Read it.

Well, they’ve got to do something – it’s not as if the world’s navies are doing squat.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

A shootout between rival Somali pirate gangs over their biggest ransom ever threatened to turn an oil supertanker and the 28 hostages aboard into a massive fireball until bandits begged the international anti-piracy force for help.

Truly, you cannot make this stuff up.

Read it.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked. I think there’s one of these in my community.

Read it.

Hint: They’re all going up. (Hey, you expected something different from Democrats?)

Read it.

The Sun appears to have got the shock news from blinkbox.com, which suggested that the $1bn box office barrier acts as a trigger for movie-based sprogbranding. A spokesman offered: “Past the $100m barrier, the chances of a film’s star lending their name to a child increase.”

As the gene pool slowly degenerates….

Read it.

Russians are almost as strange as the Japanese.

Read it.

Who needs strings when you can have buttons?

Read it.

As everyone knows, in response to the Northwest flameout, the Obama administration has adopted policies that are almost exactly the same as those of the Bush administration, turning the flying experience into a political advertisement for all the wonderful things that the president is doing to fight the war on terror.

Why people put up with this shit is just beyond me.

Read it.

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

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

Read it. And laugh, as I did.

The Islamic Solidarity Games, designed to strengthen ties among Muslim nations, have been cancelled after a dispute between Arab countries and Iran over the name of the waterway dividing them.

Jack Shafer is pretty dyspeptic these days. But here’s the fun part:

Haitian Nitpicking Bonus No. 1: Why the goddamn hell is Barack Obama writing the cover story for next week’s Newsweek (which, like Slate, is owned by the Washington Post Co.)? He doesn’t know anything about Haiti outside of what his aides may have told him. He won’t even write it! If the piece is worth publishing, Newsweek should give the byline to its true author.

Read it.

A twelfth-century poem newly translated into English casts fresh light on the origin of today’s Francophobic stereotypes.

Things haven’t really changed that much.

Andrew Stuttaford pulls no punches.

The myth that all religions are basically the same—and basically benign—is a nonsense that could only flourish in a society that has little knowledge of the past and, for that matter, of the nature of religious belief. Naturally it’s an idea that is being actively peddled in both Europe and America today.

Read it.

Yeah, that government-run health care in Britain is miles better than what we have in the U.S.

Read it.

Venus to follow presently?

Read it.

Soon to be a best-selling novel by Dan Brown.

Read it.

Everything bad is good for you.

Peter Suderman has the goods.

Last month, I noted the possibility that health care reform could give states an incentive to withdraw from Medicaid. Health care reform legislation currently includes approximately $25 billion in unfunded state Medicaid expansions. But many states are in terrible fiscal shape and would have a tough time coming up with the cash to pay for the expansion. Now, the governor of Nevada is saying that his state’s response could be to simply drop out of Medicaid—a voluntary program—entirely.

Of course, the response of the federal government will be to make the program mandatory.

Read it.

Markets show up even when you don’t want them to.

Read it.

The World Food Programme has said that its warehouses in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince have been looted and that it would have to restock in order to provide urgent food aid for 2 million people affected by the deadly earthquake.

It would appear to me that they’ve already got all the ‘urgent food aid’ that they ought to get.

Read it.

If Apple does a tablet, I’ll probably want it. I may not buy it, but I’ll almost certainly want it. *sigh*

Read it.

Read it.

Not to mention the apparent innate human desire to dick around with something that works perfectly well as is.

Read and Heed.

Read it.

How much aid have destitute Muslims received from the West? Lots.

How much aid have destitute Westerners received from Muslims? Zero.

That tells you all you need to know about Islam.

Read it.

Read it.

An actress was doused with petrol in Paris in an attack thought to be related to her role in a feminist play she wrote about Algerian women.

Your future under Islam. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

Read it.

This ornate weapon of antiqued cast metal and high carbon stainless steel could pass for either sidearm or spaceship.

