At New English Review, we like to ask important questions. I was about to ask an important question about teabags, but New Scientist pipped me to the post (h/t Alan):

Why, when you pour boiling water on a teabag, does the bag inflate?

William Hughes-Games, Waipara, New Zealand

Readers wrote in with suggestions:

Fast broadband goes underground. From the BBC, with thanks to Alan:

While politicians and network providers work out how they can afford to provide the UK with a network capable of delivering super-fast broadband speeds, one company is already doing it - via the sewers.

H20 networks has been in negotiations with water firms for the last five years and began rolling out its fibre-via-sewers network - known as Focus (Fibre Optical Cable Underground Sewer) in 2003.

That's a feeble acronym. How about "Subterranean Hyperspeed Internet Technology"?

I've said it once, and I'll say it again.

Well, I've heard of selling your birthright for a mess of pottage, but we've gone and sold Magna Carta to the Americans. In fact we sold it more than twenty years ago. From France 24 (so perhaps it isn't true), with thanks to Alan:

NEW YORK, Dec 18 (Reuters) - A rare 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta, among the most important historical documents ever to hit the auction block, sold for $21.3 million on Tuesday at Sotheby's.
 

The document was bought by a Washington businessman who said he was determined to see it remain in the United States, where it has been on display at the National Archives and Records Administration since 1988.
 

The last remaining copy in the United States and the last in private hands, the Magna Carta, one of 17 known to exist, was sold by The Perot Foundation, created by billionaire former U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot to make philanthropic grants. The foundation acquired it from the collections of the Brudenell family of Deene Park in Northamptonshire in 1984.

The Magna Carta, which Sotheby's called "the most important document in the world," established the rights of the English people and curbed the power of the king.
 

The U.S. Constitution includes ideas and phrases taken almost directly from the charter, which rebellious barons forced their oppressive King John to sign in 1215.
 

Sotheby's said the Magna Carta was ratified and reissued with each monarch who succeeded John. It was enacted as law in 1297 by the British parliament when it was reissued by King
Edward I. The copy sold on Tuesday is from 1297.
 

Asked how high he was willing to bid for the Magna Carta, Rubenstein replied: "I don't think you can put a price on freedom."

1. That no one was to be put to death, save for some reason (except the Common People).
2. That everyone should be free (except the Common People).
3. That everything should be of the same weight and measure throughout the Realm (except the Common People).
4. That the Courts should be stationary, instead of following a very tiresome medieval official known as the King's Person all over the country.
5. That no person should be fined to his utter ruin (except the King's Person).
6. That the Barons should not be tried except by a special jury of other Barons who would understand.

Magna Charter was therefore the chief cause of Democracy in England, and thus a very Good Thing for everyone (except the Common People).

Reuters: POLOKWANE, South Africa  - South Africa faced deep uncertainty on Wednesday after the greatest political shake-up since the end of apartheid set populist Jacob Zuma on the road to the state presidency.

Newspapers described Zuma's stunning victory in an election for leader of the ruling ANC as a tsunami, and said the defeated party boss, President Thabo Mbeki, had been humiliated. The tabloid newspaper Sowetan carried the headline "Zunami Rules".

Zuma not only defeated Mbeki but swept aside the entire old guard of the party, filling all top positions with his allies.

Despite fears by some investors that Zuma, who is backed by trade unions and the Communist Party, will push the country to the left, markets remained unmoved and there was little change in the rand. Investors said they had priced in a Zuma win...

Adding to the mood of uncertainty is the threat of corruption charges hanging over Zuma in relation to an arms buying scandal, which make it conceivable that he could be jailed before he succeeds to the presidency.

"We can anticipate this conflict extending over the next two years. It is going to be particularly precarious when Jacob Zuma gets charged, if he does get charged, over the corruption scandal," said political analyst Adam Habib.

Prosecutors said this month they had new evidence that could lead to renewed charges against Zuma, after a previous case collapsed.

The 65-year-old Zuma, an ethnic Zulu, has made a remarkable comeback after setbacks that would have buried most politicians.

Apart from the corruption scandal, he was acquitted of rape in 2006. Evidence in that case, including his admission that he showered after sex with an HIV-positive family friend to avoid infection, tarnished his reputation...

"Showered with an HIV-positive friend to avoid infection"?

