English but you must pretend that it is a question and then answer it, otherwise we will be here for ever. Do you understand?

Chrysler: Yes, m'lud.

Judge: Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Mr Chrysler, why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers, knowing as you must have that hotel coat hangers are designed to be useless outside hotel wardrobes?

Chrysler: Because I build and sell wardrobes which are specially designed to take nothing but hotel coat hangers.

Sensation in court. More of this later, I hope.

Any comments, David?

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It's all been a bit solemn here at Samizdata of late, so here's an extremely silly final titbit from my Slovak holiday.

One of the oddities of Slovakia for the visiting Anglo is their rule of putting "ova" at the end of every non-Slovak female surname. Julia Robertsova. Meg Ryanova. Gwyneth Paltrowova. Odd, but you soon get used to it. One of these ovas did make me smile, however. The Harry Potter books are big in Slovakia, as everywhere, with all the same symptoms being displayed as in Britain. "When's the next one out?" say the kids. "Well at least they're reading something" say the elders. But consider what happens on all the book covers to the name of Harry Potter's creator J. K. Rowling.

Well, I liked it.

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SCENE: BRUSSELS. OFFICES OF THE EU COMMISSION. THE COMMISSIONERS ARE HUDDLED AROUND A SHEAF OF NEWSPAPER REPORTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST.

LOUIS: Look at this…..100 per cent!!

HANS: It is truly amazing

DIRK: I wouldn’t believe it if I couldn’t see it with my own eyes

SVEN: Vote after vote, all the same; Saddam, Saddam, Saddam, Saddam, Saddam……

HANS: Yes, and how many did that cowboy Bush get, eh?

LOUIS: Precisely, Hans

DIRK: That lucky, lucky bastard

LOUIS: ‘Luck’ had nothing to do with it, Dirk

SVEN: You’re right, Louis. The Iraqi people obviously adore him

HANS: If only we could get an endorsement like this

DIRK: We, too, have our own loyal supporters

LOUIS: Yes, but they’re both getting old now

SVEN: I don’t understand. What does Hussein have that we don’t?

DIRK: Well, the Americans actually pay attention to him

LOUIS: That’s not the reason, Dirk. No, the man is obviously a campaigning genius

HANS: Clearly

SVEN: 100 per cent. 100 per cent. I just love saying those words…

LOUIS: Sven, get your hands out of your pockets, this instant

SVEN: (Sheepish) Sorry, sorry. I..er…just got a little carried away

DIRK: We must find out Saddam’s secret

HANS: Yes, that must be our top priority

LOUIS bangs his fist down on the table

LOUIS: I know exactly what we must do. We must support the American attack on Iraq!

SVEN: WHAT!!??

DIRK: Louis, are you mad?

HANS: You cannot be serious, Louis

SVEN: What about our principles?

DIRK: What about stability in the region?

HANS: What about my investments in Baghdad?

LOUIS: Listen to me, you fools. We support the American attack, they go in and do all the fighting and depose Saddam….Then we bring him to Brussels and employ him as our Public Relations Consultant.

SVEN: Louis, that’s…that’s brilliant!!

DIRK: Damn, why didn’t I think of that?

HANS: Louis, you are a Born Leader.

LOUIS: I know, Hans, I know. And, one day, all of Europe will agree with you.

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To add to the recent outburst of gun-related posting I think this will work a treat!

Unfortunately, it appears to be only an urban legend. But even the fact that such story has been coined is a good sign. We need more of those! Both, grannies and stories...

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Iraqi deputy prime minister and minister responsible for Iraq's weapons programmes, Abdul Tawab Mullah Hawaish, speaking at a news conference in Baghdad, has invited the United States to send officials to visit Iraqi sites suspected of producing weapons of mass destruction. He said Iraq was not producing weapons of mass destruction and declared that U.S. claims that it was producing them were false.

"As I am responsible for the Iraqi weapons programmes I confirm here that we have no weapons of mass destruction and we have no intention to produce them."

Damn, you are just so convincing, Abdul...

And my personal favourite - he also said Iraq would teach the United States an "unforgettable lesson" if it launched a military action to oust the government of Saddam Hussein.

"If the Americans commit a new foolish action against Iraq, we will teach them an unforgettable lesson."

But, Abdul, honey, how would you do that? This is the US army you are talking about, remember? Lots of lovely, lovely modern missiles and other amazing equipment that actually works, not like your mucked up 1950s Soviet Scud Bs (ripped off V-2s). And besides, you just convinced me that the peace-loving Iraq has no weapons to speak of!? I am sooo confused!

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The Illuminatus post below puts me in mind of a little anecdote that was doing the rounds in the legal profession a few years ago. It concerned the case of a homeless vagrant who had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in a public place. A trivial matter and quite unremarkable but for the sentence handed down by the Magistrate:

"I am going to discharge you on the condition that, for the next six months, you do not touch a drop of alcohol. And when I say 'not a drop', I mean not a drop; not even a glass of sherry after dinner."

It may not be true but I like to think it is.

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This is an article from the Guardian:

"The Angel of Death is stalking the streets and leafy suburbs of Maryland in the form of an unknown and, thus far, unseen sniper who has seemingly murdered up to six people in cold blood and for no apparent motive.

The fear of sudden death hangs like a shroud over the entire State under which its hapless and anxious citizens scurry from cover to cover lest they be the sniper's next victim. This is the real America; rheumy-eyed, mistrustful and dangerous. A place where any passing stranger could be a stone-cold killer and where a violent and bloody death waits just around the next turning for it's vulnerable and haunted citizens.

While the police search frantically to find the elusive marksman before he claims his next victim, maybe they should pause to consider whether they will ever really bring the guilty party to justice. For, regardless of who's finger is actually pulling the trigger, the real culprit here is America itself.

Despite the increasingly horrific death toll, this is a nation which still clings rabidly to the absurd and outdated notion of allowing private citizens to own firearms. The simple fact that guns kill people is so banal in its obvious truth that it should not need restating anywhere; except that is, among the Republicans and their gun-lobby puppet-masters who will baulk at the merest suggestion of sensible regulation lest it blow a big hole in their profits. In the meantime, we Europeans can only scratch our bemused and wiser heads and wonder how many more painful lessons will have to be endured before America's red-necked boys get their toys taken away from them.

But the gun-toting culture is only partially to blame because, in order to be truly lethal, it has to be combined with a reckless, inhuman cowboy capitalism with its injunction to the devil to take the hindmost and let the weak and frail die where they fall. In the land where the Dollar is King, the citizens are merely dispensable serfs providing nothing more than an opportunity cost to be measured on the bottom line against a cardboard cut-out target and a magazine full of dum-dum rounds. In America, breakfast is cheap but so is life.

For us on the safe side of the Atlantic, we can but give thanks for a more progressive political leadership that recognises these squalid dangers and defends us against their encroachment. Not so the average American who is left to twist in the pitiless wind while their elected officials busy themselves with the more lucrative task of propping up their nations corporate interests. When democracy can be trumped by chicanery, as in the Florida elections re-count, good faith lies bleeding. When you witness your own government flaunt the will of the international community, as expressed by Kyoto and the International Criminal Court, is it any wonder your dashed hopes and routed expectations may express themselves as murderous fury? If you hold democratic institutions up to contempt it is but a short step to holding life itself in contempt.

Pray that the Maryland police find this trigger-man quickly and let their be no more tragic victims. But pray also that the bereaved seek true justice by demanding that the murders of their loved ones be added to ever-growing list of crimes that must be laid at the door of George W. Bush"

Alright, I lied. This article did not appear in the Guardian. But it probably will at some point. Who knows, maybe I'll send it in as copy.

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Have we got fed up with Americans, especially for some reason Donald Rumsfeld, asking three questions in a row and answering them for themselves with three different but oh-so-poetically balanced adverbs instead of waiting for answers from the persons they're talking to like normal people? Absolutely. Is Ally McBeal to blame for this, and in particular John Cage, also known as (I don't know why) "The Biscuit" (who is otherwise very good fun, I think)? Possibly. Would we like them to stop? Immediately.

