Free Republic

David Brooks of the New York Times has written an alternative biography of Mitt Romney that makes for witty reading (“He was sent to a private school, where he was saddened to find there are people in America who summer where they winter.”) But in the course of doing some internet research about this Romney fella, I found out he’s running against someone called Barack Obama. Obama’s biography makes for fascinating reading, too. Barack Obama was born in 1961, the location marked by the appearance of a new star in the East. His mother lived on food stamps and his...

Experts believe they could one day be marketed as a healthy alternative to fatty snacks. In most of Europe, bug-eating is largely restricted to the belated realisation that there has been an unwelcome addition to the salad. It is common elsewhere, however, with some 1,700 species of bug eaten in 113 countries. In Taiwan, stir-fried crickets or sauteed caterpillars are delicacies. A plate of maguey worms - larvae of a giant butterfly - sells for £12.50 in smart Mexican restaurants. Sago grubs wrapped in banana leaves go down well in Papua New Guinea, as does dragonfly in Bali. In many...