This Week In Vexillology #44

This week, we're heading to the Abode of Peace, so chill out, relax and let's get ready for the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace. (Yes, that's it's official name.)

Brunei is located on the Island of Borneo and is bordered to the south by Malaysia.  At one point in history it was the center of an expansive Empire before heading into a gradual decline until it assumed it's present configuration and became a British Protectorate in 1888.  It won it's independance from the United Kingdom in 1984 and is now recognized as an industrialized nation and a wealthy one at that- Forbes ranked Brunei as the 5th richest country in the world and it's got the second highest Human Development Index in the region after Singapore.

The current flag was adopted on September 29th, 1959 for national and civil usage.  The yellow in the flag represents the Sultan of Brunei, while the black and white stripes represent Brunei's chief ministers.  The national arms are placed in the center of the flag.   The upturned hands on either side of the arms (and I know it's a little hard to tell that they're hands, but that's what they are) represent the benevolence of the government.  The flag and umberella at the top are symbols of royalty while the central mast below them is a symbol of the state.  The crescent at the center of the arms represents Islam and Brunei's Muslim traditions- the Arabic motto translates as 'Always render service by God's guidance.' and below that at the very bottom, the scroll is inscribed with the words Brunei Darussalam or City of Peace.

And while in the age of industrialized democracies and figurehead monarchs that we live in people are starting to wonder just whether or not it is good to be King, being the Sultan of Brunei seems to be a pretty sweet deal, by all accounts.

So put your hands together and give it up for Brunei!  And remember, until next time keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise.

Bookshot #67: Consider Phlebas

I've attempted to read an Iain M. Banks book before.  Feersum Endjinn did me in and forced me to beat a hasty retreat--  I was in high school at the time and I just don't think I had the patience to really dig deep and get into that book.  (Now that I've read Garcia Marquez's Autumn of The Patriarch, I might give it another try) but the experience left me somewhat leery of Banks.   I mean, I tried and failed-  maybe the guy just wasn't for me, right?

Well, then he died of cancer.  And there were so many people talking about what an amazing writer he was and how amazing his series of Culture novels were that I figured I had to give him another shot and I figured there was no better place to start than with his very first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas. I was not disappointed.  Let me just add that I get it, I get it, I get it and I want to read everything that he's ever written like right now, because Consider Phlebas was an amazing book and the ending just about blew my mind.

Horza Gorbachul is a shape-shifting Changer who works for the Idrians who are locked in a war with The Culture- he's charged with tracking down one of the Culture's Minds (hyper intelligent, sentient machines that power the Culture's warships, planets, orbitals and some say the culture itself) that has fled and hidden itself away on the dead planet of Schar's World which is protected by a barrier maintained by the god-like and neutral Dra'zon who allow nobody to enter, save the Changers who were allowed to live there as custodians of the planet.

He is captured by allies of the Culture, escapes back to his Idrian handlers and narrowly escapes death again before falling in with a company of mercenaries lead by their Captain Kraiklyn.   Kraiklyn leads the crew on a series of disastrous raid, which kill some of their number before revealing that is he is heading to the Orbital of Vavatch where a high-stakes game of galactic poker called Damage (because it really does cause damage to the players) is going on and Kraiklyn wants to cash in.   Crashing on the Orbital, Horza evades a psychotic cannibal and eventually takes on Kraiklyn's identity and heads for the Schar's World to retrieve the lost Mind.

I won't spoil the ending for anyone but needless to say, it was amazing.  And I'll give fair warning to people who might be thinking that this is a book that they want to read:  you must persevere!   Banks doesn't condescend to his readers in anyway.  He doesn't construct the world and all its players before starting his story, he merely turns you loose in his universe- it's up to you the readers to figure it out as you go.  He doesn't exactly drop you into things media res but it's close.  The complexity of the characters, the motivations of Horza especially are fascinating as he grows to question his allegiance to the Idrians, especially after they arrive on Schar's World for the final conflict to retrieve the lost Mind.

Probably the masterstroke that really left me stunned, amazed and wanting to read more was the appendices, followed the epilogue.  It's fascinating because Banks has taken a long-time staple of science fiction- namely the Star Wars like prologue to set the stage of a world and inverted it, providing acres of context about the war between the Culture and the Idrians and what happened to the characters of the story after the events you just read.