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1. Would you be willing to tell Miss Piggy she's unclean?
2. What would we do with all the one handed politicians?
3. The Budweiser Chameleon. So you think The Birds were nasty?
4. We've only got virgins for Martyr's age 8 and under.
5. It's impolite here to throw rocks when someone asks to get stoned.
6. Pancakes and a side of camel fat just doesn't have that ring to it.
7. It won't help crime because toilet paper works in either hand.
8. Ham and cheese sandwiches beat goats milk for lunch hands down.
9. Bob Evans would sue for loss of livelihood.
10. Playboy Magazine just wouldn't be the same with Burqah gatefolds.

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Blimey! It appears I am...

What Farscape Character are you?

...hmmmm. Whilst I do rather 'admire' Aeryn Sun (or rather Claudia Black), I'm not so sure I want to be her... I was rather hoping to be 'Ka D' Argo'.

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Now, this is hilarious! It was linked on Heretical Ideas and deserves further dissemination (so to speak!). By the way, LOR stands for a Letter of Reprimand.

Warning! Can cause serious abdominal injury judging from the comments... I understand that somebody is already suing for replacement keyboard damaged as a result of "coffee spurting precipitiously (and uncomfortably) from one's nose in the event of abrupt belly laughter".

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...or how to die in aeroplanes.

Brian fears that the bracing postion is no good in a plane crash. May I offer a few words of reassurance. This is how I see the pros and cons of passenger jets.

The most comfortable ride (i.e. the least stomach churning) is as close to the centre of gravity as possible, generally near or over the wings and away from the windows. But this is usually between the engines and fairly close to the main fuel tanks. Sometimes the wings snap off tearing this section of the fuselage to shreds.

On the other hand the noisiest and least pleasant ride is usually right at the back, it's also near the wash rooms which means that the queue will be leaning on your seat. However, provided the tail section doesn't snap off too high above the ground, this is where survivors seem most likely, especially if they unfasten their seat belts and are thrown clear of the blaze.

Closet smokers who put gum in the smoke detector whilst sitting on the loo having a puff always seem to survive (airlines don't like to admit this). The forward section is where the best service and most legroom tends to be found, and it is easiest to tell if anything is going wrong (lots of shouting or drunken singing coming from the cockpit are a give-away).

Perhaps they should put laughing gas in the masks which drop automatically when there's a sudden drop in cabin air pressure...

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Locked in the midst of a long range exploration of East Coast watering holes and possible future Blogger Bash sites, the Samizdata Expeditionary Drinking Force is regretfully unable to join its comrades at the Second British Blogger Bash (2B3). We've established a perimeter of beer mugs and martini glasses and, in a display of solidarity with our comrades in cups, have vowed to hold out to the last drop or as long as we can stand. Pitchers of margaritas are even now being prepared for what promises to be an extended effort. Although rescue is unlikely, escape is still possible. Godspeed Samizdata. Godspeed 2B3.

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In preparation of the anniversary of 9/11, The Brains Trust have devised a Griefometer to answer the question of "just how upset should you be when disaster strikes?", using the death of Diana as a benchmark. All in the best possible taste, of course.

For example, the Holocaust scores 4 Dianas and 7.7 Dandos1, with the statistics of 9,000,000 dead, on average 50% cute, in a location of 80% importance. The event had 90% visual impact and the story lasted for 825 days.

Please have a go and let us know how you get on. I put in Titanic - it hardly registered...

Note 1: For those not following the UK affairs too closely, Jill Dando was the BBC Crimewatch UK presenter murdered in April 1999. She was shot in the head at close range with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, on her doorstep. Her death caused a tremendous public response. In other words: 1 dead, on average 35% cute, in a location of 55% importance. The event had 10% visual impact and the story lasted for 7 days - death of Jill Dando scores 1.0 Dandos.

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Well it just so happens to be Hedy Lamarr Day! I know this to be the case because Shannon Okey told me and we all know that Shannon, the veritable Lucretia Borgia of the Blogosphere, would not say such a thing if it were not so.

And just incidentally, if you are going to go and peruse the Bitter Girl site, make sure you do not miss one of the funniest blog articles in quite a while:

Tune in a decade or two from now for the year 2018 version of this post, when I take on Britney Spears' cellulite, visible C-section scars and obvious track marks as she performs "Oops, I Did It Again!" at the MTV VMAs with Michael Jackson, who, by then, will be made entirely of plastic and have a robot monkey to guide him on and off stage.

Prescient.

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Today in Johannesburg, the delegates at the Earth Conference moved onto the next important phase in the proceedings: water sports.

Having accepted the monumental challenge of solving the problems of poverty and environmental degradation, the delegates have maintained their unanimous opening day resolution, that they were all having far too much fun to worry about that sort of thing and that the world would be far better off if they all did as little as humanly possible during the ten-day Conference.

So, this morning, the Conference moved en masse to the Lakeside Pavilion where they will have a choice of jet-skiing, windsurfing, snorkelling or simply soaking up that radiant South African sunshine with a selection of cocktails and a trashy novel. All eyes, though, will be on the Head of the Brazilian Rainforest Foundation who is rumoured to be something of a dab-hand at Beach Volleyball.

But not all the delegates have been this proactive. Back at the hotel, Indian Development Minister Laxmi Ennerjee spent the entire day languishing in the Tropical Hothouse Spa Jacuzzi, together with his, erm, 'Research Assistant' Trudi. While the sparkly Trudi toyed with his greying chest hairs, the Minister lay motionless in the warm, herb-infused bubbles; his head occasionally lolling to one side in order to lick a dollop of tangerine-flavoured yoghurt from between Trudi’s quivering breasts. In an attempt to explain away this apparent lack of wordly concern, he said:

"Look, it’s really very simple. We were charged with the responsibility of ending poverty, saving the planet and maintaining an economic equilibrium between all nations and people of the entire world. But when we got right down to it", he sighed heavily, "it was all too much like hard work and we decided that we just couldn’t be bothered"

Despite what some would regard as a refreshing candour, the delegates have, nevertheless, come under fierce criticism from Inactivists who accuse the delegates of being a part of the problem not a part of the solution. Daniel Le Thargy spokesperson for the Coalition Against Movement said:

"You just have to observe the furious vigour with which these guys play Canasta around the poolside to realise they are actually heating up our atmosphere. They should learn to do something much less productive, like sleeping. Sleeping is fun and involves no carbon emissions whatsoever."

Denying accusations that he was simply a luddite, Mr.Le Thargy went onto to explain:

"Our aim is get Third World farmers off of their knees, and put them flat on their backs."

But the Conference has brushed aside these protests and, following the afternoon’s recreation by the waterside, the delegates then went into a delicate round of complex negotiations, wrangling and horse-trading before a resolution was passed calling for tonight’s dinner to consist of an open barbecue with a Thai & Vietnamese theme. Speaking to a Dutch correspondent, British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed confidence that agreed targets for at least 80% attendance at tomorrow’s Bingo & Billiards party would be met.

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Investment with a twist - invest in sin! Well, that is the sales pitch of a new breed of investment fund which deliberately chooses to wager money on sectors like tobacco or booze, according to a diverting article in the European edition of today's Wall Street Journal (link requires registration). This makes a lot of sense. It seems to me that there must be a potentially big politically incorrect investor client base out there dying, so to speak, to invest in "naughty" areas of the economy. My favourite fund is called the Tombstone Fund, which claims to invest in the "death-care industry".

Here's a key paragraph:

According to Mutuals.com research, the five-year return for alcohol stocks that fit its criteria was nearly 63 percent, compared with 11.8 percent for the overall S&P 500 index through to June 30. For the same period, tobacco stocks were up 7.8 percent, gaming and casino stocks soared 116 percent and aerospace and defense stocks gained almost 25 percent.

Crikey!

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Claire Berlinski, a professor at Niccolo Machiavelli University, has some fresh Swiftian thinking that could really crack some ice in the Middle East. We are privileged to publish a preview of a working paper she has written for the Bilderberg Trilateral Commission Council on Foreign Relations... well we'd rather not say actually

SADDAM, LET’S THINK outside the box for a change.

We know you don't really give two shits about the Palestinians, and you sure as hell don't give a rat's ass about Islam, either. And we know you're a practical kind of man. So here's a little suggestion that might meet both of our needs.

Here's the way it is. Unless we make some kind of arrangement here, we're going to have to turn all of Iraq into a pane of stained glass. It'll be an ugly business; everyone in the world will get their panties in a wad about it, and we'll all have to waste a lot of our valuable time and energy holding useless press conferences explaining things we'd rather not explain. We will, that is. You won't, because you'll be dead. You can take Israel with you, sure, but you're still going to be dead as a dodo, and there ain't no 72 virgins in Paradise waiting for you. Take my word for it, we know from the pleasures of the flesh in our country.

