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Keisha Buchanan, the former Sugababes singer, says the success of the middle-class Kate Middleton with Prince William has given her hope with Prince Harry.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Megan McArdle enjoys the irony.

Perhaps you have to be familiar with New York politics to understand how truly bizarre this story is: 1199 is dropping its health care coverage for children.  1199 is the extraordinarily powerful local health care workers’ union which has pushed New York State’s Medicaid reimbursements into the stratosphere.  The state not only has much higher than average Medicaid enrollment, but also spends more per-enrollee than any state but Alaska.  Every time a governor tries to cut into, say, the funds for home health care workers, the union runs tear jerking ads which imply that the governor is trying to end health care for everyone in the state.

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Now we have a case where a group is trying to rate games for an entire religious body. Kotaku, a video game blog in the Gawker network, posts this interesting tidbit about how a group in the Middle East has launched a ratings system for games based on the tenets of the Islamic faith.

Wonder what sort of rating they give scenarios where Marines are blowing away jihadists.

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But the latest theory suggests that the great navigator, who died in 1506 after four voyages to the New World, was in fact of royal blood: the son of King Vladislav III who was supposedly slain in the Battle of Varna in 1444.

In his third book on the subject Manuel Rosa, who has spent 20 years researching the life of Columbus, suggests that Vladislav III survived the battle with the Ottomans, fled to live in exile on the island of Madeira where he was known as “Henry the German” and married a Portuguese noblewoman.

Mr Rosa believes a conspiracy was agreed to hide Columbus’ true origins and to protect the identity of his father. “The courts of Europe knew who he was and kept his secret for their own reasons,” the researcher at Duke University, North Carolina said.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

I think it’s a variant on the Polish Joke, personally.

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The new, updated, Politically Correct Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Dude, it’s been a long day.

Gotta love Australians–even the animals.

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If you’re looking to improve your child’s chanting skills or enhance their moon dancing, Lincolnshire may soon be the place to go – as the county decided this week to let individual schools decide on the teaching of pagan doctrine.

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A homosexual sperm donor who fathered two babies by a lesbian after placing an advert in a magazine is now engaged in a legal dispute over access to the children.

Not your grandfather’s Britain. Not even close.

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Everything bad is good for you.

Don’t like what scientists tell you? Wait a week or two, and they’ll reverse their opinions. (Unless grant money is involved, as with ‘climate change’. That’s cast in concrete, with enough rebar to built a new Bismarck.)

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Army cadets have been banned from carrying rifles on a Remembrance Day parade amid fears the weapons might “upset” onlookers.

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It’s hip, and trendy. Christian? Not so much.

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Life imitates art.

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British news is always more … interesting than American news.

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British news is always more interesting than American news.

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And, of course, there’s always the Death Star Pumpkin.

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Slow news day.

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Patrick Acton, 57 has created a massive replica of Minas Tirith, the city from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, using 420,000 match sticks. Acton, from Gladbrook, Iowa, spent 3,000 hours building the 8ft by 8ft structure.

Some people need to get a life.

A sign of the End Times.

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Slow news day.

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Diversity, ya know?

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A dog abandoned by its owner after it was born as a hermaphrodite is looking for a home after having a sex change operation.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

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Only a handful of cabins have yet to be sold on a cruise that is to follow the route of the Titanic to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship.

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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?

H/T Wheels Within Wheels.

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Guidance issued recently by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for public bodies suggseted it may be illegal for any school to require girls to wear skirts as part of their uniform, since this could discriminate against transsexual pupils.

It warned of legal action if uniforms were deemed “gender specific”.

Nurse Caroline Petrie was suspended after offering to say a prayer for an elderly lady on her ward. The tribunal heard that the patient was not offended. Ms Petrie said she “trying to do is help”. Andrea Williams, founder and director of the Christian Legal Centre, said people with traditional values were being silenced “in the name of equality and diversity policies”. Ms Petrie was later reinstated.

Political Correctness is rotting the bones of our culture.

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Spain is not what once it was.

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The little porker that could.