Overall:  Sign me up for more.   I can't wait to get my hands on the next one of these wonderful, amazingly complex novels just to see what other adventures Iain M Banks has written in the universe of The Culture.  This ranks right up next to Ken Macleod as probably one of the best science fiction discoveries I've ever had.  **** out of ****

Can I Get A Waffle To Go With That Cruise Missile?

The gathering pace of supposed plans to start lobbing cruise missiles at the Assad Regime in Syria hit a snag today, as British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had summoned Parliament back to debate possible military intervention in Syria was hit with an unexpected defeat as a motion backing the use of force 'if necessary' went down 285-272 in the House of Commons today.

All of this is only adding on growing pressue on the Obama Administration to allow a similar debate and possibly a vote in Congress.  The White House has said that it's going to brief Congress but skepticism is growing by the hour and memes like this courtesy of GOP Flavor of the Month Senator Ted Cruz of Texas only underline how difficult such a vote and/or possibly a debate should be.

As usual, I'm a little torn.  The International Relations student in me feels like a response of some kind is necessary.  You can't just toss sarin gas around and thumb your nose at every international convention against chemical and biological weapon out there- and plus, if we're going to draw red lines and the other guy crosses them, there need to be consequences.  Otherwise, we just look ridiculous.   And make no mistake, if we don't walk away from this with a tangible win, no one is going to take us seriously anywhere anymore.  We'll look ridiculous.  We'll embolden Assad, Iran and Hezbollah- three regimes the world could do without, in my opinion and we'll just prove that the President's lofty rhetoric is just that:  rhetoric.

That said:  the time to intervene in Syria was this time last year- if ever we were going to do it, it was then.  There was a window where we could have found effective allies to work with against Assad and a no-fly zone, if applied properly could have been a real help to the rebel groups.  Now, it's just too murky.   No one is sure who is allied with who and people get queasy at the thought of arming Islamist fighters that have loose or not so loose affiliations with Al-Qaeda.

So, what are we going to do then?  I don't know.  Probably waffle for a week or so and then ending up doing something completelty toothless and utterly feckless and impotent.  Because that seems to be the overall direction our foreign policy is taking at the moment.   I know that there are good arguments for intervention on either side but what's frustrating is it seems like nobody wants to shit or get off the pot.  If we're going to do it, then saddle up and let's go.  Let's get it over with.  If we're going to have a vote in Congress and a debate, well, call their asses back to work and game on, people.

Instead we waffle.  This isn't leadership.  It's waiting for your breakfast order at iHop.  Time to make a decision and own that sucker.

UPDATED: Hmmmmm...  seen on Twitter:

1855 last time UK PM defeated on war & peace in Parliament. Lord Aberdeen lost vote on Crimean War. Also led coalition. Resigned day later!
— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) August">https://twitter.com/WilliamsJon/statuses/373229212599336960">August 29, 2013

I'd be surprised if Cameron did resign, but you never know.   

And before anyone mentions it:  yes, I know we watched as Saddam gassed the Kurds at Halabja and didn't do squat about it.  I know we ignored Saddam's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War.  The question is, do we have a moral imperative to help the Syrian people now?  Should we?  More resolute leadership on our part would have made a choice and owned that sucker by now.   I'm not saying either decision would be wrong, I'm saying we need to get off the fence and do something!  That's what I find frustrating about this whole thing.

How Much Should Flipping A Burger Pay?

The fast food industry is finally get its feet held to the fire a bit!  A national day of protests for higher wages and the right to unionize kicked off this morning and these protestors aren't just targeting one particular chain, they're going after the whole damn industry!  (Per the LA Times, Chicago walkouts are going to cover Wendy's, Subway and McDonald's while in New York, they're going to be at Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King.) The somewhat controversial demand the protestors are making?  They want a pay raise from the typical $7.25 an hour to what they call a living wage of $15 an hour which a lot of people think is sort of insane.

All of which begs a question:  how much should flipping a burger pay?  As the LA Times article in the link notes, the fast food industry has undergone a shift of late- instead of relatively dispensible, short-time teenaged and college-aged employees that are looking to make extra money to pay for school an other stuff, more and more people, especially in this economy are relying on these relatively low-skilled, low-paying jobs to feed their families.  And the protestors are quite right to point out that it's damn near impossible to raise a family on $7.25 an hour. 

