George Orwell

When people discuss Orwell's 1984, many mistakenly think he was talking about the USA. Nope, he was talking about the U.K., with good reason.

How are things in Iraq?

I dunno, ask the British guy that the Home Office told to get 3 quotes for window replacement or gender awareness workshops.

He has a book, it's on the Amazon wish list!

What are we gonna do?!?!?!?!?!

Lots and lots of hand-wringing over the oil crisis, how much we use here in the US, bla bla bla.

How about this? A car that gets 35MPG city, 55 highway with existing technology? Or an SUV that does 23 city, 36 highway? Or, if you want to go fast with a diesel (0-100KPH in 6.8 sec, top end of 155mph) you can get 31 city, 55 highway. Nothing to do, really, except sell it here in the US.

It's diesel. Plain old, boring diesel cars. Very popular in Europe. They're not noisy, smoky or lousy performers like they used to be.

The cars that do this?
The 35/55 car is the Dodge Caliber, UK version, with a 2.0L diesel.
The 23/36 SUV is the Jeep "Cherokee", UK version (we call it the Liberty in the US) with a 2.8L diesel.
The performance sedan? BMW 330d, with a 3.0L diesel.

Helicopter parents

Are we pussy-ifying (is that a word?) our kids?
The answer is...yes!

And of course, the Fark thread on this is great. If you ignore the BS posts, there's some tood stuff in there.

Springtime

Ah, yes, springtime. Is there nothing more pleasant than springtime in North Korea?

The National Guard and the border

It appears that the mere presence of NG troops installing fences and building roads is enough to deter illegal crossers. Detentions were off 21 Percent along the border in a 10-day period. Keep this in mind: the Border Patrol figures they catch 1 in 4 illegal crossers. So, if they caught 27,000 crossers in 10 days, that means roughly 81,000 came across during that same time. That's a football stadium's worth of illegals every 10 days. So, during the year, we have 36 full football stadiums of illegals coming across the border.

Do you still think we don't have a problem?

Is the Haditha massacre a hoax?

Maybe. But Time's telling of the story is definitely falling apart. They're already starting to retract pieces of the story.
There are a couple of interesting links off the story that I want to highlight here and here.

Before there were Muppets

Jim Henson did a series of ads for Wilkins Coffee with what look like the precursors to Kermit and Cookie Monster. They're hardly politically correct. In fact, they're kind of twisted...

The whole series is here