September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day: try the ever useful English to Pirate Translator, Pirate Name Generator, and the Pirate Ship Name Generator.

In real life, African and Asian pirates are a serious threat, and IMO are another front in the War on Terror:

French troops wearing night-vision goggles killed one pirate, captured six others and pulled the French Polynesian couple to safety in an overnight operation described by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a triumphant press conference…

Sarkozy said piracy in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia has “literally exploded” this year, with some 54 attacks in the heavily trafficked zone so far this year.

He added that Somali pirates are holding 150 people and at least 15 ships, mainly in Eyl, a Somali area that serves as a base for pirates who have been seizing yachts, freighters and fishing boats.

Recommended reading: Bill Whittle Proud of the GOP, at NRO.

Whittle is a great, moving, writer. I was blessed to find his work some years ago. For some of the best essays on the Internet, here’s Whittle’s website,  plus an example essay - Freedom.

Apparently if you interweave the pages of two phone books together they are nearly impossible to pull apart.  These two Dutch students won first place in a Mythbusters challenge demonstrating as much.  Very cool experiment, but I think they should have been disqualified for referring to kilograms as units of force.