Imagine a bold reinvention of U.S. geography. Vermont, home of the dreaded Bernie Sanders, is forced to merge with Connecticut, and the rest of New England marches northward in celebration of the socialist purge. The Carson campaign would like you to know: If such an imaginary hybrid state did exist in real life, Carson would definitely not support Syrians taking refuge there.
Today there is one less large thing named after a man from Ohio, and the other men from Ohio are hopping mad. “Our beloved Ohio man needs his name on the large thing,” they cry. Their cries fall on deaf ears: Alaska’s Mt. McKinley is now Denali.
It's in a largely uninhabited jungle region on the Atlantic, just over the border with Venezuela. When you hit "Manchester United Road," keep going straight about a mile.
As promised, the island nations of Samoa and Tokelau will jump 24 hours into the future tonight, when the international date line is revised to facilitate Samoan trade with Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. (American Samoa will stay on Hawaii's side of the line.) When 18,600 Samoans and 1,500 Tokelauans go to bed tonight, it will be a Thursday. When they awake, it will be Saturday.
Justin Bieber stopped by the Late Show this evening for a chat with David Letterman. At one point, Bieber noted that he'd been to "every continent." But after being challenged by Letterman to actually name each of them, Bieber was less than successful. See that, plus Letterman telling Bieber that a photo of him looks like Marie Osmond, in the above video.
According to data on same-sex couples released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the gayest city in these 50 states is, not surprisingly, Provincetown, Mass., the vacation spot of circuit boys, insane writers, and homosexuals who make a whole lot more money than any of us.
Scientists who study islands have apparently been sleeping on the job for years, because get this: Researchers have discovered 657 new islands around the world, making for a grand total of 2,149.
In the northern parts of this country, it's already been a long, wild winter. That makes it the time of year when those of us in freezing cities fantasize about which tropical locations we'd move to. Let's contemplate the options.
"The Top of the Rock observation deck gives visitors a 360-degree, panoramic view of New York City, and is located in what famous skyscraper?" When 300 randomly selected NYC residents were asked that question, 34 percent said they didn't know. Another 41 percent responded that it's on top of the Empire State Building. [NYT/City Room]
The news media has tracked failed VP candidate Sarah Palin to the wilds of Alaska to get her reaction to the LOL-legation that she thought Africa was a country rather than a continent. Her forceful rebuke of the charge can be summed up as: It, uh, sounds like some bitters are saying I maybe, uh, didn't know the answer to a question so, uh, who was it that said that, anyhow? Click to watch the mush-mouthed meanderings of a geographically challenged woman.
This is what happens when you let an Australian-born media mogul buy an American newspaper and import his chief editor from Britain: Suddenly no one on staff can correctly identify the country to the north (for the record, it's "Canada" — just "Canada"). And to think we actually believed Robert Thomson would make the Wall Street Journal more globalist! [WSJ]
