HERE'S ANOTHER THUNK FROM BUSH If you don't follow Jacob Weisberg's Bushisms, you're missing out on frequent glimpses of the grammatical inadequacies of an Ivy League education. Especially one that was sort of handed to you by virtue of meritocracy. Today's Bushism: "The public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society." The scary thing is that what he said was not what he meant to say, but it was more honest than he intended. Or he's truly an evil, evil capitalist.

NAME THAT BUFFY GIRL Yes, this is recycled. But I've changed since last month. No longer am I confused Dawn whose true purpose is to save mankind. I am now apparently Anya: "You view the world with childlike wonder. Pro-capitalism, you're all about the money. You're sweet, honest and sincere. You appear to be all sweetness and light, but you do have a dark side. You were a demon, after all." So, which Buffy girl are you? Take the quiz. Hopefully, you won't be the one who dies at the end of this season. Maybe that'll be Zander.

CELERY AS DEMON FARE I've hit a news turnaround today -- from famine and nuclear destruction to one woman's passionate distaste for celery. She makes quite the argument, calling it "the Devil's dental floss," among other things. But I especially enjoyed her palatable tremble of fear as she described: the sheer blind terror induced by that otherwordly crunch. It is, I think, no coincidence that while recording film soundtracks, the Foley artists replicate the sound of a breaking bone with a freshly-snapped stick of celery. Go on, try it...alone, perhaps, on a rain-lashed winter's night in a room lit by a single half-spent guttering candle... and see how you like that..." Yah. You'll never drink another Bloody Mary now, will you?

CLASSICS WITHOUT SILVERFISH INFESTATIONS Ah, books. One of the oldest e-text sites on the 'net, Project Gutenberg has gathered thousands of works of literature that are in the public domain, "classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries, from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice's adventures in Wonderland as told by Lewis Carroll, and thousands of others."

You can download the texts as html or zipped documents, and do with them what you will. You can feed them to hamsters, make tablecloths out of them... you can even read them. There is one downside, especially with clever tales like the one about Alice, or loony prepubescent hero tales like "John Carter, Warlord of Mars." Yes, that's right -- no pictures. And, as Alice thought as she sat next to her sister, "What is the use of a book without pictures or conversation?"

FAMINE RETURNS TO AFRICA This must be my sad news day. This Washington Post piece should serve as a reminder that while we debate farm subsidies in this country, millions of people in southern Africa are dying. Not just hungry. Not just starving. Millions of people are hungry and starving to death. Politics, drought and poor agricultural practices have all contributed to this growing devastation in countries like Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

It gets worse. "The AIDS epidemic," the article continues, "which was only beginning to surface in southern Africa a decade ago, is deepening the misery. An estimated one of every six adult Malawians is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and hunger has accelerated the onset of debilitating diseases and even death among many household breadwinners here, according to relief and medical workers."

What to do? Awareness is useful. There are organizations on the ground, such as the UN's World Food Program, the South African Development Community and the Christian Children's Fund -- all doing amazing work trying to provide adequate resources for the hungry, the sick and the orphaned.

WORRISOME Lest we delude ourselves into thinking that the only flashpoint in the world right now is to be found sandwiches between Sinai and Lebanon, think about this piece by David Ignatius. Ignatius reminds us that next week, India will issue a report on what Pakistan has done to limit political violence in Kashmir (answer: not much). This is the violence that caused the largest mobilization of Indian troops since the 1970s late last year, and brought some analysts to the edge of their seats because of the real threat of nuclear war. Ignatius thinks that Indian hardliners will demand that India use some of the 500,000 troops massed along the border to "slap" Pakistan on the wrist, that Pakistan will almost certainly launch a nuclear missile toward New Delhi if a significant incursion takes place, and that India will retaliate in kind. Brinkmanship at its worst. A hawkish Indian home minister, a politically weak Musharraf in Pakistan, a turf war as passionate as Palestine's, and nuclear weapons. This is not the time for the Bush Administration, or anyone else, to wait to react and to allow events to drive agendas (as we did with Israel and Palestine). This goes beyond 15 killed in a cafe or dozens dying in Jenin; Pakistan and India have the very real ability to throw millions of lives into the brink.

