Time Immortal

This one has an edge to it:

(context)

Runner-up: “Iran failed Friday to register what it said would be the world’s largest sandwich in the Guinness book of World Records after people rushed forward and began eating it — before it was measured.”

Emphasis on FAIL!

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

This is an image of North Korea and South Korea, taken at night. I have to say, it reminds me of that line from Lord of the Rings: “Sauron needs only this ring to cover all the lands in a second darkness.” There is something distinctly…wrong about the way that the normal, night-time lights of modern society simply stop dead at the border between the two Korean states.

And it would appear that the latest enviro-nuttery to rear its ugly head involves calls for other countries to emulate the North Korean example. Japan is seeing calls for convenience store owners to close earlier and turn out their lights, whilst Britain has for some time now been turning off its street lights at night in Buckinghamshire.

Does the good Reader see a potential problem with that neo-Luddite idea?

Like…say…increased crime rates?

Bill Whittle remarks:

When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

Is that a Tolkein reference I do detect therein?

Lord of the Rings was a metaphor for its own time, written (as it was) across the span of time in which the Second World War happened. But like the deep Catholicism from which Tolkein drank, the messages of his epic tale do have an eternal, and then repeating, ring to them. We can see ourselves in his tales…but that is not always a comforting thought.