Author: Guthman

You won’t read this in the New York Times:

The Saudi/US sponsored March 14 coalition in Lebanon won the parliamentary election, by getting 71 out of 128 seats (gaining +1), but lost the popular vote on election day by a margin of 45.2% to 54.8%. (via Friday Lunch Club).

The “March 8 Coalition” between the Shi’ite parties Hezbollah and Amal, the Christian FPM party and a few others received 839,371 votes, whereas the “March 14 Coalition” between the Sunni Al Mustaqbal party, the Christian Lebanese Forces, the Druze PSP and a few others, received 692,285 votes.

How can this be you ask? Well it has to do with Lebanon’s bizarro sectarian election quotas, which massively under-represent Shi’a voters and over-represent Christian voters.

(These numbers also give you an idea just how small this messy Lilliput really is…).

This is truly a story for the ages. Today’s WSJ  portrays two very special Madoff victims: a pair of artists, Arakawa and Madeline Gin, who designed houses, that are meant to prolong the lives of their inhabitants and perhaps even make them immortal by making them uncomfortable.

… They build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor. Between rooms are sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and mind, thus prolonging life. “You become like a baby,” says Mr. Arakawa.

The pair financed their work by investing with Bernie Madoff, no doubt attracted by the, ahem, great comfort that came with those uncannily regular returns…

In general I really try not to gloat but this is just too funny.

Here is video.

You probabaly didn’t know that the Blackwater people are in the language teaching business .
They teach Iraqi Arabic, Pashtun and… Spanish.

Hmmm….