Hey, don’t complain, it’s not my headline. Xinhua reports that a dance troupe from China have been promoting Chinese culture in Britain.

Yes, quite. After that, I’m sure there will be quite a lot of Britons eager to experience some, ahem, Chinese “culture”. *Cough*

[I wonder if this will generate more or less interest in Chinese culture than the swimsuit fashion show …]

I’ve expressed caution in the past about getting too excited about the apparent upsurge in solar activity. Today, however, I think it’s safe to say that we can all breath a sigh of relief. We’re not going to have an (even more) extended solar minimum, and all the nasty global cooling that would ensue. Spaceweather.com’s daily sunspot watch reports that we now have three areas of active sunspot activity, and an overall sunspot number of 71. That’s unprecedented in the last several years, and I think it represents the first absolute sign that the solar minimum has concluded.

I put a clip from a Slade song in a recent post, and it reminded me just how much I like this band. I haven’t listened to them in ages, so here’s a small selection of some of my favorites. They produced an incredible number of hits in their time. Apparently they never broke into the US market, so perhaps I’ll be introducing some great power ballads that American readers won’t be familiar with. Enjoy.

This is news? Worthy of headline status at Xinhua Chinese news? Apparently so.

A record 5.8 million dairy cattle were counted in the year ended June 2009, Statistics New Zealand said Tuesday — well more than one animal for each of the country’s 4.3 million citizens.
In contrast, sheep numbers declined to some 32 million in 2009, less than half the peak of 70 million reported in 1982. In 2009, New Zealand had fewer than eight sheep per person.

In other breaking news, there are 8 billion chickens in the world (apparently).

In what ought to be a parody, but is sadly entirely true, Hugo Chavez has launched a new radio show called Suddenly Chavez.

Chavez said the program would always be preceded by the sound of a harp playing local folk-music. “When you hear the pluck of a harp on the radio, maybe Chavez is coming. It’s suddenly, at any time, maybe midnight, maybe early morning.”

All I can say is, when you hear the sound of the harp playing … run away! run away! (and shut up and go and change your armor.)

Or, if you need something more melodious to clean out your ears, perhaps this:

First there was this:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the “global arrogance” on this year’s anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

Now we have this:

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran is set to deliver a “punch” that will stun world powers during this week’s 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. “The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (of Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned.”

This is exceptionally good news:

Source of China’s three main rivers, Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers, last year recorded the largest volume of water outflow from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in three decades, according to local hydrological authorities. According to the provincial hydrological bureau of the northwestern Qinghai, the outflow of three rivers’ headwaters, called Sanjiangyuan in Chinese, amounted to 77.63 billion cubic meters last year, a record high over the past 30 years or 26.6 percent more than the average level.

A shortage of freshwater is one of the really big problems facing China in the future, and if this particular bit of “climate change” should become more regular, it will really help out the Chinese. If China ever started really suffering from a shortage of water, that is something that could lead to its total collapse … and that would be a disaster for the entire world. You don’t even want to think about the refugee issue alone. A prosperous China on the other hand will help drive the global economy onwards and upwards. It’s also good news for China-India relations, as damming of rivers and control of water outflow from the Himalayas is a major source of tension between the world’s two most populous nations.

OK, so we get a lot of traffic just because of the one time I posted about cabin stabbing. Actually, it’s kind of embarrassing just how many hits come about because of that post. I enjoy looking at the search terms people use at Google that bring them to this website … but today I saw a new one: “Midget mud wrestling”. Now I thought that was pretty weird, because there has never been a post Inside the Asylum about midget mud wrestling. It turns out that one post about Chinese female mud wrestling and another post about New Zealand rugby fans advertising for a midget beer wench got conflated so that what do you know … a Google search for “midget mud wrestling” leads to this website. Which then lead me to test something … what happens if you search for “Chinese midget mud wrestling”? Well then … Inside the Asylum has the honor of being Google’s number one hit. Oh well.

Why? Because you can? The collector’s widow describes his collecting philosophy as “yes!”

Still, it doesn’t seem quite as impressive as this place I went to a few years back in Israel:

Early Sunday morning, the space shuttle Endeavor will lift off in what is planned to be the fifth to last launch of the shuttle program. It will also, incidentally, be the last night launch. It’s true that the shuttles are damn old, but I always imagined there’d be an effective replacement up and running before we ever reached this point. But no …

This is a great idea.

