The Dartmouth Beacon

Kenyan conspiracy theorist
Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai will be awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace this December in Oslo. An avid opponent of deforestation, Maathai organized efforts to plant several million trees to help restabilize African forests, while providing education about biodiversity, the environment, and African naked women’s rights. On the other hand, she is wont to say things like this about the AIDS pandemic: “Although I am a biologist, I have not done any research. I may not be able to say who developed the [HIV] virus but it was meant to wipe out the black race.”

Singing Statesmen – The Sequel

Jibjab.com, home of the wildly popular political Flash cartoon “This Land” starring President Bush and Senator Kerry singing a duet about each other, released a follow-up cartoon last week. “Good To Be In D.C.” takes some more melodic shots at Washington’s top dogs, this time to the tune of “Dixie.” Jibjab writers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis offer aficionados of politics yet another important decision this year: which is a more frightening image, John Edwards bending over in a thong or Jim McGreevey prancing about in a tight pink t-shirt and short-shorts? The cast for “Good To Be In D.C.” is also much larger than that of “This Land,” which devoted itself more to the candidates’ caricatures of one another. The new cartoon features such newsmakers as John McCain, Michael Moore, Dan Rather, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Lieberman, Bill Clinton (a reprise), as well as several Halliburton bigwigs, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Axis of Evil (waving a Kerry-Edwards banner). Jibjab, to its capitalistic credit, has also found a way to make money off its genius, by offering DVDs and paid downloads of the two cartoons.

Prison escapes getting predictable

48 Rio de Janeiro prisoners staged a successful jailbreak using a rope made of towels and linens tied together, just like in the cartoons. Less than a week prior, 69 people escaped from another Rio jail by digging a tunnel, just like in the Shawshank Redemption.

Our Lady of Perpetual Gullibility

St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA, was duped out of $121 million when the source of the immense donation vanished into a cloud of false identities and forged documents. “John Banker,” the given name of the scam artist, turned out to be an ex-real-estate salesman with a history of selling phony properties. He was, however, able to hide this history from the trusting folks at St. Mary’s, who had even arranged a papal blessing for the duplicitous philanthropist. Now college officials are at a loss over what to do with an already constructed $25 million science center, which was to be paid for with Banker’s gift.

Michael Moore sues for your right to view!

When iN DEMAND, the cable company that was supposed to air Michael Moore’s Bush mockumentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” on the eve of the election withdrew from the arrangement, Moore made the appropriate liberal response: he threatened to sue. “We’ve informed them of their legal responsibility and we all informed them that every corporate executive that has attempted to prohibit Americans from seeing this film has failed,” he said. Corporate executives, for their part, were instrumental in the film’s October 5 DVD release to the public.

Colorado looks to be 2004’s Florida

Colorado has had its share of electoral ineptitude in the past few weeks. In a story broken by Denver’s 9News I-Team, independent companies were found to be paying commissions for people to sign up voters, offering $2 per registration. Less than scrupulous employees, however, quickly had friends and significant others register multiple times, using false information, forging signatures, and registering ineligible voters such as felons—all to make a quick buck. As a result, the state of Colorado has as many as 1,000 fraudulent voter registrations for Jefferson County alone, with some individuals registered more than a dozen times each. Couple that with ballot printing that is behind schedule because of a Ralph Nader inclusion controversy, as well as a telephone scam in which an automated messages asks the recipient to “Press one to have an absentee ballot mailed to you” and encourages people to stay home from the polls. The ballot, of course, never arrives, as Colorado law requires a signature-bearing request form before the state can mail an absentee ballot. And the icing on the cake comes directly from “Colorado Election Day Manual: A detailed guide to voting in Colorado,” an election playbook circulated within the Democratic Party. The manual advises Democrats to claim voter intimidation and minority scare tactics, even if none exist: “If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a ‘pre-emptive strike.’” Colorado has the goods to deliver massive amounts of confusion this election; if Florida wants to defend its crown, it needs to get its idiocy together in the next few weeks.

The Real Important Stuff

An ABC News poll released October 18th reveals that Republicans have better sex lives than Democrats. Respondents to the American Sex Lives 2004 survey who identified as Republican handily got the better of those calling themselves Democrats in response to prompts such as “Very satisfied with current committed relationship” (R-87%, D-76%), “Very satisfied with sex life” (R-56%, D-47%), “Have worn something sexy to enhance sex life” (R-72%, D-62%), and “Have ever faked an orgasm” (R-26%, D-33%).