But an increase all the way to $15 dollars an hour?  I'm unconvinced.  Don't get me wrong:  it's been a long standing irritant of mine that pro-Labor, pro-Union lefties will spend acres of ink taking a dump all over Wal-Mart while completely ignoring the fact that the fast food industry treats their workers like shit, promotes horrible and potentially unsafe working conditions and generally does shit that makes Wal-Mart look like the very model of progressive corporate responsibility and not nearly enough attention has been paid to their misdeeds- so I'm all for this protest.   (And don't get me wrong, Wal-Mart is far from the greatest corporation on the face of the planet and they can and should treat their employees far better than they do- but that's another blogpost.)

Do I think they should have the right to unionize?  I do.   I think there's work to be done on getting them better wages and safer and more sanitary working conditions and as these corporations seem to be intent on doing jack squat about it, someone should pressure them to do something.  If these protests don't bring change, then why not unionize? (And I know the standard corporatist/free market response is:  'well go work somewhere else then' but seriously?  In this economy?  What are people supposed to do?  And I think good capitalism means that you don't treat your employees like shit.  I mean, you depend on these people to make your business work.  You should value them.)  $15 bucks an hour though might be out of reach though.

'We're The Millers' --A Review

The Missus and I had a date night on Tuesday night and because I love her so, so much and when it comes to our taste in movies, men really are from Mars (i.e. science fiction, superhero, action movies etc) and women are from Venus (comedies, romantic comedies, etc) our movie tastes differ a bit so I let her pick the movie and with We're The Millers, she picked a hysterically funny one.

We're The Millers is the story of David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) a low level pot dealer who gets all his stash and money stolen when he comes to the aid of an awkward kid in his apartment building, Kenny (Will Poulter) who in turn is attempting to come to the aid of Casey (Emma Roberts) a local teen runway who is being hassled by some thugs who are attempting to steal her phone.   David gets roughed up by his drug lord boss, Brad Guerlinger (Ed Helms) who makes David an offer: smuggle 'a smidge of weed' over the border from Mexico and he'll forgive all of David's debts to him.

This throws David for a loop as one man travelling across the border is bound to raise suspicions, however, he hits upon an unlikely solution, recruiting Rose (Jennifer Aniston) a down on her luck stripper who needs cash in a hurry-  together with Kenny and Casey they decide to rent an RV and pose as a typical suburban family just on family vacation.  The newly formed Miller family makes it across the border with ease, shows up the address given to David by Guerlinger and discovers that the supposed 'smidge' of weed is, in fact about two tons of the stuff, which is stuffed into every possible crevice of the RV.

Going back across the border proves to be a dicier proposition as along the way they encounter the Fitzgeralds another RVing family with Don (Nick Offerman), Edie (Kathryn Hahn) and their daughter Melissa (Molly Quinn.)  Despite a tense moment at the border, when questioned by the Border Patrol, it's discovered that several illegal immigrants have harbored themselves aboard the RV and when it looks like the Millers might be discovered, they flee and the Millers are waved through as the Border Patrol leaves in pursuit.   Once across the border, they soon break down, discover that Don is, in fact, a DEA Agent and eventually have to confront the mysterious Pablo Chacon and Brad Guerlinger to see if they can all find a way out of their predicament together.

Standard disclaimer:  no, I'm not going to spoil the ending! There's a lot about this movie that seems pretty typical for the 'family vacation/crazy road trip' type of movies that are out there but you have to admire We're The Millers for putting such an original spin on this.   Sudeikis is in fine form as the drug dealer with what turns out to be a heart of gold and has believable, excellent chemistry with Jennifer Aniston, who, I'll admit, is pretty good as a stripper.  (Though she's a nicely atypical stripper, in many ways- there's a maturity to her routines that make her stand out from the crowd and compared to the typical strippers you see in movies she's got a natural, nicely toned body.)  Will Poulter (Kenny) and Casey (Emma Roberts) both turn in fine performances though the real gems of this movie are, of course Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn.