“Budget items without clear, identifiable and useful purpose should be eliminated to reduce inefficiency, redundancy, and highly discretionary lump-sum funds which are prone to abuse and mismanagement,” the Alternative Budget Initiative Consortium said.

That ought to eliminate a huge portion of government spending. I doubt much of the stimulus bill would stand up to any rigorous scrutiny on that basis. Unfortunately, it’s a proposal to help the Philippine government balance its budget, and we’re unlikely to see any similar proposition voiced in this part of the world.

This sounds like a joke or parody, but sadly, it isn’t:

Hamas said Saturday that it did not regret the death of Israeli civilians by rockets militants fired from the Gaza Strip during Israel’s military operation against the coastal strip.

“There has been no regret or apology…” said Mohammed al-Ghoul, minister of justice of the deposed Hamas government.

Obama promised Hope and Change. Clinton promised to reset relations with Russia. It looks like the change part is working anyway. Not so much progress on the “hope” part. Times of India reports:

Lowering the threshhold for the use of nuclear weapons, Russia has said it reserves the right to hit back with nukes in case of an aggression, in a new doctrine which may be a veiled warning to China and rising NATO powers.
“Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction against it and its allies, as well as an aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons jeopardising the very existence of the state,” a military doctrine signed by President Dmitry Medvedev said.

Oh goody. Just what we need. Especially when “jeopardizing the existence of the state” could be interpreted liberally to mean pretty much any conventional military defeat, since that could lead to major internal upheaval (as the Russians well know, looking back at what happened when the Japanese beat them in 1905).

Recently I posted about the mystery surrounding the murder of a Hamas arms dealer in Dubai. I also posted how Sydney Morning Herald reporter Jason Koutsoukis falsely claimed that Dubai authorities had “fingered” Israel in their investigations, when in fact all they said was “we haven’t ruled it out.” Now the same reporter is at it again, with a story that begins like this:

Perfect execution points to Israel. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s death in Dubai had all the hallmarks of a hit by the Jewish state’s spy agency, writes Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem.

Could the Israelis have done it? Certainly they could have, and they’re no friends of Hamas, but in the end, that is the entire “proof” behind a 1000+ word newspaper article. Seriously … that’s it. Koutsoukis has nothing other than that to go on. He fills up a lot of the story with accounts of other unrelated Israeli operations.

In the ever-suspicious world of Middle Eastern intrigue, Mabhouh’s death had all the hallmarks of an assassination by Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad.

Yeah … “all the hallmarks” … like stars of David tattooed to the victims forehead, Israeli flags draped over his body, a calling card placed in his hands saying “brought to you by your friends at Mossad” … that kind of thing? Ummm … no, the “hallmarks” involve the fact that the guy seemed to have been injected with something … and that’s it. So watch out … next time someone tries to inject you with something, he’s probably a Mossad agent … because apparently injections are “all the hallmarks” of a Mossad hit.

Nor does Koutsoukis acknowledge that an Israeli newspaper recently claimed that Arab enemies of Mabhouh were more likely to blame. Regardless of whether you believe the story or not, you think it would at least deserve a mention? But no.

Maybe Israel did it, maybe they didn’t … and this newspaper story doesn’t add anything to the story. All it does is insinuate that the Israelis must have done it. That’s how the western press covers Israel.

[Update] Apparently, four of the assassins used Irish passports. For what it’s worth, the story in Gulf News also notes that Oliver North and other Americans used Irish passports to travel to Iran to negotiate arms for hostages… So, obviously it must have been the Americans who killed him, since it has “all the hallmarks” of American diplomacy in the region. (It’s got as much evidence as Koutsoukis’ story, anyway.)

President Obama gave a speech yesterday praising a corpse-man in the U.S. Navy. I’m afraid this wasn’t a slip, since he said it three times (the video only includes two; for a poorer-quality video that repeats all three instances but without their context, go here).

Many commentators are mistakenly blaming this on a poor vocabulary, but I fear it isn’t as simple as that. There’s just no way he could have meant “corpsman.” Can we honestly believe that a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School would actually be that unfamiliar with our nation’s military and its terminology? No… Obama even said the corpse-man was a translator, not a medic, so I don’t think he was confused about the guy’s job. I’m afraid it’s much worse than simply a poorly chosen word.

Obama is soft on Zombies.

