ninme

Wheat & Weeds is on a roll.

First this:

Wife of the Week Is So Easy

I have little incentive to improve the weaknesses that cheese my husband off all week when my full glory in his eyes can be restored with two words: steak dinner.

Combined with this:

The Real Difference Between Men & Women

Men like The Three Stooges.

A college girlfriend taught me that, and its truth was confirmed again when hubby rented an early 3S flick. Daughter fell asleep, I observed detachedly, sons & husband laughed themselves silly. Even the toddler, male, learned to say, “Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.”

Then, everything you need to know about the world and all its intricate workings:

Death is Better Than Babies

…but as Janet Smith documents in Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later, when scientists were working to develop the pill, there were trials in both men and women. When some men suffered some slight testicular shrinkage, the trials were called off. When 8 women died of stroke, they just lowered the dose and kept going. But remember ladies, it’s all about our health and freedom.

I just found this (can’t find a link), digging through my archives:

Times Online - December 20, 2002 - Little monsters see the big, bad, Wide World, by Simon Jenkins

I am disinclined to read too much into any author’s intentions. Volumes have been written on the psychology of Peter Pan and the feminist iconography of Cinderella. As for A Christmas Carol, not a Christmas passed in the 1980s without The Spectator deploring Scrooge squandering the firm’s revenue on turkey and coal. Cratchit should pull himself together and work harder.

Haha!

Arthur quizzes his teeth-gnashing commenters:

Chrenkoff - “Jumpy and nervous”

Update 4: It’s usually a pleasant experience reading the comments section, but for all the gnashing of teeth no one seems to have come up with any practical alternatives to deal with a similar incident in the future. It’s all well to write that

If the police in Britain adopt a shoot to kill policy, they are going to need better intelligence than that they used to “identify” this fellow. And they are going to have to have an EXTREMELY comprehensive scrutiny system in place for the aftermath of an incident like this one. And that system will have to be WHOLLY independent of the police and politicians.

Or that

While the police are under an immense amount of pressure its their job to manage it and act accordingly so that situations like this don’t occur. Allowing the situation to develop to the point where the only apparent option was to shoot the man dead was a failure on the side of the police.

it doesn’t really tell us anything useful. By all means, let’s have the best intelligence we can, let’s have comprehensive scrutiny, but next time somebody comes out of a staked-out house wearing bulky clothes, and then tries to escape the police pursuit, do you:

a) during the pursuit try to shout some questions at him to establish his identity;

b) quickly draw straws to pick who will crash tackle him and thus potentially take the full force of the explosion;

c) let him go; it’s a perfectly normal behavior to run away from the police; don’t you?

d) withdraw troops from Iraq.

Hilarious!

Woah, I linked to this two days ago. My, his commenters have been busy.

India Uncut - Red light for traffic cops

Hee.

I don’t have time to read the articles he links to, but what an intriguing idea it is, firing all the traffic cops, en masse. Hmmm.

Good lord, you spend a weekend reading a new Harry Potter, and the Daily Ablution checks the Guardian and gets splashed all over the Indy.

Daily Ablution - ‘Sassy’ Organisation: “Kill Jews Everywhere”

UPDATE: Here’s my email to the Guardian comment editor

Mr. Milne:

I maintain a blog called the Daily Ablution, which frequently takes an interest in matters raised by the Guardian.

As you may be aware, there’s been a bit of a stir raised by “sassy” Guardian trainee Dilpazier Aslam and his article published Wednesday.

Apparently, Mr. Aslam is, or was until very recently, a member of Hizb Ut Tahrir - an organisation which, according to the BBC, “promotes racism and anti-Semitic hatred, calls suicide bombers martyrs, and urges Muslims to kill Jewish people.”

My readers are interested in knowing whether Guardian newspapers were aware of Mr. Aslam’s affiliations before he was hired.

If so, one wonders whether it is standard Guardian policy to employ members of extremist organisations like Hizb Ut Tahrir (which was described in a Guardian article of November 11, 2004 as “Britain’s most radical Islamic group”). The question is raised as to whether you would hire, and provide a forum for, a known member of an international group of right-wing extremists who expressed similar views.

If not, one wonders first about your screening procedures, and secondly whether Mr. Aslam will remain employed by the Guardian now that you are aware of his affiliations.

Thanks very much for your attention.

Hah, maybe not an obvious choice for the funniest item of the day, but it certainly cracked me up.

Ablution Hits the MSM

Thanks to those who have commented and emailed with respect to this story in the Indy:

‘Guardian’ man revealed as hardline Islamist

The Guardian newspaper is refusing to sack one of its staff reporters despite confirming that he is a member of one of Britain’s most extreme Islamist groups…

It is understood that staff at The Guardian were unaware that Mr Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir until allegations surfaced on “The Daily Ablution”, a blog run by Scott Burgess. Speculation is mounting that it may have been a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media.

A little more serious, but still funny because it happened to the Guardian. Not the Times or The Telegraph or one of the other more obvious choices, one of the ones fairly regularly defending Britain, for instance, or perhaps even the war. I direct you to today’s Terror Victim Profiling and Continuing the “What Whining Gets You” Theme.

Wheat & Weeds - Confessions of a Philistine

…and I spent communion trying to drive from my mind the idea that I was receiving the Lord from J-Lo at the Golden Globes.

(The reader blinks, reads that line again, blinks again, brain whirls in dangerous confusion)

Read the whole thing. It’s hah-larious.

