ninme

We’ve been rewatching the Indiana Jones movies, and tonight’s installment (Temple of Doom) ended early so I’ve been wandering around Wiki, and (footnote numbers omitted):

Wikipedia - John Rhys-Davies (Sallah, “the best digger in Egypt”)

Political views Rhys-Davies is a member of the UK Conservative Party. As a university student in the [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

LA Times - Where is the West’s outcry?

If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any. And, in that great silence, is a great scandal.

Don’t worry. I’m sure Maureen Dowd will [...]

Categories: Business & Media

The Sunday Telegraph - Europe must stop fighting itself. By Niall Ferguson

But the best argument for reforming the EU’s system of governance is that it may be now or never. The true significance of Sarkozy’s victory in France, it now becomes clear, was not so much economic as political. The slogan that won [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

The Sunday Times - Rushdie, the man they love to hate Surely there’s a difference between careful diplomacy and pandering to extremists, India Knight

What an extraordinary, if depressingly predictable, fuss about Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. Eighteen years after the fatwa was issued, Ijaz ul-Haq, the Pakistani religious affairs minister, last week told his country’s parliament [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

I’m glad to see the Iraqi courts are moving along. After Saddam went, the press clear forgot about them. I assumed because they weren’t running anymore. I mean, surely the trial of a dictator’s cousin for genocide of 180,000 people is news.

Times Online - Chemical Ali sentenced to death for genocide of [...]

Categories: War and Peace

If you feel like you’re going to watch Evan Almighty, and you don’t want to know any more about it that you don’t already know from the preview, stop here. But you’re not going to watch Evan Almighty, are you.

Deadline Hollywood - MORE SEQUEL SICKNESS: ‘Evan Almighty’ Debuts Weak Friday

The Tom Shadyac-directed [...]

Categories: Entertainment

But if one were to do a slight redesign of one’s blog, what would one be interested in seeing?

Categories: Wildcard

PA - Cameron’s bag raises a few eyebrows

Actress Cameron Diaz appears to have committed a major fashion crime in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians. They suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

I thought this was pretty funny, but you guys in the know will have to tell me how true it is. Although the core of my military readership, such that it is, seems to be rather left out.

Categories: War and Peace

The Times - Crumpled passport ‘proves’ Tibet independence claim

Crumpled, faded and torn at the edges, the sheet of paper looks unremarkable at first sight – a typical government document from Asia in the early 1900s, perhaps. Closer inspection suggests that it is something extraordinary: a Tibetan passport issued to the [...]

Categories: History

The Times - Hardliners vilify Queen over Rushdie’s knighthood

A hardline Iranian newspaper launched a vitriolic attack on the Queen yesterday for her part in awarding a knighthood to Salman Rushdie. … The editorial continued: “This act can be seen as a cover-up to distract the public’s attention from the sexual [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Every time I look at him singing I start laughing. It’s all so… happy, or something. Anyway, somebody at NBC pays attention to YouTube and flew him out to sing on the Today Show.

Daily Mail - Britain’s Got Talent champion Paul Potts conquers America

Paul, who picked up a £100,000 prize and [...]

Categories: Art and Literature

BBC - Clooney objects to $15m town plan

Mr Clooney bought the 15-bedroom Villa Oleandra for $10m (£5m) in 2002. The houses close by have almost tripled in value. But since he arrived in Laglio, things have begun to change. The star of Ocean’s 13 says the town, which has a [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

He’s a little off topic. It’s a bit of a rant. Obviously he’s spent a week back in England. It’s set him off.

The Times - Alas, poor Britain. The best name for it is Absurdistan, by Gerard Baker

(First he’s got some rather hilarious digs in at a TV historian, Andrew Marr, that [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

The Times - Write Knight Free speech is non-negotiable in an open society

The Muslim Council of Britain has commendably urged restraint on those it represents, but condemned Sir Salman’s knighthood as “yet another example of insensitivity to Muslim opinion”. In doing so it has wasted an opportunity to show its understanding of one of [...]

Categories: Art and Literature