Some articles I've found interesting in the past week:

• "Toddlers who dislike spicy foods racist." Yes, if your British 3-year-old says "yuk" when offered a bit of internationally unfamiliar food, you might have a racist on your hands and intervention is called for.

• Learning about other religions and cultures is one thing, but when directed to pray to Allah in a UK public school, two seventh-grade boys refused. Too bad for them and their individual religious rights rebelliousness...they got detention.

• A new "secret" British report on the international food shortage lays the blame squarely on the quest for biofuels <not unlike my ethanol arrogance post last week>. My favorite part of the story? They say the report is still an unpublished "secret" because they don't want to embarass President Bush. Get real.

• Related to the above, I read a very entertaining article about global warming from an Australian perspective. The reporter lambasted some of his own government officials for trying to impose multi-million dollar changes to reduce CO2 emissions when their output is negligible compared to that of China and India. The officials even admit the effect would be negligible, they merely want to spend the money so they can basically try to lead by example and hope those two countries will "follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats, too." China said "our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth." India "would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases." In addition, India actually did a little research to conclude man-made global warming is a hoax. Now where have I heard that before?