DanKohn.com

Classic WSJ story on the Chinese bringing competition to the gravestone indusrty. Rednecks, hard working Chinese physicians, gravestone plants in China going up next to Boeing plants, it’s all here:

“I wanted to see how Americans are buried,” she said, wandering again through another graveyard here on a recent afternoon. She crouched before various graves to study their finish and cut. “Ah, this one is nice,” she said, admiring a marker depicting a pickup truck and Jesus on opposite sides of a lake.

My friends are expecting to deliver their son this week. If, as Bill Kristof suggests, cows will “someday be made to produce torrents of genuine human breast milk from their udders” by splicing in human DNA, then fathers will no longer have an excuse (such as the inconvenience of breast pumps) not to get up in the middle of the night for feedings.

NYT on Ghanaians entering NY traffic tickets in Accra:

Data Management workers said they were surprised — but grateful — for New Yorkers’ apparent willingness to break the law.
“They know the rules and they still are always violating them,” Ms. Mensah said. “Maybe they don’t understand simple instructions. But they have to keep doing it, because it’s how we make our money.”

NYT editorial on Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS: “The Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism tactics — secret detentions of suspects, denial of the right to trial and now citizen spying — have in common a lack of faith in democratic institutions and a free society.“

When thinking about God in the Pledge of Allegiance, ever wonder how other countries, especially traditionally religious ones with a recent chance to redo their constitutions, deal with the question? Here’s a section from the preamble of Poland’s constitution:

We, the Polish Nation - all citizens of the Republic, Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty, As well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources….

Desiring to guarantee the rights of the citizens for all time, and to ensure diligence and efficiency in the work of public bodies, Recognizing our responsibility before God or our own consciences, Hereby establish this Constitution of the Republic of Poland…

Not bad. Note that the US Constitution mentions religion twice, once when prohibiting religious tests for any office (Article VI) and the first part of the First Amendment (”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”), even before mentioning the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly. Of course, I have every expectation that the Supreme Court will overrule the 9th circuit, but that doesn’t mean it’s correct, just that it’s the law.

Christopher Caldwell has an NY Press column on how bad Bush’s profits from Harkin Energy makes the President look. It includes this gem, which is too odd to comment on:

An editorial on Harken in last week’s Wall Street Journal noted “interesting Saudi connections on the finance side.” One of Bush’s early investors in Arbusto was James Bath, agent of Salem bin Laden (Osama’s half-brother) in the United States.

Things to do when you retire: pass the sommelier SATs:

Which of the following wine label descriptions would likely indicate the presence of grenache? 1) Chateauneuf-du-Pape; 2) Pomerol; 3) Gevrey-Chambertin; 4) Mosel-Saar-Ruwer; 5) Somontano.

Seems like a pleasant way to work on self-improvement: “High school is a pretty apt description, except that here the teachers pour you booze instead of confiscating it.”

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction awards challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The 2002 winner:

On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not
quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it
hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going
bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of
annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.

And the sentence that started it all:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

And you thought my blog was annoying….

The WSJ blogs this under Dogs of War:

“A pair of hot doggers taking their Wienermobile to the National Capital Barbecue Battle in Washington were pulled over by the Virginia State Police this week for driving too close to the Pentagon. . . . ‘Obviously this was a mistake,’ Virginia State Police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ‘This hot dog posed no threat to us.’ “–United Press International, June 21

“A pilot busted for July 4th air antics that frightened beachgoers and authorities on heightened terror alert told investigators he and his friend were ‘hot dogging’ when they flew close to boaters and bathers, prosecutors said yesterday.”–New York Post, July 18

In other words, more hot dogs, less hot doggers.

WSJ reports:

Is Tehran’s lunatic theocracy on the verge of collapse? Columnist David Warren thinks so. “Iran has come to the boil,” he writes. “Against the background of huge public demonstrations, the reformist party that controls the largest block of seats in the elected but largely powerless Iranian Parliament [Wednesday] threatened to walk out, if the ayatollahs continued to stall measures for social and political change.”

Bush has even given an impressive (and completely unreported) speech on the subject:

The people of Iran want the same freedoms, human rights, and opportunities as people around the world. Their government should listen to their hopes.

In the last two Iranian presidential elections and in nearly a dozen parliamentary and local elections, the vast majority of the Iranian people voted for political and economic reform. Yet their voices are not being listened to by the unelected people who are the real rulers of Iran. Uncompromising, destructive policies have persisted, and far too little has changed in the daily lives of the Iranian people. . . .

There is a long history of friendship between the American people and the people of Iran. As Iran’s people move towards a future defined by greater freedom, greater tolerance, they will have no better friend than the United States of America.

I think you’ll see the democratization of Iran before that of Cuba, but I expect both to be soon.