Opinion Journal - ‘Take Courage’ : That’s what the sign says, and the Brits do. BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN

The responses were all reassuring, and all marked by that distinctive unflappability that no visitor to Britain can fail to notice, however brief his sojourn. When I moved to London from New Delhi as a boy of 15, I was greatly impressed by the large, stark billboards I saw all over the city depicting a pint of ale. They said: “Take Courage.” That was the name of the beer, of course, but I could not help thinking that this counsel was irrefutable proof of national fiber. Which, clearly, it was.

My friend Q.’s response to my note yesterday was a very British jewel: “Yes, tin helmet firmly affixed on bean, sandbags at the door, sticky tape on the windows, but the kettle is on and we’ll soon have steaming mugs of sweet tea to hand. Don’t panic!”

Haha

P., an old sage who has lived in London all his life (except for a brief stint in ghastly Glasgow with his regiment after the war), had this to say about his morning trip into the office: “I’m OK, but am a bit shattered, old boy. It’s a hairy thing, walking to work at my age. At Bond Street [tube station] someone went around shouting ‘Everybody out. Emergency reported.’ Thousands stagger out. Bus queues horrendous. I get in line. Swear. Looked around for a taxi. I must be joking. So hoofed it. Still puffing. How to get home, Zeus knows!”

This was perfect British phlegm: no more than a cursory word about the danger; instead, an ironic, yet detailed, account of how difficult it had been to get to work, dash it. Between the lines, one can read of how intent P. (and thousands of others) had been to maintain the Natural Order. Bombs have just gone off in their midst, yet those Londoners cling to their queues. And who can say they are wrong?

I love that. There was a good line about queues in the Josephine Tey I’m reading, come to think of it… Ah yes:

Up in the front of the queue where the order was less mathematically two-and-two than down in the open, the excitement of the door-opening had for a moment or two overcome the habitual place-keeping instincts of the Englishman.

Err, anyway, that column cracked me up. I do recommend the whole thing.

Doghorse & Electech - The Very Model of a Modern Labour Minister: A Tribute to Charles Clarke and His ID Cards

Curtsies: Arthur’s Seat. If Americans had the cell phone industry that the..rest of the world does, really, I’d want this as my ringer.

Good lord how I love piling on Chirac.

Opinion.Telegraph - Tut, tut, Mr Chirac

Jacques Chirac, the embattled president of France, seems to have gone a little off his rocker. According to the French newspaper Libération, he has taken to launching cheap and thoroughly schoolboyish attacks on the United Kingdom.

In his private conversations with Germany’s Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin of Russia, he is reported to have said of the British: “The only thing they have contributed to European agriculture has been the insane cow.”

Mr Chirac seems to have forgotten all his history. Does he not remember that Britain was the seedbed of the agricultural revolution - the country in which all modern methods of farming were first developed, from the drainage of wetlands to the rotation of crops?

The sooner that France’s farmers catch on to the efficient methods of food production discovered in Britain more than 300 years ago, the sooner the curtain can come down on the corrupt farce of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Apparently, Mr Chirac doesn’t enjoy British cooking, either. He is said to have sneered to his fellow Eurocrats: “One cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine.”

In particular, Libération reports that he has complained about being expected by Lord Robertson, the British former general secretary of Nato, to eat an unspecified “Scottish delicacy” (we guess he meant haggis, which has always been wasted on unsophisticated palates).

Again, Mr Chirac is lagging far behind the times. Even the most chauvinistic French chefs now acknowledge that London overtook Paris long ago as the culinary capital of Europe. We understand Mr Chirac’s bad temper.

After all, he has just been kicked in the teeth by his own people’s resounding Non to his dreams of a European superstate. But this is no way to conduct high politics. How would Mr Chirac feel if others descended to his level of argument, and called him a snob and a has-been, who pongs of garlic?

I hope he reads that. I hope he throws it across the room with a “bah!” and glower at his assistant, then resolves to forget about it, but finds that it eats at him throughout the day. Then I hope he finds himself not quite able to meet the Scottish staff’s eyes at Gleneagles this week. And I hope that just makes him feel like utter crap. Hee. Also:

The Australian - Gallic petulance too much to stomach, by James Morrow

FRENCH was once the language of diplomacy; the hangover of this legacy is why passports still bear headings such as “Name/Nom” and places to fill in the holder’s “Adresse du titulaire a’l'etranger” (that is, where you’re staying overseas). But even though the world’s diplomats no longer chatter to one another en francais, the French government still likes to pretend it is the top chien on the world stage. Which is why, given France’s increasing irrelevance in global affairs, Jacques Chirac’s petulant outburst last Sunday to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder is both amusing and understandable.

For those who missed it amid all the Live8 hoopla, France’s leader was overheard in a meeting in Kaliningrad telling his two fellow heads of state that “the only thing that [the British] have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease”, adding, “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland.”

Leaving Finnish food aside for the moment (presumably Chirac hasn’t had a good plate of kaalikaaryleet lately), the French president’s comments are further proof that his country has once again missed the bateau. Britain has become something of a culinary superstar. London is home to 35 Michelin-starred restaurants, second only to Paris, and British chefs from Jamie Oliver to Gordon Ramsay are famous the world over. France, meanwhile, can boast that its McDonald’s franchises are the best-performing in Europe in terms of income per restaurant, serving a million customers a day nationwide.

And on and on and wonderfully on.