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Belgium has won Guinness World Records recognition as the country with the longest time without government as it approaches a year of life without elected rulers.

And the fact that nobody else appears to have noticed ought to tell you something about the essential, absolutely essential nature of government in the modern world.

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One of many questions I am not required to deal with by avoiding the practice of law.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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People actually get paid to do this….

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The Staten Island terror charged with viciously bashing a young female middle-school classmate while demanding to know “Are you a Muslim?” is himself the son of a Muslim woman, his dad revealed today.

“How could a Muslim have another hate crime against a Muslim?” asked Frank Davies, 32, about his son Osman Daramay.

Makes sense. Few people hate Muslims like other Muslims, judging by the way suicide bombers operate.

Osman, who has a history of disciplinary problems at the school, yesterday allegedly began assaulting the Muslim girl just outside the school building with a 13-year-old female accomplice, and tried to rip off the victim’s hijab headdress covering her hair while yelling, “Are you a Muslim?” authorities
said.

Sound like a typical New York City kid to me.

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Can Klingon be far behind?

In fact, I’m surprised that they didn’t do Klingon first.

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What’s racist about a Russian waving a banana at a soccer player?

I’ll tell you: I don’t know.

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The world’s worst YouTube video as seen through the eyes of a metrosexual English major. Theme: ‘Taking nothing and spinning it out to 1700 words.’ Epitaph:

Dana Vachon is a writer living in Manhattan, followable on Twitter.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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Supporters of Bradley Manning stripped down to their skivvies outside the office of US Senator Dianne Feinstein to protest the treatment of the suspected WikiLeaker, who is being held in solitary confinement, often without being allowed to wear clothes.

I’m sure that’s the top item on Feinstein’s priority list.

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Fears of range anxiety have loomed over EVs since their inception, and those fears were validated courtesy of a couple unfortunate souls whose Nissan Leafs apparently died on them while driving. The drivers put their faith in the Leaf’s remaining range calculation, and were sorely disappointed when the car’s dash said they had enough juice to go 10+ miles, but the batteries had other ideas. Turns out, the Leaf needs some time to get to know you and your lead foot before it can accurately determine the bounds of its own range.

Pardon me while I LAUGH LIKE A MANIAC at these putzes. There.

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John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, lets loose.

Our nation’s actual military is ahead of VMI in these matters. They are aiming for an organization that exists not to fight wars, still less—heaven forbid!—to win them, but to celebrate diversity.

Most Americans first heard news of this development on November 8, 2009, when General George Casey, reacting to the Fort Hood shooting, told a TV interviewer: “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” We were further enlightened shortly afterward on learning that Fort Hood, like most US military bases, is a gun-free zone.

Turning military bases into gun-free zones is merely a rest stop along the road to making them testosterone-free zones. That in turn appears to be part of a scheme to fold the military into our culture of grievance, complaint, “rights,” and teeming swarms of lawyers stripping all the sense and virtue from the populace like locusts on wheat. A correspondent who knows the territory tells me: “Guys who served a single tour will get out and join the post office where veterans get very preferential treatment. Then they retire from the post office and head over to the VA claiming service-related handicaps.”

Hey, military men have government jobs, too.

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I’m not even going to speculate.

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Some days it doesn’t even pay to get up in the morning.

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A teenager girl collapsed and died from sudden adult death syndrome (SADS) minutes after she was kissed her for the first time, an inquest has heard.

‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome’? WTF? Can’t they just say ‘She died, and we can’t figure out why’?

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Witches could soon be required to get a permit under proposed Romania legislation which would make it possible to fine or even imprison one whose predictions turn out to be false.

And God forbid they should put clocks back an hour in winter.

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Preparing for the jobs of tomorrow?

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These days, growing numbers of young Swedes about to marry are not only choosing flatware patterns but also picking new names. Sometimes it is an older family name; more often it is one they simply concoct.

Mr. Ekengren recalled a case a few years ago in which an immigrant family requested permission to be called Mohammedsson.

“Permission was granted,” he said.

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Didn’t know that there was such a thing as ‘steel crotch Kung Fu’. I guess you learn something new every day.

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In some modern forms, the monastic way of life need not even include adherence to a particular faith. One can easily imagine cloistered communities focused on sustainable, ecological practices. Instead of daily prayers, members of the collective might spend a prescribed number of hours reading Thoreau and Wendell Berry; in season, they might cultivate organic heirloom vegetables for their own use and for sale at the local farmer’s market.