Overall:  A laugh out loud funny movie that puts a new and interesting spin on the idea of the family road trip, We're The Millers could have easily been unbearable-  instead it's funny and ultimately wears it's heart on it's sleeve and plays with the very interesting notion that sometimes, if you don't have a family to call your own,  you can just make one.   If you go see this movie, make sure you stay for the credits!  **** out of ****.

Bookshot #66: The Puzzle Palace: Inside The National Security Agency

I take books like this with a large grain of salt.   Don't get me wrong:  the author, James Bamford speaks with authority and certainly has the footnotes and bibliography to back himself up but there's always something that makes me wonder.   I mean, let's consider the subject matter.  It's the National Security Agency- one of America's most secret intelligence agencies so while Bamford presents an engaging and well-researched story over the course of the book, you have to wonder what he doesn't know and whether he really thinks he knows what he says he does know.

Does that make sense?  It's like with books about the Mossad.  It's the Mossad, for crying out loud.   Take everything with a large grain of salt.

Leaving that aside, now that I've managed to finish this book, it feels like an especially timely book, given the recent and ongoing scandal about the size and scope of the NSA's surveillance efforts.  What's shocking is that the NSA was sort of built to operate this way.  Truman established the agency with unprecedented levels of secrecy around it and didn't even give it a formal charter to operate under.  (The Puzzle Palace was published in 1982, so whether that remains the case today is something I honestly don't know.)  This was designed to be an agency that came into the public view as little as possible and remained as far away from any kind of oversight by law as possible (an oversight Bamford laments in the book- while in the late 70s, the NSA took giant steps forward in technology and research, it did not accompany such steps with increased oversight and bringing it's overall mission and activites fully in line with the law.)

The structure of the book took some getting used too- which is part of the reason why it turned into a bit of a long slog for me.   First, Bamford opens with the origins of the agency and a prelude detailing the history of cryptology and signals intelligence and the government's involvement in it.  (A very telling detail was the long and complex negotiations with companies like Western Union to get them to turn over their traffic to the NSA-  and Western Union and the other communications companies eventually caved and agreed to do it!)  Then, Bamford takes a left turn and starts describing the anatomy of the agency and the various platform across the world that it uses to do it's mission.  Which isn't bad, because the book's title does say 'Inside The National Security Agency' and to his credit, Bamford does take us inside and let us, the readers see how the place ticks but the transition from narrative history to more structured tour guide/research paper type of language is a bit jarring. 

Then it sort of blends, as Bamford goes into the growing threat (at least from the NSA's point of view) of technological innovation as the computer/electronics industry began to blossom and how the NSA set up a research pipeline from the nation's top universities to them and how they began to co-opt patents and research to help keep their agency ahead of the game when it came to technology- a mission that they've largely successed at.  The book more or less ends with The Church Committee hearings and warnings about the growing power of the NSA and what it can do to our democracy if left unchecked (again, a timely warning, even in 1982) but bizzarely, there's an odd Afterword which deals with the history and structure of Britain's NSA the GCHQ and the discover of a double agent for the Soviets inside it.   The whole Afterword feels like a reader's digest attempt to write a version of Puzzle Palace about the GCHQ- something that Bamford should just go ahead and do if it's that interesting.  (The level of cooperation between the English speaking democracies when it comes to signals intelligence is unprecedented and one aspect of the current NSA mess that isn't getting the coverage it deserves.)

Overall:  Body of Secrets is a lot better and a lot more current to boot!  While you can't doubt level of research behind The Puzzle Palace, you're still reading something written in 1982- a whopping three decades ago and it feels more than a little out of date at times- and even though Body of Secrets was published in 2002, I'm sure that's still out of date barely even a decade later.   Plus, there's the little fact that the back of the book promises that it's 'been extensively revised and updated to include the major world events in the 80s and 90s' when in reality, it stops with the revelation of the Soviet penetrations at the GCHQ in 1982.   I'd say ** out of ****.  Probably felt amazing to read when it was first published- but there are more up to date sources out there- some of them written by Bamford himself.

