Not What They Had In Mind

A roundup of comment on the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI in the
Weekly Standard gives us a flavor of fashionable opinion on the new pontiff.
There’s no doubt about it. People don’t like their ox being gored, and a traditional Catholic Church
is a threat to their peacefully grazing cattle. But one man’s peacefully grazing ox is another man’s
rampaging bull. For the Church and its traditionalist allies think that their ox is sorely
threatened by the rampaging progressivist bull.

British Election: Tories Should Lose

The Sunday Times’
Minette Marrin
thinks that the Conservative Party needs a few more years in the
political wilderness to allow the New Labour project to come to fruition.

“And until the new Labour project has discredited itself thoroughly the Conservative party will never have the political
courage — or rather the political chance — to declare what it truly stands for,”

which is, or which ought to be
“that less central government, less local government, less regulation,
less tax and less surveillance would be better for everyone.”

No kidding.

Steyn: Westerners are All Teenagers

Joke-a-graf Mark Steyn gets serious for a moment and
reflects
that we westerners are all
grown-up teenagers:

“Free citizens of advanced western democracies are increasingly the
world’s wrinkliest teenagers: the state makes the grown-up decisions
and we spend our pocket money on our record collection,” our cars, and our porn site
subscriptions. And that’s the way we like it.

Ancient Scrolls Deciphered. Philologists Go To Heaven

The ancient Oxyrhynchus Papyri, discovered years ago in Egypt have
succumbed to modern technology, and are being rapidly
deciphered, according to a
report in The Independent.

“In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing
discoveries, including writing by
Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia.
They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which
were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.”

Wow. The papyri were discovered over a century ago and constitute 400,000 fragments. It is
reckoned that their deciphering will increase the available ancient texts by over
a fifth. And it’s a transatlantic project. “Oxford academics have been working alongside
infra-red specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. ”

Steyn: Don't Put Your Hands on Hips Around Me Young Man

Mark has had it with this anger management thing. So John Bolton in not qualified to be Ambassador
to the United Nations because he once spoke to an underling with his hands on his hips.
Pu-leez!
Democrats like Barbara Boxer are starting to parody themselves. And anyway, growls Mark, does this
mean that government underlings can underperform as much as they want and not deserve a reprimand? Is
that what the Democratic Party has come to?

Steyn: Don't Get Flushed Down the Eurinal

Is nothing sacred? Now they are outsourcing tax returns to India! And that’s not all. Even Steyn Global
Enterprises is outsourcing.
Mark Steyn
is outsourcing “certain administrative and managerial functions” of Steyn Global Enterprises
across the world, and
he’s willing to forgo the chance to hit on the help at the office Christmas party. He’d rather likes
the help to be working hard while CEO Mark is
sleeping it off. Better wake up Europe/Canada, before you get flushed down the EUrinal.

Spot the Fascist

On Wednesday, conservative advocate David Horowitz took his campaign for the Academic Bill of Rights
to the University of Texas.
Here
is the report on the event in The Daily Texan, and
here is the report from
conservative bloggers. But let us let our minds wander a little. How would such a disturbance have
been reported if conservative students were screaming, holding up signs, and tooting air horns at a speech of
some icon of the left?