And I'm sure their lunatic dictator has nothing to do with it....

Victor of the Dead Parrots Society offers a funny item that I find particularly relevant, given the length of my hair: the North Korean government has launched an official campaign to encourage North Korean men to cut their hair short:

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.

Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

Hmmm. I felt last week that my brain had been robbed of energy, but it turned out I'd been listening to Vivaldi. A little Rachmaninov, and I was just fine. (A little jab at Lynn, that.)

Seriously, every fifteen days for a haircut? That's absurd. Even when I did have short hair, four or five years ago (when I looked like an idiot, a state of affairs I find infinitely less desirable than looking like the axe-murderer PZ Myers fancies I resemble), I didn't get my mop cut every fifteen days. Once a month, maybe.

There's just something about North Korea that would make the country the ultimate bit of comic relief on this planet, if not for the fact that their people are starving and they've got the bomb. Aside from those two factors, it's just a hilarious place.