Albums2010 #65: Live

I heard about Tig Notaro's standup set at the Largo last year-  the interwebs kind of exploded with how amazing and awesome it was and no less a comedy authority that Louis CK hailed it as one of the best stand-up sets he had ever seen.  And the genius of this album is that her gig nearly got cancelled- and what makes it unbelievably amazing is the context:

And then the day before it was going to happen, she learned how bad her cancer potentially was. In the prior four months, she’d had pneumonia, nearly died from a digestive infection called C. diff, had a breakup, and her mother had died suddenly after a fall — and now this.

I can't imagine the courage it took just to stand up in front of people and talk- but to do so when the idea is to make people laugh?  How can you possibly find the humor in a situation like this?  Well, Notaro pulls it off and does so beautiful-  right from the get go, she walks out on stage and just lays it out there:  "Hello, I have cancer."

You can hear the audience members laugh nervously, unsure how to react but Notaro just keeps going and what follows is amazing.  Heartfelt, touching, thrillingly honest and most importantly, surprisingly funny.   'Funny Cancer Greeting Cards' and 'Questionaires for Dead People' (the latter where Notaro describes receiving a questioner for her mother,who had died, about whether or not she'd had a good experience at the Hospital is laugh out loud hilarious.) 

The most poignant moment of the album to me, comes at the end where Notaro asks the audience straight up if they'd like to change the subject back to something a little more cheerful.  They all say no and you can hear one guy in the audience above the others who tells her:  'This is fucking amazing.'  And that, to me says it all.  Live elevates itself into the realm of legendary comedy albums and one can only hope that Notaro continues to try and top this for many, many years to come- though to be totally honest, it's hard to see how she could do that.

Overall:  I'll admit I don't listen to that many comedy albums but this one was worth it, courtesy of the new selection of comedy albums on Spotify.  Amazing story, heartfelt, honest comedy and the beauty of finding humor in situations that couldn't be more devoid of it.  Listening to this was an experience and a half.  **** out of ****.   (Oh and stay for 'The Bee Joke' at the very end.  It's totally worth it.)

'Samsara' --A Review

I randomly saw a preview for this somewhere on the Interwebs and I was entranced.   Whatever the hell this was supposed to be about, it looked gorgeous.  The cinematography was amazing and the images- all of them real and from Planet Earth, were breathtaking.  I had no idea what the movie was supposed to be about it, but I immediately put it on my own, personal, 'must watch' list.

And then I found it on Netflix (as you tend to do with these things) and watched it and discovered that there was a catch I hadn't considered.  Samsara is a documentary, of sorts- but it's a non-narrative one.   So in other words, it's about an hour and half of beautiful music and images in which nobody says a single word.  (Other than to sing, I guess.)   All of which raises a somewhat interesting challenge:  how do you review a documentary/movie that contains no speaking whatsoever?

Well, for starters, I think you try and figure out what the filmmakers were getting at to begin with.   Wikipedia reveals this:

The official website describes the film, "Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of man’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation."

While the description on Netflix reads like this:

This contemplative documentary reveals the ties between the dueling rhythms of nature and humanity as found in diverse locations across the globe.

These descriptions, while eloquent and certainly descriptive don't really give the would be viewer much of a cluse as to what they're getting into.  I'll be honest:  I watched this in two parts because the first night I started watching it, it turned out to be so soothing and so relaxing that it put me right to sleep.   And it almost did the very next night when I went to finish it as well.  But to me, it's like Mother Cigar's Requiem For A Dream surprise but in reverse.  (The TL;DR Version: basically, Mother Cigar purchased Requiem For A Dream thinking it was just a concert by the Kronos Quartest.   Oops.)

Samsara is a pleasant surprise  You really don't have a clue what you're getting into but it's amazing to watch when you do- the movie takes you all over the world, from Southeast Asia and the Angkor Wat (at least I think it was the Angkor Wat) to Tibet, Africa, even the deserts of Utah and the urban dreamscapes of Los Angeles and Hong Kong. You see volcanos erupt, babies born, old people fading away, children playing, Buddhist sand paintings created and then destroyed. 

The two descriptions more or less fit the movie perfectly-- and really and truly, you could argue that this takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation-  I only wish I could have seen this on a bigger screen.  The images are so clear and crisp that I think only on a bigger screen could you get the sense of the grand and wonderous scale that Samsara is trying to reach.   Yet even on my tiny, tiny screen, this was still a wonderful, beautiful movie to watch.

