While waiting for confirmation about the human clone, here is a scientific FAQ to better understand the background of the procedure.

That Tricky Amis

If, like me, you were a huge fan of Martin Amis long before he wrote Koba The Dread, you might have already read his meta-essay on writers after 9/11.

If not, have fun.
Money lines: (well, there are many, but how about): "On the other hand, PC now occupies the preferred territory of all ideologies: it is among schoolchildren. The language and literature papers in our national exams are becoming implicit invitations to ideological conformity; and everyone knows that there are few marks to be had for bucking the earnest line on, say, Maya Angelou. The weaker pupils will take the false comfort of belonging to a consensus; the stronger will simply receive early training in the practice of hypocritical piety."

This essay provoked a mini-controversy on the hip British left. First, the out-of-this-world sanctimony of M. John Pilger. I don't think that Pilger is actually responding to Amis, but that shouldn't stop him. Where there are soapboxes. . .

Then, Lars Vanderquist's response.
Mr. Vilensky will probably enjoy bits like this: "John Pilger is a mush-headed Rousseauist liberal who's convinced that people are basically good. Especially Muslim peasants."

Could I get that wrapped?
An anarcho-capitalist dream come true: eBay sells an entire town in California.

Truth or Fiction?
Scientists linked to the Raelian sect claim to have cloned the first human being, Eve, from the cells of her mother. The claim should be verified within the next few days, so updates will follow here.

At the End of the Quest, Victory
Great review of The Lord of the Rings by W.H. Auden. Perfect for furnishing on all-too-hip pomo lit profs.

Best of Junk Science 2002
Enjoy the meatball and college drinking scandals, as well as the truth about DDT and global warming.

"Bigger, Better, More Beautiful"
A great article about potential designs for a new WTC by our very own Yale professor David Gelernter.

And for a lighter side to philosophy, which describes the "causes of death" of philosophers. Some noteworthy causes:

Darwin: became unfit
Heidegger: not being in time
Keynes: the long run
Kant: found the means to his own end
Plato: caved in

One can never get enough of good old Friedrich.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Thought for the Day

"It seems to me that Dante committed a grave blunder when, with disconcerting naïveté, he put over the gate of hell the inscription: 'Me, too, eternal love created.' At any rate, the inscription over the gate of the Christian paradise, with its 'eternal bliss,' would read more fittingly, 'Me, too, eternal hate created'---provided that it is fitting to place a truth above the gateway to a lie."
---Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, XV

P.S. I now cannot walk outside my home without seeing the beaming grin of that vile fraud and poseur Santa Claus. No there are no camps, but it feels at least like visiting Tiananmen Square as a tourist.

In response to Mr. Koffler's blogs:

1) Between laughing and crying, I suggest laughing. She'll never win.

2) "It's that enthusiasm is compulsory too" ?! Somehow, I don't think so. At least it seems like Mr. Hitchens was able to escape that enthusiasm quite well without being locked up in a camp.

One can lack any kind of belief in Christianity and still enjoy celebrating Christmas. If nothing else, it's a good time to get together with family and remember to be grateful to one's loved ones. I don't remember the last time Bolshevism did that, do you?

And In Other News

Should I laugh or cry?

O'Reilly and the Bathhouses---Who Knew?
Does this guy hear himself?

O'REILLY: I want to pursue happiness, and I don't want you, Dan Savage, to tell me after I know now how to use the condom because you taught me in school -- now I want to go to that bathhouse and use that condom and have fun, but you're going to close that down.

(I know he doesn't mean it, but wow. Anybody up for starting an O'Reilly watch?)

Tis The Season
Here's something for those of you, who, like me,
keep a "Christianity is Bolshevism" file:

"I absolutely abominate absolutely everything about this season of the year. It's taken me a considerable time to decipher my emotions, but here's how it finally came to me a few solstices back. The newspapers are full of an identical theme; the television and radio pump relentlessly on the same handle; in shops and in public squares and train stations and airports and even in bars and restaurants the music and the slogans and the propaganda are inescapable. The schools teach even less than usual and begin to rehearse the dismal chants under the guidance of wan instructors. Workplaces are given over to paroxysms of repetitive celebration. And it's not just that attendance and observance are compulsory and conscripted (though that would be bloody bad enough). It's that enthusiasm is compulsory too. You are always being urgd to join in. Of what does this remind me? Of the Leader's Birthday in some godawful, one-party banana republic or people's democracy, that's what."
---Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, January 13, 1996

Sweet dreams.

Ambiguous Gifts
President Bush decided to issue his first pardons to seven folks. That's neat, especially in the case of the man convicted for producing untaxed whiskey, which is definitely not an immoral offense in my book. What I find strange, however, is the fact that the names of the offenders (who committed their crimes between 9 and 45 years ago) are now published all over the Internet. Would some of them rather not have received a pardon if that was the price to pay?

A Merry Christmas for Chinese Dissident Xu Wenli
His crime? Trying to implement democracy. What it took for him to get out of jail and be exiled to the U.S.? Only 25 years in prison, contracting Hepatitis B, and continued pressure from the United States.

The U.N., our friend and neighbor
Forced sterilizations is another business the U.N. should maybe not be into. Nor should anyone else, for that matter.