Sure to make my mother-in-law happy…acknowledgment that the Finns were the first to ice skate.
The world’s first skaters are likely to have taken to the ice about 4,000 years ago on the frozen lakes of Finland, according to a UK-based research team…These early skaters would, he believes, stand on two horse bones and propel themselves with a stick.
I just started reading Meredith’s ‘The Fate of Africa’ hoping, unrealistically I know, it finish it before my next class starts on the 7th. Even if I don’t, I’m hoping there might be some applicability to the subject matter of the class, titled ‘Foundations of Peace’.
I haven’t even gotten fifty pages into the 750+ page behemoth yet but I have to say that the author’s writing style is quite inviting. Perhaps it’s just me but it seems like history and political science writing has gotten much, much better over the past 20 years and reputable authors no longer view accessibility to a general audience as synonymous with selling out.
A preview of the book is available from google here.
As I was reading this morning, I briefly began thinking about the current crisis in Sudan and the difficulty in getting an effective peacekeeping force there.
The International Peace Operations Association (the lobbying organization for private military companies) has held the position that they could do an effective peacekeeping mission (at lower cost and higher efficiency that traditional alternatives) if nations or international organizations (like the U.N.) would pony up the money. For some reason, I began wondering if such a mission could be raised if private citizens raised the money instead. Then I saw this article (linked from here) that talks about George Clooney and Don Cheadle offering to raise $20 million out of $47 million needed to equip the arriving UN force with 24 helicopters.
I think the offer is a moot point because it doesn’t seem that money is the problem but rather political reluctance (and here let me recommend Samantha Powers’ The Problem from Hell for more examples of such behavior).
So what if the $47 million was entirely financed by private individuals? If Ron Paul supporters (relatively few in number, burdened by campaign finance laws on donation size and not exactly overflowing with high income supporters) can raise $12 million in one quarter, how much could a semi-organized movement raise to support something as widely supported as peace in Sudan?
If one or more PMCs were offered a significant amount of money to conduct peacekeeping missions (or, more likely, peace enforcement missions since the Khartoum government would not be open to such a mission and some sort of combat would be required) would they do it?
I haven’t thought this through but it’s an interesting idea.
I’m not sure I have much to add than what’s moving throughout the information superhighway. Just a couple of comments though…
I found CNN’s fixation on whether she was killed by gunshot or shrapnel along with the ridiculous amount of airtime wasted on that irrelevant question to be indicative of the problem with TV news’ today. A reluctance to handle potentially complex issues and events and instead give issues of no consequence much more attention than they deserve simply because it will be possible to provide a ‘correct answer’.
“Yes…We can now confirm that Bhutto was killed by gunshots. And now that we’ve got that settled we can take you to footage of a water skiing squirrel.”
Yo! Pinheads! How about a discussion of the various factions vying for power in Pakistan and what this might mean for our efforts in Afghanistan?
The first thing that came to mind when I heard about the assassination was the killing of Masood on the 9th of September, 2001. If, in fact, Al-Qaeda/Taliban forces were behind this, was it a one-off to keep Pakistan in a state of heightened tension or perhaps is part of a larger effort to destabilize the country/region/etc.? Of course it’s all speculation but Al-Qaeda does seem to try to think at least two moves ahead and so the question of how they intend to exploit this attack should be on our minds.
I went to see I Am Legend last night and thought it was a pretty good action flick. Without Will Smith, however, it would have been a ’so-so’ movie at best. He’s one of those actors that can make you ignore plot and scripting shortfalls.
The movie differs significantly from the book. So different, in fact, that you can’t really discuss which version was ‘better’. The book had a darker, more complex ending for sure (although the movie doesn’t exactly end with a ‘happily ever after’ either) but the special effects in the movie are pretty powerful and a even a mildly active imagination will force you to enjoy the post apocalyptic mayhem of the film.
The evil doers of the film were pretty two dimensional but gave a few small hints at being more interesting. Either there were some scenes left on the cutting room floor (wait for the DVD!) or, when combined with the ending, it may have been a set up for a sequel (which I do not think would be particularly good).
