Inside the Asylum

It seems like quite a crime wave for the month of June:

1) A Sony Amplifier was stolen from a motor vehicle
2) Police were called to a report of Damage
3) One person is under investigation for playing loud music on the Pierhead in the early hours of the morning
4) A bracelet and a ring have been found

Don't you wish you lived in a place like that?

The election results are in, and Argentine hopeful Alfonso Prat-Gay slipped from his expected 2nd position to come in third at the end.

Unión-PRO centre-right party Gabriela Michetti wins the congressional elections in Buenos Aires City with 31.08 percent of the votes. Fernando "Pino" Solanas of the leftist Proyecto Sur party comes in second place with 24.25 percent of the votes, while Alfonso Prat-Gay of the opposition-centre Social and Civic Accord comes in third place with 18.88 percent.

Just thought you'd like to know...

The United Arab Emirates is very pleased to have beaten out Germany and Austria in the competition to host IRENA:

The UAE has become the first developing country to host a major international organisation with Abu Dhabi becoming home to the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).

The irony of IRENA being in the land of the oil sheiks seems to have been lost on all parties concerned.
It reminds me (a lot) of the following dialogue from Yes Minister, about why Britain joined the EEC (now called the EU). The conversation is as current now as it was when the episode aired in 1980.

Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?
Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it's just like old times.
Hacker: But surely we're all committed to the European ideal?
Sir Humphrey: [Chuckles smugly] Really, Minister.
Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?
Sir Humphrey: Well, for the same reason. It's just like the United Nations, in fact; the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes.
Hacker: What appalling cynicism.
Sir Humphrey: Yes... We call it diplomacy, Minister.

This just in:

BRITAIN will fund the destruction of opium fields in Afghanistan, despite the US condemning it as a waste of money.

The British should be reading the Asylum, then they'd know that wallabies are the answer.

I'm back. I've been away on business for a few days, but now I'm back. I thought Dr Strangelove or Prof X might post something while I was away, but I guess not. I need a day to recover, and then I'll resume. Stay tuned.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. People make a massive mistake in dealing with the Middle East in assuming that all parties are rational actors. Some may, perhaps, be rational actors within their own warped world view, but that does not make them rational according to the rules of either diplomacy or war. How would the FBI respond if a group of hostage takers said the following to them in America?

The Islamic Hamas movement on Thursday said it cannot confirm or deny if the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is still alive... Al-Muzini, however, said Israel has to go ahead with talks to exchange Shalit for a number of Arab prisoners "whether the soldier was dead or alive... The Zionist enemy has to pursue negotiations without any signal confirming or denying this argument."

Well, I'd say the FBI would continue negotiations only so they could lure the hostage-takers into revealing their location, and then they would move in with all necessary force, and by the end of it all the hostage-takers would either be dead or in captivity. But if the Israelis behave in the same way as the FBI, that would be a "war crime" and a "human rights violation."

It's one of the greatest problems in the study of recent human evolution (in terms of the last 150,000 years or so.) There's enough evidence to draw some conclusions about the physical development of bipeds into hominids into homo sapiens, but it's much harder to judge when those creatures actually began to think like modern humans. A thought or an emotion simply doesn't leave physical evidence. Cave paintings and such are useful, because they show that humans were starting to think symbolically, but there are a whole bunch of other human behaviors that we'd love to know about. For example, when did humans start dancing? It sounds like a funny question, but it's not: every human community, no matter how isolated, practices some form of ritual dancing. Perhaps it was drill for war, or perhaps from mating rituals, but other primates do not demonstrate anything close to the universal human habit of dance. Well, this latest evidence doesn't necessarily indicate dance, but it is solid evidence for music, and there's another thing that helps us show earlier human thought processes. The reason I mention this is that there's just been an announcement of the discovery of fragments of a bone flute in Swabia (SW German) that have been dated to 35,000 years ago. That's the oldest evidence we yet have for human music.

At last we have the answer. Crop circles are caused by stoned wallabies. You think I'm kidding? Then look:

Wallabies are getting stoned on Tasmania's opium poppy crops and hopping about in circles, authorties say. Attorney-General Lara Giddings says wallabies have created crop circles of squashed poppies as they increasingly hop in to the fields eating the poppy heads. That causes them to get high and run around in turns creating crop circles, she told a budget estimates hearing.

If you don't have any wallabies in your area, then it's probably the stoned sheep:

Tasmanian Alkaloids field operations manager Rick Rockliff said "There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles."

Now the real question ... if you take their poo and make it into paper (as has been done already in Tasmania, believe it or not), then use it to roll your smokes ... will it do anything? I know coffee lovers go nuts over some weird Indonesian coffee that's seen the beans go through the digestive tracts of some kind of monkey ... could roo poo pot be the next big thing in the drug world? It's certainly got a catchy name.

I'm going to be rich now that I've learned about the stupid ebook!

