I love how Buddhists (and Hindus?) express the concept of infinity by giving Gods a bunch of hands:

Shanghai is busy preparing for the olympics in 2010 and has begun an earnest campaign to train their citizens to act well-mannered. Of the 100 such recommendations are these two gems:

• Don’t walk outside in pajamas or with a naked torso.
• Trim your nostril hair short.

The report does not, however, mention what to do should you use your nostril hair to cover your naked torso.

It is time we Americans brought our heads out from under the covers and realize that there is no monster hiding in the closet. Terrorists are not going to jump out and kill us. We do not need our government to protect us.

Consider all that we have suffered these past years: the lives lost in Iraq, our freedoms surrendered to a unchecked Executive, our economy further in debt than ever as the cost of the war spirals out of control… We have endured all of this for naught. Terrorism is no more dangerous than lightning — or deer:

Fewer than three thousand people died in the attacks of September 11, but about forty thousand people die each year in automobile accidents. Even in 2001, Americans were fifteen times more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident than as a result of a terrorist attack; and seven times more likely to die of alcohol-related causes; and five times more likely to die of HIV; and five times more likely to die as a result of accidental poisoning or exposure to toxic substances. The terrorist attacks of 2001 increased the chance of dying in an air crash from a probability of 0.00000128 to a probability of 0.0000024. Since the 1960s, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism is about the same as the number killed by lightning or by accidents caused by deer. If an attack of the magnitude of September 11 occurred every three months for the next five years–an unlikely event, to say the least–the probability of being killed in such an attack would remain tiny: 0.02 percent, to be precise.

Stop being afraid. Demand the government give us back our lives.