Maggie's Farm

Good lawyers can always find an argument. Here's one: Too fat to die. AOL news. Hanging is needle-free, I believe.

How many people think that this is a real disease? Sounds like a crock to me. An infrared detoxifier? I sure hope tax dollars didn't buy that joke of a gizmo. NYT Science

Bill Clinton endorses torture "for specific purposes". Where's the outrage? Ace

My precious...Where can I get me one of these slick rings? Polipundit. American medicine needs to break its chains from the big pharmaceuticals and do good simple stuff like these people do, don't you think? We sure have a lot to learn from Asian medicine.

And, speaking of Asians, may I ask why Euro journalists always refer to Moslems as "Asians"? "Hundreds of Asian youth shouted chants to Allah while bombarding Parisian police with rocks." Just wondering, because they don't look like, or act like, regular Asians to me. Can't they call them Semites, or youths of Middle-Eastern origin, or Moslems, or something a bit more descriptively-accurate?

Atlas VLOGS our hero, Paul Belien.

The elections. Damn, do I miss Reagan. Rick Moran sees some signs of hope.

Another climate change heretic.  Tim Blair suggests warming him at the stake.

The Dem strategy: Ignore the economy. Nothing to talk about there. Driscoll. No, let's talk about important things like gays in congress. As Iowahawk has it, "It's the homos, stupid." Just don't think about the economy...and, by the way, it's terrible: Captain Ed

Remember Abdul Rahman?, asks Wizbang. Well, Jihad isn't done with him yet.

There is a simple moral to this sad story about limiting cod catches in the North Sea. Worstall

Wussy CT bans running up the score. How about banning running up the GPA, too? View from the Right

And speaking of GPAs:

(2006-10-18) — A new Brookings Institution study that shows an inverse relationship between math skills and student self-esteem is “just plain wrong,” according to an overnight poll of the nation’s largest teacher’s union.

The study found that Japanese and Korean students excel in math despite their lack of confidence in their own abilities, while American kids feel great about their abilities but have much lower skills according to tests.

Full story here, of course.

And lo and behold! More on GPAs. The "No child gets ahead" program. Classical Values