Music wise, the duduk got a major workout and it's always good to hear the hauntingly beautiful voice of Lisa Gerrard in anything- but it was the length more than anything else that got me in the end.  This was like an hour and half of beauty, I'll grant you but it gets kind of arduous towards the end.  I think it would have packed more of a punch if it had been a touch shorter.

Overall:  If you're looking for thought-provoking, contemplative journeys into spirituality and exploring the wonderous miracles of our world, then Samsara is the perfect movie for you.   If you think movies get bogged down by all that pesky speaking and talking and stuff, then you'll be happy with the lack of talking as well.   It's different and worth a watch:  *** out of ****

WTF Is Up With Children's Television Programming?

It's a damn good thing that cartoons are designed for children because man, the innocence of youth is a beautiful thing.  Kids can just enjoy them.  Adults have to endure them and what I've quickly discovered is that a lot of children's television programming is just plain eye-gougingly awful.  Thankfully, The Cigarillo seems to be hip to a variety of channels and I've made damn sure to stay far, far, far away from that satanic purple dinosaur Barney but there are still a few offenders that we really need to talk about, the first of which is Dora The Explorer.

Dear God.  Don't get me wrong:  I get the whole repetition thing-  there's at least some method to the madness and anarchy that is Dora.  I also like the bi-lingual stuff- might as well start them early, right?  No problems whatsoever.  But Dear. God.  First of all, she yells a lot.  I know you're going to the Big Tree already, dammit.  You don't have to yell it at me three times in a row.  I think I've literally had nightmares where I get stuck in a car with a GPS system that's constantly nattering at me:  'WHERE ARE WE GOING?  (clap clap clap)  'CANDY MOUNTAIN'.  Second of all, The Map.  The best part of this piece of awesomeness from Funny Or Die is when she slams The Map's head into the table.*  The Map's voice is so nasal and so irritating and all it does is repeat over and over again 'I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map...'  No shit, Sherlock.  Remind me again what you are?  Finally there's that god-awful song at the end of each and every episode.   'We did it, we did it, we did it, yeaaah!'  I KNOW YOU DID IT.  I JUST SPENT THIRTY MINUTES OF MY LIFE WATCHING YOU SAVE THE PURPLE FLOWER FROM THE GRUMPY OLD TROLL!

Dora has also bred two distant cousins:  Go Diego Go is one that The Cigarillo hasn't really tuned into yet but somehow involves saving and yelling a lot about animals which can actually be amusing to my juvenile brain sometimes.  (The episode where Diego is singing about how awesome beavers are-  'Everybody scream!  BEAVERS!' -that actually tickled my funny bone.)  NiHao Kai-Lan really excited me for a little bit- I mean, a bilingual cartoon that helps you kid learn Chinese?  Sign me up!  But then I watched an episode...  the animals all have twee, annoying names like Rintu or Toli or Ho-Ho and in a contrast with Dora- who actually goes exploring- Kai-Lan just kind of hangs out and tries to get along with people- which usually involves telling Rintu not to be such a douchebag to Toli and/or Ho-Ho while the Grandpa just hangs out in the background and teaches the occasional life lesson.  (I'm increasingly convinced that NiHao Kai-Lan is actually from the world of Firefly, where everybody sounds reliably American but can speak Chinese as well.)

Then there's Bubble Guppies.  Let me be clear about how desperately awful this show is-  whenever I see an episode come on, I change the channel or risk trying to spend a half-hour not trying to stab myself in the ears and/or eyes.  The theme song curls up in the cerebellum like those freaky space slugs from Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan only you don't get to die writhing in agony like Paul Winfield did, oh no, it just haunts you for days.   Plus it just doesn't make sense.  Are they underwater?  Are they weird fish mutants from the future?  Why are there farms and supermarkets if they're underwater?  Spongebob Squarepants at least recognizes and works with the environment around it- Bubble Guppies just throws it all out the window and says, yeah, they're fish people that just fly around in a world that looks exactly like ours and never once do they eat lunch.  (They sing about with Mr. Gruper, their teacher, but I don't think I've ever seen them actually eat.)