And you can play a Cleric in the video game.

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I’m definitely in the wrong line of work.

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Ever wish Angry Birds had more poop in it? Well look no further than the App Store today, as Apps Genius has launched Angry Turds. As a monkey in Angry Turds, you get to battle evil island explorers who have stolen your monkey babies with various projectile weapons.

You knew it had to happen.

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Airport officials ordered a holidaymaker carrying a toy soldier onto a plane to remove its three-inch gun – because it was a safety threat.

Ken Lloyd was stunned when he was told he could not go on the plane with the nine-inch model soldier because it was carrying a ‘firearm’.

Apparently the British figure that if the TSA can be stupid, they can be stupid too.

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The couple — who it should be mentioned are constituents of Alesi — were having a home built. While it was under construction, but no one was there, Alesi suddenly decided to just go into the house and have a look (he says he was checking it out “for a friend.”) The door was locked, but he walked around back and found a basement door that was unlocked. Once inside, he tried to climb a ladder to get to the first floor, since no stairs had been built yet… and suffered serious leg injuries, requiring surgery. And now, he’s suing the homeowners and the builder.

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WARNING: This is not a parody, however much it sounds like one.

The urge to insinuate herself into other people’s lives was evident in her earliest artworks. Ms. Nakadate (pronounced nah-ka-da-TAY) grew up in Ames, Iowa, and moved to Boston in the mid-1990s to attend a program sponsored by Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. A friend at Wellesley College introduced her to the social rituals at that women-only school, especially the legendary parties featuring young men from Harvard and M.I.T. who would arrive at the campus on a weekend shuttle bus.

“It was this moment in the girls’ sort of postfeminist movement where their way of empowering themselves was having these enormous parties where they didn’t apologize for anything,” said Ms. Nakadate, who was fascinated by peers “so unafraid of failure,” and seemingly unconcerned with “trying to please people, or trying to put on the correct veneer.” She spent the next four years shadowing students at Wellesley and other nearby women’s colleges, interviewing them and documenting their lives in photographs.

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It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank, whipping up a batch of vegan brownies, and, like an increasing number of American teenagers, teaching her dog to use an iPad.

I haven’t seen such stereotypical SWPL prose since I first opened a Playboy magazine as a callow youth.

A member of a generation that seems to have lost interest in the idle pleasures of sleepaway camp, Anna has spent the last three summers working on an ibex farm in the Catskills, just ninety minutes from her Manhattan home. Anna’s parents, Leslie Wilhelm, an editor of style and fashion books, and Walter Gilliam, a partner at a boutique investment firm, love that they can see their daughter often. (Williams, Anna’s last name, is a portmanteau of her parents’ surnames.) How often? “The toll collectors on the New York Thruway are becoming close friends,” cracks Anna’s father, referring to the highway connecting New York City to the Catskills. “We’ve always let Anna pursue her dreams, but we like to be able to visit wherever they may take her,” counters Anna’s mother, who has accompanied her daughter on long trips to Uganda, Bangladesh and the Mississippi Delta.

At Yael Farms, Anna gets plenty of exercise. She spends the day herding ibex, drawing water from a well, and moving heavy stones. After a Deuteronomy-friendly dinner of figs, unleavened bread and honey-drizzled ibex, she practices her Mandarin. Like many of the ibex farms sprouting up across the northeastern United States, Yael offers an intensive Chinese-language immersion course.

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I don’t think this is how Prince Namor got started.

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There’s a little girl in Las Vegas who was hit by car. She’s 13-years-old and in a medically induced coma.

Allegedly, Takara Davis was jaywalking when she got hit. So a police officer showed up at the hospital and gave the ticket to her mother, Kellie Obong. Why did they hand the ticket to the mother? Because Takara was busy being rushed to the operating room as the doctors tried to stop the bleeding in her head…

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Maybe they know something we don’t.

Hey, if it works….

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The Johannesburg Road Agency is in talks with suppliers to try and stop thieves targeting its shiny new traffic lights for the SIM cards they contain.

The Agency has been forking out thousands of rand on phone calls the thieves subsequently make using the snaffled SIMs.

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Another sign of the End Times.

