Everyone's favorite tyrant is back in the news, this time for attempting to evangelize Rome's beauties. From the BBC:

The girls had to be beautiful, between 18 and 35 - and at least 1.70m tall. The dress code was strict: plunging necklines and short miniskirts were most definitely out. Two-hundred women passed muster and were bussed to a plush residential corner of the Italian capital.

Security scanned and shown into an imposing reception room, they were then left waiting, as several complained, without so much as a glass of water. An hour later, their host's identity was finally revealed. Col Gaddafi proceeded to preach the benefits of Islam, taking particular pains to assure his guests that it was not misogynistic, and encouraging them to convert.

Two hours later, the women left, looking a touch bemused, 50 euros ($75; £45) better off and clutching a copy of the Koran.

Gaddafi rarely makes sense, but is almost always entertaining.

Update: Der Spiegel has an epic photo set here. And Al Jazeera's Arabic language service is reporting that one of the girls actually converted. Money quote translated:

"Reports stated that one of the participants said--at the end of the lecture that lasted two hours--that she was convinced by what the Libyan president said and has decided to convert to Islam. While another participant merely pointed out that what Gaddafi said was important."

Hat tip to Diana for help with the translation.

He's done it again. I didn't think anything could top the Putin Outdoors photo set the Kremlin released back in August. But Putin's awkward visit to Muz TV's studios to present an award to the winner of a freestyle rap battle is certainly much funnier.

Mikhail Kalashnikov is responsible for designing the one Soviet product that is more ubiquitous than Coca Cola or McDonalds: The AK-47. On this his 90th birthday, Russia felt the need recognize him for his contribution to death by giving him the "Hero of the Russian Federation" award. Lovely.

For all those who served and gave their lives in the defense of our country:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

-An ode from Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen",

Next time you are at a party and some annoying pseudo intellectual mentions Hannah Arendt be sure to send them this article by Ron Rosenbaum the next morning. Their head will explode.

Money quote:

To my mind, the use of the phrase banality of evil is an almost infallible sign of shallow thinkers attempting to seem intellectually sophisticated. Come on, people: It's a bankrupt phrase, a subprime phrase, a Dr. Phil-level phrase masquerading as a profound contrarianism. Oooh, so daring! Evil comes not only in the form of mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash types, but in the form of paper pushers who followed evil orders. And when applied—as she originally did to Adolf Eichmann, Hitler's eager executioner, responsible for the logistics of the Final Solution—the phrase was utterly fraudulent.

Adolf Eichmann was, of course, in no way a banal bureaucrat: He just portrayed himself as one while on trial for his life. Eichmann was a vicious and loathsome Jew-hater and -hunter who, among other things, personally intervened after the war was effectively lost, to insist on and ensure the mass murder of the last intact Jewish group in Europe, those of Hungary. So the phrase was wrong in its origin, as applied to Eichmann, and wrong in almost all subsequent cases when applied generally. Wrong and self-contradictory, linguistically, philosophically, and metaphorically. Either one knows what one is doing is evil or one does not. If one knows and does it anyway, one is evil, not some special subcategory of evil. If one doesn't know, one is ignorant, and not evil. But genuine ignorance is rare when evil is going on.

- Evan

It's strange when countries honor their current or former leaders by building gigantic golden statues (unless of course it looks like this).  It's even more bizarre when they honor yours.

The Kosovars recently did just that. On Sunday, they unveiled an 11ft tall golden statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina with Bubba in attendance. BBC has the must see footage here.

Surprisingly the Serbs are pissed.

Update: It looks kinda like someone slipped the sculptor a picture of Reagan as a joke...

Money Quote:
The main loss when a language dies is not cultural but aesthetic. The click sounds in certain African languages are magnificent to hear. In many Amazonian languages, when you say something you have to specify, with a suffix, where you got the information. The Ket language of Siberia is so awesomely irregular as to seem a work of art.

But let’s remember that this aesthetic delight is mainly savored by the outside observer, often a professional savorer like myself. Professional linguists or anthropologists are part of a distinct human minority. Most people, in the West or anywhere else, find the fact that there are so many languages in the world no more interesting than I would find a list of all the makes of Toyota.  So our case for preserving the world’s languages cannot be based on how fascinating their variegation appears to a few people in the world. The question is whether there is some urgent benefit to humanity from the fact that some people speak click languages, while others speak Ket or thousands of others, instead of everyone speaking in a universal tongue.

Full article here.

I was recently talking to some friends about one of my favorite topics- crazy heads of state- when my comment that Saddam had ordered a Quran written with his own blood drew incredulous looks and suggestions that these were American rumors. 

According to the BBC, Saddam gave this explanation to the official Iraqi media:

My life has been full of dangers in which I should have lost a lot of blood...but since I have bled only a little, I asked somebody to write God's words with my blood in gratitude.

I feel bad for whoever had to write it.