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Yes, it's me! Mark Steyn of that ilk - back for another hour of questions from Steyn Clubbers around the planet. The fun starts at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in the British Isles and 9pm in western and central Europe.
Lots going on in the world:
~Twenty years after the Danish Motoons, ten years after the Charlie Hebdo bloodbath, dear old Mohammed (PBUH - Pictures Be Upon Him) is back in the funny papers - this time in Turkey. From the BBC:
Turkey arrests journalists over alleged cartoon of Prophet Muhammad
Shouldn't that be "alleged cartoon of alleged Prophet Muhammad"?
~In America, the University of Pennsylvania has reached a settlement with the federal government under which it will defrock the bepenised woman Lia Thomas and award its Ladies' Swimming trophies to actual ladies. Apparently, the university has also agreed to apologise to its young women for making them change and shower with a bloke:
~From the UK: Thirty years ago, in happier times, I used to co-host the live summer opera broadcasts from Glyndebourne on Channel Four TV. Tickets for Glyndebourne cost almost as much as the special Death to Jews package at Glastonbury, and you have to climb into the old soup-and-fish or taffeta frock, according to gender-identity preference. Sir George Christie and his family, who ran the show, were always very pleasant to me, but I confess I hadn't kept up with recent developments on the operatic front. Apparently, a couple of years ago, Sir David Attenborough unveiled a new Glyndebourne wind-turbine to make all the soprano ululating more "sustainable". The opera ain't over till the wind-turbine's blown.
Alas, on Saturday, in the exquisite stillness of a summer afternoon, it declined to blow. And so, after six power outages brought the production juddering to multiple halts, they pulled the plug and called off the show - Handel's oratorio Saul. That's the one with the composer's famous "Death March", traditionally played as enraged premium subscribers storm the wind turbine and bring it crashing to the ground as if it were a Confederate general or a bloke whose great-great-great-grandfather invested in a plantation in Antigua.
The following day there were further power cuts that delayed the finale of Le Nozze di Figaro. That's the one with the beloved aria "Non più andrai". Which means "No more will you blow" - er, go.
The poignant symbolism of society's elites gathered in black tie to watch an immobile wind-turbine is too pitiful even for my tastes. Hard to think of anything more civilisationally degrading than subjecting Mozart and Handel to the caprices of a wind machine. But I'm happy to take your thoughts on that or any of the other topics we've chewed over in recent days.
Whether or not you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, you can listen to our show live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: Club membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and especially appreciate those who are having such a grand time around these parts that they've signed up a chum for a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Among the additions to our ranks in recent days are newbies from around the planet - from Norfolk to Nevada, Raleigh to Regina, Perth to Ponte Vedra. If you've joined this week either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's show.
But, if you're not interested in joining, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in. So see you back here at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm in London and Dublin, 9pm in Paris and Berlin, 10pm in Kiev and Moscow; half-past-ten in Teheran; midnight-forty-five in Kathmandu; 3am in Singapore and Honkers (sorry about that); 6am in Sydney and Melbourne; 8am in Auckland, and an even more civilised hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific, where you're so far ahead Michael E Mann's probably lost his appeal by now...