Vote now for the Official Amphibian and Official Reptile of the US State of Illinois:
http://www.state.il.us/ltgov/zoo.asp

Sourced via The Miami Herald's Dave Barry Blog

Tiny Doll is dead. The sister of Grace Doll, Daisy Doll and Harry Doll, Tiny (born Elly Ann Schneider) was a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz (1939).

Tiny was the last of the Doll brethren, and there are now only eight surviving Munchkins from Oz. I can't be bothered doing the research, if anyone can tell me who they are I'd be most grateful.

"He caught his shin on an iceberg and never stopped crying about it."

RowboatVets.com
The shocking proof that George Washington lied about his war record!

How the face of the sky changes,
when the darkness roared with tanks in Beslan,
and with a premonition of the end
in that school, in that basketball hoop
trembled explosives, hung by Stalin.

Extract from Yevgeny Yevtushenko's School in Beslan, which appeared in today's Guardian.

Whew. Corey Patterson smashed two home runs on Tuesday night as the Cubs beat the Pirates 3-2. In twelve innings. Corey's second homer finished the game.

The Cubs are now 78-64 with two wins so far in their home series against Pittsburgh, but they are still half a game behind the Giants. San Francisco beat Milwaukee 3-2. Bonds is still on 699.

Oakland beat GWB's former plaything, the Texas Rangers, in a ten-inning thriller on Monday night. But it was Frank Francisco's chair-throwing antics that captured all the headlines.

Irrefutable proof of the linkage between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden on Friday, when The Don, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, repeatedly got the two mixed up during a National Press Club luncheon in Washington.

Here's a couple of quotes from the transcript published by the US Department of Defence on their website. Exhibit A:

Barry Bonds hit career homerun number 699 on Sunday as the Giants beat the Diamondbacks 5-2 in Phoenix. He's now 15 behind George Herman Ruth and 56 behind Henry Aaron. For those who care, it was also his 100th home run scored in the month of September. Another centennial in the game: Arizona's 100th loss of this season.

No, I'm not having delusions. I realise that Essendon are out of the 2004 AFL premiership after their appalling effort against Geelong on Saturday night.

But as we commemorate the anniversary of 9/11, let's remember that almost as many people are still dying in Darfur every week as died in the World Trade Center attack.
- Nicholas D.Kristof, New York Times, 11 September 2004

It's been three years since the most audacious act of international aggression in the last half century. Now, for the first time, I am putting into writing my views about that day.