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“The gist of the copyright dispute between the parties is whether Plaintiff’s virtual horses infringe on copyrights associated with Defendant’s virtual bunnies.” Yeah, so you know you’re in for a treat.

Prime candidates for culling from the gene pool.

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Be the first on your block….

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Let heaven and nature sing.

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Bugarach, population 189, is a peaceful farming village in the Aude region, southwestern France and sits at the foot of the Pic de Bugarach, the highest mountain in the Corbières wine-growing area.

But in the past few months, the quiet village has been inundated by groups of esoteric outsiders who believe the peak is an “alien garage”.

According to them, extraterrestrials are quietly waiting in a massive cavity beneath the rock for the world to end, at which point they will leave, taking, it is hoped, a lucky few humans with them.

Most believe Armageddon will take place on December 21, 2012, the end date of the ancient Maya calendar, at which point they predict human civilisation will come to an end. Another favourite date mentioned is 12, December, 2012. They see Bugarach as one of perhaps several “sacred mountains” sheltered from the cataclysm.

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

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Let’s see, it’s the Republicans’ fault that he can’t stop Obama from doing an end-run around Congress. Right.

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A farmer unwittingly shot two suspected burglars who were allegedly targeting a cannabis factory, which he didn’t know existed, on his property.

British news is always more interesting than American news.

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I’m curious as to how they plan to enforce this. After all, these are organized bodies of criminals we’re talking about here.

This reminds me of the notion of California solving its budget deficit by taxing growers of marijuana — which is (last time I looked) illegal to start with.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

You may ask: How can a whole city sink in Wisconsin? Well, read the book and find out.

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In a society hypersensitive about gender issues to the point of psychosis, a rape accusation is perhaps the worst claim you could lodge against someone short of adding that their victim was underage. But although certain gender-crazed pompom girls insist that false rape accusations are a vicious patriarchal fiction, by one estimate about half of all official rape complaints are entirely fabricated. Merely searching the word “false” alongside “rape” on Google News will yield a fresh crop of verifiably bogus allegations nationwide with each new sunrise. Try it if you don’t believe me.

At around 2 p.m. on August 20th, Wilen and Ardin walked together into a Stockholm police station. Both women told police of how Assange had, against their expressed wishes, ridden their naked golden haunches bareback and rubber-free. They both said they were alarmed about possibly having contracted STDs from him but that he’d refused their requests to be tested.

Oops.

Did you catch that? For both girls it was consensual, but suddenly it wasn’t consensual, but he wasn’t violent, but then again he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, but neither of them are afraid of him, anyway, even though he’s twisted.

Assange now faces charges in Sweden for what is legally known there as “sex by surprise.”

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Following in such unimpeachable footsteps, Ardin once reportedly filed a sexual-harassment complaint against another student for looking at his notes and not paying attention to her—while she was apparently giving a lecture on sexual harassment!—and thus using “male suppression techniques” to make her feel inferior and unwanted. When the male student learned of the complaint, he apologized to Ardin, who filed a NEW harassment complaint arising from his apology.

‘Oh brave new world, that has such people in’t!’

Whether or not he was set up, and whether or not it was the CIA, doesn’t seem all that important to me. One would think that a globetrotting David seeking to slay the American Goliath would have the good sense to keep his dick in his pants. But in this case, he apparently made the mistake of penetrating a radical feminist seeking to bring the patriarchy to its knees.

The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley;
And that is why wise men don’t leave their dicks astray.

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To quote George Carlin: ‘If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it.’

For Professionals Only.

Makes Congress look like a kindergarten recess.

The Other McCain sometimes points and laughs.

Before we go wading into that troll-infested argument, however, let’s pause to consider a remarkable fact: Interpol is now issuing warrants for men who fail to wear condoms.

Perhaps Julian Assange should convert to Catholicism and ask the Pope to testify on his behalf.

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Perhaps they need to make the acquaintance of the Wicker Man.

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Or you could just open the fargin door yourself.

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At least 120 white farmers in Zimbabwe have returned to the land by setting up farms under leasehold deals with the black beneficiaries of Robert Mugabe’s land seizure policies.

These people are certifiable idiots. Let’s hope they don’t breed and pass their defective genes on to future generations. (Fortunately, in Zimbabwe they probably won’t live that long. But still.)

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Obviously, those are the guys doing denial-of-service attacks on their hosting providers.

It’s all so clear to me now.

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