The original film, with Vincent Price, was closer to the book (you can watch it here) but it has it’s own faults and, in my opinion, the movie has difficulty in capturing the despair Neville feels in the book or the sense of how empty the world is in the story. I watched it again recently but it didn’t do much for me.
Another movie called Cloverfield will be kickin’ the crap out of NYC soon. I don’t have high hopes for this one. It looks like the Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla where a bunch of clueless 20-somethings decide to film a huge monsters assault on the city. The movie obviously intends on making a lot of mileage out of the fact that they have the monster decapitate the Statue of Liberty. That’s fine with me but if you have to reference that gimmick three or more times in a two minute trailer I’m guessing you don’t have much else to show.
It’s been six years since we invaded Afghanistan and the Bush administration finally decides it may be time to take that conflict seriously.
According to the NY times:
Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development, according to American and alliance officials.
And the Washington Post:
Administration officials say the White House has become more concerned in recent months about the situation in Afghanistan, where grinding poverty, rampant corruption, poor infrastructure and the growing challenge from the Taliban are hindering U.S. stabilization efforts.
What makes this thing so maddening is that there have been tons of people who have been sounding the alarm about this for years. Bush however was focused on Iraq and so virtually ignored Afghanistan. Of course, given his track record, that might be seen as a blessing by the Afghan people.
Now, Bush is apparently going to start videoconferencing Karzai in order to “aimed at more closely monitoring and influencing the situation there, officials said. Bush has long held such videoconferences with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.” Can you imagine those conversations? Does anyone believe that the situation will benefit from Bush’s attention and influence?
Yikes…
I just finished The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan which formed the third in an (unintentional) trilogy of food related media that I’ve read watched listened to absorbed over the past year or so. The first was the film Super-Size Me and the second was the audio version of Fast Food Nation. Taken together they give a pretty shocking view of where much of our food comes from and the effects on our bodies and our society.
I’ve been a pescetarian since 1997 so perhaps I was impressed with these works because they generally reinforced my preexisting notions about food. Even so, it was stunning how little I knew about the industry that feeds us and how apparently ‘green’ choices about food aren’t always as good or sustainable as you might thing.
Super-Size Me (you can see the whole movie here) will convince you (if you actually needed convincing) that ‘fast food’ not only tastes terrible but the toll it takes on your health far outweighs any ‘convenience’ value that could justify in any but the most extreme circumstances. It becomes even more clear when you find out how many people eat that crap on a regular basis (one in three children eat fast food every single day - remember that when you see a long line of obese kids huffing and puffing their way to the school bus). In fact, I’ve heard that the current generation of young people is the first in our country’s history that has a poorer health prognosis than the one before it.
Fast Food Nation (read extensive excerpts here) begins with an explanation of how fast food came to dominate the American culinary landscape (admittedly the least interesting part of the book for me but it does put the rest of the book into perspective). It then goes on to discuss the process in which the food (particularly the meat) ends up in that burger you ate the other day. That process involves illegal labor practices, contaminated food and unethical behavior on the part of companies processing that food. Not just food destined for the local McJoint either. That beef, chicken and pork you get at your local supermarket is pretty bad as well, loaded with chemicals, assorted detritus and, yes, fecal matter. That, of course, leads to all sorts of bad health effects. Don’t worry though, the industry has a plan. They want to irradiate the food to kill any contaminating microbes and make the food safe to eat. You’ll still be eating fecal matter but it’ll be sterile fecal matter.
Mmmmmmmmm…….that’s a spicy meatball!
Omnivore’s Dilemma begins where Fast Food Nation leaves off and looks at three different meals (even though the subtitle is “A natural history of four meals” he really focuses on three):
The organic section was particularly fascinating in that it discussed how the organic movement is split into two camps. Industrial organic attempts to mimic the regular food industry in size and scale and just takes out the pesticides and pastoral organic (I’m not sure that is its official name) rejects large scale production and huge distribution networks as inherently destructive counter to the basic premises of the organic movement. Instead they favor local producers growing and raising food in ecologically sustainable ways for local consumers.
