Listing My Dutch Chills

These freaks want you to know that Winter Swimmers are not only healthy but super sexy and consider the chill currents off Alcatraz as so much bathwater.

I'm getting myself back together...slowly, so the junk's junkier than usual.

1) As you may have heard, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, having been effectively quarantined from normal life by security threats against her from Islamic extremists who don't like her message (or pal Theo Van Gogh's) about the subjugated role of women in Islam, has now been evicted from her apartment and stripped of her Dutch citizenship, thus also her parliamentary seat. She has since accepted a job at an American think tank, and I'm glad she will be coming here where I hope she may be allowed to lead an unmolested life of free thought and speech.

Christopher Hitchens finds her treatment disgraceful. Henryk M. Broder says "Voltaire and Erasmus are spinning in their graves."

2) Via NRO's Corner, I learned about this 7 year-old who swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco in 47 minutes. That's way cooler than I, almost as cool as the 50-ish degree water.

3) Pigeon Weather notes that one shouldn't ever post lists of things other people shouldn't do, for Alfred E. Neuman's sake. Except that I agree with most all of his list, dear frenzzzz.