ninme

The Times – Three pressure points to make Iran crumble<br/> The Tehran regime is taking a beating at home and abroad. President Obama should ditch his conciliatory tone, by Rosemary Righter

This emphasis on conciliation is, to put it mildly, odd given that it came at a press conference expressly called to read the riot [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

When Republicans flood:

Boston.com – Flooding in the Southeast

Also from last week. Look at those McMansions. Somehow I missed the news about the networks setting up permanent news bureaus there to report on the recovery…

Categories: Science and Nature

I’ve had this open since forever ago:

Telegraph – The best London Underground Tube map pastiches

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Wheat & Weeds – Weekend Joke (yeah, it’s Wednesday, what of it)

The Pope and Nancy Pelosi were on a stage together in front of a huge crowd. However, both of them have been in front of crowds before, so, to make this time more interesting, Nancy said to the Pope, “Did you know [...]

Categories: Politics

Jonah Goldberg:

You could think the underlying crime wasn’t that big a deal (not my position by any stretch), but how can anyone forgive Polanski’s flight from justice? I don’t care what your ideology is, that just makes no sense if you believe in the rule of law at all.

Yes! Thank you!

For further reading [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

It’s getting late, but I’ve had a couple things stacked up, waiting to be posted…

The Times (Wednesday) – Colonel Gaddafi finally finds somewhere to pitch his tent – on Donald Trump’s land

“There is no legal way to prevent this as he is a head of state, despite the fact that he has a [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Slate – First They Came for the Pigs<br/> The terrible consequences of Egypt’s swine slaughter. By Christopher Hitchens

So the background we’ve been over in a previously quoted article, which Mr Hitchens has been reading too:

I read all the way to the end of Michael Slackman’s well-written and vividly illustrated report in the New York [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Telegraph Blogs – Tim Collard: What the hell is the point of the United Nations? (a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany & an active member of the Labour Party)

So the circus has come to town again. The unspeakable Gaddafi is given a reasonable 15 minutes [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Time magazine, in a 1966 obituary, summarised his oeuvre by claiming that Waugh had “developed a wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious assault on a century that, in his opinion, had ripped up the nourishing taproot of tradition and let wither all the dear things of the world.”[5]

From the Wikipedia article on Evelyn Waugh. [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

The Times – Gaddafi interpreter ‘collapsed during UN speech’, by James Bone in New York

The translator broke down as the man once denounced by Ronald Reagan as the “mad man” of the desert embarked on a tirade about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an explanation of his call for a single-state solution called “Isratine”. [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

I don’t think RC2’s a fan:

Wheat & Weeds – In Which I Side Against The British PM

Why must we pretend that an organization which exists to misspend money, enrich apparatchiks, make sex-slave rings of girls in war zones, fund China’s forced abortion policy, give international venues to holocaust deniers, dictators and mass murderers, [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Not totally out of left field, apparently, as there’s a “fine new exhibition” on at the British Museum. Shucks…

The TImes – Cortés’s regime change was good for Mexico<br/> Moctezuma was a brutal and bloodthirsty dictator. It’s no wonder neighbouring tribes helped the Spanish to overthrow him, by Hugh Thomson

The Spaniards did, of course, bring [...]

Categories: History

BBC – Nick Robinson’s Newslog: Gaddafi UN drama serves ace to Brown

Gaddafi [tossed] aside a copy of the UN Charter. It was an act – at the end of a 1 hour 36 minute address which provided Gordon Brown with an ideal opportunity to come to the defence of the UN. [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

In the comments of my post pining for an inter-war upper-class drinking culture, Red writes,

If they went to a public (ie private) school before the First World War – as Waugh did – it’s a fair bet that they drank beer every day, rather than tea or coffee. That’s what happened in the [...]

Categories: History

io9 – Did Ralph Nader Write The Weirdest Science Fiction Story Of The Year?

The story begins in 2005, not long after Hurricane Katrina. A secret gathering is convened by Buffett at a Maui mountain retreat, where 17 very wealthy people agree to take back the country they think has [...]

Categories: Art and Literature