Pollan also gives one of the best summaries of the basic tenets for vegetarianism I’ve seen as well as some serious counterpoints that any vegetarian (or pescetarian) should consider. Is it more responsible to eat a chicken from a nearby farm where it was raised free-range, free from chemicals and antibiotics and fits into an ecosystem which is mutually supportive with few additional inputs or get eat a vegetable (organic or not) that was raised in a mono-culture setting, transported across continents and sold for prices that make it impossible to buy by the very people who were responsible for harvesting it?
He doesn’t advocate any particular food style for people to follow (except perhaps less of the fast food) but rather thinks that if we understand where our food comes from and how it gets to our table, we’ll be much more inclined to make the right food decisions.
I recommend any of the three but all three together (particularly in the order I described here) create an environment in which each author can support and riff off of each other.
When I was in Afghanistan I was struck by how optimistic and hopeful almost everyone I met was. Exhausted from almost three decades of war and confident that the U.S. would help bring Afghanistan into the 21st (well, maybe the 19th) century, people were generally buoyant about their futures.
This article from Slate therefore is a bit disappointing. The author was in Afghanistan the same time I was and recounts the same sense of optimism that I remembered. On her recent return trip to that country, however, she says that positive outlook is quickly fading.
“The people were very hopeful,” said Daud Nazari, the soft-spoken surgeon who worked as my translator during the trip. “But now they’ve lost their hope.”
Hope is hard to quantify, but I had reason to believe him. A BBC, ARD, and ABC News poll released Dec. 3 found that a slight majority—54 percent—of Afghans think the country is going in the right direction, but it also indicated that this number has been declining since 2004, the earliest year for which figures were available. The same poll found that support for U.S. efforts has fallen and that a significant number believe the Taliban has gotten stronger.
I’m sure there are a lot of reasons for dwindling hope in Afghanistan: Too little emphasis on reconstruction ever since we got there, expectations that were too high, too few troops to have a significant presence throughout the country, turning a blind eye to the narcotics industry during the first years of the conflict followed by an ineffective and heavy handed response which drives citizens into the arms of the Taliban, etc. etc. etc.
Perhaps even a clear misunderstanding of the problems that we’re facing.
I made an appointment with Gen. Carlos Branco, spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, which has 40,000 troops in the country. He told me that the Taliban were weak, even in the south, and that international forces routinely defeated them in battle. Then he named seven areas in the south and west where, in the last two weeks, the Taliban had seized control for a few hours or a day. They held control in none of those areas now, he told me.
I nodded and wrote this down. I did not tell him that when I was last here, the Taliban seizing control of seven places in two weeks, for any length of time, would have been unthinkable.
When I was there, it was really inconceivable that we’d lose in Afghanistan. I felt we were stumbling quite a bit but that, eventually, we’d get that place up and running. Now, it’s not clear at all. Clearly, the ball has been dropped.
I remember one briefing by a senior officer early on during my tour there. He told us:
‘If there are two identical operations with cool sounding names, the one in Iraq is going to get all the support. What I’m saying is, everything coming into the system is going to Iraq. Don’t expect any more personnel, UAVs, intelligence teams, anything. We’ll be lucky to keep the stuff we’ve got right now.’
And this is what you get when you try to fight a war (or conduct post war operations) on the cheap.
A few weeks ago I finally accepted the fact that the laptop I bought a couple of years ago no longer had the ‘umph’ I needed. I don’t think I utilize particularly greedy applications or programs but it was becoming clear that my slacker ways had rubbed off on to my computer and it seemed determined to do as little as possible.
So, I picked up a new one as an early Christmas gift. My old one was then handed down to my wife who has even fewer processing requirements than I have. She in turn was able to mothball her old laptop which, I think, utilized mice and some sort of tread mill in order to generate power. In other words, everyone came out a winner.
My new laptop, like most of them out today, had Vista pre-loaded on the system. I was a bit dubious since I’d read a number of underwhelming reviews and I have to admit I don’t see a huge difference between it and Windows XP. There are some minor pros and cons but nothing about the operating system itself that has freaked me out, yet.
