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U.S. foreign policy succeeds again

The Bush Administration has added one more to the long line of unqualified successes in U.S. foreign policy. On the heels of dramatic progress in the nation's greatest foreign-policy success, Israel, another victory is rapidly shaping up in Iraq. In a speech at the White House, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "We've finally managed to bring about our main goal in Iraq: fear and chaos due to frequent bombings. The recent escalation in suicide attacks in Israel has been both exciting and fulfilling to all of us in the State Department, but we felt that the U.S. has been focusing on encouraging violence in Israel for too long. The Iraq War created a fantastic opportunity for the U.S. to foster an environment of politically motivated, futile violence in another area of the world. The current level of suicide attacks in Iraq is nowhere near as high as it might be, however. We must maintain our three-fold strategy of half-assed military presence, bumbling civilian oversight, and unquestioned unilateralism in order to increase the violence. Now that we have created a terrorist haven and breeding ground of anti-American sentiment in Iraq, I have every hope and expectation that the violence will soon be completely out of control." Iraqis, for the most part, have taken an attitude of jubilant competitiveness about the issue, hoping to meet or exceed the Palestinians in frequency of bombings. Iraqi merchant Abdul Khuzai told a reporter, "Thank God for the American occupation! Now the Iraqi people will get caught up in a cycle of political and economic self-destruction not possible under the dictator Saddam! My hardware store will get wonderful business unless it is blown up!"

GASP official engages in collegiate drinking activity

A source at the Philosophy Department of Indiana University confirmed the rumor that has been circulating about behavior of members of the Graduate Association of Students in Philosophy at a recent private party. "It is true that one of the highest-ranking GASP officials did a keg stand," said the source. Keg stands are practiced most frequently by college-age deviants for whom becoming intoxicated as fast as possible is imperative. The participant holds on to a keg of beer while his or her legs are lifted in the air. The tap of the keg, which has been pumped to a high level of pressure, is placed in the participant's mouth and he or she "chugs" beer for as long as he or she can. Typically observers count the seconds; participants are held in higher esteem if they go for excessively long periods. IU graduate school dean Dr. Ralph "Buzz" Kill has called for a full investigation. "This is the kind of thing you expect to see from frat boys or jocks, but the graduate students in the philosophy department are some of IU's brightest and most responsible students. It has come as a real shock, especially since there were members of student government involved," he said.

Local geeks totally geek out

Artists create giant sculpture of Golden Gate Bridge

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, known for their enormous, steel and concrete sculptures of ordinary objects like trowels, bowling pins, and binoculars, have been commissioned by the city of San Francisco to create a new piece of public art commemorating the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge. The pair recently installed a sculpture near the bridge in Rincon Park: a giant, partially buried bow and arrow entitled 'Cupid's Span.' "We were so happy with the Cupid piece that we wanted to invite the artists back to do a piece that would really be about something that San Francisco is famous for," said city Board of Supervisors member Hugh Jass at a press conference this week. Fellow boardmember E. Norma Snockers chimed in, "The artists asked us what we thought a good icon for the city would be, since they had already alluded to San Fran's romantic spirit with the Cupid sculpture. We said, well, how about the Golden Gate Bridge?" Oldenburg and van Bruggen agreed, and started work on the sculpture right away. In an interview with San Francisco magazine, van Bruggen said, "We like to play with existing landscapes in our pieces, so the idea of making a sculpture of the bridge actually span a body of water came up right away. At the scale we're using, working with steel and concrete is absolutely necessary." Oldenburg added, "Because the Golden Gate is already so big, we decided it would just be impractical to use a much larger scale. We were able to modify and use the plans for the real Golden Gate Bridge as we worked on the engineering aspect of the replica--actually, we didn't really modify those plans at all." Groundbreaking for the sculpture is scheduled for early in 2004, less than half a mile away from the real bridge. The artists are currently debating whether or not it would be "really neat" if they connected the sculpture to existing roads and allowed traffic on it.

Scientists discover Twin Earth water actually H₂O

Using the limited sample of Twin Earth water gathered by astronauts in their visit to our sister planet last year, scientists have finally isolated the chemical structure of the substance. Twin Earth was discovered by the famous astronomer Hilary Putnam in 1975. Putnam's first observations of the water-like substance there, which is perceptually indistinguishable from water, led him to conclude that its chemical structure is different from our water. He postulated the molecular structure XYZ, which has baffled scientists for decades, since it contains only one symbol which refers to a known element, Y. (Yttrium is a metal used in color TV screens and is unlikely to enter into a waterlike molecular compound.) Putnam's work incited a long and often fruitless debate about the legality of packaging and selling Twin Earth water under the name 'water.' The debate was entirely academic until NASA began a new space exploration program, Gemini Beta, which eventually succeeded in visiting Twin Earth and bringing back some of the substance that Twin Earthians call 'water.' The debate continues to be academic, however, because the astronauts brought back such a small amount of the substance that its commercial sale is still impossible. Scientists hoped to isolate the chemical structure in order to replicate the substance in the lab, plans for mass production were abandoned once the structure was successfully isolated. As it turns out, Putnam and all his followers were wrong; Twin Earth water is H₂O, and so is chemically identical to the water here on Earth. This result resolves the legal debate about labeling the product, but also effectively eliminates the demand for the product, since its molecular structure proved to be so boring and mundane.

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