Tom Lehrer was right; satire is dead. Yesterday I was joking about China insisting that Taiwan is an isthmus. Today, it was insisting that the temperature in Beijing was 104 instead of 113 (they’d have to send people home if it hit 105).

The Washington Post has been serializing a biography of George Dubya this week, which is rather interesting. Highlights: not being told his sister was sick until she was dead (he was at boarding school), chewing tobacco at the Harvard Business School, dating Tricia Nixon (once), drunkenly challenging his father to a fight, checking the “I do not volunteer to go to Vietnam” box when joining the Texas National Guard. Today (Wednesday, that is) focuses on his military record. My favorite sentence is that the colonel “who twice had himself photographed with Bush said his status [as son of a Congressman] ‘didn’t cut any ice.’” Bush himself of course says that he just wanted to be a pilot, which raises the question, does he have a civilian pilot license today, I mean, if he likes piloting so much? Also, does two years of pilot training mean he was a slow learner? Also, he learned to fly the F-102. Was the son of a Congressman deliberately assigned an obsolete plane due to be retired to make sure he’d never go to Vietnam?

2nd favorite story from the Onion today, “Dog Urine Lowers Heart-Attack Risk, say Snickering Researchers.” My favorite follows:


The Onion * 28 July 1999

Focus On Language

NEW YORK--According to a report released Monday by the Modern Language Association, speakers of the Star Trek-based Klingon language outnumber individuals fluent in Navajo by a margin of more than seven-to-one. ...