Mysterious $100 ‘supernote’ counterfeit bills appear across world
The only way to distinguish some of the “supernotes,” experts say, is to compare photographically blown-up sections with magnifying instruments, […] About $50 million of the mystery money has been seized since 1989.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
On not winning the Nobel Prize
I am sure that everyone here, making a speech will know that moment when the faces you are looking at are blank. Your listeners cannot hear what you are saying: there are no images in their minds to match what you are telling them. In this case, of a school standing in dust clouds, where water is short, and where, at the end of term, a just killed goat cooked in a great pot is the end of term treat.
Is it really so impossible for them to imagine such bare poverty?
I do my best. They are polite.
I’m pretty sure of this lot there will be some who will win prizes.

(also not me, though i met the guy at a gaming convention in Calgary once)
Thursday, October 18, 2007
“THE GORE EXCEPTION”
A Layman’s Guide
to the United States Supreme Court Decision
in Bush v. Gore
Q: I’m not a lawyer and I don’t understand the recent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Can you explain it to me?
A: Sure. I’m a lawyer. I read it. It says Bush wins, even if Gore got the most votes.
Q: But wait a second. The US Supreme Court has to give a reason, right?
A: Right.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
– Napoleon
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
‘Belgium? Something that does not exist’ Political fault lines divide nation | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited
[…] There is not a single national politician or leader (bar King Albert) or a single national political party that straddles the linguistic and cultural north-south divide between Flanders and the southern region of francophone Wallonia.
“I don’t know any federal state where you don’t have national parties. Here the parties are purely local,” says André Sapir, head of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. “We are a federal state, but we have less and less of a common political framework.”
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
An example of a more advanced civilization than ours:
National Public Toilet Map (Australia)