The one thing that did get my (proverbial) goat is that many of the programs I use frequently weren’t compatible with Vista. The inconvenience ranges from mildly annoying (my Rosetta Stone language software - If I didn’t have an on-line alternative courtesy of the U.S. Army I’d have to shell out a couple hundred bucks to get a Vista compatible version) to a matter of life and death (my MP3 organizing software didn’t work with Vista).
I have two MP3 players, a Creative ZEN Xtra (40GB) and a Rio Karma (20GB). I refuse to get an iPod for a number of reasons I won’t get into now but I’m quite happy with both of these. The software for the Rio worked well but it’s the ZEN that I really need since that’s the one I take with me whenever I go anywhere and therefore has a lot of files being put on and taken off of it.
Creative was no help whatsoever (for $12 I could get some sort of technical assistance but message boards said that for that price I’d get the honor of some tech weenie telling me what I already knew - the software isn’t supported by Vista) so I spent a couple of days frantically trying to figure a way out of this maze when I found MediaMonkey. Despite the unfortunate name (I’m not a big monkey fan. I’ve never forgiven them for what they’re going to do to the State of Liberty once they take over.) it is actually a better media management tool than the ones offered by Creative or Rio. It was a huge pain to have to edit all of the ID3 tags (I’m still not totally done with that) as not everything transfered over smoothly but within a week or so I had a semi-coherent music library again.
And the even better news…now I can get ready for some serious post holiday gameplay.
I’m not particularly interested in crime movies or shows but this week, for some inexplicable reason, most of my TV/movie viewing has centered around the theme of serial killers.
It all began on Sunday with the latest episode of Dexter. When a friend told me about this show I was initially skeptical. Yet another crime show where…let me guess…a different scumbag criminal gets caught every week and the world is clearly divided between ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. Boy, was I wrong.
The show focuses on Dexter who is a blood spatter analyst working for the Miami PD. The twist is that he is also a serial killer. The show balances the tensions between making the character likable while at the same time, reminding you that ‘Hey, this guy kills people and cuts them up into tiny pieces.’ It’s a credit to the writers that they are able to pull it off so well.
Next up was the movie Zodiac which is about the killer of the same name who was active in California during the late ’60s and early ’70s. It might be more appropriate to say that the movie is about Robert Graysmith’s research and writing of a book about the killer. As such, this is one time where reading the book before seeing the movie will actually make the film better (the two works are complementary rather than covering the exact same events). I really enjoyed the book and the movie was quite good as well.
Finally, I saw Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner. While not a perfect movie (the female roles were particularly weak) the film contained enough interesting ideas and a good performance by William Hurt that it was worthwhile to see. It was one of those movies that had the potential to be a great movie with a bit more work.
I know Swedes generally like to have a non-confrontational attitude throughout their life but this is firmly in crazy land territory.
Apparently, some members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club rented a hanger in the town of Sandviken. The town, apparently became concerned about this (and for good reason, the Outlaws conduct a wide variety of violent, narcotic, and commodity crimes). So, rather than utilize law enforcement and local laws to send a clear message that illegal activity by them would not be tolerated (even relatively ’small’ steps like noise ordinances and strict enforcement of traffic laws can make outlaw bikers avoid areas in order to escape being ‘hassled’ by the police) the city ended up paying off the bikers (to the tune of about $31,000) to move to another location.
You don’t have to be a expert in criminal activity to realize that the local governing body of Sandviken just screwed themselves and other small towns in the region. They basically just put out a sign advertising for every semi-organized criminal organization to move into their town and try to extort money from the population. Holy crips! You’ve got to wonder what the people living in that town are thinking.
Maybe it’s an attempt to boost tourism:
“Come to beautiful Sandviken and bully us! Don’t worry we won’t put up a fight and we’ll pay you for your trouble!”
Or possibly an ad campaign for a local vodka:
Absolut Disgrace
Ah…Sandviken…where (apparently) the women are women and so are the men.
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