Laughing Spell

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 22 Dec 2003 13:00:00 GMT
Mark Fiore - The Simple Life - flash animation on Lady Liberty getting used to Guantanimo Bay and detention of citizens without charges. It's a comedy. A tragi-comedy that is. [smith2004]
American justice will never be the same!

Mark Fiore - Are You a Patriot? - a new game. See if you can decide which suspects should be investigated under the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. All of them, of course. [smith2004]

The Patriot Act: It's not just for terrorists any more.

William J. Walton at High Desert Insider - Spellcasting 101: Don't Try This At Home - Mr. Walton tried out some of the spells described in the Harry Potter books and the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook. None of them worked. But don't read this with a full bladder or with liquids in your mouth. Mr. Walton's laughing spell is very effective. [highroad]

PREPARATION - Constructing The Wand

First, we'll need a wand. According to the books, wands are usually made of a magical wood, with some sort of powerful item inside - like a unicorn hair or phoenix feather. I'm not sure where to find a phoenix or unicorn - in fact, I suspect that neither of them really exist. But I could be wrong. After all, according to Demonbuster, any kid who reads these books will be able to start throwing spells around like there's no tomorrow. So a wand can't be that hard to make.

The Harry Potter books tell us nothing about how to construct a wand, so I will have to improvise. We have a border collie (no horn), a parakeet with a very bad temper, and a yard full of transplanted Christmas trees (and there's GOT to be some kind of magic in THOSE). So for the purposes of our experiments, I will be using an evergreen twig with some dog hairs and a parakeet feather taped to it.

This part wasn't easy. The parakeet got a few good bites in, and the dog won't get anywhere near me now, but that's okay.** Any wizard worth his salt can cast spells with a bandaged hand, and the dog would only get in the way anyway. Now we have one official Harry Potter wand, capable of performing all kinds of nasty magical effects. Let's pick up one of the books and look for a spell to cast.

Wendy McElroy at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Conservative Cookie Rebellion - this is an old story, but it's nice to see the summary all in one place of which schools shut down cookie sales. Guess this protest really struck a nerve, eh? As well it should have. Affirmative Action is discrimination in drag. What the civil rights movement was supposed to be about was eliminating government mandated discrimination. Instead, it created government mandated reverse discrimination. [tle]

Want to buy a cookie? If you are a white male, that'll be $1; for white females, 75 cents; blacks, 25 cents. The price structure is the message. Through Affirmative Action (AA) Bake Sales, conservative groups on campuses across America are satirically and peacefully spotlighting the injustice of AA programs that penalize or benefit students based solely on gender and race. The cookie rebels are being slammed by such a backlash that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) -- dreaded by many university administrators -- just shot "an opening salvo" in the rebels' defense.

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