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The devices can be found currently in the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, Bankshop in Reutlingen, Germany, The Westin Palace in Madrid, and the Orio al Serio International Airport, and they’ll be hitting Las Vegas and Florida sometime this year.

You have to distrust the motives of people who will give you real gold and take dirty paper or electrons. What do they know that you don’t?

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Forward, Comrades, into a brave new world!

(AlGore, eat your heart out.)

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Well, that’s all right, then.

Steve Sailer has a great deal of fun with this one.

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The obvious implication is that black students are much more likely to be disruptive than white students. (Insert disquisition about dysfunctional ‘gangsta culture’ and that culture’s antipathy to ‘acting white’ here.)

Of course, the unspoken assumption of the writer (and, no doubt, his intended Crustian audience) is that there is some kind of dastardly racism going on there. It couldn’t possibly be that the students actually deserved the suspensions, oh no.

As Steve Sailer points out, you can’t parody this crap because it parodies itself.

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I would have guessed it meant ‘fear of not having any homosexuals around’ but I would have been wrong.

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Jarhead Red is a wine on a mission to support the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. True to its name, Jarhead Red boasts a robust character with rich black fruit flavors and a finish that doesn’t quit. This is the 10th vintage of Jarhead Red since the inaugural vintage of 1999.

I find the entire concept absolutely delightful.

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Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, who lost the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary, won the Republican nomination as a write-in candidate, the District board of elections said.

This is just a crazy year in politics.

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

Bats can be identified by their different regional dialects, researchers in Australia have discovered.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.

Gotta love Australians.

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

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In the culture at large, there is something of an obsession with learning the sex of babies in the womb, a fascination that can get pretty creepy and overdone. Some parents are having what they call “sex parties,” where they reveal the sex of their baby in some cutesy way. Websites offer reams of advice on how to make “creative gender announcements” (like getting the tell-tale sonogram put onto t-shirts and sent to friends as a gift, or having “It’s going to be a [Whatever]!” proclaimed on the JumboTron at a major sports event).

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Toymaker Martin Kittsteiner is hoping children will go potty for his new invention – a family of soft toys who all have psychiatric illnesses. The toys – suffering from everything from bipolar disorder to acute depression – come with their own medical history, a referral letter and a treatment plan. Patients include Dub the turtle with severe depression, Sly the snake who suffers from terrifying hallucinations, Dolly the sheep with a personality disorder and a crocodile which has a irrational terror of water. Martin sells the dolls for £25 each from his website www.parapluesch.de.

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Yale, of course, has too much taste to indulge in this sort of vulgar enterprise.

I suspect that this is a startup run out of a dorm room in Eliot House.

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Great. Let’s have him blow up Fidel Castro.

(I can see Fidel and Raoul watching the MSNBC reporter come in and muttering to each other “Let’s have some fun with this guy.”)

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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Not a headline that you read every day.

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A number of Al Azhar ulema expressed their opposition to building a mosque near [where] the events of September 11 [occurred], convinced that it is “a conspiracy to confirm a clear connection between the strikes of September [11] and Islam.” Dr. ‘Abd al-Mu’ti Bayumi, a member of the Islamic Research Academy [of Al Azhar] told Al Masry Al Youm that he rejects the building of any mosque in this area [Ground Zero], because the “devious mentality” desires to connect these events [of 9/11] with Islam, though he maintains that Islam is innocent of this accusation. Instead, it is a “Zionist conspiracy,” which many are making use of to harm the religion. Likewise, Dr. Amna Nazir, professor of doctrine and philosophy at Al Azhar, expressed her rejection that a mosque be built near the World Trade Center, saying: “Building a mosque on this rubble indicates bad intention — even if we wished to shut our eyes, close our minds, and insist on good will. I hope it is a sincere step, and not a new conspiracy against Islam and Muslims.”

Islam is the new Communism.

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I don’t know what the Russian word for hubris is, but these folks have got it.

Presumably we can expect the heirs of the Romanovs to weigh in at some point.

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Certainly a more productive use of one’s time.