Pun Salad

Apologies for the no-posting holiday yesterday. I was celebrating this blog's evolution from "Multicellular Microorganism" to "Wiggly Worm" in the TTLB ecosystem. At least that's what it says over there on the right; watch out, Instapundit!

• In celebration of the upcoming blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, Mark Steyn amusingly points out that our fellow-NHite Dan Brown (who is, you may have heard, the author of the original novel), has a "penchant for weirdly inauthentic historicity" and exhibits other stylistic flaws. Mark also looks at the Gospel of Judas, and doesn't like that much either.

• Tired of being amused? Perhaps you're more in the mood for disgust? Craven and dishonest University administrators are always fertile sources for that sort of thing. Today's example is from the Torch, which carries a guest column from the ex-editor of the Daily Illini, describing the history of his publication of the Mohammed cartoons, and his subsequent sacking. He concludes:

  It's a truly astonishing experience to be summarily fired from your job and then erased from the public's memory for trying to provide one's readers with information pertaining to one of the most newsworthy stories of the year. It's a nauseating pattern that one might have expected to find in the pages of a dystopian novel—but not at a modern American university.

  Ah, it's a question we've all asked: am I in the pages of a dystopian novel, or at a modern American university? Hard to tell, sometimes.

• The WaPo has an article about those VW ads that emphasize how safe their Jettas are. The sub-headline says:

  Jetta Commercials Show Real People in Real Crashes To Sell Viewers on Safety

  … where, well, "Real People" are actually "Professional Stunt People" and "Real Crashes" are actually "Staged Crashes". On the other hand, they apparently used actual Jettas with no additional padding or reinforcements. And despite my kvetching, the commercials are pretty stunning.

• And (via Carl Schaad) here's a pretty neat Flash video allegedly showing a time-lapsed horde of FedEx aircraft avoiding a thunderstorm (and probably also Jettas) as they try to make it to their Memphis hub. (Carl's skeptical of its authenticity, and you should be too, but I, like, totally believe it.)