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'It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...'
'You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?'
'No', said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, 'nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'
'Odd', said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy.'
'I did', said Ford. 'It is.'
'So', said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't people get rid of the lizards?'
'It honestly doesn't occur to them', said Ford. 'They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.'
'But', said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?'
'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard', said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?'
'What?'
''I said', said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, 'have you got any gin?'
I'll look. Tell me about the lizards.'
'Ford shrugged again.
'Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them', he said. 'They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it.'
'But that's terrible', said Arthur.
'Listen, bud', said Ford, 'if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say "That's terrible" I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.'
WASHINGTON - The Wall Street Journal launched a WikiLeaks rival called "SafeHouse" on Thursday, calling for online submissions to help uncover fraud and abuse in business and politics.
"If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service," the Journal said at wsjsafehouse.com.
The newspaper said SafeHouse's security features include file encryption and the possibility for a contributor or whistleblower to remain anonymous.
It said the SafeHouse site was located on secure servers managed directly by Journal editors.
The Journal said SafeHouse's interests include "politics, government, banking, Wall Street, deals and finance, corporations, labor, law, national security and foreign affairs."
"SafeHouse will enable the collection of information and documents that could be used in the generation of trustworthy news stories," Journal managing editor Robert Thomson said in a statement.
"We're open to receiving information in nearly any format, from text files to audio recordings and photos," the newspaper said. "Help The Wall Street Journal uncover fraud, abuse and other wrongdoing."
'It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...'