I'm going to introduce you to an opportunity so lucrative I have to use ass-ugly fonts. This isn't one of those other eBooks by total posers who can't back their offers up. You can tell I'm serious because I use lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!
Look at all the expensive things I bought just in the last week, which prove how much better my stupid eBook is than all those loser eBooks with pictures of mansions and sports cars: AustraliaThe other day I was reflecting on existence when I realized I didn't have enough marsupials in my life, so I bought Australia. Don't you wish you had that kind of buying power? Buy my stupid eBook and you definitely will.

Luckily enough, the formula is simple enough, even for me!

It couldn't be easier! Here's all you need to rake in millions:
* A computer
* A snorkel
* Toilet paper
* A can of Pringles
* A ferret

What will all that money that's going to come to me any day now from the widow of the Nigerian president, I've got it made.

North Korea claims that:

Millions of people were killed cruelly by the U.S. imperialists in the period of the Korean war... Not content with shooting people to death, the U.S. imperialists resorted to all cruel methods to kill people, which far surpassed those of the Hitler fascists. They buried them alive, picked them to death, hammered a nail into skull, sawed off the neck, hung them upside-down on tree branch to set fire on the head, gouged out eyeballs, skinned people, raped girls and women before cutting off their breasts.

No doubt Obama will shortly give a speech in which he acknowledges the historic truth of these claims, and begs North Korea's forgiveness. How else would neo-Carterite Obama respond? Oh yeah, he'll probably blame the South Koreans too.

Despite earlier reports from CNN that Dr Who performed abortions and that he was dead, it turns out that

New Dr Who star Matt Smith will be joined by 10 of his Time Lord predecessors in a special charity edition of the science fiction show, it has been reported. The episode will be the first to features Smith as the new Dr Who - the 11th reincarnation of the iconic Time Lord - and will feature cameos from all previous actors to play the character, both living and dead.

Perhaps I was right that he would regenerate into a plastic surgeon? Matt Smith certainly looks like he could come from an episode of Nip & Tuck.

If these stats are similar for North Korea as well, then it would explain a lot about that peninsula.

In South Korea, 41.6 percent start drinking during elementary school and 44.1 percent during middle school, the survey showed.

 Over at Transterrestrial:

They must think we’re stupid. Of course, based on last November’s election results, they have some basis for it.

I've nothing further to add.

I've been saying for a long time now that Obama is a Carter on steroids, but always with the hopeful comment that four years of Carter brought us eight years of Reagan. Someone else gets in on the game:

Here's the scary thing for the new White House: the terrifying words "Jimmy Carter" have started appearing in print and on the air, recalling the ex-Georgia governor's ineptness and apparent powerlessness in handling his Iranian (hostage) issues in the late 1970s. That impression lead to 12 years of Reagan-Bush Republican White Houses.

Hey, LA Times, I couldn't have said it better myself. Oh, I already did. Repeatedly.(Click on "Cartobama" category along the right to see those posts.)

(via Instapundit)

When the British wanted to put Napoleon somewhere after his final defeat, they chose about the most remote location possible, St Helena. It was also one of Charles Darwin's stops on his famous voyage.

You can't fly there, and unless you've got your own boat, the only way to get there is by the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) St Helena, the last royal mail vessel still in operation. It only seems to visit St Helena twice a year.

For more information, have a look at St Helena's tourism website.

With KCNA being absent for unknown reasons, I found this excellent database of North Korean news (mostly or entirely copied from KCNA anyway) ... but it has one additional feature that will solve all our problems as we await the wordsmiths at KCNA to return with their overblown bluster and odd word choices. Yes, there is a North Korean random insult generator! My first four are copied below. Get yours now. Share and enjoy.

You bellicose running dog, you have glaringly revealed your true colours!

You arrogant bloodsucker, we will transform your country into a sea of fire!

You shameless political dwarf!

You psychopathological stooge, we will mercilessly crush you with the weapon of singlehearted unity!

KCNA's website currently isn't showing anything. Is there some significance to the sudden lack of news from North Korea? Or is it just some problem with their server? I've no idea. Stay tuned.

[Update] Hey, it's back. I guess it was nothing.

Obama just got the bill for the world perception that the US is weak when it comes to central Asia. The US has been hoping to keep the Kyrgyzstan airbase open for keeping the war in Afghanistan supplied. Kyrgyzstan, not being blind deaf and dumb, knows that this would annoy the Russians. They know full well that there's no point in hoping Obama would back them up if it came to a confrontation with Russia.  For once, we can put an exact price tag on the perception of weakness.

Under the new one-year deal, rent will increase to $60 million per year from the current $17.4 million... [The US must] also pay $37 million to build new aircraft parking slots and storage areas, plus another $30 million for new navigation systems.

In return for all this, American use of the base will now be restricted to "transshipment of nonmilitary goods." I wonder what the price will be next year?