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A great system is one where Caligula could be elected president, and it wouldn't affect our liberties one iota, because he'd lack the power to do anything awful.

- Commenter Pro Libertate, commenting on the Reason Hit and Run Blog.

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"Organic food is grown in shit by hippies."

Anthony Bourdain, speaking to Deborah Ross.

I mean, how can you not love someone who says something like that?

(H/t Salil Tripathi)

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This is Friedman’s life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee’s signs.

From Matt Taibbi's takedown of Thomas L. Friedman's writing in the New York Press. Another wonderful excerpt from the NY Press article:

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: “I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.’” And off he goes.You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don’t notice that tri-planes don’t have headlights.And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There’s so much shit flying around the book’s atmosphere that you don’t notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.

As someone who read half of The World is Flat, I can vouch for the accuracy of Mr. Taibbi's characterisation.

Also read Taibbi's review of The World is Flat here.

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How many times do I have to see footage of Danes licking ice cream cones and riding bicycles as though this were the final station of moral human development[?]

- Celia Farber, writing on the Scandinavians-have-it-much-better-than-Americans cliche at Dean's World.

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(Yes, I know it sucks that this is the only portion of this blog that gets updates. Sorry 'bout that.)

[I]f we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made out of meat?

-The innominate one, commenting on Reason.

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"If you die a virgin, in heaven you have to have sex with a terrorist."

Timothy Dreier, commenting on the Reason Hit and Run Blog.