One of life's little delights, viewed from a safe distance, is the presence of one of those charity lolly bins in the work space. My current client has one of these on the floor I work on, stuffed full of allegedly delicious treats; if the will is weak, it's a source of pain and suffering, since it allows me to spend a small fortune a week on junk food. But when the will is strong, it's a cornucopia of snack foods that failed in the marketplace. Take the "Pink and White Peanuts" (chocolate coated coloured goodness), the Delft "Chocolatey White" (composed entirely of sugar, milk products, soy, and flavour - not so much as a smidgen of cocoa butter anywhere!), or the "Maxies!" (honeycomb coated in chocolate). And that's not even beginning to get into the wierd stuff.
You can see why the purveyors of these miserable excuses for mass-marketed products can sell them below market rates; all of these products are sure-fire losers that doubtless languish on the shelves of the few dairies bold enough to stock them. When not even the most desperate of sugar addicts will eat them, they go to the charity bins to die.
A good collection of essays from various US conservative thinkers on the US War on Drugs, what the problems are, and why it's not working. They're interesting mostly because this is an unusual perspective - proponents of anti-enforcement views are typically portrayed as being on the left, rather than the right. Of course, many of the figures in this collection are, one suspects, in danger of becoming the Barry Goldwaters of their generation of Republican - out of tune with their opressive peers who would replace government oversight of health, education, and business with government oversight of the bedrooms and living rooms of the United States (while leaving the economy to the magic of the unregulated market).
Doug Golightly's piece on the pack of morons calling themselves the Blackhearts (quick, Joan, sue!) is spot on, but he missed a couple of additional points. One is that these pratts are claiming that New Zealand must do anything to retain the America's Cup in order to ensure the many benefits it apparently brings remain with us; one of these benefits is cited as being tourism.
Leaving aside the question of how many people actually give two shits about a pack of rich wankers playing at the most boring vehicular sport in the world - I'm with PJ O'Rourke on this, the only way yacht racing could be made interesting is by mounting weapons on the vessels - one of the selling points used in New Zealand tourism is that we're nice people; it's a not uncommon sentiment. If these morons do manage to get any publicity it will be to suggest that New Zealanders are, in fact, a bunch of thuggish dickheads; poor sports and losers of the first order. This is going to help our image abroad how, exactly?
Perhaps they should import some English soccer hooligans just to complete the picture. Tossers.