Jon Stewart, using satire in a way that might make a Hebrew prophet proud, was discussing what he saw as the imminent flight of Hosni Mubarak from Egypt (he turned out to be right about that). He saw the frustrated Egyptian people being oppressed by a new Pharaoh, and gave the American people a vision of a better vision of the world to come after his upcoming defeat. This surrealistic vision happened to include Hosni Mubarak appearing on the reality TV show Big Brother in a special ‘Big Brother Edition’ alongside a variety of other exiled dictators. Then Jon Stewart suggested that we could bunk Mubarak with Muammar al-Gadaffi of Libya. Oh, wait — said Jon Stewart — Gadaffi hasn’t been exiled. Yet.

In one goofy little show, Jon Stewart foretold the end not only of Mubarak’s regime, but also that of other tyrants, including Gadaffi. His goofy little rant is — I kid you not — one of the best exercises in applying biblical eschatology to contemporary events that I have seen in my lifetime. I have to wonder whether on some level his Jewish heritage influenced him to give a speech so reminiscent of the prophets of the Bible. Stewart may lean a little further left than I would like. He may even be a bit disrespectful at times, though I suppose I shouldn’t complain when I spend so much effort promoting a book in which God’s prophets use the bitterest and most biting satire one could imagine against their own leaders.

If the current rumors of Gadaffi leaving for Venezuela have any truth behind them, Jon Stewart has been vindicated in a spectacular fashion. Gadaffi’s own little judgment day is upon him. The arm of Jehovah has reached out for justice again.

A court has recently ruled that cross-gender searches are unconstitutional because they are degrading.  In the specific case involved, a woman searched a man.  Judges went so far as to call this an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, presumably because the gender element adds the possibility of a sexual element of some kind to the searcher/searched relationship.  What’s interesting in this case is the presumption of a heterosexual society that lies behind ruling.  If a man has a right not to be searched by a woman, does a man have a right not to be searched by a gay man?  Wouldn’t that be an invasion of privacy with similarly degrading sexual overtones?  If not, why not?

Chávez went on, jovially stating that, were Obama to pay him a visit, both leaders would “sit down to talk, to eat socialist arepas,” a corn-based pancake popular in the country.

Chavez went on, jovially stating that, were Obama to pay him a visit, both leaders would “sit down to talk, to eat socialist arepas.”

But, you may rightfully argue, doesn’t this leave open the possibility that the government will stifle academic discourse?  Of course it does.  But if it is feared that government intervention in college is bad, the correct route to fixing this lies not in handing out our hard-won tax dollars without scrutiny, but rather in removing the government from the business of funding and regulating college.

“I feel like my constitutional rights are being violated,” said Tyrone Wheeler, a day laborer in the village seeking work.

Poor Tyrone.  If only he knew anything about constitutional rights, he would know that there is a right to free speech for the Hasids, but there is no constitutional right to not be disagreed with by religious people.  What he calls a constitutional right is really nothing more than tyranny.

An outside consulting group has announced that the IPCC has engaged in some shoddy scientific practices when it comes to their advocacy of global warming. Particularly interesting was this quote:

This sort of writing system has both benefits and drawbacks.  On the plus side, it’s one humdinger of a work-out for the visual processing capabilities of the human brain.  It’s also produces very attractive writing.  It also preserves within itself a long process of historical evolution of the writing system.  The bizarre contortions of the English spelling system are, in a smaller way, an analogue to the Chinese system, in that both systems require massive memorization to progress from spoken to written language.  In English, you can see all sorts of traces of the etymology of words in their spelled forms.  You can also distinguish between homophones like they’re, there, and their, a feat which would be impossible in a purely phonetic system.

The downside of a complex writing system like the Chinese have is that it presents a significant barrier to literacy.  Unlike, say, Spanish, a language in which any person with a knowledge of about forty letters and symbols can make himself understood, the Chinese student must memorize thousands of letters.  The existence of a complex writing system keeps out many people who are unable to master its difficulty and induces a permanent feeling of inferiority among those unable to adhere to its rules.  How many English-speakers, for example, feel insecure about their written communications due to their being bad spellers?  Our complex writing system must certainly be a factor in why the US, which spends about $10,000 per year per pupil, has an illiteracy rate five times higher than that of Cuba, which spends ten times less.  And the Chinese illiteracy rate is a full thirty-five times higher than the Cuban, despite the fact that their level of economic development is nearly on par with Cuba’s.

But before I knew all these statistics, back when I was an eleven-year-old peering into that encyclopedia article, I began to wonder whether it might be best if China replaced their complex system with one based on Roman letters.  Sure, it might be perceived as a pro-Western selling out of indigenous culture.  And sure, it might in some subjective and ultimately non-quantifiable way reduce the happiness or artistic ability or pride of some people.  But it would allow those who would otherwise be unable to write to join the world of literacy, a skill which increases earning power, life expectancy, mobility, and self-respect by giving access to vast stores of information previously inaccessible.  And even for those little children who would have been able to handle the Chinese system, the huge time savings due to the ease of teaching alphabetic, phonetic reading over character-based reading would free up years of study for other subjects, like science, math, history, or art.

The article I read eight years ago mentioned pinyin, and I began to hope that one day it would succeed in being a widely used tool for communicating in China.  It turns out now that this is happening.

A massive shift is occurring, and pinyin is now nearly the only method of writing used by many Chinese people.  The reason for this is that pinyin is the primary input method for electronic devices in China.  So everyone is writing in pinyin, but reading in characters.  The result of this shift is that young adults are now beginning to forget how to write many characters, even as they still retain the ability to recognize them necessary to read.

This looks to me like just one more step in an inevitable historical process, one that started the first time Chinese people began to engage in trade with people who had alphabetic writing systems.  Character-based Chinese, at least as a means of mass media communication, is dying.  And we can either view this with idealistic disgust, or welcome the progress.

On Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying that “these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning.”

Whether an attack comes will reveal not only much about the Israeli government’s feelings toward Iran, but may also reveal much about the current US stance toward Middle Eastern politics.

Two bartenders are facing up to 45 years in prison for breathing fire.  As far as I can tell, nobody got hurt, and all the bar-goers knew the risks they were taking by going there.  The bar’s logo sports a fire-breathing bartender, for goodness’ sake.  So I don’t see any reason for fining them, let alone sending them to jail.  And the charge of “manufacturing an explosive device” is just silliness.

An assertive flight attendant took away a baby from its mother after the parent slapped it.  The world needs more pushy strangers like that, to curb parents’ ridiculous notion that they can treat their children shamefully in public.  (Not that privately mistreating a child is okay, of course.)