Now here's what we suggest, Saddam. This might come as a surprise to you, but we've been giving it some thought, and lately it occurs to us that the Iraqis and the Americans might actually have more in common than we first thought. You know that book about what to do when someone moves your cheese? Well, we’ve read it too, and it really spoke to us. It’s time to look at that cheese again.

For one thing, we've noticed lately that we really don't feel a lot of love for the Saudis, and it just doesn't seem to us that they're running those oil fields as responsibly as they could. And you know the Kuwaitis? Well, we were wrong, you were right, and we're man enough to admit it. They're repulsive little ingrates and they're too damned cowardly to have a country of their own. Hell, they probably were stealing your oil.

So you know what, Saddam?

Go ahead.

Yep, you heard us right. That was the green light, just like the one you thought you got from that Glaspie woman, only this time we mean it. Take Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia too. It would take you what, three days? Go ahead and butcher the Al Sabahs and the whole Saudi royal family. Have at it. Any dissent? We know you know how to handle it, just don't tell us about the details. Let Noam Chomsky worry about it.

And hell, Saddam, you want a free hand over Iran? We see no problem with that either. We know they gave you a bit of hassle the last time around, but after 23 years under the Ayatollahs, this time they'll probably be throwing roses at your tanks. As far as we're concerned, you can have the whole Persian Gulf. All of it. You can even keep your WMD program. We'll sell you the damned Trident missiles if you like, just as long as you keep them pointed toward the right people. Oh, and we'll give you a free hand to slaughter all the Islamic fundamentalists you want – in Saudi Arabia, outside Saudi Arabia, in Iran, Yemen, wherever. We know you're dying to do it anyway; heck, you love killing people. Give 'em a taste of what the Kurds got. Like I said, we don't want to know the details. Kind of like we said to the Indonesians back in the day. Let Robert Fisk worry about getting the scoop. (Oh, and if something unfortunate were to happen to him, you didn't hear it from us, but you know – accidents do happen. The will of Allah and all that.)

Way we see it, Saddam, there’s really no reason the two of us should go to war when we really have a lot of common emotional needs. Sure, we think you’re a little ruthless, a bit of a homicidal maniac, but you know, we managed to see the bright side of Stalin when we needed to, and in retrospect, it’s a fine thing what those Russians did at Stalingrad – that could have been our boys taking losses like that. We think we might have sort of a similar situation here. Let’s face it, we Americans just don't have the stomach to do what it really takes to wipe out these Islamic lunatics. And they seem awfully serious about wanting us all dead. So why not give the job to a man who has both the appetite to do the job right and the expertise?

We just have a few little things we'd like in return. Lay off of Israel, stop sending money to those idiotic suicide bombers, and keep the price of oil below nine dollars a barrel – forever. The way we see it, everyone ends up happy, except maybe the Al Sauds, and frankly, at this point, their happiness is just not our number one priority. You get what you always wanted – total control of the Gulf. We get what we always wanted – – cheap oil and the assurance that every fundamentalist maniac in the Middle East will enjoy your excellent vacation facilities and your trademark Iraqi hospitality. We can be buddies again, just like we were during the Cold War. Remember the good times we had together back then?

What are the Europeans going to say about it? They're the ones who keep blathering on about how they don't want us to antagonize you, so they should be thrilled by the announcement of the Iraqi–American Peoples' Alliance for Peace. And figure this: We lift the sanctions, you control all the oil in the Gulf, you start pumping it out like there's no tomorrow, and within a week you'll be able to feed all those poor little starving Iraqi children and keep your palaces maintained in the fashion to which you've become accustomed. No more of this undignified slinking from house to house every night to escape detection – you could really live in style. And a constant supply of nine–buck–a–barrel oil will do wonders for this unpleasant little economic slump we've been facing here. It's a win-win situation.

So that's really the deal, Saddam old buddy. It's simple, isn't it? Lay off of Israel, do the needful with the terrorists, and the Gulf is yours. We tried to do the right thing by the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, but you know, there comes a point in every relationship where you have to ask – "Am I giving more than I'm getting here?" And honestly, we think that point came and went a long time ago. It's like they say in the books about healthy relationships. We feel like one of those women who love too much. Have you read that one? It really spoke to us, all that stuff about being co–dependent and all. Always bailing out some penny–ante, Jew–hating Gulf potentate whenever he gets himself into some stupid mess, and getting no thanks, none at all, not one word, just more abuse about how we're such bullies and warmongers.

Well, we've talked it over with our therapists and we've seen that we're worth more than that. It's all about Toughlove now. If they think they don't need us, fine – let them go it on their own, just don't come crying to us when the Republican Guards start yanking out the plugs on those tiny widdle incubating babies. They had their chance.

Nine dollars a barrel. Lay off of Israel. Do whatever it is that you do best with the Islamic Fundamentalists. And the Gulf is yours forever. Tell me you don't see the beauty in it, Saddam.

And of course, remember the alternative.

Claire Berlinski

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It may have caught the eye of readers in the UK the other day that the Inland Revenue has redesigned its logo. Samizdata.net brings you a special preview!

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Watching an episode of the Simpson's last night was great fun, even though it was a repeat. The womenfolk of Springfield are up in arms after a drunken St. Patrick's Day, and demand a ban on booze. They confront the hapless Mayor, and demand to know why he defends liberal drinking laws:

"Well, it tastes great; makes women look more attractive and makes men invulnerable to criticism."

Magnificent.

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My suspicions have been confirmed! Now I know what a large proportion of car (and van) drivers are thinking when I ride past them on my motorbike during rush hour traffic.

Adriana had a calming effect on the drivers in the traffic jam

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Right. I've had enough of American women whining about why English chaps are such terrible dates. It is surely up to us, or at least those of us who are single guys, to step up to the plate, so to speak, and bury the issue once and for all. The latest of American ladies to lambast the English male, the delectable New Yorker and frequent visitor to these shores, Gwyneth Paltrow says she hardly ever gets asked out for a date when she is over here.

Come on male Samizdatistas of London. Let's do our duty. We could even get Gwynnie to start a blog.

Seriously in need of an Englishman

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As Perry mentioned earlier today, you have got to hand it to him, the new Archbishop of Canterbury has already gotten off to a flying start. Already known as the scourge if Disney and kiddie's computer games and skeptic of military action against Iraq, the new top prelate Rowan Williams has became an honorary Druid! Yes, honorary Druid. What next? Will the Pope embrace Objectivism? Will Ozzy Osborne take up Holy Orders? Will Yassir Arafat become a paragon of truthfulness?

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Further to Tom's appropriately titled introduction to the newly-elected Archbishop of Canterbury, the Brainstrust reports on Rowan Williams' views of Iraq and Disney...

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Basking in the anticipated riches from sales of Samizdata consumer durables, Perry e-mails to suggest, "Natalie should consider a shop for her site... a nifty line in 'Ninja Librarian' tee-shirts?" Thank you, Perry, but I have already launched my own mug and T-shirt business, and while doing it had the inspiration that will make me the next Bill Gates. As capitalists you might be interested in my business model. Start up costs are zero. Running costs are zero. Depreciation is zero. Losses from theft, breakage and catastrophes of nature are all zero. Profits, it is true, are also currently running at an integer number between one and minus one, but it's early days yet. The Great Thought came to me while I was thinking of what to give my 48,888th visitor, a chap called Dave. Suddenly it came to me:

"You win a... um... free endorsement of whatever T shirt, baseball cap or coffee mug you happen to own anyway. It is now an official nataliesolent.blogspot.com shirt, cap, mug or other promotional article. Tell all your friends!"

"Virtual micromanufacturing," as I like to call it is the true child of the information age, with all its virtues of instantaneousness, flexibility and asypmptotically trivial transaction costs. You don't like the Ronald MacDonald logo on your nataliesolent.blogspot.com mug? Just look hard at your much more tasteful 1802 Sèvres card dish and reassign that coveted Natalie identity at the speed of thought. Just In Time manufacturing has nothing on this! It remains only for the delighted customer to send me his money.

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Blogosophical Investigations (I preferred "Chris Cooper's Blog" because that's what it is) is definitely worth an occasional look. Say, about once a month. A rather good contribution from Chris to the now rather good Libertarian Alliance Forum reminded me of his blogzistence.

