Crook of the week

You don't get better than this. It reads as if it could be science but it's as "the great Professor Richard Feynman described Melanesian religious activities 30 years ago: "During the war they saw aeroplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head as headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the aeroplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No aeroplanes land."

It's no coincidence I've nicked the Feynman quote from the Grauniad article about Gillian McKeith. Both she and Kazmer Ujvarosy (who's an 'Academia Consultant') are great believers in truthiness. However, at least Gillian McKeith doesn't suggest injecting your own sperm.

Hat tip, Sal

Quote of the day

From John Cole, mocking Republicans' response to the Mark Foley sex scandal

If the terrorists kill your kids, who cares if GOP congressmen are diddling them?

Is America really unspeakbly vile?

The US Congress has just approved the "compromise" bill legalising the mistreatment of detainees by the CIA.

For the record, this bill

legalizes certain forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, the use of stress positions, and induced hypothermia

strips the right to habeas corpus from non-US citizens, including legal immigrants in the US

allows alleged terrorists to be convicted on the basis of coerced testimony

makes it impossible for any Court to review this

I am not an expert, but the New York Times thinks this is up there with the Alien and Sedition acts as the worst law ever passed by Congress.

I can hardly think for outrage. Not torturing people is part of what it means to be a civilised society. Habeas Corpus has been a basic guarantee of liberty since the 1620's. As a sane person involved in student politics, I have spent much of the last few years defending America against lefties. I'm not sure I will be able to do that now.

If the Democratic Representatives and Senators who voted "Aye" (and most of the Democrats facing tough re-election battles did vote "Aye") are right, the American voters are ready to punish their representatives at the ballot box for voting against torture. In other words, the conventional wisdom of the American political establishment (on both sides of the aisle) is that the American people are unspeakably vile. I can't help but worry that they might be right.