Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Weird thing of the day 22 June 2005/15 Siwan 5765

Greetings.

Political update: I present for your reading pleasure (or disgust) the Downing Street memo, which plainly shows that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were planning to go to war with Iraq, knowing full well that that country had neither weapons of mass destruction nor connections with Al-Qa‘ida.

Language weirdness: I discovered yesterday that the Hebrew word for “mascot” is קָמֵעַ (qamea‘), which literally means “amulet” or “talisman”. Go figure.

Today’s weird thing is a Forbes article on how much it would cost to actually be Batman. (It’s amazing what an economist with too much time on his/her hands will write.)

Criticism: This article lumps treats all expenses as if they only had to be paid once, even though this is clearly incorrect (e.g., Alfred Pennyworth has to be paid every year of his employment), so the actual cost of being Batman would be higher.

Related eeriness: Another silly article on the same site, “The Forbes Fictional Fifteen” reports that supervillain/businessman Lex Luthor was elected president of the United States in 2000. This strikes me as fairly close to reality, in which greedy rich businessmen (Karl Rove, Richard Cheney), did take control of the presidency. If anyone has any information on parallels between the Bush administration and the Luthor administration, please let me know.

Enjoy or be scared or something.

Aaron

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luthor: Nothing on his head.
Bush: Nothing in his head.

No, no real parallels.

Anonymous said...

I thought Karl Rove was the Luthor analog!