Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain — Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire
The official count says the United States came in first with 46 Gold Medals, followed by China with 38, and Great Britain in third position with 29.
But Reuters argues that, if we look at all this another way, taking all the medals won by countries of which Queen Elizabeth II is head of state, the total is really a bit different.
Thanks to her role as head of state for 16 countries, Queen Elizabeth is the world leader whose athletes have won more gold medals at London 2012 than any other and in her diamond jubilee year too. That’s 48 golds for Elizabeth to Obama’s 46.
Alongside Britain’s 29 golds, only six of the queen’s other countries were needed to top the medal count with seven from Australia, five from New Zealand, four from Usain Bolt and his fellow Jamaicans and one each from Bahamas, Canada and Grenada.
But what’s a piddling 48 Gold Medals?
Pingflux suggests counting historically and looking at the results by Empire. The British Empire does decently, achieving a tie for second place (55 Gold Medals each) with the Roman Empire. But the real winner may be a bit of a surprise.
The real winner of the 2012 Olympics proves to be Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire with a whopping 102 Gold Medals, 285 total.
Ed Driscoll admires the left-wing media’s instant, almost pre-programmed and prepared-in-advance attacks on Paul Ryan, which poured out everywhere this weekend as soon as Mitt Romney announced his Vice Presidential pick.
Watching the hysterical reaction from the left [Saturday] over Romney choosing Paul Ryan as his veep makes you wonder how much was pre-written boilerplate, with the Republican candidate’s name simply dropped in at the last minute, once Romney formally made his announcement. It’s sort of the Bizarro World version of the riff brainwashed into the skulls of Frank Sinatra and the rest of Laurence Harvey’s troops by the Soviets and Communist China in The Manchurian Candidate: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.†Instead this weekend, we’re getting “INSERT NAME OF REPUBLICAN TO BE DEMONIZED HERE is the worst, vilest, sexist, homophobic, God-worshiping, Second Amendment-supporting, budget cutting, evilest human being I’ve ever known in my life.†…
[A]t Commentary, John Podhoretz explored “Paul Ryan and Liberal Glee.†As Podhoretz wrote, “Doubtless, Ryan has provided some subject matter for Democratic attacks. But so, in different ways, would anyone else on Mitt Romney’s short list:â€
More important is the quality of the glee itself. It’s an ongoing liberal political-character flaw. So insulated a are many, if not most, American liberals that they simply presume that which they despise is inherently despicable, and that what they fear is inherently fearful. As they gather in their echo chamber, all they hear are voices resounding with the monstrousness of redesigning Medicare and the parlousness of cutting the federal budget. They genuinely do not know that budget cutting is popular, even if only in theory, and that tens of millions of voters do understand the notion that the government is living far beyond its means. From what we can gather, in fact, these are exactly the sorts of ideas that speak to independent voters and have since the days of Ross Perot.
Ryan is a formidable presence in American politics. Generally speaking, formidable players do formidable things. The glee of the Left suggests its folk are so excited by what the Obama campaign can dish out that they are unprepared for what Ryan and Romney can dish out right back.
Daniel Greenfield has an absolutely brilliant essay on this year’s election, loaded with deadly accurate strokes of wit, explaining exactly who it is that the Republican candidates are running against.
In 1980, when President Reagan asked Americans, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago”, it was still possible to campaign on a theme as simple as the job performance of the other guy. But now, 32 years later, the campaign hinges on a much more fundamental split among the voting population.
Romney appeals to voters who are dissatisfied with the last four years. Obama appeals to voters who are dissatisfied with America.
This basic gap was obscured in the 2008 campaign by the window trappings of inspiration. Among all the plastic pillars and stolen quotes from poets who stole them from sermons, it was harder to see that the underlying theme of the campaign was dissatisfaction with America. But in 2012, Obama can no longer run as a reformer or an optimist.
The coalition that he committed to last year is a coalition of those who are unhappy with America, not in the last four years, but in the last two-hundred years. Its core is composed of groups that fear democracy and distrust the will of the people. There is no optimism here, but a deeply rooted pessimism about human nature and the country as a whole. It is the Democratic Party’s coalition against democracy.
