Good stuff in Jay Nordlinger’s latest NRO “Impromptus” column — including this undressing (sorry if the image scars you; me, I’m mildly excited by it) of the Washington Post’s Mary McGrory: Mary McGrory, longtime columnist for the Washington Post, ended her recent column this way: ‘George Bush would rather keep Cubans hungry than take any chances for himself and his brother with the folks who thought Elian Gonzalez would be

“Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never said — a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying the moving image,” The Boston Globe reports. “In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to

From Reuters: “Soccer-mad criminals have been turning themselves in to British police stations in the hope of completing a short jail sentence in time to watch the World Cup, British newspapers reported on Friday. In ‘Operation Red Card’, police in Hertfordshire, north of London, sent a simple message to defendants who have been failing to turn up in court: surrender now or spend the World Cup in a police cell

From Reuters: “Soccer-mad criminals have been turning themselves in to British police stations in the hope of completing a short jail sentence in time to watch the World Cup, British newspapers reported on Friday. In ‘Operation Red Card’, police in Hertfordshire, north of London, sent a simple message to defendants who have been failing to turn up in court: surrender now or spend the World Cup in a police cell

If there’s a problem with college kids today, it’s this: they have no idea who fought in the Spanish-American War, but they can write entire columns on the techniques and logistics of fellatio. For Yale Dailynews, no less! …Of course, knowing a lot about the Spanish-American War probably won’t earn you a night out at TGIF Fridays and a movie… Nevermind.

Though it has yet to be confirmed, there’s speculation that the body of slain WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl may have been found in Pakistan. The Nando Times reports: Police dug up a body in an open field in a poor neighborhood on the western edge of Karachi, the official said on condition of anonymity. The official said the body was not being removed from the site while the scene was

Here’s a photo (via Scott Armel-Funkhouser) of the infamous “blood libel” poster, funded by public monies and exhibited by student groups at

Screw Luke Skywalker and his cult-of-personality buddies! Misguided revolutionaries, the lot of ’em! Yoda? A faux-Zen puppet poseur. Obi-Wan? An aging hippie activist clinging to silly proto-Marxist ideals. The Empire, on the other hand — which “doesn’t want slaves or destruction or ‘evil.’ It wants order” — now that’s where it’s at, should you wish to run a galaxy properly. Or at least, so writes The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last…

The National Review is on a Pim Fortuyn kick today. First, John O’Sullivan writes of the “combination of oversimplification and outright falsehood […] found in the media picture of an ‘extreme right’ resurgent throughout Europe.” It is in reality a multitude of anti-establishment attitudes. The Danish ‘extreme right’ party, for instance, wants to protect its nation’s welfare state from the demographic pressures of high immigration. Le Pen may be an

Tres Producers’ Marty Thau tells the story of Heineken’s trademark treachery. ‘t seems Big Green’s rippin’ off the name of Mr. Thau’s indie record label, Red Star Records (founded in 1977). I recently gave up beer — my fatted manbreasts were drooping so badly I kept scorching my nipples whenever I ate soup — but if I hadn’t already, I’d swear off the Heineken after reading this. Crazy Ed Chileen’s