Poor South Africa. What will the next decade bring?

Michelle Malkin points us to this Cybercast News Service report that, though House Democrats gutted the funding for the fence the government has promised to build to show us all how serious it is about border enforcement, their massive appropriations bill manages to ensure that lawyers representing illegal aliens will be funded:

What can you say about a 3,500-page appropriations bill that stands more than a foot tall? Nothing good, according to Republicans. But Democrats are spinning the spending bill as a step in their much-talked-about "New Direction."

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said the bill is full of "misguided" policy decisions: "On one page, for instance, you will find a set of new restrictions on the construction of our security fence along the border; on another, $10 million in 'emergency' funding for attorneys of illegal immigrants.

Newsweek: The Greenhalgh family—47-year-old Shaun and his octogenarian parents, Olive and George—lived quietly together in a housing project in the heart of Britain's postindustrial north. From the street, their red-brick house looks just like their neighbors': tatty hanging baskets and small plastic windows, flanked by chimneys and the windswept moorland. So you can imagine the police's surprise when they raided the place, back in March 2006. "There were blocks of stone, a furnace for melting silver on top of the fridge, halffinished sculptures, piles of art books and a bust of Thomas Jefferson in the loft," says Ian Lawson from Scotland Yard's Arts and Antiquities Squad. That's right—Scotland Yard. The Greenhalghs' galley kitchen and garden shed doubled as one of the most prolific—and successful—art-forgery studios in the world.

Now the Greenhalghs' production line of fake art and antiquities has come to an end. Last month, after lengthy investigations that tracked the family's frauds to galleries across the globe, a trial judge sentenced Shaun to almost five years in prison for the production and distribution of forged works of art. Olive, 82, was given a 12-month suspended sentence for conspiracy to defraud, and George, 83—who approached galleries in his wheelchair and hatched the artworks' detailed "histories"—will be sentenced in January. The family had fooled art galleries and auction houses from Vienna to New York. Last week the Art Institute of Chicago disclosed that "The Faun," a half-man, half-goat sculpture attributed to Paul Gauguin, was also a Greenhalgh forgery. The family had made perhaps as much as $4 million from their crafty labors. But, curiously, they all lived off state welfare benefits. Money doesn't seem to have been their only motivation, police say. They also wanted to ridicule the art establishment. "They were just normal people," one neighbor says. "They were just happy having a drink of cider in front of telly."

It was hubris that got them in the end. After making almost $1 million from the sale of an Egyptian sculpture in 2003, the Greenhalghs approached the British Museum with an ancient Assyrian relief and talk of another large payout. Errors in the cuneiform script—essentially ancient spelling mistakes—prompted the already suspicious staff to contact Scotland Yard. "For a while they had us convinced," says the British Museum's John Curtis, who spotted the mistake. "But this very last project was the straw that broke the camel's back."...

I don't see this on the White House Press Release Page, so I couldn't check the veractiy of the quotations, but it is consistent with past years.

AKI (hat tip: JW): Washington, 19 Dec.- United States president George W. Bush on Wednesday sent a message of goodwill to Muslims worldwide at the start of the major Muslim Eid al-Adha festival of sacrifice.

"During Eid al-Adha, Muslims around the world reflect on Abraham's unwavering faith and his trust in God when asked to sacrifice his son," Bush said in the message.

"These four days are a time for Muslims to honour Abraham's obedience by celebrating with family and friends and showing gratitude for the many blessings bestowed by God. 

"This holiday also helps ensure the important values of compassion and devotion are passed on to future generations," the message continued. 

Bush also paid tribute to the role played by Muslims in America, saying they "enriched" multicultural US society.

"The kindness, generosity, and goodwill displayed by American Muslims during this special occasion and throughout the year have contributed to the strength and vitality of our Nation," the message stated.

"May all those observing Eid al-Adha find love and warmth during this joyous holiday. Laura and I send our best wishes for a memorable celebration," the message ended.

Eid al-Adha, which lasts through Saturday, is one of the most important Muslim holidays. It commemorates the Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael to Allah.

That story sounds familiar...

"Money doesn't seem to have been their only motivation, police say. They also wanted to ridicule the art establishment." -- from this news story

They should all receive full pardons at once, and then be knighted, For Services To Art.