I defy any human being to carry this more than 30 seconds without cutting himself. More of an AlGore knife than a Bowie knife.

Read it.

‘I’m sure it’s fun as a networking device for teenagers but there’s something undignified about adults using it.’

My thought exactly.

Read it.

The guys who run the plant must not be from around here.

Seth Godin understands the dialectic.

If the industry can’t make money selling what you’re selling, why will they help you?

I especially like this one:

Governments don’t like buying at retail. They prefer custom stuff from high-touch organizations that can bring them the mountain, instead of the other way around. They’d rather pay 10x for an office supply that’s customized just for them, instead of modifying what they want to match what the market sells. It gives them something to do. And all those salespeople! The trips, the bribes, the attention…

Read it.

But bear in mind, there are lawyers who would actually take that case.

Read it.

And as long as we have government-run schools, what will be taught will be a political question and fought out in fora such as these.

Read it.

Check it out.

How to be a success in any job.

Read it.

And why is this so? Because their sacred texts tell them it is a good and holy thing to kill as many infidels as possible. Convert or die is the rule for the rest of us. May it be a choice you are never required to make.

All the dancing and handwaving in the world can’t get around that simple fact.

Read it.

Gotta love Australians.

George Will lets ‘er rip.

It’s time to get rid of a meaningless number.

Read it.

Scientists have temporarily suspended an avalanche experiment that involved burying live pigs in snow and monitoring their deaths after being criticised by animal rights activists.

Get some Muslims to do it. They like killing things, they hate pigs, and they don’t give a shit what animal rights activists say.

Read it.

Well. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Megan McArdle has the goods.

Presumably, the unions plan to go back and get their exclusion extended every few years.  Otherwise, the deal doesn’t make much sense.  The ostensible reason for the respite is to allow them to renegotiate new collective bargaining agreements, but in these inflationary times, how many collective bargaining agreements last longer than three years?  I could be wrong about that, but unless I am, 2013 is plenty far enough away for most of the unions in question to negotiate better contracts.

Read it.

‘Hey, aid isn’t getting to us fast enough! We’ll show them! We’ll block the roads!’

Ignorance can be cured, but stupid is forever.

Read it.

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

Read it.

Orthodox Christianity has a tradition of saints who are known as fools-for-Christ, people who have attacked the sin of pride by behaving in ways that seem, to the casual observer, insane. To date, there is no tradition in Orthodoxy of wiseguys-for-Christ, which is a shame: that would be handy category for Fr. Joseph Huneycutt.

The book laces together personal memories, stories from the life of a priest, and fictional episodes to form a set of tales about what it’s like to be an Orthodox convert in a country where “Orthodox” is usually understood to mean “Jewish men with old-fashioned hats” and where a hearty “Christos Anesthi” is more likely to be met with “gesundheit” than “Alithos Anesthi.”

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Let’s spell out the logic. The United Nations is a pain in the butt. It pays no taxes and annoys hard-working New Yorkers with its sloth, pretensions and cavalier disregard for traffic laws. The place is a sinkhole dominated by anti-American, anti-Semitic and authoritarian fantasies. It is far from the elegant crown jewel that celebrated the U.S.’s global ascendancy after the Second World War.

Sheikh Mohammed could offer to build a United Nations City to house the U.N. in any number of vacant office towers. Business Bay has 65 million square feet of office space under construction in more than 200 high-rises. Dubai already has thousands of newly constructed apartments that await the international delegates. More than 2 billion people in Africa, Europe and Asia are within a six-hour flight from Dubai. Travel connections through the world’s largest airport would be a breeze. Dubai has 55 five-star hotels to accommodate every regal and royal delegation, as well as the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center, a $1,400,000,000 facility branded with the Harvard crest, just in case one of the U.N.’s elite workers breaks a gasket.

Works for me.

This is news?

Read it.

Perhaps because most ‘scientists’ today are time-serving hacks? That’s just a guess, of course.