CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

If you have already watched this.

You might take a look at this one too:

A Trillion Dollars

Did you know what a trillion dollars look like?

Here it is.

In a few words...

This is memorable, it sums up what is more embarassing and insulting of the social liberal status quo.

Without having Hanif Kureishi's exalted, exquisite, Nancy-Mitford-style sensitivity for class distinctions, I do see that the combination of Mrs Thatcher's beliefs and her social origins (and perhaps also her sex) is toxic for people like him.

People like Mrs Thatcher – state-educated, lower-middle-class, provincial, female – were not supposed to question the 1945 state-socialist settlement. To its architects, such people were of no account. They were neither poor enough to attract romantic sympathy, nor grand enough to be entitled to power. They were expected to know their place.

But, read the whole piece by Mark Steyn's about it...

What he says and what he does

Many times I tried to sum up some of my ideas into well written points on how Africa can and cannot develop. Well apparently Mark Steyn beat me amply with this witty, ironic yet brilliantly written piece on what aid is and aid does...:

...A quarter-century ago at Live Aid, Bob Geldof stood on the stage of Wembley Stadium and bellowed at the developed world: “Give us yer fokkin’ money!” By the time of Live 8 in 2005, the message had evolved: the rockers were no longer demanding our money, only that we in turn beseech our governments to give more “aid” to Africa. In her new book, the Zambian economist (actually, more of an econo-babe) Dambisa Moyo takes aim at Sir Bob and Sir Bono beginning with the very title: Dead Aid. Government-to-government aid, says Miss Moyo, all but guarantees corruption and barbarism: a country that seeks private business investment will be accountable to the global markets; a country that raises public funds from taxes will be accountable to its own voters. But a government that gets “aid” from other governments is accountable to no one and nothing, and decades of easy money that make self-absorbed Western do-gooders feel swell about themselves have debauched the political culture of a continent. Which is why so much of the trillion dollars lavished on Africa since the earliest days of decolonization has wound up in this week’s president-for-life’s Swiss bank account while the conditions for domestic wealth generation improve not a whit...

Tarantino movie or Reality?

Almost fell from my chair when I arrived to the last part of the tale.
My comment was: unbelievable!

The robber, a 32-year-old man identified by Life.ru as "Viktor," burst into the salon at around 5 p.m. waving a pistol and ordered all of the stylists and clients to hit the floor and toss him their money.

At this point, 28-year-old Olga, whom Life.ru describes as a "delicate" girl trained in martial arts, was apparently still standing when she offered to hand over her cash. But when Viktor tried to accept her contribution, Olga surprised him with a quick punch to the chest, knocking the wind out of him before she flipped him to the ground.

Olga proceeded to tie Viktor up with a hair-dryer cord, gagged him and dragged him into a storage room...

She tied him to the radiator with handcuffs covered in frilly pink fabric, gave him some Viagra and had her way with him several times over the next 48 hours. When she finally let him go on the evening of March 16, Viktor had been "squeezed like a lemon," Life.ru reported.

First, he went to the hospital to have his injured genitals treated...

Precision, Deadly Precision

If you see a scene like that in a movie, now, in 2009, your reaction would probably be to mentally lower the movie to a "B movie", just for that, because, after all: who's gonna believe these things happen like that?!"

Well, it came out they do happen.

so... what about Iceland?

Iceland never is at the center of the media's attention, even the big economic crack was sort of ignored by tv and newspapers, maybe mainly because no one here in Europe knew much of the Icelandic economy to start with.
The bubble has burst completely there, and now this article describing that crisis can make you understand the global crisis. Yes because after all Iceland has a "simpler" economy than France or Italy, so if you understand how the game got broken there then it's easier for you to understand the dynamics of it somewhere else.

Here is the usual and enlightening post by Mark Steyn.

Academic Madness Watch - 01

It is not breaking news that in most US colleges now there is a speech code in place. This can be more or less strict. The aberration is that the schools declarers that in order to protect the people's right they need to curtail free speech. In my house this would be called propaganda.

Quite astonishing was this guy's answer to the Southern Utah University:

In light of SUU officials plan to designate "Free Speech Zones" on campus, I thought I'd offer my assistance. Grab a map. OK, ready?

All right, you see that big area between Canada and Mexico, surrounded by lots of blue ink on the East and West? You see it?

There's your bloody Free Speech Zone.

Jeffrey Wilbur

Senior communication major from Bountiful

Read the whole thing here.

This ain't no Dirty Harry

There is a lot of similar news with the same worrying pattern: when police, the tough one, is needed, well, bureaucracy eunuchized them somewhere along the last 2 decades.

This Steyn's pearl sums it up:

A few days ago in The Corner, I mentioned the South Yorkshire Police, who sat outside watching as a young couple and their children burned to death, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who sat outside a Greyhound bus for four hours watching a cannibal slice body parts off his victim and eat them. Now from Binghamton: >>> ...read more

This ain't no Dirty Harry! And if Dirty Harry is too old and wrinkled now anyway then reinstate Vic Mackey and give him carte blanche.

The Super-Bower

Here is the picture:



Here is the video (checkout at 0:54):



...and here is the tragic explanation on why you should start to worry.

UPDATE 01: As George V, rex et imperator 1910-36, said, "Only waiters bow at the waist."

Crisis explained ...by South Park

...aaaaand it's gone!!!

Decay and death of a country

You know a country's institutions are at the stage that I'd call "cancer in the fabric of society" when things like this happens and right after they self compliment (the institutions) with this piece of filth:

The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place.

But first of all, read about the fact:

In my column today, and in an earlier Corner post, I’ve written about Britain and its health-and-safety regime. Several readers have sent me articles from yesterday’s London newspapers. The story is sad — or possibly outrageous. In the Times, the headline was, “Fire kills child, 3, and parents as police prevent neighbours from trying to rescue them.” >>> read more...

...and now read what Mark Steyn had to comment about it:

Jay, that fire story from Doncaster is almost unbearably sad: The characteristically moronic behavior of the braindead British coppers transformed it from a family tragedy to a national metaphor. >>> read more...

It is in my opinion utterly unbearable. Great Britain is well on the way to its sovietization (see this and this), this story shows, among other things, the arrogant disrespect for the individuality that the nanny-state once again proudly screams out load. If a person wants to risk his/her life to save a kid nobody should be entitled to stop that person. This is indeed the stupidification of the modern Europe! Sad thing is that I just hoped the Great Britain was different, but I'm realizing that it is probably even farther gone into decay.