And let's not forget the movie rights, which I hope they can sell for a pretty penny to the Coen Brothers for their first production set outside the United States. I see something that's a cross between "The Ladykillers" and "Bells of St. Trinians," with more than a touch of "Laburnum Grove." Judy Dench as the mother, of course. And as the necessary neighbor, the sole outsider ever admitted into their house, because she has taken pity on them and especially on their son, someone with a throaty voice, evoking the inimitable Joan Greenwood, should be found. Possibly Cheryl Campbell possesses the necessary aural skills. And who shall we have play the father, now that Alastair Sim is no longer a possibility?  Bob Hoskins? Michael Gambon? Who? And who will play young Shaun?

Questions, questions. But it's unfair of you to expect me to figure out the whole thing right now. It's been years since I was a casting director, you know.

"It is utterly impossible to appreciate social values at all or to discriminate between what is socially good and socially bad unless we appreciate the utterly different social values of different wars. The Greeks who triumphed at Marathon and Salamis did a work without which the world would have been deprived of the social value of Plato and Aristotle, of Aeschylus, Herodotus, and Thucydides. The civilization of Europe, America, and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization, because the victories stretching through the centuries from the days of Miltiades and Themistocles to those of Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century. During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today nobody can find in them any "social values" whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influence. There are such "social values" today in Europe, America, and Australia only because during those thousand years the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do - that is, to beat back the Moslem invader."

"quite surprised by the results" -- Pollster in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a police-state, more effective in preventing outsiders from knowing what goes on inside than either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. For it manages the fantastic feat of having millions of foreigners -- guest-workers or wage-slaves -- in Saudi Arabia, but the Mysteries of the Kingdom, and especially all the things that the Saudis don't want investigated -- the existence of slaves in a society that formally  abolished slavery, the fantastic debauches behind palace walls -- remain largely unknown.

Now it is clear that the Al-Saud wish to present a different face to the world. And they want to make the Americans think that the people they rule over are "pro-American." A polling organization in Saudi Arabia must, necessarily, use Arabic interpreters. These interpreters must, necessarily, speak the dialect of spoken Arabic spoken in Saudi Arabia. How, then, even if those conducting the opinion poll are non-Arabs (were they?) avoid the kinds of interference that, one can be sure, would have come from the Al-Saud, who can produce any damn results they want from any opinion poll conducted in the Kingdom, merely by letting it be known what they want, and therefore what answers to give.

And there are other problems, beginning with that question "Do you want closer relations with America"? How did that come out in Arabic? And what does it mean, or what would it be taken to mean? Does it mean: We Like or Love America and American ways. Or does it mean: We wish that those awful people who say awful things about Saudi Arabia, its rulers, its society, its textbooks, should be shut up, so we -- and the Americans who protect us, and who offer us a continuous open-for-business funfair-cum-brothel with diploma-mills on the side -- can continue, unworriedly, to pile up those trillions, some of them used to pay for those mosques in the America, nicely islamizing thanks to us, about which we will answer this question correctly -- don't worry -- for the gullible American poll-takers.

And they will be encouraged and "amazed" by the result. But the rulers with sneers of cold command in Riyadh and Jiddah will also be encouraged, but not "amazed" at all.

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone."

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point. -- this NYPost editorial

If either of these officious bodies (the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the British Columbia more-or-less ditto) officiously proceeds, it is their members who will look ridiculous. It is they who will suffer.

And they will have picked a fight that, from the Infidel point of view, is welcome. For as limned by Robert above, and previously noted by Steyn himself, attacking someone for quoting others accurately, is an absurdity. And it will be seen as an absurdity by the as-yet-insufficiently-brainwashed Canadian public, and lead that public, from sea to shining northern sea, to be made grimly aware of those quotations -- dont on parlera even in those quelques arpents de neige that constitute Quebec, in those mind-your-P.Q. circles -- that were not fabricated, but merely quoted, and most aptly, by Steyn.

Let the proceedings proceed. Let them be hoist by their own prosecutorial petard.

“Lorne Gunter said in the Edmonton Journal: 'I see nothing uniquely Muslim in her death. If, indeed, her father killed her, her death is his doing, not Islam’s.'

