Article of the Day

Rachel sent me a link this this interesting piece: Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining, by Charlotte Allen. I've never read an atheist website in my life, so it was pretty informational for me.

Article of the Day

I have had this great little piece open for six seeks. I'm finally getting around to closing old tabs on my real clear politics window, so I'd finally like to share with you National Disservice, By James Bovard. It's rather entertaining, and show clearly some of the waste of the Socialist Democrat Party and Obama in particular.

Facefuck Doesn't Let Me Write Long Enough Status Updates

This guy awoke at the ungodly hour of 6:30 and ate an apple in bed with his eyes closed. Ten minutes later he rose and shined all morning; but now that he's eaten his left over pizza lunch, what he'd really like for dessert before returning to the piles of work on his desk is a sweet sweet nap: so he wonders, now, as he's wont to wonder after lunch, if there's an unoccupied classroom somewhere in the college with a sofa he can lock from the inside.

Article of the Day

Robert Fulford: The UN speaks, and the world listens. Are we nuts?

Quite right. And when Congress refused Bush's appointment for UN Ambassador, we should have quit the UN.

Article of the Day

After a life time of trying to get the government out of my face, apparently, I'll be the happiest guy around: Happiness Is ... Being Old, Male and Republican

Consultation Innuendos and Another Student Hilarity

Lately I've been consulting the students who are writing diploma papers with me. Here are a couple passages from our dialogues:

Student, showing me a text box: "Is this a nice box?"
Professor: "Yes, you have a splendid box."

Another student showing me a pie chart: "Does my pie look good to you?"
Professor: "Sure does."

And today in class the warm up question each student had to answer in class was, "What was your last job, did it have any fringe benefits?"

Student: "I worked a construction job."
Professor: "Oh yeah? What kind of work did you have to do?"
Student: "Nothing, just stealing things."

Turns out stealing things wasn't even the fringe benefit: he'd take night shifts and sleep the whole time.

Dos and don’ts of another Trip to Cyprus

• Do insist that your eye-catching, seductive, appealing , glamorous , stunning, glimmering, exotic, alluring, foxy, marvelous, lovely, enticing, dazzling wife come: you’ll be lonely without your beautiful, intelligent, becoming, kind, well-chosen and forever increasingly sexually attractive soul mate.
• Don't break your toothbrush as soon as you get there...brushing all week with a one inch brush is sucky.
• Do turn on the central air for your room at night: even if the temperature is right without it, the whirring noise will block out the maniacal screaming from next door.
• Don’t overpay at the convenience store—too greedy: when my deodorant rang up too high I though fuck it, arguing about price correctness is hard enough on your own turf, and I do need some deodorant, but then the prick rung up the juice too high also, so I pointed out his two mistakes and paid the right price for both.
• Do eat the "prawn cocktail" flavored chips.
• Don't eat anything that doesn't taste good.
• Do take a full bottle of wine every time you leave a room with wine on the table.
• Don't expect to be fed sooner than an hour after the 350 person buffet begins.
• Do complain that your minibar isn’t cold at all; it’s quite funny just how profusely the hotel staff is taught to apologize.
• Don't wait an hour after eating to go swimming, it might get cloudy.
• Do order yourself some poached eggs and waffles or pancakes or french toast to end the monotony of the buffet breakfast, it's free!
• Don't pose for too many pictures with beautiful ladies or another even more, much more beautiful and pregnant lady might think you should have called more often.
• Do brush off the waiter who slept on his wine pouring duty: "Excuse me sir, I should pour the wine." "Too late buddy, I'm doing it now!"
• Don't expect to gain less than five pounds if you enjoy yourself to excess.
• Do go ahead and stock up on cigars and pipes at the Alpha-Mega grocery store, they're cheaper than in Lithuania.
• Don't laugh too hysterically when your colleagues opens a beer and it sprays all over her.
• Do go on all the excursions you can, the sights of Cyprus are splendid.
• Don't forget to bring some palm trees back for your special lady.

Article of the Day

Don't start nothing, won't be nothing, by Gregory Kane, is an excellent article about the morality of war and torture. I'm surprised I haven't read anything by him before: he's brief, to the point, and very convincing.

I remember where I was too, of course, even though I wasn't stateside. I'd just begun my Erasmus year at Vilnius University and I was at home in Riese. My uncle Alfonasas ran over to the house and yelled to turn on the television, that America was at war. I ran upstairs to get Sarunas Krukonis, who was living with me at the time. For at least a half hour he didn't believe it: he was utterly convinced that I must be playing a practical joke on him, or else that it's all a hoax.

My mother was in a windowless room with blocked cell phone reception in Brussels, I believe: the doors on this conference were locked until the delegates could hammer out a new strategy on education. Imagine her worry when she walked back into the world and was flooded with ambiguous sympathetic text messages from Lithuania: she thought I was dead.

The thought that she had to endure that for even ten seconds before getting touch with me brings tears to my eyes. Where can I sign up to waterboard terrorists myself?

Cross-posted here on my mother's remembrance blog.

Arlen Specter: Fake, fraud and liar

I get a kick our of this guy.

Article of the Day

I haven't posted one of these for a while (busy). But here's one I started reading a month ago but never closed. It's quite an entertaining topic: National Disservice, President Obama’s feel-good draft, By James Bovard.