The Radical Tinkerers are at it again
Ellen Barry reports in the Boston Globe that Broader, varied SAT advocated. It's the usual blather about a kinder, gentler test which will obfuscate the inability of the school system to teach students to read, write, and do arithmetic without a calculator. There are, however, sample questions! Since I love a quiz, here goes:

Q. What would you do if you had already eaten lunch when you realized you didn't have the cash to pay for it?

A. Pretend to go to the john and then run out the front door.

Q. What would you do if you walked into a party where you didn't know anyone?

A. Drink all the booze, proposition all the women, and then collapse behind the couch.

Q. How would you ask a professor you didn't know well to write you a recommendation?

A. Hey Gramps! You owe it to me!

Q. Write a story entitled ''The Octopus's Shoes.''

A. They don't need shoes. They have suckers, sucker!

Do I get into Harvard?

News you can use
Older women urged to become lesbians

AUSTRALIA'S leading relationship counselling body is urging lonely older single women to become lesbians.

Relationships Australia spokesman Jack Carney said men's shorter life spans, and their pursuit of much younger women, meant women in their twilight years were often forced to turn to other women for love and companionship.

Mr Carney said the government-funded support group encouraged older women to explore lesbian relationships, which were seen as more nurturing and emotionally supportive.

To paraphrase one of James Taranto's favorite lines, what would we do without government funded experts?

Sea salvage to keep cars off used lots

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands -- Smit Salvage has been besieged with calls ever since a Norwegian-registered ship with thousands of luxury cars on board sank late last year in the English Channel.

The callers -- used car salesmen, junkyard dealers and modern-day treasure hunters -- guessed correctly that the Rotterdam company was the likeliest candidate to raise the sunken ship, the Tricolor, and its cargo of 2,871 BMWs, Volvos and Saabs, worth about $40 million.

What they did not fully consider was the corrosive effect of spending eight months in salt water.

What makes the author think so?

Expert: Cuban economy on brink of collapse

Under a ''catastrophic debt burden'' and unable to pay its creditors, Cuba is teetering on the precipice of economic collapse, an international finance expert said Thursday.

''In the last couple of years, Cuba has spiraled out of control in not meeting its obligations. It's a sign the wheels are coming off the bus,'' said Dennis Flannery, executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank. He spoke to reporters in Coral Gables after addressing the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

Cuba had its lowest sugar harvest this year since the Great Depression, and the country is largely floated on income from the tourism industry and money sent to the island in remittances. The government has used that money in part to buy food -- in cash -- from U.S. farmers, while avoiding its bills to other foreign governments.

Cuba's foreign debt is so high -- it owes $12 billion in hard currency, plus Russia claims it is owed another $20 billion, Flannery said, citing the State Department -- that a credit agency has listed the Caribbean nation among the world's riskiest investments, along with Iraq and Angola, a nation to which Cuba once sent military and economic aid.

Guess those Fidel Savings Bonds won't be a good investment. How long before the usual suspects in the Democrat party call for a bailout?

How killers in state stay untouchable: Mexican court scraps extradition treaty -- frustrated California D.A.s won't cut deals

After a months-long search, Santa Cruz County investigators found the man accused of a brutal attack in which he allegedly slashed a girl's throat and then raped her friend.

Trouble is, the only way to get him is to cut a deal.

Suspect Miguel Loza is behind bars in a Mexico City jail. But Mexican authorities refuse to send him to the United States to stand trial unless he is guaranteed parole.

The dilemma facing Santa Cruz prosecutors -- whether to reduce charges for a heinous crime or risk leaving a suspected killer, rapist and child molester on the loose -- has become increasingly common for district attorneys throughout the state since October 2001. That was when Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that life in prison, or any term without guaranteed parole, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under Mexico's constitution.
...
As for Loza, the pending charges of homicide, sodomy, assault with a deadly weapon and forcible sex assault on a child would have to be reduced to the level of manslaughter before Mexico would allow extradition.