During the Cold War, the odd politician might get criticized as being soft on Communism. More recently, we’ve had politicians (including Obama) who have been soft on the War on Terror, soft on illegal immigration, and so on. But by publicly praising this Undead-American sailor (whose ethnic background I’m not even going to mention, for fear of perpetuating unfortunate stereotypes), the President has set a new and disturbing precedent. There doesn’t even seem to be any sort of don’t ask-don’t tell policy for zombies in the military in this administration, since the commander-in-chief knows and is telling the world!

So, what does this mean, aside from the fact that we can’t count on our military (at least the Navy) to stay uninfected during the coming zombie apocalypse?

Well, for starters, it’s pretty much a given that the feddle gummint won’t be printing up any more handy survival guides in convenient poster format, or researching vital new weapons such as the chainsaw bayonet.

It’s probably going to be up to us to take care of ourselves. Yes, there are anti-zombie organizations beginning to form chapters around the country and providing useful advice on how to prepare, and a few commentators (conservative, of course) are already raising this issue at National Review, but for the most part, at the moment, we’re on our own if the ZA comes. (If you want an estimate of how you’ll fare, or whether you’ll become fare for some zombie, you can take the free “What Are Your Chances of Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse” quiz.)

I hope this will become an issue in this year’s Congressional elections, but while the Democrats seem to be shuffling mindlessly along behind their leader, the Republicans and even the Tea Party people are ignoring the topic.

Maybe John Derbyshire is right, after all, and we are all doomed.

This was always their first line of attack against any skeptic: they’re funded by oil money, so you can’t believe them. Well, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If someone is providing bucket loads of cash to promote global warming alarmism, you’d be right not to trust either them, or the people they fund.

In the space of two years, the British Council has spent more that £3.5 million of British taxpayers’ money on climate change propaganda… It has been spent on recruiting young people in 60 countries to pressurise world leaders to “to take action on climate change”. This included funding groups to attend the December Copenhagen summit in order to take part in demonstrations… [They’re still looking to recruit] “15-20 young influencers” to become British taxpayer-funded “Climate Advocates”… Nevertheless, taxpayers will be pleased to learn that the money is in good hands. Head of the programme is the famous Dr Viner, formerly of the East Anglian Climatic Research Unit. It was he who in 2001 was telling The Independent that within a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event”.

Funny how it always comes back to the CRU.

Also from the blog EUReferendum, we have this tantalizing tidbit:

Pachauri is on the ropes but he ain’t down yet. The view is it will take one more “killer blow” to fell him. We think we’ve found it! Under wraps at the moment, for obvious reasons, but all will be revealed.

Stay tuned!

No. 9 has claimed that Rajendra Pachaur, head of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Shakedowns Change is actually Rasputin. I was initially skeptical, even when No. 9 presented some potentially corrobating evidence. After all, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that if a great womanizer like Rasputin were to write a novel, it would have to be porn (or at least smutty). But there’s no word on whether the novel includes miraculous healing, so it’s not as if we can treat this as definitive proof.

I had therefore remained skeptical until today. What has me starting to wonder now is a picture accompanying a National Review article about Ras–er, Pachaur. (Interestingly, even Greenpeace is asking him to step down now, although it’s just so the IPCC can regain credibility in the wake of the near-total collapse of the data supporting the existence of global warming.) What’s interesting/scary is that his beard is growing out, and starting to make him even more Rasputin-like. If we view these three photos as a progression:

It’s almost uncanny. Perhaps someone should investigate whether Pachauri has a fear of carpets or swimming? Or perhaps the assassins in 1916 missed a bet when they didn’t decapitate him?

We might also want to search for photos of Rasputin from 100 years ago to see whether he was wearing that ring on his right hand. I find it suspicious that the ring finger is obscured in both those photos…

In any case, while I’m not so sure about global warming, we may want to enlist Rasputin’s help to combat personal warming.

To be classified as a refugee you have to have a genuine fear of persecution in your home country. What’s the basis of Obama’s aunt’s claim to get refugee status in USA? It seems to be “I’m Obama’s aunt.”

Zeituni Onyango, 57, is expecting to make her second bid for political asylum on Thursday before an immigration judge in Boston and could potentially argue that her relationship to the president would make her a political target in Kenya’s unstable political climate.

If Obama’s poll numbers keep sliding, I’m thinking that she’s more likely to get persecuted in this country for that relationship.