In the year 2029

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia formally known as California.

Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops and livestock.

Baby conceived naturally...scientists stumped.

Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.

Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the American Territory of the Middle East (formerly known as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon.

Iran still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

France pleads for global help after being over taken by Jamaica.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.

Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.

85-year, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise are the keys to weight loss.

Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.

Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals violates their civil rights.

Average height of NBA players now nine feet, seven inches.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.

Congress authorizes direct deposit of formerly illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.

Florida voters still don't know how to use a voting machine.

Who's rich now?

This is from Michael Jennings, at Christian Aid. Tip of the hat to Samizdata for the quote:

This "trade and cheap labour for manufacturing is the rich world exploiting the poor" argument is not precisely new to my ears. When I was a kid in the 1970s I heard the same thing about how we were taking advantage of poor world sweatshops. The only thing that has changed since then is the location of the sweatshops. In those days people talked about Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, those kinds of places. And what do these places have in common? Well, today they are the rich world. Ten years ago we started seeing "Made in China" on our cheap imports. A lot of this stuff then came from Shenzhen, just over the border from Hong Kong. Well, today Shenzhen is for practical purposes a developed world city. The manufacturing has now moved inland. The process is getting faster, and the more of the world is rich, then it gets faster still for the rest.

Those annoying liberals

Rob Koons of Right Reason has analyzed emails and posts by liberals to come up with the ten things he really hates about liberals:

1. Liberals invariably charge their critics with the straw man fallacy, no matter how tight the fit between the criticism and the words and deeds of real liberals.

2. Liberals are quick to distance themselves from their wacko spokesman (Michael Moore, Ward Churchill) whenever these spokesman are attacked by the right, but liberals will never initiate such criticism, holding fast to the maxim of pas d’enemi à gauche.

3. Liberals love to play hard-ball politics, until they get beaned themselves.

4. Liberals complain incessantly that conservatives don't know or understand them yet have never spent more than five minutes listening to conservatives or reading their works.

5. Liberals are apt to label conservatives hateful, confusing vigorous rebuttal of liberal thought with personal attacks on liberals themselves.

6. Liberals make extremely intemperate remarks, while holding conservatives to a standard of politeness so stringent as to make Emily Post squirm with anxiety.

7. Liberals never bother to check their facts, since they know that only ignoramuses disagree with them.

8. Liberals are boring, since all they ever have to say is "yada, yada, yada, yada,..." [Sorry, I stopped listening after the second 'yada'.]

9. Liberals object vehemently to any attempt by conservatives to make generalizations about liberals, no matter how apt the generalization might be.

10. Liberals have absolutely no sense of humor. They never laugh -- they only smirk.

Planetary Nebula

Courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day: the Hubble photograph of the planetary nebula NGC 6751.

Click for a larger view.

Quote for the day

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

   Thomas Paine