April 27, 2002
I c8n't believe thiz.
Two of the keyz on my keybo8rd h8ve ztuck. It'z the letter before b & the one before t. I c8n juzt 8bout lever them up with 8 h8irpin, zo I m8y be 8ble to link to 
thiz wonderful zhot of my webcounter c8ptured by D8wzon.
If the im8ge doezn't work - zometimez it doez, zometimez it doezn't, I don't underztand imaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagez - fe8r not! You c8n go zee it @ (...oh-oh, h8irpin time, though I c8n do zome of it with cut & p8zte...) hiz webzite, & t8ke 8 look @ the weird ze8rch requeztz while you're there, ezpeci8lly if you ye8rn for 8 f8t g8y terrorizt of your very own to love & c8re for forever.
Or zhould it be "f@ g8y terrorizt"? Th@ z8vez on the typing.
April 26, 2002
Instajustice, Palestinian Authority-style.
The paragraph below is from a story in yesterday's Times concerning Zuhair al-Muhtesseb whose mutilated body was hanging head down from a pylon yesterday, and presumably still is today. He was killed as a collaborator by the Tanzim, the military wing of Fatah. I keep getting ejected from the Times registration process so I can't give you a link, but you can get the flavour of the whole from this final paragraph:"In Ramallah a month ago, 22 year-old Raed al-Liftawy was beaten and hanged after his sister reported him to the Tanzim because she had heard him speaking to an Israeli officer."
News roundup.
18 students were killed in Germany in the latest in the worldwide series of school shootings - the globalisation of madness? British and Dutch plane-spotters found guilty of espionage by a Greek court, and soon they'll be able to come and get you over here courtesy of the European Arrest Warrant. All the papers are hinting like mad that the boys acquitted of murdering 10 year old Damiola Taylor did in fact do it. Finally, Natalie Solent still has too much to do and too little time to do it in. Expect limited posting for the next few days.
Amygdala
told me I would want to hear what Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci had to say about anti-semitism in Europe. He was right.
April 25, 2002
Talking of the fallibility of my memory
, I never did find the TV clip of toddlers dressed as suicide bombers to which I referred on April 10. Though I have ample evidence that the phenomenon occurs, I now think that my mind conflated two separate film clips or one film clip and one still photo. I meant to say this earlier, but forgot. Further proof of my mental decline.
Les schadenfreudes d'antan...
I went over to England Shamed Again to see if there were any "Britain most racist country in Europe" stories I could jeer at in the aftermath of Le Pen's surprisingly strong showing over in France. There weren't, though. I had been almost sure I remembered one or two, but perhaps I saw them somewhere else. I will nonetheless permit myself a little topical jeer at the blog's motto, "Learning from our European cousins."Le Pen's day of victory is something like finding out that one member of the household of one's goody-goody neighbours who are always being held up as examples of virtue is actually a thug long known to the police. (In fairness to my pleasant and peaceable real-life neighbours I must stress the similie is purely fictional.) There is a certain amount of pleasure at seeing the tables turned, but it is pretty soon outweighed by realizing that the thug is only a wall away.
It is Anzac Day.
Elitist links to a fascinating story in the Sydney Morning Herald, about a man who may be the last survivor on Earth of the Gallipoli campaign.
Canadian Shenanigans.
One thing that really gets my goat is politicians who get their way by the substitution of tricks of procedure for honest debate. I forget exactly why the Northern Ireland Alliance party became "unionists for a day" - to fulfil some criteria or other, or win some vote - but they were cheats and liars whatever their reason.It's the same story worldwide. This post, appearing in Lawrence Garvin's What Fresh Hell, exposes a sly bit of work in the Canadian Parliament. This time a party called the Alliance, or at least one of its MPs, Dr Keith Martin, is the injured party. Dr Martin forward a private members' bill to decriminalize cannabis in some circumstances. It never had a hope of passing, but you might have thought that the decent thing would be to give it its run of debate in the time-honoured fashion. The Liberal party thought otherwise. Having shown their own disregard for Parliamentary convention they then affect outrage when the original sponsor got understandably irate and - oh horrors! - touched the Mace, the naughty little Oliver Cromwell that he is.
I found that link in Ranting and Roaring. David Janes shares my dislike of trick laws. I dislike them even when they further causes of which I approve. I'm pretty much pro-life, but you won't find me supporting anti-abortion measures being sneaked in under the cover of social benefits to pregnant women.
