“There wasn’t a thing on the table that I could eat” said a frustrated Love. “They kept putting food in front of me, but I kept trying to tell them that I was a vegan. I pointed to the food and said it really loudly and slowly ‘vegan, veee-gaaan’ but they didn’t seem to understand. They just kept encouraging me to eat.”
Love’s lack of Mongolian language skills coupled with the families lack of English language skills provided the perfect environment for a cultural misunderstanding to take place. And before long the Mongolian family had come to understand that “vegan” meant “sick” and quickly began to set out to find a remedy for their guest’s illness.
Oyon left the table for a moment and returned with what appeared to be two recently severed chicken’s feet. She then dipped the feet into some of the congealed pig’s fat and took Love to a back room where she proceeded to try to spread the substance on her ears in an effort to remedy her sickness.
A Howard Dean Moment
Is Hillary! building up to one? She’s always struck me as pretty tightly wound.
One More Reason Not To Do Business In California
This upcoming “bi-partisan” (if you really believe that Ahhhnuld is a Republican) disaster of a health-care plan.
Apparently Sacramento has never learned the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Spaceport Progress
Jeff Foust has a good roundup of current events over at The Space Review today.
Ten Things
…that atheists and Christians can, and must agree on. From, of all places, Cracked.
[Via emailer Eric Akawie]
A Vision, Not A Destination
When I was digging through my December 2003 archives to see what I was writing about the Wright brothers anniversary, I ran across this space policy essay that I wrote a few days later. As long as I’m doing reruns today, it still holds up pretty well, I think, so here’s an encore, from almost four years ago.
A Hundred And Four Years
That’s how long it’s been since the Wrights first launched their first airplane from the dunes of Kitty Hawk. That also means, now, that it’s been four years since the X-Prize was won. We haven’t made as much progress since then as many of us hope, but I think that things are moving along reasonably well. I in fact expect to see an acceleration of suborbital activity, in the near future, with John Carmack hoping to fly into space in the next two years. I think it was Arthur Clarke who pointed out that we tend to be overoptimistic in the short run, and overpessimistic in the long run, partly because we tend to think linearly.
Anyway, I’m going to reprint my thoughts from four years ago, including links to two other pieces that I wrote at National Review and TCSDaily (then TechCentralStation).
The GodFather Candidate
Huckabee on foreign policy.
I can’t believe that this guy could really get the Republican nomination. And of course, just because he’s in the lead doesn’t mean that he has a good chance, since he only has a plurality, not a majority, and seems unlikely to get one. And if he does somehow get the nomination, I can’t see the party rallying behind him.
Reclaiming the First Amendment
Ron Paul’s supporters and a former Federal Election Commissioner are turning the operation of political speech inside out by turning individual donors into political organizations and the delivery vehicle (pun intended) into a for-profit universal-access media company. Bravo! Or as On the Media puts it:
…a campaign reform loophole as big as the Ron Paul blimp.
Expect ever tighter epicycles from the FEC to try to hold back the Internet and the innovative business processes that low transactions costs make available via personal computers and the Internet. They will nullify all limitations on free speech.
Just Shoot Me Now…
OK, this isn’t what I had in mind as an alternative.
Though I have to say, if all you care about is the war, there would be a lot worse tickets…