His bit about Scab Pride is there (July 23), as well as on the LA-F. Some teacher trade unionists in America have been saying that non-unionised teachers should pay the unionised ones Danegeld or teacher-geld or whatever, on account that the unions got them their wages also. Says Chris:

The right of the non-unionized to undercut their unionized competitors is a sacred right.

Chris says unionized and I say unionised, but otherwise of course I agree. He also includes a rather good comment from new LA-F regular Anton Sherwood.

I also liked this, from July 17th, which I think is further evidence that BI's original name would have sufficed:

Women pride themselves on multitasking

As I come in from walking the dog, I walk past my daughter's room. A CD is playing full belt: someone called Pink, I later discover. But my daughter is in the next room. She's sitting on the piano stool watching TV while listening to the music. The TV sound is right down, but it doesn't matter because she's seen this episode of Ally McBeal before – probably three times. It doesn't matter anyway, since she's talking on her phone. After a while she decides not enough is going on, so she starts playing on the piano with her free hand.

My god. I've just realised. I do this. I watch Ally McBeal repeats with the sound off and the Bruckner (or some such preferred alternative to Pink) up, while tapping away at my keyboard. I'm a woman. Oh well. All the libertarians I know agree that we need more of those.

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I was reading Aeroplane over what might charitably be called "lunch". Some crisps and a cup at the approximate time of a normal lunch... but this is just making a short story long.

Castle Bromwich is well known in aviation circles. It's where a large number of Spitfires and Lancasters were built (for the non-aviation minded, that places it in World War II). Each airplane had to be taken up and run through some rough testing before being handed over to the ATA (the men and women who delivered aircraft to the RAF bases). The test pilots were there to ensure manufactruing mistakes were found at the plant and not in battle.

Now Castle Bromwich had miserable weather, lots of fog, a rather short runway that was half paved and half grass. I remembered reading much of that before. What I didn't know was the interesting bit about the approach. You see, there was a sewage treatment plant just before the threshold.

It really has to be asked. Did the test pilots at Castle Bromwich originate the phrase.... "landing us in the shit"???

I couldn't resist it.

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I have just had the pleasure of reading through a 221-page report sent to the British government on what should be done to make us save more.

Attending the press conference, I listened to the mild-manner Ron Sandler take us through the thicket of tax codes, rules and varied practises of Britain's Byzantine financial industry. Nodding off for a second, I fell into a strange dream:

"Ladies and gentlemen, today's report on how to stop shafting the British saver is brought to us today by Prof. Tom Burroughes of Libloony University. He has kindly produced this report, which, er, is rather short." Cut to moi: "Members of the press, you will see my report is only one page long. Its recommendation is brief - abolish taxation and get government out of the savings business. Period. End of story."

At this point a strange noise emerges from the assembled hacks. Muffled cries from back of the room...

I suddenly woke up, hope no-one noticed my nodding off, and listened for an hour about differential tax codes, the need for fewer rules on X rather than Y, blah, blah. blah.

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It's official. According to an unnamed US government study (reported in the Daily Telegraph) the parts of the brain responsible for sensation in the mouth, lips and tongue are "most active" in obese people. Health fascists conclude that larger men (such as Perry and I) [Ed: speak for yourself!] "like the taste of food too much", which coming from them is a compliment.

The obvious explanation is that we are in fact superb oral technicians. In less benighted cultures than welfare states young ladies know that larger men make better company. We cook better, have more appetite for life, aren't obviously short of cash, and have sensitive mouths, lips and tongues. What more could a lady ask for?

It's nice to know that governments spend money on this sort of research. I think I shall buy some more luxury foods and contribute sales taxes to the state.

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Imagine the horror of it. The poor man was forced to have sex with Liz Hurley. I suppose the trauma of it must have had him running to some high priced therapist right afterwards.

Sure, I'd like to have kids, Bing said. Kids, that is, that I voluntarily play a part in conceiving.

Well I cannot believe a wealthy guy like Steve Bing has difficulty seeing the causal link between having sex and that potentially resulting in a pregnancy so the implication is clear... The sex was not voluntary! Hurley must have overpowered him, tied him to a bed, somehow induced his member to attention (imagine that!) and then forced her attentions on the hapless multi-millionaire. The woman must be insatiable! I feel so sorry for him that had I known of his distress, I would have stepped forward and selflessly volunteered to take his place to spare him the dreadful experience. Steve, baby, next time you find yourself in such a sticky situation with one of the most beautiful women in the world, pick up the phone and call me. I mean, what are friends for if not for helping out when things get rough?

Having sex with Liz Hurley... involuntary apparently!

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Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, George Bush, Pervez Musharraf, Osama Bin Laden, Jean Marie Le Pen, Vladimir Putin, Crown Prince Abdullah, Gerhard Schroeder, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Charles Krauthammer, Silvio Berlusconi, Colin Powell, Jacques Chirac, Romano Prodi, Javier Solana, Kofi Annan, Robert Mugabe, Fidel Castro are you listening?

ENGLAND 1   BEEF-EATING SURRENDER MONKEYS 0

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As reported by The Brains Trust in their latest edition, hundreds of notes from across Europe are breaking through flimsy currency exchanges and fleeing across the Channel Tunnel into the UK. Two desperate refugees known only as 'Frank' and 'Mark' explained their plight:

"There was a time when we were welcome throughout our homelands. In every home in the country people would be delighted to let us in. Shops, restaurants, banks - even politicians - they couldn't get enough of us. But then suddenly some sinister extremist forces began to take over in the heart of Europe.

At first it was a bit of a joke, no one thought it would ever happen. But then people began to talk about a single currency, a master race that would sweep throughout Europe. Then discriminatory laws began to appear. We could only meet each other at fixed exchange rates. There were maximum numbers of us that could work in government. Adverts appeared denouncing us and calling for people to hand us over to the authorities. I felt completely devalued."

However, the currencies are also having a hard time finding solace in the UK. Many locals are handing them in to the authorities to be transported back to an unknown fate at home. They also face opposition from "nationalist currency activists". One such hard currency supporter, known only as "Sterling", explained his position:

"We're being overtaken by a tide of foreigners. We should only allow in ones that look like us - ones with a Queen's head on them. And they should be forced to swear allegiance to the Bank of England and leave their foreign markets at home. We should chuck all the rest back. Before you know it they'll be taking over here."

As the Government promised swift action against the "immigrants" Tony Blair declared that the UK need not fear for its own currency especially as it was going to get a nice, lovely, shiny new one "very, very soon."

There are days, and today is one of them, when I think this is the only way to deal with the current affairs. For more 'solutions' to international and domestic problems visit The Brains Trust. I especially recommend their new peace plan offering Palestinians 'virtual statehood'...

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You could project the keyboard onto the upper back of a suitably placed loved one and combine blogging with giving him or her a massage.

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...that project-a-keyboard one you just mentioned, Brian, is the daftest. You'd have to clear your desk before using it.

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So Tony Millard was just joshing and I fell for it. Sheesh, coulda been worse. I could have believed that absurd post about Pim Fortuyn thinking he was in danger, or the even more risible one which claimed that a football corresponent for a respectable newspaper would employ the word "f+ck".

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If full moons make people go bonkers or turn into wolves, maybe the lack of a full moon makes people po-faced and excessively serious.

Jason Soon*, who like the fragrant Natalie Solent is a high quality blogger who is on the side of the angels, also does not seem to have figured out that Tony Millard was actually joking. The fact Tony's article appeared on Libertarian Samizdata was a significant clue that the wine tasting apparatus might be lodged in the cheek.

*[Ed. Jason's archive links do not seem to be working at the moment (a frequent problem with blogger alas), so in the meantime just go to Jason Soon and scroll down to the article Un-libertarian samizdata to see why we are spanking him]

Now to the serious part of my blog post:

Tony Blair and David Blunkett have promised to scrap all British restrictions on firearms ownership, affirm the state's commitment to individual civil liberties, repeal the Town and Country Planning and Land Act and replace the statue of proto-fascist Oliver Cromwell in front of Parliament with a statue of Margaret Thatcher wielding a sword and standing astride the prostrate body of the fallen Arthur Scargill...

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Tony Millard seems to agree with the old saying that two is a party and three is a crowd.

