China:

Locals in Beichuan county in China’s Sichuan province, including children commuting daily to school, have to use a zip line to get across a river (wsj) because the bridge that collapsed during the May 2008 earthquake has never been rebuilt. (via

Kottke

Sean Penn wins an Oscar for..:

In accepting his award, Penn gleefully described the Academy voters as “commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” He also criticized California’s voters for their ban on gay marriage.

But let’s not forget what else Sean Penn is. He’s also a Hugo Chavez-ACLU-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-Cindy Sheehan-Dennis Kucinich-Ralph Nader-Fidel Castro lovin’ son of a gun. He’s supported every anti-American tin horn dictator, politician and policy that’s come down the left side of the road in the last twenty-five years.

Mickey Rourke Writes His Own Part Into Sean Penn

What should Gordon Brown give up:

Cranmer has been wondering what Gordon Brown ought to give up for Lent.

His home.

A reader writes on Jade Goody:

When I referred to Goody as being half way there to be being burnt as a witch with her bald head, it was in reference to the custom of shaving witches heads prior to burning them.

Poodle exercises with humans:

Bono - Mr G9 - is on the BBC. Says Sue:

Blanket coverage for Bono

Unfortunately with the wrong kind of blanket.

NORTH Korea is preparing to fire a rocket. Of course, firing a rocket is not rocket science - you just point it and aim away from yourself.

Ok, let’s keep it simple - point it at yourself if you want to.

If Hamas can work it you, so can you.

News Cottage: North Korea feared to be testing missile

The Armchair Intelligentsia Blog

You can pay for a blow job with Mastercard, says Mastercard:

Also works with cutting up lines of cocaine (see press ads)…

Exclusive Review: Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted - here

Delia missed out.

Spray tanning - you can never overdo it…

AL GORE is moving with the times. His slide show is a work in progress. Whenever there’s a disaster - and anything will do: fire, ice, rain, snow, mist, spit - Al takes a picture and sticks it into his narrative.

Now Al Gore is shuffling his slides. Says the NY Times:

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

Let’s hear it for the disasters. Yaaaaay!

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said.

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph.

But why? What changed, Al? Is he going for a second Oscar?

Here.

That Obama chimp picture. And this from Tim Graham:

But most of all, someone who had Condi Rice declare herself President Bush’s “house nigga” is going to comment on racially insensitive cartoons?

Offence is what you make of it…

Reader Chenier writes on Peta and dead bird and F1 racing fan Ingrid Newkirk:

PETA is the only ‘animal welfare’ society to remain conspicuously silent whenever a few hundred thousand birds, fish, cute furry seals, etc get the chop from an oil disaster; unsurprisingly since they are staunch supporters of the petro-chemical industry which provides the synthetic fabrics they tout as animal-friendly, and Ingrid Newkirk is a self-proclaimed addict to cars in general and Formula 1 racing in particular:

‘”It’s sex,” she said. “The first time you hear them rev their engines, my God! That noise goes straight up my spine. It’s so electrifyingly glorious.”