Frontiers in cuisine

Overheard while having dinner at a Cuban restaurant in Chokoloskee FL.

Chef stomps out, saying "Where's the guy who says he doesn't like my paella"?

Guy, mildly: "I never had paella made with spaghetti before."

A simple way to save Medicare

In the current negotiations on the so-called Fiscal Cliff, one proposed change is to raise the minimum age for Medicare from 65 to 67. This turns out to be a bad idea, because it increases rather than decreases the amount spent on health care, and would be a cruel joke on 65 year old retirees who suddenly found that they had no Medicare and no employer insurance. So let's think outside the box for a minute. Rather than changing the minimum age for Medicare, let's change the maximum age to 85.

How do you say I Shall Return in Japanese?

I was catching up on my Financial Times and read an amazing front page story that says "The Philippines would strongly support a rearmed Japan shorn of its pacifist constitution as a counterweight to the growing military assertiveness of China, according to the Philippine foreign minister."

Bataan, Corregidor, Manila Massacre, never mind, come back, all is forgiven. Wow.

FT Article

A political question

Let's imagine that Eric Cantor and Rand Paul were working for Al Qaeda, lavishly paid to destroy the American economic and political system from within.

What would they do different from what they're doing now?

Don't mess with the duck

I had a chance to visit the gift shop at Interpol last week.
The little feet rattle when you shake the mug.

Civil unions

As a way to deal with the fight over gay marriage, how about making the states only recognize a civil union, and leave marriage to churches?

What else didn't the government invent?

The blogosphere is all abuzz about an inane op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which alleged digital media expert Gordon Crovitz argued that the US government didn't create the Internet or the technology behind it, Xerox did. His argument is so wrong it's hard to know where to start rebutting it, but these articles give you the idea. Given that the history of the Internet is not exactly secret, where did this nonsense come from?