ISLAM'S BIGGEST ENEMY IS OURS TOO A friend sent me this link last week, and I didn't think to post it until the murder of the Netherland's Pim Fortuyn, who has been brutalized by the press for stating candidly that: "Cultural developments which are diametrically opposed to the desired integration and emancipation, such as arranged marriages, honour revenge and female circumcision, must be fought by means of legislation and public information. Discrimination against women in fundamentalist Islamic circles is particularly unacceptable." Fortuyn's issue with Islam appeared really to be an issue with fundamentalism; on the surface, he was pretty neo-liberal in some significant ways. And one issue with fundamentalism, whether it is Islamic or Christian or Jewish, is its emotional resistance to modernity.

Which gets to the Observer article linked at the start of this piece. Author Ziauddin Sardar's extremely timely and thoughtful piece gets at the heart of some issues that since September 11 have become more and more maleable. Ziauddin calls terrorism a Muslim problem; Fortuyn called Islam a Western problem. I'd argue that the fundamentalist roots of terrorism has become everyone's problem. Here's Ziauddin:

"Leadership passed from intellectuals to semi-literate demagogues. What the Islamic movements have generated is fanatic militancy, a fundamentalism that is as autocratic, illiberal and repressive as the established order they seek to dethrone. Instead of allowing debate, and a rethinking about the contemporary meaning of Islam, fundamentalist notions became something to die for and finally something to kill and destroy for in pure hatred.

The failure of Islamic movements is their inability to come to terms with modernity, to give modernity a sustainable home-grown expression. Instead of engaging with the abundant problems that bedevil Muslim lives, the Islamic prescription consists of blind following of narrow pieties and slavish submission to inept obscurantists. Instead of engagement with the wider world, they have made Islam into an ethic of separation, separate under-development, and negation of the rest of the world."

LIBERATING COMMON SENSE If you sort of get the feeling that a Republican Administration might be a bit heavy on punishment and light on rehab when it comes to prisons, let loose with three cheers for Great Britain. "Battered politically by the escapes of terrorists and murderers from the Whitemoor and Parkhurst maximum security jails, the last Conservative government (Ah, Thatcher...) invested almost exclusively in prison security. In the past three financial years, however, the three main types of rehabilitation scheme - psychological 'offending behaviour programmes', drug treatment and basic skills education - have been funded to the tune of £213 million, and are set to expand substantially again." The lessons we can learn from an island-nation of people with bad fashion sense.

PAKISTAN: A DEMOCRATIC BEACON OF JOKES After last week's trendy election in Pakistan (trendy in the sense of being rife with corruption, flawed and preparing the stage for deeper troubles), the State Department's round-up of world opinion is truly shocking. Who in their right mind would believe the cynics in Europe and elsewhere who: "blasted the referendum as a "deeply flawed" democratic exercise intended to lend a "patina of legitimacy" to a military ruler.  Most claimed that the U.S., following past form, is turning a blind eye to Musharraf's shortcomings because he serves U.S. interests in the neighborhood." Fools. Don't they know that the American political system is designed to prevent the Executive Branch from acting with ulterior, self-interested motives? Yeah, well... (The link takes you to a pretty balanced overview of world reaction to Musharraf's election. You got lucky if you already guessed most people thought it was a joke.)

PHILIP MORRIS NAME SNATCHED Ah, SatireWire. It evokes rare halcyon feelings for late nights hunched over the old Quadra 610 looking for just the right crappy typeface to use for a Caffeine article. "New York, N.Y. (SatireWire.com) — Just days after Philip Morris declared it will change its name to the Altria Group, lung cancer today announced it will change its name to Philip Morris. According to lung cancer officials, the chance to snap up a brand that is more widely associated with lung cancer than lung cancer itself was too enticing to pass up."

TINY TOY SURPRISE My newfound love is SatireWire, and mainly because of this: "Princeton, N.J. (SatireWire.com) — A Princeton physicist recently split an atom of hydrogen and found a toy prize inside, the journal Science reported in its June issue... Science noted that it was the first prize found inside an atom since Allison Wyatt of Cambridge University discovered a magic puzzle toy in a lithium atom in February. For Lumiere, it was the first time in his 15-year, atom-splitting career that he has come across anything more than the normal protons, gluons, and quarks." The Onion is old hat. SatireWire is where the fun is. Read the whole article, if only because it made me laugh aloud.