Across Difficult Country

Since its unnerving appearance in November of 2006 there have been no further reports of the mysterious Sandsend blob , but I have learned of an earlier blob visitation at the scene of a world famous car crash : "In the recent Channel 4 documentary The Witnesses in the Tunnel, she [Princess Diana] disappeared behind a grey blob, which obscured the body the doctors were trying to resuscitate." We know from subsequent events the Sandsend blob was a harbinger of doom for Whitby. The presence of a blob at a gruesome accident suggests the blobs might be both an ill omen and a cause of terrible events, perhaps even feeding off human suffering in some manner. Elsewhere: The $1,000,000 Remote Viewing Challenge .

In a speech last Friday President Bush said , "Our nation is more vibrant because of the contributions made by Hispanic Americans in all sectors of our society." Although he didn't go on to name any specific contributions which have increased our Gross National Vibrancy the ones that leap to my mind at least are the taco, the lowrider car, and a recently developed bit of 'spice in the melting pot' known as el bomba del gato : "A sicko set a cat on fire in East Boston, and then used the burning, screeching animal as a live Molotov cocktail, chucking it at the window of a house, a crime that investigators believe could be connected to gang violence. The live fireball was heaved at a first-floor window at 204 Princeton St. in the Eagle Hill section of the neighborhood, leaving the charred outline of the tortured animal in the screen of the two-family home. "This kid threw something at the house. It was on fire. It was making noises," said construction ...

“Property developer Owen O'Callaghan had a bizarre tendency to hide in broom cupboards in toilets during breaks in business meetings he was attending, fellow developer Tom Gilmartin told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday. Mr Gilmartin recalled how on one occasion he had gone to the toilet during a tea break and had seen Mr O'Callaghan falling out of a cupboard where he had been hiding.” - via the Irish Independent .

Economist Steven Landsburg calculates Americans who oppose immigration must think immigrants are “ worth less than one-fifth of an American citizen .” Obviously a more apposite calculation would be determining how much immigrants’ value the lives of American citizens - to the average immigrant, is an American’s well-being worth three-quarters as much as his, or half as much, or one-quarter as much? I say obviously, but for some reason it did not occur to the great mind of Steven Landsburg, possibly because he’s tired from all the charity work someone as altruistic and unselfish as he is must surely be doing.

I’m not the sort of person who moblogs 1 , I’m the sort who writes things down on a scrap of paper, intending to type them in later. So there I was reviewing some dormant financial accounts 2 when I discovered the following gem, scribbled last December and, what with all the holiday distractions 3 , forgotten. Until now: In the spirit of the season I selected a group of troubled teens from a local youth center and had them write what gift they wished for Christmas on a 3x5 card. Of course the requests were ludicrous - designer clothes, gold jewelry, etc. Many asked for expensive video game consoles, or, as one of the delinquents wrote, “get me X buks.” One 12 year old boy just wrote “X”. I think he wanted an Xbox too, but who knows? A 14 year old girl asked for a pony. “You can’t even feed your own children, how would you feed a Pony?” I asked her. She admitted I had a point. Not a single one wished for peace on Earth. So I threw away the cards and gave each of them a copy of When I W...

Afer announcing a proposal to “provide free diapers-to-dormitory public education”, expand “early childhood learning programs”, with “the pledge of a free two-year community college degree to all high school graduates”, the obviously deranged Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick proclaimed: "There will be those, there always are, who say we can't afford this, that this is too ambitious, that the interests involved are too entrenched, perhaps that this is just too h-a-a-a-rd," the governor said, stretching the final word in a belittling manner. "Those are the same voices who said that President Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon in less than a decade was a folly, who said the United States could never win the Second World War, who said that America would never free her slaves, who said the colonies could never be independent of Britain, that America herself could never be born." And then there are those voices that say we can’t build a community coll...