I am always baffled by those (presumably the same heavily bearded Oxfam worker types) who seek to promote more immigration on the grounds that any decline in the UK population would lead to massive infrastructure and social problems - New Zealand seems to manage all right with less than 4 million for a similar area.

I can't think of anything better than sharing our small crowded island with 40 million less people...

Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)

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Tony Millard has a unique Chianti fuelled view of how to revitalise rural economies

Whilst I agree with the general premise that our welfare/benefit system is responsible for many of society's ills, I am more concerned at the undermining effect of fossil fuels on the "working classes" (for want of a better word - meant in its historical sense, i.e. those with more forearm than forehead).

The artificially low cost per watt of diesel, particularly the untaxed, "farm" or "red" sort, has a hidden crippling effect on those parts of society whose principal selling point to employers is "grunt". By providing an artificially low alternative to the working classes' human energy, we radically reduce their earning power and status, with all the miserable consequences that that entails. Taxing fuel at a level to raise pump prices to say six times their current level, with a commensurate (i.e. total tax-take) reduction in income tax would have a number of benefits

1. augmentation in the status of the musclebound

2. re-focusing of local economies on local production

3. reinforcement of the rural economy by increased teleworking, local spending, and farm jobs

Basic manufacturing is already in terminal decline - the West can never again realistically be expected to compete with the likes of the Chinese in this area - and the service industry is less fuel price sensitive, and as such I am not yet convinced of the arguments that suggest a huge rise in imported products.

Pride and sense of purpose is an excellent societal glue - let's re-value honest toil.

Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)

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...convey my deepest and most heartfelt apologies to all Slovs.

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I think the muitbats have mated with the froonbats and had baby smelibels in your brain, because I have only the vaguest idea of what your post to me was about. Most of your readers will have even less idea, because at least half of them are so benighted as not to make their daily pilgrimage to my blog. I slipped that one in rather nicely, don't you think? Were you saying that I could keep the proceeds of my now-uneccessary keyboard fund because I have said some nice things about the Queen sometimes and the British Empire wasn't so bad? If so, I quite agree with both propositions (a decision helped along by explicit permission from the donors) while not quite giving my full intellectual assent to the chain of reasoning between them.

(What with all these jolly little interjections and in-jokes, this blog is sounding more and more like The Corner all the time. This is no bad thing. It is a cause dear to Perry's heart that Jonah Goldberg should one day come weeping and penitent to our door, saying brokenly between sobs, "I'm so sorry that I foolishly said that I was so mighty that I needed no hits from an outfit calling itself "Libertarian Samizdata". Not only do I concede that I copied your format in forming The Corner, I also humbly beg you to take us over, now that the Libertarian Revolution has arrived and President Sullivan is in charge of the Committee for Public Safety and Rending Conservatives In Their Gobberwarts, In A Totally Non-Coercive Manner Of Course.)

Back to the British Empire. I agree with you. Empires are wrong, but as Empires go the British wasn't so bad. And part of the reason for that not-so-badness was indeed the fair trials for the "fuzzie-wuzzies". I seem to recall that a very similar remark to that made by Corporal Jones was made by one of the characters in Heinlein's The Number of the Beast when the party land in the alternative universe where Britain rules Mars as a penal colony. "We may be shot," said one of the good guys, "but we'll be shot after a fair trial with a wigged judge and a defence counsel." Maybe not those exact words, but that was the sense of it.

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Concerning Brian's article below on Euro-Britain for fruitbat read moonbat throughout.

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Hello Natalie. I didn't send any money for your keybo8rd because I too am a cheapskate. But keep it all, I say. We're British. We have our reputation in the USA to live down to. Over there, us Brits are a bunch of sciving scrounging parasitical sciver scrounger parasites, or so it said in The Bonfire of the Vanities. In the film they changed the Brit sciver etc. journo to an American. No wonder it bombed.

We're scroungers, that is to say, when we're not tormenting the world's ethnic minorities in their countries of origin. In connection with David Carr's spat with the warblogwatchers, concerning another trans-Atlantic stereotype, one of my favourite lines in a TV sitcom was in Dad's Army (which, for the benefit of uncultured, can't finish a sentence without a script to read it from, ignorant of everything outside America, cameras on enormous beerguts, Macdonald building, gas guzzling, napalming, friendly fire killing, plastically surgicated and let's face it just plain crazy Americans) is about the British WW2 Home Guard. Ex-member of the Thin Red Line Corporal Jones the Butcher, during a discussion of the merits of the British legal system, said:

"We always gave the fuzzy wuzzies a fair trial before we shot 'em."

The British Empire in one line.

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In protest at the electoral success in France of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French EU commissioner speaking in Brussels, Bertrand Maginot has expressed his outrage and concern.

"This is unacceptable and contrary to all democratic European principles" said Monsieur Maginot who took the opportunity to formally announce the imposition of trade sanctions on himself.

Camped in his apartment in Brussels Monsieur Maginot has refused all food, provisions and even a change of clothing. He is forced to stay in Brussels because he also banned himself from travelling.

Asked how long he intends to persist with the sanctions, Monsieur Maginot replied:

"Until I come to my senses"

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semiquaver
pentacle
octodecimo twice
X times Gemini plus Gemini plus III

Who am I?

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There was a young woman named Plunnery
Who rejoiced in the practice of gunnery.
Till one day unobservant,
She blew up a servant,
And was forced to retire to a nunnery.
- Edward Gorey

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Scene: EU Commission in Brussels. A urgent meeting of EU Officials.

LOUIS: This is an outrage!!

HANS: It is totally unacceptable.

SVEN: Intolerable.

DIRK: We cannot allow it.

LOUIS: To be scorned by such a shitty little country.

HANS: Don't they realise who we are?

DIRK: How important we are?

LOUIS: We are World Leaders after all. First it was the Balkans, now the Middle East. We are in danger of not being taken seriously again.

SVEN: You mean, we are taken seriously now?

LOUIS: OF COURSE WE ARE, YOU SWEDISH OAF!!!

DIRK: Okay, okay. Let's calm down. We must present a united front.

LOUIS: The Americans, the Israelis. Is there anybody else out there who is going to humiliate us?

SVEN: The Russians?

LOUIS: Shut up, Sven! We cannot allow this to stand.

HANS: Absolutely.

DIRK: We must put our foot down.

HANS: For sure.

DIRK: Show that we cannot just be pushed around.

LOUIS: Bravo! We must hit back.

HANS: Retaliate.

SVEN: How about a military response?

LOUIS: What with, Sven, what with?

SVEN: Oh yes. Good point.

DIRK: We must do something.

HANS: To show them we mean business.

LOUIS: I know, I've got it......!!

SVEN: What?

LOUIS: We will impose immediate trade sanctions on the Israelis.

HANS: Excellent idea.

SVEN: Louis strikes again.

DIRK: That is perfect, perfect.

HANS: That will teach them a lesson.

SVEN: They will never cross swords with us again.

LOUIS: We will prohibit all movement of goods, all travel and all banking transactions to and from Israel.

DIRK: Will I still be able to buy bagels?

HANS: Dirk, you are being very unharmonious today.

DIRK: Sorry.

LOUIS: One week of this and they will be begging, begging us to intervene and impose a solution on the Middle East.

HANS: So are we all decided?

DIRK: Definitely.

SVEN: I vote yes.

HANS: Good. I will prepare an immediate proposal on behalf of the whole Commission.

[Pause]

DIRK: Er...aren't we...perhaps, being a bit hasty here?

LOUIS: What do you mean?

DIRK: Well...er...maybe it might make things worse.

SVEN: Oh yes, yes. Dirk has a point here. Maybe it could inflame the situation.

DIRK: Cause all manner of reprecussions.

HANS: Hmmm...well, we must avoid being confrontational I suppose.

LOUIS: But we must appear strong.

SVEN: But the Israelis are rather sensitive, just now.

DIRK: And they have a big army.

LOUIS: They do?

SVEN: And nuclear missiles!

LOUIS: Mon Dieu!! [Presses Intercom] "Francois, book me on a flight to New Zealand..."

HANS: And then of course there is the Americans.

DIRK: Oh yes, the Americans.....

SVEN: There is not telling how they might react.

LOUIS: They are a bunch of cowboys....

HANS: Unsophisticated.

DIRK: Savages, really.

SVEN: They might take this very badly.

HANS: Who knows what they might do?

