Current Affairs

If you approve policies that don't require students to show up for class, they won't show up for class. Who'da thunk?

Only government can do the right thing in the wrong place at the wrong time so well:

MOTORISTS were driven mad when they got stuck in a two-mile rush-hour jam — caused by council officials doing a traffic survey.

This sounds as maddening as getting a phone survey asking if phone surveys are annoying. I think I had one of those once.

I was going to get one of these for each of my cats, but then I thought, no, they'd probably just be stolen by some illegal-immigrant felines and used for all kinds of mischief.

I could go on and on about how this symptomizes the sad state of affairs we have come to, but it kind of speaks for itself:

SWAKOPMUND, Namibia (AP) -- Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt denied Wednesday that wedding bells are in the air, saying they want to concentrate for now on their newborn daughter and Jolie's two adopted children.

Another piece of evidence that the vehicle crash ID mixup in Indiana had nothing to do with the elected-cornoner system -- a similar mixup in 2004 in Michigan, which has a medical-examiner system. And there, they're looking in the right direction for improvement, changing state law:

I've been pretty critical of President Bush of late, so here's a more positive assessment of his performance:

You go, guy:

Britain's oldest surviving war veteran has celebrated his 110th birthday at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne.

Henry Allingham was presented with a letter of good wishes from the Queen by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown at the five-star seafront hotel.

[. . .]

In the past Mr Allingham has put the key to his old age down to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women".

Oh, please. If you just get mad, you have a bad temper. But if you get mad -- unreasonably so -- often enough, you can have Intermittent Explosive Disorder, your very own disease:

A school with no rules finds that kids without rules=discipline problems. Boy, who saw that one coming?

Now, in a new book, its current head, Zoe Neill Redhead, the founder's daughter, reveals the school is having to adopt a more disciplinarian tone towards its current pupils, who have been so pampered by their parents, she says, that they no longer know the boundaries of acceptable behaviour.

I love stories like this:

Lifetime lovers Frank and Anita Milford have become Britain's longest-married living couple after celebrating their 78th wedding anniversary, newspapers reported.

[. . .]