January 2004

"A polar bear can fall asleep anywhere, in the most comical positions, using a block of ice as a pillow, snoozing as a snowstorm covers all but its black-tipped snout."

relying "almost exclusively on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as American agricultural experts to make its case"

"His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression."

"Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year"

"the champion per capita is unquestionably tiny Iceland... a population of just 278,000 supports nine grandmasters"

I'm not convinced the US government really does "support full, free elections", though "at some point" is pretty safe

"Elephants have four sets of teeth in a lifetime, but after they lose their last molar they cannot chew properly and often die from malnutrition or starvation."

for "leaking details of a secret US 'dirty tricks' operation to spy on UN Security Council members in the run-up to war in Iraq last year"

neither country "wants the dispute to interfere with efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme"

"Like his fellow swivel-chair commandos, Lileks is too self-absorbed and gung ho to ever stop waving his water pistol."

"al-Sistani warned that he might issue a fatwa rejecting a U.S.-backed government if his demands for direct elections are ignored"

"the difficulty in measuring handset radiation means people are effectively playing Russian roulette with their health every time they use a mobile"

"the administration's tax cuts could lower U.S. productivity and the deficits could raise industralised world interest rates by as much as 1 percentage point"

EITHER I don't get paid for selling secondhand books OR I will be penalised 20% if I don't sell at least one "non-media" item (each quarter)

"Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, is setting a poor example. His government has reduced the penalties for false accounting."

"relaxing laws on bungee-jumping, bar-top dancing and chewing gum in a bid to shake off its stuffy image and lure foreign professionals"

The persecution and assassination of Marat as performed by the inmates of the asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade

"This war to liberate Iraq was never about liberating the Iraqis. Unsurprisingly then, the reconstruction effort is also not about reconstruction"

"much cosmological research shifted from trying to find the parameters that define our universe to trying to use these parameters as a tool"

"economists simply can't understand why people would do something as stupid as giving presents at Christmas"