SPEAK IN MANY TONGUES

Sen. Barack Obama said this week that Americans need to make sure their kids know how to speak Spanish. Jingoists reared up and said Obama has it wrong -- Americans need to make sure immigrants know how to speak English.

Pollster Rasmussen has it this way:

A national telephone survey conducted last month by Rasmussen Reports found ... 83% place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language. Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages.

It's not an either/or debate -- it shouldn't be, at least -- but it's startling to see how fury over illegal immigration has created devolution among many formerly high-functioning humans. Their offspring will curse their stubborn bones.

Pissed about immigrants not knowing English? Volunteer in an ESL class. While you're at it, learn Standard Mandarin. It's the skill of the future.

SOME DEATHS ARE WORTH MORE

At least 35,000, or maybe four times that number, dead in Myanmar. Another 30,000-plus killed in China. It's news, even big news, but it's not the Mother of All News. The MOAN designation is attached only to the events we see for ourselves, when it's our shoes on the ground, our nose filled with the pungence of mayhem.

Unfair but true; subjective but real. It's the Law. McClurke's Law.

Reportedly named after a jaded BBC editor, McClurke's Law holds that some deaths are worth more. NBC journalist Martin Fletcher's Breaking News -- a helluva read, even if you don't work in a paragraph factory -- includes McClurke's Law:

One hundred thousand Bangladeshis killed in a flood equals 10,000 Africans killed by famine equals 500 Egyptians eaten by crocodiles on the Nile equals five British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland equals two of the queen's corgi dogs run over by a bus.

Rue the day when the U.S. has to endure a death toll equivalent to a dozen Sept. 11ths. The ensuing coverage may kill us all.

SEEDS FOR THE APOCALYPSE

Longyearbyen, Norway. It's a village on the Svalbard archipelago, close to the Arctic Circle. Go there when the balloon goes up.

Seeds from more than 200,000 crops are on their way to an underground vault in Longyearbyen, where they will, in theory, be safe for post-doomsday stragglers to use as they rebuild.

According to last year's news release about the project:

Svalbard’s airport is the northernmost point in the world to be serviced by scheduled flights – usually one a day. For nearly four months a year the islands are wrapped in total darkness.

The site was chosen, in part, because the ground is perpetually frozen, providing natural back-up refrigeration that would preserve the seeds should electricity fail. Yet, even here, project architects had to consider how to offset the potential impacts of climate change.

The design will accommodate even worst-case scenarios of global warming in two main ways. For one, the vault will be located high above any possible rise in sea level caused by global warming. The vault will be located some 130 meters (426 feet) above current sea level, ensuring that it will not be flooded.

Four months of darkness, sure, but also four months of the midnight sun, and this part of the Arctic Circle is enchanting.

YOU DO NOT LOOK THAT BAD

... we said to Addie Broyles, a fellow traveler in our lunge through life. Alas, too late. Too late! And now she is destined to be on "What Not To Wear," that show on TLC where poorly dressed souls are torn to shreds before being blessed with five grand worth of fresh threads.

She will still travel the odd path -- they can trash her clothes, but they can't trash her soul, dammit, they can't even touch it -- but the thought of That Gal From Aurora in styling duds is too much right now. We must recline.

Read all about it on La Vie Dansante, her blog.

HAPPY 2008

So glad to make it to this side of the fence, where we can look forward to Dec. 31, 2008, when Dick Clark makes another uncomfortable appearance on New Year's Eve. Man, that's some creepy-good TV.

Resolved for 2008:

*More posts.

*More odd news.

*More compassion.

*More understanding.

*Fewer complaints.

And fewer cigarettes. Happy New Year.

LOST, NOW FOUND

Hannah Klamecki was dead and everyone knew it. She and her grandfather were last seen on Wednesday at the Kankakee River near Momence, Ill. His body was pulled from the river on Friday.

Then Hannah, 5, walked out of the woods with a handful of raspberries.

The Associated Press reports:

"People were like, 'Who's that little girl? That can't be her, can it?"' Kankakee Sheriff's Chief Deputy Ken McCabe said. "I went up to her (and) asked, 'How you doing? What's your name?"' ...

Hannah was taken to a hospital as a precaution. She slept with her parents and a teddy bear at her side before being released. Cradling the bear, she spoke freely of her ordeal Friday evening.

"I was scared last night when everybody was gone," she said. "I went searching all over the world to look for the cottage (where her grandparents live)."

Hannah had scratches on her face and body and thick dirt under her nails. She had poison ivy rashes on her legs and couldn't walk because splinters and thorns cut her feet. ...

Authorities believe the river current swept the girl away from a small island where she and her grandfather had stopped to swim and to the shore of the mainland where she eventually was found.

She told searchers she was wearing floats on her arms and pulled herself from the water with a branch.

"That's a tough little girl, I tell you," McCabe said.

Tougher than at least one 26-year-old woman who couldn't survive two hours in the woods, much less two days.