Eliot Weinberger wrote an essay entitled What I heard about Iraq in 2005. Sadly, the dwindling number of supporters of the war and the rogue Bush administration probably did not hear most of this. Although I know we’re preaching to the choir here, why not read the excellent essay and revisit the facts?
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So Akeva rocks up with the latest online referral/pyramid scheme, known as Autosurfing. You download something, it takes over Internet Explorer, and while thousands of members do this little circle jerk on each other’s websites you just watch your visitor figures go up. Oh yes, and somehow you earn money as well.
You don’t need to figure out how a scheme makes money for it to be a scam. And when I see infomercial style conversations like this on forums, my scam sign lights up:
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23262
Straight Man 1: So, Straight Man 2, you say I can make money using your uniquely patented and really quite safe scheme at MakeLotsofDosh.com, also known as http://www.makelotsofdosh.com/?
Straight Man 2: You bet, Straight Man 1! Making money has never been this easy, thanks to my uniquely patented and really quite safe scheme at MakeLostsofDosh.com, also known as http://www.makelotsofdosh.com/.
Straight Man 1: Well then, I’m convinced.
Straight Man 2: But if that doesn’t work for you, why not try this completely different and unrelated way of making money in a uniquely patented and really quite safe scheme at MakeEvenMoreDosh.com, also known as http://www.makeevenmoredosh.com/.
I’ve gambled online, your Three Card Monte holds no fear for me.
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PZ Meyers links to an interview with Mel Gibson, and calls him a “clueless turd” for this statement:
PLAYBOY: So you can’t accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?GIBSON: No, I think it’s bullshit. If it isn’t, why are they still around? How come apes aren’t people yet?
Update: Jonathan Rowe at Positive Liberty can indeed confirm that Gibson’s statements are accurate, as published by Playboy.
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The Exorcist scared the living daylights out of most us. Then Scary Movie made some of us laugh at it. But the specialist field of demonology isn’t a laughing matter for the Vatican, which still keeps around a swat team of Van Helsings to rush to Linda Blair’s aid when she feels the pee soup coming on.
Pedro Barrajon is such a specialist. In a world where people who believe in invisible imps are called nut jobs, Barrajon gives a rather lucid interview on the subject of demonism and exorcism. (The interview originally appeared in German in Die Welt on December 2, 2005.)
Every exorcism begins with the invocation of the trinity: the father, the son and the holy ghost. Then there’s a reading of excerpts from the Bible, before a kind of dialogue between the exorcist and the possessed person begins, in which the exorcist asks for the name of the demon. That’s always a difficult moment. Evil never wants to reveal itself. It often lies.
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In the true spirit of giving as Christmas day approaches, I give you… Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney slash fiction. (via BoingBoing)
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Is there anything as sexy as vintage technology? Probably not according to the regular visitors to the Valve Page. Vintage radios and televisions, among other ephemera to get your pulse racing.
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If there’s one thing I hate (among the thousands of other things) it’s Site of the Year nominations. The Webbies I can stand, it’s an industry organisation supported by the community. But you know the other kind: the printed media, television shows and assorted new media hangers-on. A case in point is the Belgian computer magazine Clickx. Every year they present a site of the year award to a Belgian website, which their readers vote on. For the third year running, Google.be was voted the winner.
No offence to the readers of Clickx magazine, but the innovative math and science involved in Google’s technology is far beyond most of the 62,000 of them who voted, and what remains is just a mostly white screen with a button that gives you porn when you click on it. For the average surfer there is no difference between Google and other search sites, and on the level of keyword search Google certainly does not bring anything new to the party.
Site of the Year awards are as stupid as the people who vote in them, and as sycophantic as the companies who run and sponsor them.
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Paul Theroux has an excellent opinion piece in the New York Times on Africa and foreign aid. Himself a member of the Peace Corps teaching in Malawi in the 1960s, Theroux is well placed to offer an opinion on what went wrong and how to fix it.
Africa is a lovely place – much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth.
More aid is not the answer. The answer to Africa’s problems should come from Africa, from accepting responsibility for its own destiny. More aid will not solve corruption and mismanagement, just exacerbate it.
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To which degree is America’s foreign policy (and has its foreign policy always been) driven by religion? To a very high degree, according to John B. Judis (a senior editor of the New Republic), writing in Dissent Magazine.
Religion has entered into Americans’ thinking about foreign policy primarily by framing how Americans understand their role and responsibilities in the world.
America is seen as a chosen nation, on a divine mission to bring salvation to the world by fighting the forces of evil. Being based on an irrational belief system, perhaps it is futile to look for rational thought in American foreign policy?
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Some more insight into the strange, simple world of George W. Bush, this time from the Washington Post reporting on the US President’s recent trip to the Far East:
In five years in the presidency, Bush has proved a decidedly unadventurous traveler, an impression undispelled by the weeklong journey through Asia that wraps up Monday. As he barnstormed through Japan, South Korea and China, with a final stop in Mongolia still to come, Bush visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary local people.
“I live in a bubble,” Bush once said, explaining his anti-tourist tendencies by citing the enormous security and logistical considerations involved in arranging any sightseeing. “That’s just life.”
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