Earliest Known Picture Of Michael Phelps

This is a rare cartoon submission from The Mother Of The Whited Sepulchre.

Alisa In Wonderland on Iowa and Beijing

As a public service, I try to alert everyone when Alissa In Wonderland starts typing in English instead of Hebrew.

First, check out her post about our ongoing ethanol scam. (Note to Iowa senators Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley: They've figured you out everywhere but in the United States. Great job, guys!)

Then check out what she wrote about the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Beijing, and the trade-offs between collectivism and individualism.

I hesitate to jump into the comment fields on Alissa's posts, because the threads toggle back and forth between English and Hebrew. If English was good enough for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus, why can't these people use it? Can you imagine how difficult it would be to translate something like Genesis, Exodus, or Leviticus from English into Hebrew? Why can't they use the King's English like King David did?

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was incredible, wasn't it? I've searched in vain for some decent YouTube clips, but none are available yet. Lord have mercy, what a show.




I love China, and I want wonderful things to happen for those people. Yeah, they're acting like idjits over Taiwan and Tibet. I keep hoping they'll make so much money that they'll stop caring. (Hit the "China" label at the bottom of this post if you want to read some of my bizarre travelogues from over there.) They've been through so much crap with horrific political systems, imperialist humiliations from the west, the opium wars, Marxist lunacy, Chairman Mao, The Great Leap Forward, and The Cultural Revolution. And now they're coming out of it. If you ever get a chance to go over there, jump on it.

About 30 years ago, their Commie government got sick and tired of watching people starve to death on fertile land while Tibet and Hong Kong, with virtually no natural resources, prospered. The Chinese government opened four "Free Market Zones": Shenzhen, Shantou, Hainan, and Xiamen. (I've made five trips to Xiamen. It's now the Cleveland, Ohio, of China.) Of course, everyone who could do so tried to get into these special economic zones. They might claim to be Socialists, but they're not stupid. Those places prospered.

Early this morning, I started wondering.... Could any other nation done anything comparable to this opening ceremony? Let's start with, for lack of a better term, the "anglo" nations. The U.S., Canada, Great Britain, or Australia?
Nope.
We could never get that many people to cooperate. The unified, thematically cohesive event we saw last night happened because the government was willing to underwrite and enforce the artistic will of one person. Heck, we couldn't have gotten that performance out of the committee/planning stage.
I think it's safe to include Japan in that category.

Other countries in Western Europe? Germany? Forget it. France? The unions would never cooperate, and you can't pull off something like that with a 32-hour work week.

Eastern Europe? Latin America? South America? Any of the nations in Central or Southern Africa? Nope. This would've bankrupted their treasuries.

Numerous Middle Eastern nations have enough money. Saudi Arabia, maybe. But imagine all of the Imams and ayatollahs raising hell because doing such and such is against Islam. They would never allow female athletes to compete in immodest sports like beach volleyball within their nations either. So scratch them.




Russia? No way. They've taken some wrong turns and lapsed into a Mafia state. The whole ceremony would be about Putin. North Korea, ditto, and the ceremony would have to be about Kim.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but I only came up with one other nation that is in that triangular area at the interstection of 1) creativity, 2) wealth, and 3) the ability to somehow enforce its will among its subjects.

Think about it, and then click here to see if you agree.

The Beijing Olympics Logo, Tibet, Chairman Mao, and Counting Cats

Cause for celebration:

Samizdata's serial commenter "CountingCats" now has a blog. Been up since March.

Get thee hence. Go. Learn. Laugh. Rejoice that you live in the same decade with this person, and that both of you own a computer.

Begin here, with an examination of the food riots in Haiti. The Haitian government is seriously considering lowering the taxes on food imports ! How freakin' humane ! (Hillary, Barack, take note....This would profoundly irritate Iowa caucus voters, but it would help the poor.)

Plus, the current Anthropogenic Global Warming hysteria comes in for a well-deserved thrashing. (Let's use food as an expensive substitute for fuel....)

And I don't know where the Counter of Cats got this logo, but it's a good one. Almost as good as the cartoon I posted here.

CC links to a great question....You have to wonder: how many of the people wearing “Free Tibet” buttons in 2008 were wearing Chairman Mao buttons in the 1960s?

I suspect the numbers are roughly equal.