You should really read Henry Farrell's post on our unpleasant, barely-even-denied practice of shipping prisoners off to Uzbekistan, land of boiling body parts and forcibly removed toenails. Our actions are a travesty and our government's unwillingness, indeed, straight dishonesty, when confronted with hard evidence of its actions simply underscores the total contempt the Bush administration holds its subjects -- and I use the word advisedly -- in.

In one of the sicker incarnations of the Christian Right's myopia, they're gearing up to oppose a new vaccine that could protect women from HPV, the virus that causes most instances of cervical cancer. HPV, of course, is often spread through sex, so the God Squad is worried that giving children a vaccination will, years later, be interpreted as a divine "alrighty-then" to lead a life packed with penises. This appears to be what Christ's legacy has come to: the prioritization of abstinence over life.

I'll never understand folks who alphabetize their books. It's not that I don't appreciate the idea of imposing some order on the ever-encroaching floor-monster that is my library, but the method seems so very off. I acquire books at an enormously alarming rate. You think I'm joking, I'm not -- the government has retained a team of highly trained specialists to monitor, study, and reach conclusions based solely on my rate of literary acquisition. One of them had a nervous breakdown, the other two got divorces. It's really quite scary.

The new issue of Foreign Policy has a blurb on the increasing anti-Americanism of South Korea's textbooks. To demonstrate, they offered up this question from a teacher's packet on the 1991 Gulf War:

"Which of the following descriptions of Iraq after the Gulf War is incorrect?

1) Infant mortality increased by 150%, and in some areas, 70% of newborns had leukemia due to sanctions.



2) The United States and Britain conducted a bombing campaign against Iraq for 11 years after the war, causing terror among the Iraqi people.

3) Cancer among Iraqi children increased by 700% because of depleted uranium left from the bombing.