Thursday, May 27, 2004

It's obvious
The suicide rate in New Jersey is twice the homicide rate, according to a new study. This isn't surprising, since anyone who has seen any part of the rest of the world and finds himself trapped in New Jersey has no other realistic option than to commit suicide. The small number of murders is no doubt accounted for by the few native New Jerseyites who realize the nature of the hellhole they inhabit. The few who do will do anything, even murder, to get out.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

The only boooks in the world
Thought I'd come up with a list of the only real books out there. It's odd to go into a bookstore and not see any great number of books, just a few here and there, separated by meaningless jumbles of typography on wasted paper. So I'll just give you authors' names. Not all the authors listed actually wrote a book every time they put words on paper but most of their production is real:

Rand
Hugo
Balzac
Adam Smith
Orwell
Carlyle
Stendhal
Asimov
Gogol
Dostoevsky
Voltaire
Simenon
Bernard Lewis
Raffaello Pumpelly
Benvenuto Cellini
Hayek
Vernon Howard
Bunyan
Lysander Spooner
Thomas Paine

I'll add more as I think of them and perhaps someday figure out how to move the list into a permanent section of the site. Odd how few wrote after 1900, eh?

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

More Fish War
To be even-handed, I must present the Pakistani view of the piscine pugilistics off the coast of the subcontinent. But who will speak for the fish?

Monday, May 24, 2004

Indo-Pak fish war
Yes, only on Conundrum will you hear about the Indo-Pakistani fish war:

An Indian Navy patrol boat fired at a fishing trawler that strayed into Indian waters in the Arabian Sea , killing three Pakistani fishermen, officials said on Tuesday.


One just hopes it doesn't scale up.