First, they wouldn't extradite if there was a possibility of a death sentence. Now they won't extradite if there is a possibility of a life sentence. Next, they won't extradite if there are no guarantees of doilies.

And speaking of people with obscure hobbies
It's another Blogspot Sunday - permalinks are broken. Based on past experience, they will recover sometime this afternoon.

UPDATE: It gets better, all archives are casters up, not just this week's.

"Kicked some serious Aussie booby"
Meredith May and Charles Burress of the San Francisco Chronicle report on the latest issue roiling Berkeley in Berkeley breast-feeders beat lactating Aussies:

Berkeley, the world champion of mass lactation, defended its crown Saturday against the upstart Australians in what has become something of a transpacific nursing grudge match.

On the count of, "One, two, three, latch!" nearly 700 moms suckled their babes in the Berkeley Community Theatre. Although the final head count was a bit shy of the 1,130 women who brought the title home to Berkeley last year, it still, to quote the master of ceremonies, "kicked some serious Aussie booby."

I, for one, am always interested in news of people with obscure hobbies. Zzzzzzzzz.

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Music News Hoax Alert!
Kieren McCarthy at The Register amuses with Cherie Blair dance track hits Number One:

"Will you still love me, will you still hug me, when I'm number 1?" read a story in The Independent on 4 August, which revealed the startling news that Cherie Blair, wife of the Prime Minister, was to become the summer's biggest dance hit sensation.

According to the article, a sample of Cherie singing The Beatles' 'When I'm Sixty-Four' at a Chinese press conference last month had found its way onto a dance track and become an instant hit. "The sample has serious novelty value. It's a catchy tune and an eccentric performance. When people realise it's Mrs Blair it is difficult to know how they will react but it is set to be red hot this summer," an apparent spokesman for Radio 1 in Ibiza told the reporter.
...
The news was too good to miss and suddenly every media outlet was running wild with the tale, picked up off the Internet. Most, in the best tradition of British reporting, omitting to mention the fact that they had stolen it from The Independent.

Sounds like "Purple People Eater" to me - time for a snooze. But wait, there's more:

Except, except, except. Five days after the sensational news was revealed to an astonished world, has anyone actually heard this incredible summer hit? Thousands of clubbers are, even as we speak, dancing to it, yet no one save a so-called Radio 1 spokesman and a "music industry source" has had anything to say about it. And - possibly the final proof - it hasn't appeared on any of the file-sharing networks.

Maybe we're wrong. Maybe the song is so devastatingly good that the listener's mind is incapable of remembering it mere seconds later. But it would seem that Cherie's Song will only be number one of one chart this summer and that is the Media Hoax Top Ten.

He also notes that

the exception [is] the BBC, which appears to have learnt from its numerous previous cock-ups and gone with the headline 'Mystery of Cherie's Ibiza 'hit''.

The BBC link also has a snap of Cherie belting out the tune. Looks like she's calling pigs.

So are the Independent and the other newsies blushing or will Kieren and the BBC be the chumps? Enquiring minds want to know, but not necessarily hear Cherie sing.

Passing strange
Frankly, who the American Episcopal Church chooses as a bishop rates rather low on the care-o-meter with me. But the guy they picked with all the hoopla as their first gay bishop seemed to be a rather odd choice for a poster boy. James Lileks says it better than I:

This story has irritated me from the start, and it has nothing to do with Rev. Robinson’s sexual orientation. The guy left his wife and kids to go do the hokey-pokey with someone else: that’s what it’s all about, at least for me. Marriages founder for a variety of reasons, and ofttimes they’re valid reasons, sad and inescapable. But “I want to have sex with other people” is not a valid reason for depriving two little girls of a daddy who lives with them, gets up at night when they're sick, kisses them in the morning when they wake. There's a word for people who leave their children because they don't want to have sex with Mommy anymore: selfish. I'm not a praying man, but I cannot possibly imagine asking God if that would be okay.

