“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Carnival of Satire (#97)

Carnival of Satire #97Welcome to an impolite and somewhat freakish edition of The Carnival of Satire, where we discuss politics, religion, and improbable sexual positions. But first, we start with some advice for the evil masterminds of the world:

General Kang will be sure to enjoy Destructo’s Tips for Evil Staff Meetings.

Jeremy H has ‘hit’ on some important news: God Says Yes to Drugs.

Cato presents us with this feline hagiography: San Catio de Calistoga.

It’s a shame when the news cycle grinds on before we can catch all the satiric poetry from Madeleine Begun Kane. Still, her Ode To Eliot Spitzer is not to be missed.

Joe Qelqoth has been auditioning a number of Sexual Advice Columnists on the topic of Love and Marriage.

Suldog presents the death-related, political, sporty WDUH News.

Jkrane82 has been digging into the Presidential archives, and reveals Five “Lost” Presidential Emails Unearthed.

Huck Finn presents this flow chart to explain How Money Is Sucked Out of the U.S.

Mully has a useful guide to NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament.

Jeremy Zongker presents How Banks Calculate Your Transactions.

Sammy Benoit presents Hamas, Cease Fires and Bill Cosby.

Our exception for this week is: Gary Vasey’s rant: Isn’t it Fun to be British?.

And that’s it for this edition! If you have some satire to share, please consider submitting next time. What is satire? Someone wrote something about it once, we think. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, Ferdy’s permanent floating ping festival, and for the listings at the Blog Carnival too. Also, you may find some satire here if you dig around a bit. Thanks to Azrainman for his disturbing and hilarious Cyclops frog.

Technorati tags: , , , .

Professor Quippy: Forget the Taser, I want an Epilepsilazer

Professor QuippyThe US Army and US Navy have been playing with ray guns!

In a recently declassified document, the American Department of Defense (DoD) reveals some of the “non-lethal” beam weapons they’ve been investigating.

They include a weapon that projects sounds into your head (potentially destroying your delicate ear bits in the process) they’ve dubbed the “Schitzo Ray”. This weapon is based on the Frey effect, and uses microwaves, so the schizoid’s traditional mode of protection — the aluminum foil hat — will not be helpful. In fact just the opposite.

Speaking of heating things up, they’ve got another microwave weapon that warms your body. It has three settings: bag-sweatingly hot, jungle fever, and cook. This one will be especially useful for the cannibal tribes in the coming economic apocalypse.

But my favourite has to be the Epilepsilazer™, which uses electromagnetic pulses to cause epilepsy-like seizures. It’s based on electro-magnetic pulses, so not only does it cause excessive mouth-foaming, it also completely wrecks a victim’s annoying Bluetooth thingy sticking out of his or her ear.

Given the latter results, it’s somewhat bad news that the DoD (pronounced dude) has no plans to make any of these delightful “non-lethal” weapons commercially available soon.

More details about the Epilepsilazer can be found at the New Scientist, or you can go straight to the source (PDF). Other mouth-foamers and schitzos here.

Beijing Olympic Mascot Demonstration Sports

Administrative Detention TriathlonReaders who’ve only discovered The Skwib in the past couple of years may have missed the series we’ve done on the Beijing Olympic Mascots, and a number of demonstration sports planned for Beijing this summer.

As we can see from the news, the Chinese government has really started training hard for the second sport:


Administrative Detention Triathlon


Tibetan Dissident Biathlon


Tibetan Dissident Biathalon


50-Meter Land Requisition Event


50-Meter Land Requisition Event


Organ Relay


Organ Relay


Hu Flung Falongong


Who Flung Falongong


Forced Sterilization Footy


Forced Sterilization Footy


Press Clubbing


Press Clubbing

Amnesty International has more (less satirical) information on human rights in China and the Beijing Olympics. This group of humor athletes is training hard for the new demonstration sport: “causing beverage to shoot through the nose”.