DIRK: And then, of course, there's Tony.

LOUIS: Tony won't like it.

SVEN: No, he definitely won't like it.

HANS: He'll make trouble for sure. I have an election this year.

DIRK: I'm very frightened of him, actually.

LOUIS: Oh pull yourself together, Dirk.

DIRK: Sorry (sniffle).

SVEN: Er...maybe...maybe we could put the matter on the agenda for a later date.

LOUIS: Yes.

DIRK: For discussion...

HANS: For debate.....

SVEN: As a way of sharing our concerns.

LOUIS: We will think about it.

DIRK: Consider it as a possibility.

HANS: As an idea....

SVEN: One of a number of options.

LOUIS: We can mention it in passing.

HANS: So, we are all agreed on that then?

ALL: Yes.

HANS: So. The matter is settled.

[Long Pause. Somewhere in the building a door slams. Outside a car backfires. In the distance, a dog is barking]

SVEN: Ahem...clears throat...I...I have some proposals regarding the standardisation of milk cartons.

DIRK: Milk Cartons! Excellent!

HANS: Now you're talking.

LOUIS: Why didn't you say so before?

DIRK: We must do something on this burning issue.

HANS: At last, we can address this festering sore in our body politic.

LOUIS: We must give the matter our utmost attention.

DIRK: Now we're cooking with gas. Three cheers for Sven.

HANS: Louis, order some more white wine and cheese nibbles. We're in for a long session.

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"Good evening, this is the news from the EBC.

The Security Commissioner today announced the final destruction of one of the last remaining internet cabals. (Older readers may recall the "internet"; it was a sort of primitive precursor to Maxitel, but being utterly unregulated provided means for various perverts and seditious libellers to conspire against the peace of our Community.) Members of this grouping, the so-called " [CENSORED] Samizdata [/CENSORED]" were taken into custody. Viewers will be happy to learn that these once-recalcitrant citizens made a full recantation and apology for their crimes before sadly dying of AIDS all on the same day.

Meanwhile at the Hague, the trial for War Crimes of ex-President Bush of the area formerly known as the United States continues. His court appointed defence lawyer (required by the somewhat archaic procedure of the tribunal), Maitre Cherie Booth, while admitting that Bush's so-called "War on Terror" held back for several years our present happy accommodation with the Protector of the Three Holy Places, did at least pursue in the last years of his presidency economic policies that controlled currency speculation and protected the environment by reversing the selfish phenomenon of economic growth.

Some more good news is that, as part of the widely-popular Drive for Health, the bread ration has been reduced again...

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"Good evening, this is the news from the BBC.

Stars from the world of music and entertainment are converging on London's Wembley Stadium for this weekend's charity concert, 'EuropAid'. The aim of the concert is to raise millions of dollars to provide much-needed food, tents and medical supplies for starving Europeans. Veteran music star, now political activist, Britney Spiers, who is organising the concert, has said she will meet with the French Ambassador to London, Bertrand Maginot to discuss his concerns. Monsieur Maginot has denounced the concert as 'arrogant American imperialism' and has warned that money given must have 'no strings attached'.

Meanwhile, reports are coming in from Germany that six people have been killed in a stampede and riot following attempts by Red Cross officials to distribute parcels of rice and flour in Hamburg.

Israeli Prime Minister Dana International is coming under increasing pressure from Washington to withdraw Israeli troops from Isreali-controlled areas of Tehran. Prime Minister International assured Washington that troops would be withdrawn as soon as what she termed 'mopping up operations' had been completed. Speaking from the Whitehouse, President Glenn Reynolds said that it was important that the peace process remained on track but stressed that there could be no question of Israel returning to it's pre-2010 borders without realistic guarantees of security.

At a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Tony Blair has quashed rumours that he intends to retire on his 75th Birthday. Mr.Blair said that he felt as energetic as ever and still had a great deal to accomplish. Mr.Blair used the opportunity to lend his support to a new campaign being launched by the Clone Rights group Human 2. The campaign follows publication of a damning report which highlighted numerous cases of discrimination against Cloned people in employment, housing and health care. Mr.Blair said that Clonism is a 'terrible blight on our society' and had to end

And now for the weather....."

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Ladies and Gentlemen, the Academy of Drivelling Idiots is proud to announce its award for Best Writer in a Terrorist-Supporting Role. And the nominations are:

Ted Rall for How We Lost Afghanistan

"The principal goal of this adventure in imperialistic vengeance, it seems obvious, should be to install a friendly government in Kabul. But we're winning neither hearts nor minds among either the commoners or the leadership of the current regime apparent"

Robert Fisk for The Awesome Cruelty of a Doomed People

"And then how easy was our failure to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East which neither Americans or any other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide bomber."

John Pilger for Inevitable Ring To the Unimaginable

"Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims - principally the victims of US fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of terrorism on earth"

Susan Sontag for The Disconnect

"The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy."

And the winner is.....(rustle, rustle, rustle).....ROBERT FISK

(Whoops, cheers, wild applause)

FISK: Thank you. Thank you. I am not worthy of this award. I am not worthy of being so honoured. For I, too, am guilty. I, too, am an opressor (wipes way tear). Save your awards and your honours for all the hapless victims of global capitalism and American imperialism. They are the real heroes and I accept this award on their behalf. I thank you

(More whoops, cheers, wild applause, standing ovation)

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The EU parliament has indicated its warm support for a new draft Directive which will regulate conversations between EU citizens.

The new Directive, which is the brainchild of French MEP, Bertrand Maginot will provide a legislative framework to ensure democratic oversight of all conversations which take place within the EU.

"This law is both overdue and necessary" said Monsieur Maginot. "At present there are absolutely no controls over the things people say to each other. This is dangerous and unacceptable"

British Commissioner, Sir Crispin D'oilly-Gitte also gave his full-hearted support to the new legislation.

"We must protect our citizens from being exposed to inaccurate or dishonest things", he said. "This law is an important step forward to a safer and more democratic Europe"

Dismissing the concerns of civil liberties groups, he added:

"These people are just wreckers. This law will increase freedom in Europe. Everyone will be able to converse with confidence; safe in the knowledge that they are not being exposed to wrong ideas and bad information"

The new law will require any EU citizen wishing to have a conversation with another EU citizen, to first send a draft text of their proposed conversation to a Conversation Monitoring Officer (CMO) who will be appointed at national level. The CMO will check the text for honesty, accuracy and consistency with democratic European values.

Provided the text meets the required standards, the applicant will be given permission to hold their conversation with such other person or persons as are identified in the initial application.

"It is a simple safeguard", said Monsieur Maginot.

Whilst the new Directive is not expected to be opposed, there is some concern at the dispute about exactly how the new regulatory regime will be funded. Swedish Social Democrat MEP, Helena Hankart has proposed that the CMO service be free to all applicants and funded out of general national taxation. However, Greek Commissioner Taxis Mitopisis is campaigning strongly for all applicants to pay a fee which will be charged according the applicant’s income.

"We have several committee meetings planned and I have no doubt we will achieve harmony on this issue", said Ms.Hankart.

The new Directive is expected to be in force by January 1st 2003.

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Q: What do you call a Frenchman wearing sandals?

A: Phillipe Pherlop

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"We just got a message from Saddam Hussein. The good news is that he's willing to have his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons counted. The bad news is that he wants Arthur Andersen to do it".
- George W. Bush (I kid you not!)

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The splendid Julia Gorin puts the boot in right where it is needed regarding the psychopathology of the Anti-gun male

He often accuses men with guns of "compensating for something." The truth is quite the reverse. After all, how is he supposed to feel knowing there are men out there who aren't intimidated by the big bad inanimate villain? How is he to feel in the face of adolescent boys who have used the family gun effectively in defending the family from an armed intruder? So if he can't touch a gun, he doesn't want other men to be able to either. And to achieve his ends, he'll use the only weapon he knows how to manipulate: the law.

Read the whole thing. Prepare to laugh until it hurts.

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Have fun and experience a sense of premonition reading an article titled Microsoft launches 'seek and destroy' XBox by the The Brains Trust (Trust Us / We Know), a satirical on-line netpaper.

That's why Internet Explorer 6 can automatically send us error reports containing a list of every piece of non Microsoft software installed on your machine, your name, address and credit card details and the 100 porn sites you last visited. It's our way of being more responsive to our users.

