The U.S. administration's decision to abandon America's commitment to the Kyoto Protocol has created the most serious international environmental policy crisis in years, says President of the Worldwatch Institute, Christopher Flavin. Today's development puts at risk a decade of efforts to craft an agreement to protect the world from climate change.

"Star Wars" fans in the United Kingdom hoping to start their own religion were foiled this week. According to CNET, an e-mail circulated suggesting that the upcoming U.K. Census would recognize "Jedi" as a religion if enough people wrote it in the form. The Office of National Statistics has confirmed that the e-mail is false, dashing the hopes of "Star Wars" fanatics attempting to become Jedi Knights. The e-mail was quoted by CNET: "If there are enough people who put down a religion that isn't mentioned on the census form, it becomes a fully recognized and legal religion. Send this on to all your friends and tell them to put down "Jedi" on their census form. And remember...if you are a member of the Jedi religion then you are by default a "Jedi Knight." Unfortunately, according to a representative at the Office of National Statistics, this simply isn't true.

My personal favorite paragraph from the story, however, is chosen not because of Paul's quotes. Here 'tis:

"No, that's not true at all," Harral says. "We get hammered no matter what we do. We publish people all the time who the readership doesn't like. It comes with the territory." In fact, he says, first thing Monday morning, the paper called Creators and renegotiated the rights to continue running her column. Not that the Morning News could have had exclusive rights to run her column, or would have wanted to, or would even have noticed the announcement in Sunday's Star-T that Ivins was leaving. After all, the Morning News, tempting corporate fellatrix that she is, has been quite distracted lately, what with her mouth so tightly wrapped around Boeing's cockpit.

Check this out.

4/16/01

As readers of detective novels know, a "perfect caper" is committed when the perpetrator gets to keep all of its ill-gotten gains and goes unpunished. Even if they are brought to trial, due to a variety of unusual circumstances, they still escape sanctions. This is essentially what some people are arguing about Microsoft (MS). They argue that even if the courts ultimately hold that MS violated the law, it will not be made to account for it, at least not by private plaintiffs. They argue that MS will never have to pay out even a single dollar in an antitrust case.

This is very unusual for me. I'm not generally inclined to pass on unproven financial advice, but yesterday, I heard from a drug rep for Glaxo who told me that they are on the verge of launching a new herbal remedy that they think will take the market by storm. This drug sounds so promising that I want to suggest to my friends and family that they consider buying stock in the company. The drug is called "Ginko Viagra", and its function is to help you remember what the fuck you are doing.

Comment 1: Next time be assertive in your use of the company Bell Jet Ranger and instruct the pilot to deliver you at JFK before he delivers your colleagues at Newark and LaGuardia on his way from Manhattan. Should take a lot less than 40 minutes non-stop. Apparently, according to at least one newspaper, his illegititude (currently working 24/7 at the White House; that's 24 hours a month, 7 months a year - the rest of the time he's trying to figure some way to get his brother re-elected as chief disenfranchiser of the blacks in Florida) agrees with the airline that San Francisco and the entire state of California are not in the United States and has already written the state off for 2004. Hope you have your exercise bicycle attached to a generator if you want electricity in California for the next four years.

NFA as to comment 2:

Comment 2: Congratulations to Peggy Noonan for avoiding the cardinal journalistic sin of letting the facts get in the way of a story. In fact, the Miami paper reported that using the Republican approved and requested method of counting only ballots on which the chads were completely disconnected from the ballot and applying the equal protection standard enunciated by the Supreme Court (same standard in all Florida counties) (enunciated after the Court discarded a few hundred years of settled Anglo-American jurisprudence to enable it to take the case on December 9, 2001) the person entitled to Florida's 25 electoral votes and to the Presidency of the United States was Albert Gore (by 3 votes which is 200% greater than the legal requirement of 1 vote). For some reason, the headline on most stories about this count was something other than "Gore's Actual Margin 200% Greater Than Needed To Win"

As long as we're on journalistic support for political parties, I guess the editors at The Wall Street Journal must have cut Peggy's paragraph (which she must have included for balance having learned at Dan's direction) relating how George Will prepared Ronald Reagan for a televised debate with President Jimmy Carter in 1980 (possibly in conjunction with other preparers who, perhaps without Will's knowledge, used a Carter debate briefing book stolen, apparently by a career military officer, from the President and/or his staff; in English, that's a covert intelligence operation) and then, after the debate, appeared as an independent journalist on the ABC network to comment on the debate (without mentioning that he prepared Reagan for the debate). Over 20 years later, Will is still on ABC which, as I'm sure Peggy must have written (even if the liberal editors deleted what she wrote to promote a so-called conservative viewpoint) is clear evidence of iron-clad conservative control (not influence or tendency, control) of at least one journalistic outlet (there are others also so-controlled, starting with the Aaardvark Advocate and ending with the Zzzebulon News).