Everybody Somebody Nobody

Everybody's a nobody except those people who are somebody and that excludes almost everybody.

Ron Wheatcroft, Goodnight Sweetheart S05E06

Tax Free Hell Holes

If you don't like taxes, move to Somalia.

Andrew D. Blechman, author of Leisureville,
on the desire of many to avoid taxes.
Heard on Here and Now 2008/6/19.

Anthropology and the Prime Directive

The Brazilian government department FUNAI is charged with Indian relations. Mention Brazilian government policies and normally you get a shudder. They have had military government. There are subsidies to deforesting the Amazon. They had a dirty war like Argentina. They have huge wealth and income disparity, shacks next to mansions. The police have run their own death squads. It is nice to have a political-economic story coming out of Brazil that isn't a horror story.

FUNAI used to hunt down and locate "lost tribes" in the Amazon, it was how they promoted their staff. One of their woods runners, Sydney Possuelo, developed a different policy to locate but not contact isolated groups. As described in this NPR program, Uncontacted Amazonian Tribes, it sounds a lot like the Prime Directive from Star Trek.

Was 40 Years Wandering in the Desert Just Bad Navigation

Bush = Obama

I see Obama as a mirror image of George Bush. Both have father issues that led to poor decisions/associations. Bush ran on being a uniter not a divider saying the problem was with the Washington insiders. Obama says the same thing. Bush was naive in invading Iraq and Obama is naive in his willingness to meet with the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bush attracted the far right of his party. Obama attracts the far left of his party. Just as the Bush presidency has been a disaster so would an Obama presidency at best.Obama is passive-aggressive; he uses misdirection and is duplicitous on an Orwellian level. Obama would be dangerous as president.

metimi5 comment on
'Danger Signs' as Clinton Supporters Resist Obama,
making a connection between
one Ivy League coke head and another

Leaders and Followers

(from The Pain 06/27/01)

How to Solicit Money in New York

(from Aarghh)

Counterinsurgency as Practiced by William the Bastard

Here is a primer/history on counterinsurgency comparing occupation tactics in Iraq with the practices of William the Bastard (bastard by name, bastard by nature).

3 Reasons not to Strangle Someone

1. It Is illegal.
2. It is a lot harder than it looks on TV.
3. It takes longer (then on TV).
   

Ron Wheatcroft, Goodnight Sweetheart S04E07

Overly Complicated Sneaker Lacings

On a random blog wander I come accross this brand new blog, ZONA BEBAS, in Dutch?/Indonesian?/some unknown to me language? The first post of this blog is directions to a number of complicated lacing patterns. Try them out, be the first in your class to have the zipper, the ladder or checkerboard (see above).

Dyslexic Rabble Rousing Slogan

Bad Spellers of the World, UNTIE!!!

spelling error by coefficient
picked up on by Falconier111 on AH.com.

Cell Phones are Evil

Bambi and the Ordinary Voter

Personally, I just don't see key Democratic states that routed Obama to disastrous losses to Hillary voting for Obama. Us dumb, whitey, Jesus fanatical, gun luvin, hicks thinks he be too smart for us.

Silence Dogood2 discussing Barak's appeal on
RealClearPolitcs.com, The McCain Miracle.

Mad Bombers and Bureaucratic Thugs

Running a insurgent campaign is expensive because you have to pay salaries. Running a terrorist organization is very inexpensive because people volunteer.

Peter Bergen, Al Qaida Expert on NPR

However this expert distinguishes between terrorist groups like AlQaida and insurgent groups like Hamas or The Party of Dog or those political Irish murderers the IRA. I would consider all these groups terrorists. However I do admit the distinction between the mad bombers and the more bureaucratic terror groups that also steal, rape, kneecap, shakedown, assassinate or simply murder. It the religious or political justification of the crimes confirms the terrorists as evil not their organization structure.

Only You Can Prevent Dinosaurs

Car Ad as Video Game Out Take

This ad from Lamborghini feels like an out take from Midnight Club or one the Grand Theft Auto, indeed here is a long (10 minutes) video of the same car in GTA IV. This was posted on a blog German Car Scene. If want to see more car Ads from Germany you check their youtube channel.

Carrier Manga

I recently saw the PBS documentary Carrier. It was about the USS Nimitz on a deployment. The US would also like better press and public relations in Japan. To that end they have produced and distributed a 200 page manga about another carrier, this time USS George Washington.

I got this link from a blog Japan Probe which had a photo of a sailor handing this comic book/manga with this comment from Brandon.

Oh boy. Fat guys dressed like cosplayers handing out comics to scared children. That’s not gonna help our image.

Don't Go There

Dan Neil an critic from the LA times has suggested in a recent piece that true ecotourists don't travel at all. They don't travel to the ends of earth in energy intensive ways to see fragile environments. However lightly you step you can still leave a footprint. In the past it was progress to move from safaris to photo safaris. Now Dan Neil suggests that they is a quantum problem with visiting unspoiled places, once you go there you you spoil it.

Here is a discussion about this anti-travel screed/philosophy.
Here is the original article.

Vice and Period TV

I saw the first episode of Swingtown tonight. The series is set in the seventies and is supposed to depict the casual sex, drugs and rock and roll of the era. However in a discussion on one the TV nerd sites I visit, Television Without Pity, A Little Edgy commented on a glaring puritanism of this show.

My only nitpick besides the overuse of period music was the lack of smoking. At a party like that in the seventies, the air would have been blue with tobacco smoke. It's an interesting comment on our own times that the producers feel free to portray drug use and various permutations of sexuality, but they refrain from showing people doing something that was ubiquitous and morally neutral: smoking.

This is in contrast to another period TV series Madmen where the air, circa 1960 Madison Avenue, is blue with cigarette smoke. This has some basis in reality in that (tobacco) smoking has declined over the last 30 years at the same time that pot smoking has equaled it in numbers if not legality.

French Amnesty International Ad