Der Spiegel describes how the Boho-Bolshie lifestyle and philosophy backfired on the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson and his surviving partner Eva Gabrielsson. It turns out that communists not only want the survivorship benefits resulting from the traditional marriage they formerly spurned, they also want the money.
Stieg Larsson, the Swedish author of the Millennium trilogy, only became world-famous after his death in 2004. His long-time companion Eva Gabrielsson is still fighting for her share of the inheritance, but says she no longer plans to finish his fourth book. …
Gabrielsson has to smoke a cigarette now. She lived with Larsson for 32 years. Together, they moved from rural northern Sweden to Stockholm. …
When Larsson felt pleased with a chapter, he would give it Gabrielsson to read. He became increasingly confident in the crime story, until he eventually said that he had 10 books in his head about Salander and the insanity she encounters. But then he died. One day when the elevator in his building was out of order, Larsson had to climb the 197 steps to his office. He had a heart attack when he reached the top. He had just turned 50.
Shortly before his death, Larsson had submitted the third volume in the trilogy to his publisher Norstedts, but not a single book had yet been printed. Today more than 63 million copies of the Millennium trilogy have been sold. …
Gabrielsson and Larsson weren’t just a couple, but also a leftist action group. First they were Maoists and then Trotskyists, voicing their criticism of the Swedish welfare state from a leftist point of view. She was an architect, while he worked for a news agency. They managed to make ends meet, and had no children. Like many Swedes of their generation, they were anti-bourgeois.
In their social circle, while couples may have been monogamous, they didn’t marry. But under Swedish law, a member of an unmarried couple doesn’t inherit anything from his or her deceased partner, no matter how long the couple was together. Blood trumps love, unless a will exists, but Larsson hadn’t written one. For that reason, the rapidly growing proceeds from the sale of the books and the film rights went to two biological relatives, Larsson’s father Erland (his mother Vivianne is dead) and his younger brother Joakim. “The money went to us, but we didn’t ask for it,” says Erland Larsson, 76. …
After Larsson’s death, when his novels suddenly became such a huge success, the widow who isn’t a widow under the law sat down with Erland and Joakim Larsson to discuss what should happen next. An agreement seemed possible. But then attorneys took over the case, and an inheritance war ensued — one in which the Stieg Larsson fan community has participated extensively.
Two camps have since formed in Sweden: the (primarily female) Eva camp, with its own website (www.supporteva.com), and the (primarily male) Larsson camp (www.moggliden.com).
The inheritance dispute is being waged publicly. It culminated when Gabrielsson and Joakim Larsson went on Swedish television to explain their respective positions on the dispute. The widow, invoking a higher form of justice, said that the money had made the two Larssons greedy. Joakim Larsson defended his right to the inheritance and, in his modesty, came across as likeable.
Paul Rahe observes that Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate defines his campaign and justifies his candidacy.
In choosing Paul Ryan as his Vice-Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has opted to go for broke, and he has indicated that he is a serious man — less concerned with becoming President of the United States than with saving the country from the disaster in store for it if we not radically reverse course, willing to risk a loss for the sake of being able to win a mandate for reform.
I have been unsparing in my criticism of Romney’s political record. I unsay not one word about that. If we were to judge him honestly by his conduct as a Senatorial candidate in Massachusetts and as that state’s Governor, I believe that we would find him sadly wanting.
I have also consistently been of the opinion that, of the declared Republican presidential aspirants, Mitt Romney was the least unacceptable. In his private capacity, he is a man of excellent character; as a businessman, he was accomplished in the extreme; and, as a candidate, he consistently displayed the discipline required. There were others in the race who had good qualities, but they lacked one or more of the crucial qualities that Romney possesses.
I also hazarded a guess — that current circumstances might make a genuine conservative of Mitt Romney, that his understanding of the fiscal crisis we face might very well force him to think more deeply about the moral roots of that fiscal crisis, which is to say, about the inner logic of the administrative entitlements state and the moral as well as the fiscal bankruptcy produced by that inner logic. I was accused of wishful thinking, and the accusation was just. For my wish was, indeed, father to the thought, but this does not mean that the thought was wrong.