The author takes on many issues, namely Microsoft, Bill Gates and privacy using the kind of journalistic and marketing speak that just begs to be sent up the way The Brains Trust contributors has been doing for the last year or so.

[Editor: Adriana is being naive: there is nothing satirical about this, it is serious reporting! ]

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There is an ever-so-slight '1962' feeling in the air now that the Pentagon has issued (or 'leaked' depending on the news source) its Nuclear Hit-List which includes Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and China. It must be just a little unsettling to know that somewhere in a mountain silo is a thermonuclear device with your name on it.

And I'll bet that drawing up that list was a tough one ("No, no. Mr. President, please, there is just no strategic justification for adding France to the list!").

But Washington has breached the taboo and I see no reason why I should not gleefully jump on the bandwagon. So I have drawn my own 'Nuclear Hit-List' and it reads as follows:

1. Brussels
2. Noam Chomsky
3. The Guardian
4. Brussels
5. The BBC
6. Jack Straw
7. Brussels

Oh and Brussels.

I wish to make it clear that I maintain an official 'no-first strike' policy

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Steven Green has modestly put himself forward for consideration as the next Pope. However John-Paul II has given the Vodka Pundit some sound ex cathedra advice about the wisdom of taking his job.

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Over on Blithering Idiot, blogger Will Sulik has a hilarious post called Hermeneutics in Everyday life which needs some libertarian perspectives added:

14. An anarcho-libertarian refuses to acknowledge the validity of the repressive state to place force-backed STOP signs and accelerates past.

15. A minarchist libertarian halts at the STOP sign and waits for evolutionary epistemology to transform the understanding of society-state relationships to the point where all roads become private property.

16. An Randian refuses to see any objective reason to STOP at the sign and plows into the back of the minarchist, causing automotive catallaxy.

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'Crypto-Libertarian-in-denial' Brian Linse is mistaken as to which weapon was the result of the humourous 'which weapon are you?' test: Dale Amon was the H&K PDW...my result was

Alas as Brian points out, the only weapon I can legally own in Britain is... a squirt gun.

At least if I am attacked by a female mugger, I can try to instigate an impromptu wet tee-shirt contest.

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We neither confirm nor deny our spies have determined Stephanie is a pseudonym for one of Brian's many young starlets in waiting.

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Since I have always fancied myself as a bit rugged and rather dashing, I was unable to resist taking this much-touted test so as to ascertain exactly what type of sleek and hi-tech manifestation of military armaments engineering best reflected my personality

To be informed that the firearm I most resemble is a Fisher-Price 'Mr.Wallop' Potato Gun is not just disappointing it is also deeply degrading

I shall not be taking that so-called 'test' again!

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This quiz on what firearm you resemble most certainly fits our ethos better than some of the other tests I've seen recently.

I think I could do worse than be compared with the H&K, although I'm more familiar with the Beretta:

# 1 H&K PDW
# 2 Glock 17
# 3 H&K PSG-1
# 4 Dragunov Sniper Rifle
# 5 Desert Eagle
# 6 Alliant Techsystems OICW
# 7 FN P90
# 8 Beretta M92
# 9 H&K MP-5
# 10 Steyr AMR
# 11 IMI UZI
# 12 Vektor CP1
# 13 Franchi SPAS-12
# 14 Taurus Raging Bull
# 15 H&K CAWS
# 16 Colt M1911A1
# 17 H&K G11
# 18 M4A1 w/M203 Grenade Launcher
# 19 MAC-10
# 20 H&K SOCOM
# 21 Kalashnikov AK-47
# 22 Ruger Super Redhawk
# 23 H&K HK69A1
# 24 FA-MAS
# 25 GE XM214 Minigun

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Lists of wisdom culled from half a lifetime of banging around doing this and that are all the rage on the Internet just now, and why not? They can be a good laugh, and coming from libertarians they can even smuggle bits of the libertarian meta-context into the mainstream of polite society. So here are some of my bits of attempted wisdom of this sort, in no particular order:

(a) The importance of a country is inversely proportional to the splendour of its postage stamps.

(b) Nothing ever happens in rooms with matching chairs.

(c) Nothing guarantees the ruin of a large institution more certainly than the construction for it and by it of an architecturally magnificent custom-built headquarters. (I got this many years ago from a book by the famous Professor C. Northcote "work expands to fill the time available for its completion" Parkinson. But two questions: What was the Enron HQ like? And: How come Microsoft is still staggering onwards?)

(d) Speculative booms spike and begin their plunge downwards at the exact moment that the rule which all the suckers were following ("being a Lloyds name is a license to print money" (see (c) above), "you'll never lose if you buy bricks and mortar", "get your money into dotcoms, mate", etc.) gets to me.

(e) Movies advertised with quotes in big letters from movie critics, rather than the names in big letters of movie stars, are best avoided.

(f) Any movie described by a movie critic as containing no ideas is packed with ideas, but of a kind that the movie critic disapproves of.

(g) "Courageux" is the French for stupid.

(h) Anything described as "the new rock and roll" is not now very big, and is about to get smaller.

(i) "Interesting" is English for stupid. (Well maybe not always, but it is when my mother says it.)

(j) Bad food is bad for you. Good food is good for you. To avoid doing bad to yourself when you eat bad food, eat an equal amount of good food, thus cancelling out the badness of the bad food. (This one is untrue. Sorry about that (see (m) below).)

(j) Whenever an "alternative" view is promised, it will be the same damn view as the last one, and the one before that, and the one before that …

(k) Whenever anyone says "there is no question of " whatever it is, it means that there is and someone has just asked it.

(l) Actually following your dream is fine, but avoid using these words out loud. "Following your dream" is American for stupid.

(m) "Sorry" is the English for, well, pretty much anything an English person happens to be thinking. It seldom means that he's sorry (see (j) above), although it does sometimes.

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Perry is doubtless on to something in his post below. Stephanie Dopeout or Stuffy Dupont or whatever the bit of fluff mishandling Brian Linse's office calls herself is doubtless miffed at not being invited to the Bash. I wouldn't be surprised if she's also more than a tad jealous that Brian is enjoying the company of other women, especially intelligent ones that don't have a price tag dangling in their cleavage. Has anyone else noticed how familiar Stephanie is with that whole "babe for cash" routine?

Here's a tip, Stephanie. Copy Brian's Roladex (that's a phone number index, not a watch) while you have the chance. Stockholm Syndrome aside, we at Team Samizdata can be persuasive, verrry, verrry persuasive, and I would not be at all suprised if, upon his return, Brian sends you back to the low budget temporary help office where he found you. If you're lucky, he'll even give you a map so you don't get lost again.

One more thing. Brian can't afford a PETA lawsuit, so go easy on the hamsters. Remember: The water goes in the bottle. The food goes in the bowl.

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I thought I would try the same test Perry tried to see where I was rated. I too was surprised to see some of the influences attributed in the listing though the top three seem about right for me.

1.  Rand   (100%)
2.  Nietzsche   (91%)
3.  Hume   (84%)
4.  Sartre   (80%)
5.  Stoics   (80%)
6.  Kant   (69%)
7.  Hobbes   (68%)
8.  Prescriptivism   (64%)
9.  Spinoza   (57%)
10.  Mill   (54%)
11.  Cynics   (53%)
12.  Aristotle   (51%)
13.  Plato   (49%)
14.  Bentham   (46%)
15.  Epicureans   (44%)
16.  Augustine   (40%)
17.  Ockham   (38%)
18.  Aquinas   (35%)
19.  Noddings   (22%)

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The Ethical Philosophy Selector is an amusing attempt to see what a person's philosophical influences are. Many blogs seem to be taking the test so I thought "what the heck"... My results leave me rather bemused given my dislike for Sartre.

1.  Rand   (100%)
2.  Mill   (90%)
3.  Sartre   (75%)
4.  Epicureans   (73%)
5.  Kant   (73%)
6.  Nietzsche   (70%)
7.  Bentham   (69%)
8.  Prescriptivism   (65%)
9.  Aristotle   (61%)
10.  Stoics   (60%)
11.  Aquinas   (59%)
12.  Hume   (56%)
13.  Augustine   (53%)
14.  Plato   (48%)
15.  Spinoza   (48%)
16.  Cynics   (47%)
17.  Hobbes   (47%)
18.  Ockham   (33%)
19.  Noddings   (23%)

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BraWarstm! Nice Will Vehrs over on Blog Watch 2 makes a request for a Valentine Day Party report and next thing I know I have caused an international incident. So do Megan and I get those cool light-sabre thingies?

