Current Affairs

Have you suspected that ads are somtimes placed in particular places for specific reasons? Check out the ad next to this "readers tell stories of quitting cigarettes" package. Trying to reinforce the message, maybe?

This is one of the scariest surveys I've read in a long time:

College students trust the United Nations more than they trust the federal government, according to survey results released Wednesday by the Harvard University Institute of Politics.

You'd think that UFO nuts, confronted with evidence such as this, would be embarrassed into getting real lives or at least drifting toward a different obsession. Alas, it probably won't happen.

Maybe it's been a slight exaggeration (very slight) when some of us have claimed that radical-environmentalist groups such as Earth First care far more for the planet than for its human inhabitants. It's not possible to exaggerate that sentiment for this group; its name, Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, pretty much says it all.

You may not have heard of DISH, Texas, but you can visit it, starting this week. It's part of a trend, which some find distressing, of small towns letting themselves be renamed in return for money or other considerations:

In an age of pervasive advertising that many people try to ignore, such stunts are a good way to grab the public's attention, said Mark Hughes, chief executive of Buzzmarketing and the former Half.com executive who devised the Oregon deal.

Maybe you saw the strange little story about the people who shot the sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes during an attempt to set a world record. Now you can learn the rest of the story:

Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there's a danger to public health or a crop," said agency spokesman Niels Dorland. "That was not the case."

Bumper stickers aren't philosophy, protest signs aren't dialogue, and Cindy Sheehan is not a "war critic" whose observations add to our understanding of the issue. She's a pathetic sideshow, and any "legitimate" news organization that follows her parade back to the Bush ranch over Thanksgiving should be shamed out of the business.

Now we're getting lectured by the United Nations on our social benefit systems:

High health care costs and lack of low-cost housing exacerbate poverty and this can be seen as a human rights abuse, concluded a 17-day fact-finding mission by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights Tuesday.

How much longer do we have to suffer these knaves and fools? Send the whole bunch packing.

Just in case you thought college students today had given up on the struggle for equal rights:

Some interesting thoughts on the use of torture as a tactic in the war on terror:

The torture victim faces incredible pain and perhaps death at the hands of his torturer. If these costs are to be born by the victim then we had better make damn sure that the benefits are also high and the only way we can do that is to make the torturer also bear some of the costs. Torture must not be cheap.