Fast neutrinos, fast booze, the IMF's prodder-in-chief, Saudi women can vote!, and the most important story of the week

. . .Neutrinos are wily creatures, able to pass through solid matter and change "flavors" en route; 65 billion of them just passed through your fingertip and you didn't notice a thing. Until now, though, they hadn't figured out how to make headlines. That changed this past Friday when a team of researchers announced that they had accidentally incited neutrinos to travel faster than the speed of light. It's possible this could allow Michael J. Fox to travel back to the summer of 2001 and convince George W. to allow stem-cell research. It'd be cake; Fox could trade on his future knowledge of the whole Chandra Levy thing.

          You're telling me you built a time machine. . . out of a neutrino?

. . .Speaking of changing flavors, here's a NY Times piece about how Sonic (the drive-in, not the hedgehog), Burger King, and Starbucks are testing the waters with serving alcohol at some of their "restaurants." I don't eat corporate food if I can avoid it. . . but most of this country is so infested by these chains, there are plenty of places in the heartland you can't find a nugget of non-corporate food in a hundred-mile radius. Trust me, I've been there. So I applaud this trend. . . although it doesn't look promising that it'll be in my neck of the woods any time soon.

Europeans: why haven't their societies crumbled?

. . . Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn filed a Motion to Dismiss in a hotel maid's civil suit concerning a sexual encounter they had in a New York Hotel earlier this year. In the motion, his attorneys argue that his diplomatic immunity should protect him from the suit. Kind of a bogus notion if you ask me; if he did force her to perform oral sex on him (and wasn't afraid of her teeth), then I don't care if he's God's own ambassador, he should be held to account. No, the suit should be dismissed on account of the salient fact that it's clearly bullshit. Listen, I hate the IMF, and I despise those who act like they believe (with Henry Kissinger) that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," and that their status in society gives them the right to pressure others into sexual favours. But there's no worse fate than being falsely accused, and the courts in this country are stacked in favour of women. Judges and prosecutors bend over backwards to accommodate the most outrageous claims. Yet the prosecutors themselves dropped the criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn after realizing the alleged victim was lying to them left and right. That in itself should preclude a civil suit, and Ms. Diallo should be charged with making a false police report to boot.

. . .Speaking of Muhammad's wives. . . Khadija (خديجة) was a successful merchant when she first hired a young Muhammad to oversee her caravan, and later married him (he was fifteen years her junior). It may or may not be fair to describe Muhammad as a proto-feminist, but he certainly believed that men and women are equal before God. "You have rights over your women," he is reported to have said, "and your women have rights over you." Yet in Arabia, the land of Muhammad's birth and of his revelations, women are oppressed like nowhere else on earth. Not only is it illegal for women to drive, it's illegal for them to leave their house without a male chaperon. That's why it was so heartening to hear today that the absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia has decreed that women will henceforth be able to vote in muncipal elections, and even stand as candidates. Of course, Saudi Arabia is not a democracy in any meaningful sense; even men don't have full suffrage. Still, it's a positive change. Call it the Indian Arab Spring ("indian summer" plus. . . you get it, right?).

. . . And, finally, the most important story of the week.