I'd forgotten until now that it's Halloween!  It's time for pumpkin carving . . . though my rather wicked sense of humor really enjoys taking this annual custom to wild extremes!  I'm always amused by using pumpkins as cannonballs or by carving t

And the review is worse than anything Ebert and Roeper or Rotten Tomatoes.Com could have come up with.Veteran Egyptian actor Omar Sharif recently played Saint Peter in an Italian TV film.  Instead of giving him a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, Al Qaeda

No surprise, but no joy either.  The Times of London has the story.  It includes these two lines which together speak volumes:~Cardinal Sodano, speaking at a conference, said that in return for the Vatican cutting its links with Taiwan, China would

Danish blogger Fjordman is on fire -- his coverage of the Danish cartoon situation has been detailed and articulate.  His latest post on cartoon and consequence is certainly worth a read, as he reports that international Muslim organizations are now

I came across this photo at the "Engrish"-ridden  People's Daily, and it's labeled "Li Xinniao wins the champion of the Miss China Beauty Pageant, which was held in Xianghe, Hebei Province on Oct 29, 2005."  Well, China had had

This op-ed is from a couple days past, but I found it too amusingly incisive to pass up:There are, in truth, two EUs. In the official EU - the EU of commission press statements and council communiqués and Mr Blair's speeches - thousands of "unn

I kid you not!  Honestly, I can't make this stuff up.You must see the news video on this one.Much as I want to, I will make no jokes about tasty roast squirrel for dinner. (Yummy!)

This story hasn't been covered much at all in the MSM, as rioting continues in the Paris suburb of Clichy-Sous-Bois, which is an immigrant enclave:Fjordman and Gateway Pundit have the story.  Fjordman's entry is particularly detailed, with backgroun

Come on, everyone knows that members of the CCP leadership in Beijing is constantly trying to outdo each other in sheer speechifying, but this recent whopper had to be publicized:"A small number of Japanese militarists who surrendered in 1945 ar

This report is interesting, though I haven't been able to find independent confirmation from the think tank in question, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.Still, it's a peek into the messy world of Taiwanese domestic politi

It's Friday afternoon, so let's take a break and look at the weekend ahead! This happy thought made me wonder what students around the Ivy League are doing for fun, so I took a look.  My findings are rather bemusing:~At Harvard, people are wondering

An Italian laboratory in Cremona has managed to clone 14 little oinkers.I am now cynically waiting for the Islamofascist outrage.  I hope I'm wrong!

Aristotle once said that man is by nature a political animal.  Still, politics make people act funny.  I think this is true of every nation on the planet.  Heck, I think it's true of every planet that has politics.  If aliens on Mars had politics

Boston might be the Athens of America, but just like in the real ancient Athens, there are plenty of charlatans, sophists, and shameless cheaters in Boston too.Prestigious MIT just fired a biology professor because he falsified data.  Fake results

Here's a follow-up to the recent Hello Kitty wedding horror.Reuters news service has a one-minute news clip about Hello Kitty weddings in Japan.  Some of the footage is indescribable.  You simply have to see it for yourself.  According to the repo

Turn up your speakers!Ready . . . Set . . .GO!!!This is the funniest thing I've seen since the Numa Numa Dance desecrated Romanian pop music.  Enjoy!  (Link filched from Sun Bin.)

This is without doubt the biggest corruption scandal ever, and it keeps getting bigger by the moment:More than 4,500 companies took part in the UN oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein

And now for a bit of historically relevant news you won't hear on your normal news outlets.Veterans of the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen of World War II are currently in Iraq to show their support for the troops.  Good on them!If you've forgotten your

I'm not making this up.  This story is too crazy to be true, but it is.Suddenly I have the silly image in my mind of dour-faced European judges and scientists gravely smelling boxes upon boxes of strawberries to figure out if, as the company insiste

Now that Gerhard Schroeder is on his way out of the German government, I really shouldn't continue to  make fun of him.  I should thank him for his many years of service and wish him well on his impending retirement.  Even President Bush called S

Here is a follow-up to the previous post on cartoon and consequence in Denmark.Now the very good Norwegian blogger Fjordman has this heartening report that although Muslim ambassadors are complaining to the Danish government, the Danish prime minist

Sir Isaac Newton!  That scientific genius who described universal gravitation!  who set down the laws of motion! who invented differential calculus!  (well, yeah, along with Leibniz... but independently of each other)Did you know that Newton also

This is simply too horrifyingly cute for words. (Link filched from that Instapundit of Asia, Simon World)But I looked up the official website, and you can indeed get yourself a . . . wait for it . . . Hello Kitty wedding package(And there you were,

Bruce Chang's got a nice writeup of China's insatiable appetite for energy and what it's doing to meet that need both at home and abroad.  When energy needs meet geopolitics, things become complicated very quickly indeed.Think, for instance, of the

Just to let you know . . .  Sometimes I really, REALLY hate East Coast weather.Like right now.  A big nasty Nor'easter is busy pummeling the area, and the wind, rain, and cold are making life pretty miserable!  The rain's been pouring down nonstop