Being ignorant in America is now considered a virtue

"It takes hard work, years of religious indoctrination, the failure of public education and the fulfillment of Neil Postman's prophecy about "entertaining ourselves to death" to get a country to the point where a Glenn Beck or Donald Trump is not simply laughed (or scorned) off the national stage by an informed public that knows that village idiots belong on lonely street corners howling at the moon, not on talk shows taking the rest of us with them."

The rest here

20% of Croation Catholics are atheists?

According to the 2001 census the majority of Croatians (87.8%) belong to the Roman Catholic Church. 

In the Eurostat Eurobarometer Poll of 2005, 67% of the population of Croatia responded that "they believe there is a God".

Good to know.....

Woody Allen's Posh and Becks through time

More here

HT kottke.org 

(Posh and Becks = specs )

What are those lumps on the water?

Jake used to work in tourism on Grand Cayman in the Caribbean and has been asked some very dumb questions

What are those lumps on the water? (Um, waves).

How deep do you have to go to dive under the island? (Um, quite deep)

But most amusing was when he asked an elderly couple if they were enjoying their holiday.

"It's lovely," they said. "But we thought we had booked to go to the Grand Canyon."

HT Duane Hansen

Kwinglish

A comma or two would be a good start. And a long ruler.....

Putin promises to boost flagging birthrate by 30%

Vladimir Putin pledges to spend £32bn on increasing Russian life expectancy

He could do that by calling off his goons and tell them to stop assassinating people...

Prime minister appears to make a play for return to presidency as he also promises to boost flagging birthrate by 30%

 Rather him than me....

HT The Grauniad

 

 

Bursts into flames? Successfull?

Xerox's first successful copier burst into flame so often it came with a fire-extinguisher

The rest over at BoingBoing

Multiple choice

More than one answer may be correct


I will vote for John Key/Phil Goff


1 When he tells the nation that Fred Dagg's "We don't know how lucky we are" was and remains a parody and is not a substitute for the national anthem

2. When he shows me a chart that fully explains how superannuation funding over the next 20 years can be achieved without raising retirement age or increasing taxes

3. When he tells the nation that the America's Cup is a commercial enterprise and that the $36m earmarked for it are going into R&D credits for SMEs

4. When he tells the nation and the NZRU that saying that a  $10m loss is "satisfactory" is sending the wrong message

5.   When he offers me and 4 mates a ride to the Auckland Zoo in an Iroquois Scrub that one

5. When he clearly lists the major challenges facing the nation, prioritises them, defines a plan to address them and tells the country what the impact on life in New Zealand is going to be

6. When he says that trying to close the wage gap with Australia is like trying to graft a tomato onto the back of a hairbrush - there's no point and it doesn't work anyway

 7. When he says "Actually, we were in power for 9 years out of the last 12, so we have to take some of the blame"

Who is it?

Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese.

And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them.

It's either my mum or my dad.

Or my older brother Colin.

Or my younger brother Ho-Chan-Chu.

But I think it's Colin.

Oh, how bloody generous...

 The Loop in Weiterstadt gives you sub-dial-up WiFi.

Free though...

Do you have that in XL?

"Er, I mean in XK120?"

Slow and self-obsessed....

What do you think of euthanasia?

"I have we have to look after our own kiddies first."