Harry's Place

The big news from here in Virginia is the discovery that some of the English settlers at Jamestown in the early 17th century resorted to cannibalism to avoid starvation.
For years, there have been tales of people in the first permanent English settlement in America eating dogs, cats, rats, mice, snakes and shoe leather to stave [...]

After the Egyptian government arrested TV political satirist Bassem Youssef on charges of insulting President Mohamed Morsi and Islam (he has been released on bail), his fellow TV political satirist, Jon Stewart, came to Youssef’s defense in a brilliant segment on “The Daily Show” (available on YouTube for a change):

The US embassy in Cairo tweeted [...]

Say what you want about the liberal Left, but it seems to me they have always been better than the conservative Right when it comes to self-mockery.
(Here’s another example from a few years ago. And yes, I can assure you, this was done by liberals.)
Of course I could be wrong. If anyone has examples of [...]

I don’t know if any of our readers are fans of the TED Talks videos, in which people stand before an audience and, in the course of a few minutes, present “ideas worth spreading.”
The best TED Talk I’ve seen is one the TED people decided not to post because it was supposedly too political.
If you’ve [...]

The Iranian regime’s Press TV tries humor, with predictably disastrous results:

As the political prisoner in Evin said to his torturer: “Stop, you’re killing me.”
This video breaks the first rule of comedy, which is to be funny. It manages the near-impossible task of making me slightly sympathetic to Mitt Romney.
The last word goes to Jackie Gleason:

(Hat [...]

Losing articles faster than Scott Weber, Johann Hari has announced that he will not return to the Independent.
Instead, he will focus his – and hopefully no-one else’s – efforts on writing a book:

Amid all the loss of homes, property, livelihood and the general stress and anxiety it’s causes ordinary and decent Londoners, it is good to know that there is still room for a chuckle. Members of the photoshopping community have been particularly creative in this regard. Here are some examples:

There are more here.

Via Just Journalism:
On Saturday, The Times reported that half of the board of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics are supporters of the Boycotts, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) campaign against Israel – despite the centre having prominent financial links with several authoritarian Arab states, including Libya.
…
Today’s Times includes another article by Dominic [...]