At least the trains ran on time

Jonah Goldberg has been nicknamed the Doughy Pantload for oh so many reasons, and he yet again lives up (or down) to the nickname in his latest steaming pile of feces that passes for a newspaper column:

Iraq needs a Pinochet

Now consider Chile. Gen. Pinochet seized a country coming apart at the seams. He too clamped down on civil liberties and the press. He too dispatched souls. Chile's official commission investigating his dictatorship found that Pinochet had 3,197 bodies in his column; 87% of them died in the two-week mini-civil war that attended his coup. Many more were tortured or forced to flee the country.

But on the plus side, Pinochet's abuses helped create a civil society.

Forgive me but wasn't our final rationalization for having leapt headfirst into the moral and military disaster that is Iraq, that we were just being decent sorts trying to save the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator? I mean that is still the current justification, right? So now we want to replace Hussein with...Pinochet. *headdesk*

My favorite comment on the TBogg post on this:

One train is definitely running according to schedule: the Moral Relativism Express. All aboard!

Remember how the Big Idea Bush was so bold as to advocate was the transformative power of human freedom, accept no substitutes? Good times, good times.
FlipYrWhig

Huh

Smart children "more likely to become vegetarians"

LONDON (Reuters) - Children with high IQs are more likely to be vegetarians when they grow up, according to research reported on Friday.

A British study of more them 8,000 men and women aged 30 whose IQs had been measured when they were 10, showed that the higher the IQ, the greater the odds of being a vegetarian.

"People who are more intelligent as children, who will obviously keep that intelligence when they are 30, were more likely to say they are vegetarians at that age than those that were less intelligent," said Dr Catherine Gale, an epidemiologist at the University of Southampton in England.

She added the findings, which are published online by the British Medical Journal, were consistent with other studies showing people who are more intelligent tend to eat a healthier diet and exercise more.

"There is quite a lot of evidence linking vegetarianism to a lower risk of heart disease. People who are vegetarians tend to have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels and they do have a lower risk of dying from coronary heart disease," Gale added.

For each 15-point rise in IQ scores in the study, the likelihood of being a vegetarian rose by 38 percent. Even after adjusting to factors such as social class and education, the link was still consistent.

More than 33 percent of the men and women in the study described themselves as vegetarians but said they ate white meat and fish. Just over four percent were strict vegetarians and 2.5 percent were vegans, who eat no animal products at all, including eggs and dairy.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

In the discussion about this article over at Ezra Klein's blog a commentor says:

Intelligence correlates with interest in ideas, and it's the ideas behind vegetarianism that move people to actually practice it.

The study reportedly controlled for factors like class and education, so I don't see any obvious problems with it.

Posted by: Sanpete

Makes sense to me.

Fuckin' bees!

OMG, ok this is another combination of Dane Cook and something completely different. Prince Zuko does "Sharks and Bees". moonlightnrain and I are sitting here howling with laughter, watch!

Watch on YouTube

Also, representin' for the Water Tribe, Sokka's Greatest Moments:

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