April 24, 2002
And now for the weather:
Light posting in the Solent for the next few days, due to high pressure readings on the work barometer. Medium to heavy posting elsewhere. Gales possible from this newly discovered Antipodean cyclone, even if he is a wicked Republican-in-the-Australian-sense.UPDATE: David Morgan informs me that he's a Republican for Australia and a Monarchist for Britain. In recognition of this principled stance I suggest that the secret agents of the Royalist International chop off his head in Australia but let him have it back should he visit these shores.
Sports column
from the Dude. He makes some suggestions for improving socker*"First, shrink the field down to about half. Second, put some flashing lights up on the goals so that when the one or two actual goals per game are scored, ya got yourself a little light show to spiff things up a bit! Third, don't let these guys take their clothes off when they celebrate. I mean, come on... Fourth, cheerleaders, yeah that's right, girls with big bresteses in tight sweaters. Fifth, make the coaches wear suits and cool hats like Tom Landry used to do. It will still be a boring game with all those 1-0 scores, but who knows, it just might become the most popular team sport in the world..."*Note for those surgically connected to their computers: socker, along with crickett, is a popular sprot.
April 23, 2002
The sun shines.
I blog not, neither do I sew.Never write things like that. As soon as you do, you spot something like this and just have to blog it. Peter Beaumont, writing in the Observer, see-saws madly between condemning Israel for brutality and loss of control in Jenin and flatly stating that no massacre took place. The see-sawing may not say much for his literary style but it does give a strong impression of sincerity.
That Tom Paulin pops up everywhere
. In this Times story, concerning an Oxford student who has lost his racial discrimination case, our man is "excitable and may have had his own axe to grind", according to the judge.
... Hey, who are you calling a cheater?!
- Dave
Not you, Dave! Just as the click was about to come in, Real Life intervened and I had to go off and do stuff. So I did not reply immediately, alas. You win a... um... free endorsement of whatever T shirt, baseball cap or coffee mug you happen to own anyway. It is now an official nataliesolent.blogspot.com shirt, cap, mug or other promotional article. Tell all your friends! There, isn't that easier than all this micromanufacturing lark?
April 22, 2002
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
When five more visitors have popped through the system I will have had 48,888 hits. Send me an e-mail if it's you. No cheating.
At bloody last
the sheeplike British public and the Judas-goats of the British Press seem to be waking up to the fact that gold-plated rail safety systems cost more lives than they save.It occurs to me that the times being what they are I should explain that sheep will ordinarily try to run away when being driven to slaughter, but will willingly follow a trained "Judas goat" into the slaughterhouse.
But if it slags off Krugman, who cares who wrote it?
I'm not sure whether this was written by John Weidner himself or one of the cabal of Deep Cover Economists he mentions."Another problem is healthcare rationing. This is a biggie! What we refer to is the following: If the government is going to sponsor the delivery of expensive health services through Medicare at prices substantially below the providers’ costs then either the government must fund the difference, or providers will engage in some form of non-price rationing, e.g., refusing to offer services or turning patients away. The financial capacity of the government to do the former is in serious question. This is not just a matter of changing a few percentage points in marginal tax rates. As Krugman points out, the numbers here are bigger than the defense budget. The top tax rate could be raised to 100 percent and still be a drop in the bucket."So the answer probably requires a consensus on some form of non-price rationing. What this means, in plain English, is that some Medicare patients, under some circumstances will not receive treatments that might conceivably benefit them because they cost too much. More precisely, the cost/benefit ratio of those services given the state of a patient’s health is judged to be too high. This is tough stuff. The decision making process behind such judgements is a subject no politician wants to even hear about, let alone discuss. But somehow people of goodwill, hopefully people with hard heads but soft hearts, must face and resolve them."
Beat me to it.
Everything I wanted to say about Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the second round of the French Revolution, er, I mean French Election, has already been done for me in a series of posts over at Samizdata.
April 21, 2002
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars..."
Well, I choose to believe that the conjunction of the planets is a sign that a thousand years of peace and harmony are about to descend. We had the whole family plus cheapo Argos telescope (ain't capitalism wonderful!) out on the front lawn at about half past eight. Don't worry, the neighbours are used to us. Magic.