Billy the Martian

Another gem from this Steyn book:

In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee” — the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

For years, I’ve been trying to find a way to express the notion that unwillingness to judge another culture was just a form of intellectual moral cowardice.  If’n I were better read, I wouldn’t have to work half so hard at getting the right words out.  Thanks, General Napier.

(Put this on my livejournal account originally, but maybe it fits in better here. Apparently, I haven’t quite resolved the multiple blog issue yet.)

I’m reading Mark Steyn’s book, “America Alone”. There’ve been dozens of things that made me laugh out loud while alone — that’s my personal hallmark for when something is Really Fucking Funny.

…but this one takes the cake. I never noticed that the name for Kim Il Jong’s missile project is “No Dong”. That’s just fucking killer humor. I could hope that their codename for their nuke project is “No Bang” or “No Balls”…

Steyn mentions that the nutjob is eager to sell to other countries, and he forsees problems if the president of Sudan announces proudly to his people that he has No Dong….

Seriously, doesn’t this sound like something that should have been in Sixteen Candles? I’m sure Long Duck Dong’s brother is named No Dong, and somehow movie reality has bled in over here.