Donald Sensing too:

There is no way on God's green earth that Robinson would have been elected bishop by his own diocese, much less the entire denomination, if he had left his wife for another woman. Lileks is right: he moved in with a man, and the church has endorsed all of it: his past sexual infidelity, breaking his marriage vows, and his continued enjoyment of illicit sex. All have now been given the Episcopal Church Seal of Approval.

To my mind, the whole thing merely illustrates why there is a continuing decline of the mainstream Protestant denominations in the USA. After all, if you're going to go to the trouble to be religious, it might be nice to have something to believe in.

It's Big Weird Al Again
The Union Leader editorializes on yesterday's eructation from the Goron - Delusion-Al: Gore speaks nonsense in New York:

Occasionally history produces moments that make one pause and give thanks that some past event turned out the way that it did. Al Gore’s speech at New York University yesterday was one of those moments. It made us very thankful that George W. Bush won the 2000 Presidential election.

Amen, brother! There's just something about that smarmy Gore goof that makes one want to put a boot print on his butt. But hey, at least he lost the beard!

Howard the Duck chimed in, saying that Prince Al is a swell guy. One wonders how long the love-in will last if Al is really testing the waters for his own presidential run.

Every man for himself!
Arnold Schwarzenegger's entry into the California recall election has overshadowed the DemocRats who are leaving Gray Davis' sinking ship:

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi broke with party unity to announce they would run.

The pressure even started mounting on Davis in Washington, with party sources saying House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California had reversed herself and concluded the party needs a replacement candidate.
...
Bustamante, a former state Assembly speaker and the first Hispanic elected to statewide office in more than 100 years, was the first prominent Democrat to enter the fray despite weeks of saying he would stay out.

He decided to enter as a backup candidate after polls showed Davis vulnerable, but said he would campaign against the recall.
...
"I'm here to tell everyone to vote no on the recall and yes on Bustamante," he said. "We are going to fight like heck against the recall."

Sure you are, Cruz. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.

And Grayout Davis still doesn't get it:

He said he wished that fellow party members had followed his plan to stay off the ballot, but said more Democrats could lure more voters to the polls.

"Every Democrat says they are against the recall, and I take them at their word," he said

Dream on!

In case recollections of the exploits of Cruz Bustamante don't exactly float to the the top of the bowl, here's a picture and some highlights:

Davis, who preceded Bustamante as lieutenant governor, and Bustamante have had their scrapes. Early in Davis' first term, Bustamante criticized a Davis policy on immigrants, and Davis responded by eliminating some of Bustamante's staff parking spaces in the Capitol.

Woohoo! Hot steaming bureaucratic infighting!

Thursday morning, Bustamante criticized a car tax increase approved by Davis and the Legislature, saying it hurts working families.

"When I was a child of six in the little tiny town and my father was a barber, a hundred or two hundred bucks meant school clothes," said Bustamante, who grew up in Dinuba, about 30 miles southeast of Fresno.

Someone get a stopwatch - he's breaking all records getting away from Davis' vicinity!

The lieutenant governor caused a stir two years ago when he used a racial slur against blacks in a speech to the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. But the remark was largely forgiven after he apologized for it as an out-of-character slip.

He's of the party whose racial slurs are always forgiven.

As lieutenant governor, Bustamante chairs the state Senate and sits on several boards, including the University of California regents, the California State University board trustees and the State Lands Commission, which manages 4.5 million acres of public lands and waterways.

Zzzzzz.

Dang, just dang!
There's so much goodness over at Samizdata this morning that I might as well just copy all their posts. In Iraq, The Queen's Lancashire Regiment bagged a biggie; there's a heart warming story over at the dissident frogman; and surprise, surprise there's a big US State with a balanced budget - Texas. It seems they adopted the novel expedient of cutting expenditures.

The latter reminds me of a comment I heard last night from Rep. Tom Feeney while I was channel surfing past O'Reilly - The difference between the spending habits of sailors on shore leave and Congress is that sailors spend their own money.