Just call me Chaos Girl

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There is nothing to the rumour that mentioning BRITNEY SPEARS increases the hit rate for a blog.

Blog me baby one more time!

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Miss Veen has a series of sublime cat haiku which will be immediately recognisable to people who live with cats. For example:

The rule for today.
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.

Blur of motion, then-
Silence, me, a paper bag
What is so funny?

Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitos
Fear vacuum cleaner.

Read them all. Meow.

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"Don't you 'honey' me, you worthless fuzz-ball you do nothing except lie around all day swatting flies and telling stupid jokes to all your moron pals while I have to strip all the meat and feed the kids. Have you ever lifted so much as a paw to clean this cage? My mother warned me about you, she said you were no good..."

[Thanks to dear friend and Samizdata reader Ed Collins for supplying the photo]

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Perry, question. Did not one of your dead relatives preside over the manufacture of an airplane named like the above? Was it not one of those post-war jet-propelled contrivances with a pod in the middle for the driver and the engine, and then two sort of strut things going backwards from the two wings to support the tail, in the manner of those flaps they have on the back of grand prix cars?

If I’m right about this, and following on from David Carr’s outing of himself and myself as vampires, do we not have a collective name for us all, or at least for David and me? Yes I think I finally have an answer, after more than half a century, to that Question you always get asked in bars and at parties: “What do you do?”

“I am a de Havilland Vampire.”

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[Tentatively attributed to William DeBuvitz]

The August 2000 fire at the Los Alamos Laboratory had one significant consequence. A secret scientific document, discovered in a bunker whose security systems were mostly destroyed by the fire, was leaked to the public last weekend. Actually it reveals nothing that we didn't already suspect. But it does show that the government has known all along that, besides arsenic, lead, mercury, radon, strontium and plutonium, one more extremely deadly and pervasive element also exists. This startling new discovery -- the heaviest element now known to science -- has been tentatively named GOVERNMENTIUM (Gv).

Conspiracy theorists speculate that Governmentium has been in existence since the time of the Manhattan Project or even the Philadelphia Experiment, and kept top-secret by the CIA. Perhaps its existence accounts for the explosive growth of bureaucracy over the last half-century. This astonishing element has no protons or electrons, thus having an atomic number of 0. It does, however, have 1 neutron, 15 assistant neutrons, 35 deputy neutrons, 80 vice neutrons, 145 supervisory neutrons, 165 team leader neutrons and 225 consulting neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 666.

These 666 particles are held together in the nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called "MORONS", themselves surrounded by vast and undeterminable quantities of lepton-like particles called PEONS. Since it has no electrons, Governmentium is INERT. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. According to the discoverers, a miniscule amount of Governmentium causes a reaction which would normally take less than a second over four days to complete. Unlike all other known elements, Governmentium does not decay measured according to its half-life, but instead undergoes continuous reorganization in which assistant neutrons, deputy neutrons and vice neutrons exchange places, causing a sample mass of Governmentium to actually INCREASE over time since with each reorganization some of the PEONS inevitably become MORONS, and, finally, neutrons, thereby forming entirely new isotopes. This characteristic of PEON-MORON promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever MORONS anywhere reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as the "CRITICAL MORASS."

Governmentium has been found to concentrate in certain key locations such as governments, large corporations, and especially in universities. It can usually be found polluting the best appointed and best maintained buildings. Scientists warn that Governmentium is known to be toxic and recommend plenty of alcoholic fluids followed by bed rest after even low levels of exposure.

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Perry left out the best bit of Ken Layne's comments, namely:

"I also want to blow up that planet of Furbies who ruined the third Star Wars movie ... before PETA gets over there. The PETA ship will come out of hyperspace and find nothing but pelts floating around."

I find that so inspiring.

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"First they came for the Jews and I did nothing because I am not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did nothing because I am not a Communist.
Then they came for the Catholics and I did nothing because I am not a Catholic.
Then they came for the Lawyers and I could not stop laughing"

Natalija Radic (2002)

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Seeing as how Perry has posted pictures of me on Samizdata, it seems only reasonable that I should post one of him... so here is he and his lawyer. I have not met David Carr so perhaps the lawyer is him. I will leave you to figure out which of them is which.

Perry and his lawyer

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Which is nothing to do with herpes, I assure you.

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I just want to say that I am deeply annoyed by the remarks made in the letter from Peter Barker below. This man actually expects to be subsidised to enable him to buy his weapons of choice. Well, I have just one message for your, Mr.Barker: if you want a state-of-the-art fighter-bomber then you just jolly-well get a job, save up your money and buy it yourself. Sponger!!

[Editor: in the crazed Mr. Barker's defence, he was only appealing for private sector investors, not state aid, in the matter of financing his purchase of the required armoured vehicle and (single) tactical nuclear device. Peter, my cheque is in the mail. Is this going to be a time-share kind of deal: I get the play with the nuke while you drive the tank?]

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Crazed Samizdata reader Peter Barker has written in with a proposal that we felt needed to be shared:

I was involved in an interesting discussion with a self claimed libertarian the other day. We were doing the rounds on the usual ideas about gun control and the right to arm bears. This guy was up for the idea of unrestricted possession or firearms but was advancing the idea that a legal caliber limit (?) might be placed on personal weapons.

This got me thinking in my radical way. When the "founding fathers" drew up the American constitution (and all its subsequent amendments) and gave American citizens the right to bear arms they did so to enable the citizens to defend themselves not only from hostile people but also (and mainly) from hostile governments (like their own...). The general idea being, I suppose, that if the "government" attempted to impose unconstitutional means upon the populace then they could resist effectively - as they did against the British.

So move this ideal forward a few centuries. Now if the government think you shouldn't be doing something - they send round a semi-armoured swat squad, a few APCs and have a helicopter with missiles in reserve. If the neighbourhood ain't so quiet they send in the national guard with the whole cacophony of modern warfare. Now of course if the local citizens objected to this and "tool up" to resist effectively, well, the administration will just calls them "unlawful combatants" and your civil rights are history. Remember those mad mullahs - the Branch Davidians of Waco (We Ain't Commin' Out) as an excellent example.

So how to square the circle? American citizens are supposed to be able to effectively defend themselves from government aggression. This can only mean one thing. The right to bear arms must translate (in new speak) into the right to own an effectively deterrent against anyone attempting to arbitrarily impose their will.

Which leads me to conclude one thing. I want a tank and a nuclear bomb [Ed: only one?]. As much as I'd like a Sukhoi 29 (or the new 31) the running costs are too high - there are some fiscal limits to my imagination. So, libertarians, who'll support me?

Oh! that many.... Hmmmm.

Peter did not say if he takes cash, cheques, gold or credit cards for this worthy cause.

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Sheesh... we try to bring a little class and glamour into the blogosphere but I guess there is no keeping some people happy. Glenn on Instapundit accuses us of not showing a faithful representation of semi-recovered bloggstress Natalija Radic (scroll down six articles for the 'offending picture' of a suspiciously healthy looking Natalija).


   

There... are you happy now? This picture even shows the amazing disappearing cat "Little Monster" prior to his absconding during Natalija's hour of need. Can we please have our journalistic credentials back now, Glenn?

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The European Commission convened an emergency session today to urgently discuss a response to the eruption of the Mount Nyirangongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo

"This is a very serious situation" said Hans-Pieter Blinkenblankenblonken the Dutch chair of the Committee for Pompous Pronouncements. "The Congolese will now have access to the highest quality building materials that could threaten the livlihoods of our European producers" he added

The delegate from the German Green Party, Annaliese Klumpf said: "This volcano has simply erupted without even any consultation process. It is completely unacceptable, undemocratic and flies in the face of all European opinion"

The French Minister of Duplicity, Bertrand Maginot was furious. He condemned Mount Niyragongo as a "shitty little volcano" and called for urgent measures to protect French quarries from what he termed "these unfair volcanic practices"

The Commission agreed that these unregulated volcanic eruptions posed a grave threat to the environment and European jobs. A draft resolution was unanimously adopted demanding legislation to curb unfair volcanic activity worldwide and the setting up of a committee to insitgate and oversee a set of formal consultation procedures to be implemented before any further eruptions were permitted to take place