Gunter explains: 'Of course, other cultures are also prone to intergenerational clashes and Muslim fathers have so far shown no more predilection for murder than fathers of other cultures.'"
-- from this article by Robert Spencer

To this Spencer adds a "quite so."

At first I assumed the "quite so" was meant to be sarcastic, but the context shows my initial assumption was wrong. I think Gunter's brisk brooking-no-disagreement remark, delivered with a self-assurance that is without foundation, is false. In using such a thoroughly modern-millieish phrase as "intergeneratonal clashes" in attempting to subsume the particular horror of the Muslim family, with the Muslim male lording it over the females, telling them who they can see, when they can go out and with whom, and what they can wear, and read, and see, and do, and have done this, unchanged, since the beginning of Islam, that is not simply an immigrant's tale of coming to the New World and in the attempt of the children to canadianize, or americanize, there are always these "intergenerational clashes."

That is not what is going on here. This is not some story right out of Rolvaag's Giants in The Earth (twinkling-eyed Norwegian pioneers on the Plains) or "I Remember Mama" (twinkly-eyed Russian Jewish tenement-house dwellers in Brooklyn) or "The Americanization of Edward Bok" (twinkly-eyed Dutch merchants in Philadelphia), und so weiter. No: the Muslim Experience is not, pace Gunter, the Immigrant Experience We All Share. It is quite a different matter, just as Islam, pace George Bush, is not just a "religion" and therefore, as Bush devoutly believes, worthy of instant respect. Only those who study the matter of Islam, of what the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira contain, and of how the texts have given rise to the tenets, and how those tenets have been put into practice, over 1350 years, by Muslims, can judge as to whether or not the Muslim father who strangles his daughter for refusing to wear the hijab is in fact prompted by Islam, or not. Gunter has not undertaken this study. He is not entitled to express, or even to have, an opinion, any more than someone who has not studied anthropogenic global warming has a right to an opinion.

What Gunter also overlooks, in assuring us that Muslim fathers are no more prone to violence than other fathers, is just how naturally violent Muslim societes are. The texts of Islam are full of fighting, full of making war, full of violence. Has he not read the Qur'an? Has he not read the Hadith? Does he not know the main vocation and avocation of Muhammad, the Model of Conduct, uswa hasana, the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil? Does he not know of the reported cases of murder of girls, by their fathers, their uncles, their brothers, for having "dishonored" the family? And those are only the cases that are reported. How many cases, does he reckon, of intra-family rape or molestation take place that are not reported by the victim in Musliim societies, because the girl knows perfectly well that it is she who will be considered to have "dishnored" the family and it is she, not the brother or father or uncle who did whatever he did, who will be punished, quite possibly by death.

Whistling in the dark, is Lorne Gunter. He presumes to instruct us, and does so with an air of authority to which nothing he has written above, or elsewhere, suggests that he has earned.

In my own admittedly unscientific observation of attitudes toward the "Merry Christmas" greeting this year, I think we are witnessing a remarkable comeback. With the exception of one surley teenage clerk at Walgreen's I have been greeted by robust Merry Christmases all over town. At the bank, at the post office, at department stores, in restaurants - everywhere. Today I got a "Merry Christmas and God bless you, Sweetie" from our waitress. (I live in the south - waitresses routinely call everybody Sweetheart, Honey or Sugar.)

A year or two ago, things were very different. Salesclerks were universally sticking with "Happy Holidays" as though it had come down from corporate and they were afraid to deviate. My Merry Christmases hung in the embarrassed air and were often answered with a "you too," or a silent looking away, pretending not to hear. 

No more. Everyone is saying "Merry Christmas" with gusto and the whole town seems happier.

So on behalf of everyone at New English Review,

It is often overlooked that Jesus made a great moral leap forward when he substituted bread and wine for the earlier blood sacrifice of animals. Islam shows itself to be a retrograde force in every sense.

SMITHFIELD, N.C. -- Hundreds of Muslim families don't have a place to perform a religious ceremony to start the three-day Islamic holiday, Eid al-Adha.

A Johnston County judge refused Tuesday to lift a ban on a farmer hosting a mass slaughter of lambs on Wednesday, the first day of a holiday also known as the Festival of Sacrifice.

Judge Tom Lock barred the slaughter at a farm owned by Eddie Rowe at the request of state agriculture officials, who said the farm does not have proper sanitary facilities,..