Governor Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate suggests, in fact, that my suspicions were correct. For by making this choice, Mitt Romney is declaring war. There will be no evasion, no triangulation, no attempt to mask what is at stake in this election. Instead, Romney and Ryan will directly confront Barack Obama and call him to account for putting us on a ruinous course.
This will alter radically the dynamics of the race. The money spent by Obama trying to demonize Governor Romney will prove to be money entirely wasted. The election is not going to be about Mitt Romney. It is not going to be about the sexual revolution. It is not going to be about Bain Capital. It is going to be about the failed policies of Barack Obama, about their dangerous character, and about the sober, sound alternative the Republicans represent.
This will help the Republicans in Senate and House races immeasurably, for it will give Romney and Ryan coattails — now, without a doubt, the candidates in these other races have something concrete on which to run: repeal Obamacare, pare back the entitlements state, reform our system of taxation, and put our fiscal house in order. No one will doubt the capacity of the Republicans to rule.
I have predicted that Romney will win by a landslide. The choice of Paul Ryan means that Romney has chosen the path that will maximize the significance of his victory and its impact on the races for seats in the House and Senate. As in 1980, this is going to be a national election — in which local particularities count for much less than usual.
I kept looking at the story, trying to find the tv model he ordered, thinking that maybe if I order one, Amazon will ship me a SIG716 too, but, alas, it is never identified.
That ferociously raised eyebrow would intimidate any opponent.
Everyone knows that the late Vladimir Nabokov collected butterflies and played tennis as a young man, but who would ever have imagined that this rarified Russian intellectual boxed at Cambridge and once published an appreciative essay on the sweet science?
The Times Literary Supplement offers the first English translation of Nabokov’s December 1925 essay on a heavyweight boxing match between the German Hans Breitensträter and the Basque Paolino Uzcudun.
What matters, of course, is not really that a heavyweight boxer is a little bloodied after two or three rounds, or that the white vest of the referee looks as though red ink has leaked out of a fountain pen. What matters is, first, the beauty of the art of boxing, the perfect accuracy of the lunges, the side jumps, the dives, the range of blows – hooks, straights, swipes – and, secondly, the wonderful manly excitement which this art arouses. …
At the very tip of the chin there is a bone, like the one in the elbow which in English is called “the funny-boneâ€, and in German “the musical-boneâ€. As everyone knows, if you hit the corner of your elbow hard, you immediately feel a faint ringing in the hand and a momentary deadening of the muscles. The same thing happens if you are hit very hard on the end of the chin.
There is no pain. Only the peal of a faint ringing and then an instantaneous pleasant sleep (the so-called “knock-outâ€), lasting anywhere between ten seconds and half an hour. A blow to the solar plexus is less pleasant, but a good boxer knows just how to tense his abdomen, so that he won’t flinch even if a horse kicks him in the pit of the stomach.
Singaporeans are encouraged to show their patriotic fervor by displaying their country’s flag proudly, sharing snapshots of their favorite local foods and dancing along to a fresh new national theme song.
But there is another, distinctly unofficial, national song in Singapore these days. It is asking locals to try something else on their country’s big day: Make love for Singapore.
Mentos mints created an ad campaign to urge Singaporeans to increase the city-state’s birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world.
The soulful rap, which is part of a new ad campaign to promote Mentos mints, is called “National Night,” and it exhorts Singaporeans to “do their civic duty” to help solve the city-state’s low birthrate by making a baby on Aug. 9.
“It’s National Night, let’s make Singapore’s birthrate spike,” a female vocalist sings over jittery synthesizers and drumbeats, as her male counterpart shouts phrases like “that’s right” and “the birthrate won’t spike itself!”
“Singapore’s population, it needs some increasin’, so forget waving flags, August 9th we be freaking,” the rap continues.
The song has gone viral, taking on a life of its own on social networks across the famously staid city-state. It is also raising the eyebrows of older residents who fret that it is mocking a serious issue.
Singapore’s leaders have worried for years about the country’s birthrate, which is among the lowest in the world at 7.72 births per 1,000 people. …
My wife reminded me that not everybody is on Facebook, so here is a direct link to the 3:17 astonishing and appalling video.
And some people think that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is intrusive.
