News to Make You Go, "Hmm..."

This little snippet showed up in Science News, a hideous saga about a hungry hunter and a Seven-Legged Deer.

Yes, you heard it right.

***

A Belgian TV station caused a veritable furor, a literal donnybrook by broadcasting that the Flemish legislature had voted to secede from the Kingdom, and that the Belgian Royal Family had fled the country for exile. It was only a half hour later that the station apologized, said it was a hoax, and reported that the "news" was to illustrate the need to discuss the future of the country.

Now, I won't go into the various ethnic, religious and social pressures in Belgium (that have gone on since the shotgun wedding that founded the nation in 1832), but it seems that everyone is agreed on one point - this was extremely poor taste.

***

It seems that Florida can get nothing right, from elections to executions. A lethal injection took 34 minutes to kill a condemned murderer, and the outgoing Governor (Dubya's allegedly smarter brother) has signed a moratorium on further executions until further notice. You think maybe they'll actually read the stats that show that places with no death penalty have a LOWER murder rate than places that do commit judicial murder?

***

Our Beloved Leader Generalissimo and Bringer of the Pax Americana Upon Undeserving Brown-skinned People Whether They Want it or Not (You know who!) has decided on what he's going to do in Iraq.

He's going to wait.

And actually LISTEN to people (of course, how can we tell he's listening? He just smiles, and nods his head, and giggles) who think they can find an answer.

And he'll tell us what he plans to do - after the New Year.

Meanwhile, more American soldiers will die in Operation Bleeding Wound.