It's not all bad though...  Yo Gabba Gabba is surprisingly tolerable (I secretly covet DJ Lance's orange hat) and Nickolodeon's version of Peter Rabbit is pretty good- despite Peter Rabbit being kind of a dick sometimes and Benjamin Bunny having severe social anxiety issues.    The first time I ever saw The Backyardigans, I literally said out loud:  'Why is a moose in a pink pastel jump suit dancing the merengue?' So that's not too bad.   And I am so, so thankful that The Cigarillo digs Thomas the Tank Engine.   Granted, Netflix doesn't have any episodes narrated by George Carlin, Ringo Starr or Alec Baldwin and there's a truly frightening amount of rich, detailed history about the entirely fictional Island of Sodor out there but I'll take hours of Thomas and Friends over a lot of other stuff that's out there.

Moral of the story/pro-tip:  variety is the spice of life!   Television will be varied and limited, I think because I don't want The Cigarillo locking into the television too much and I certainly don't want him getting too attached to certain shows to the point where we have to drop everything at watch it- because knowing my luck, he'll like some truly unbearable shows.  Kids these days though...  I don't get it.  I remember cartoons being a lot cooler, back when I was younger.

*Additional awesomeness can be found here, here and here.

This Week In Vexillology #43

Last week, we were in Europe looking at Romania- this week, we're heading down to Southeast Asia to the country where change is slowly and carefully tip-toeing forward with increasing velocity.    Home of the Iron Butterfly and that Patricia Arquette movie from the 90s that I never got to see- yes, this week, it's Burma!

Officially, it's the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, I guess and more importantly, as of 2010 this flag is brand spanking new, realtively speaking.  Adopted on October 21st, 2010 the new flag of Burma is a fusion of the flag of the State of Burma, flown during the Japanese Occupation and the Union of Burma which last from 1948-1974.  Basically, they took the horizontal tricolor from the State of Burma and the five pointed star from the flag of the Union of Burma and combined them.  The yellow in the flag symbolizes solidarity, the green represents peace, tranquility and lush greenery and the red represents courage and detemination.   The white star in the center of the flag represents the unity of the country.

Prior to the adoption of a new constitution and this new flag, the flag looked like this:

This is the flag of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma declared in 1974 by General Ne Win.  The old flag of the Union of Burma looked quite similar to this and this flag shouldn't be confused in any way, shape or form with the flag of Taiwan.  It looks similar, I'll grant you, but it's a totally different flag.   While the Union of Burma flag had a series of stars in the canton (one large one surrounded by four smaller ones) this flag replaced it with a socialist-style emblem. 

On the emblem itself:  the 14 stars represent the unity and equality between the member states of the Union while the cog-wheel represents industry and the rice stands for agriculture.  The white color represents purity.   The blue in the canton represents peace, while the red on the flag symbolizes courage.    The overall design of this flag originated during the Resistance to Japanese occupation during the Second World War.

So there you have it kids, out with the old and in with the new in Myanmar- or Burma.  Remember- until next time keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise.

The Bat-astrophe!

The news dropped last night that Ben Affleck was going to be suiting up and taking on the role of Batman in the upcoming sequel to Man of Steel and the interwebs promptly imploded and everybody lost their damn minds.   I'll be totally honest:  I wasn't expecting Affleck.  I'm not 100% sold but the more I think about this, the less I hate this idea. 

The biggest strike against Ben seems to be his role in 2005's Daredevil.  To be totally honest, I don't remember being a huge fan of that movie but I don't remember it being completely awful either.   And the genre of the comic book movie has evolved hugely in terms of quality- in writing, casting and directing- and let's be clear:  not a single frame of this movie has actually been shot yet.  There's no script.    The director, Zack Snyder managed to make Watchmen, a graphic novel that most considered to be unadaptable into a pretty good movie.   Christopher Goyer is, I guess, writing the script and he has screen credits on all the Dark Knight movies-  people need to take a breath.  This is not going to be anywhere near as bad as Batman and Robin.  (The benchmark for just how bad movies in the Batman franchise can be.  If somehow, this movie manages to be worse than Batman and Robin, I will be genuinely impressed.)

Yet, people are losing their damn minds over this:  a new petition on Change.org is demanding that Affleck be fired and some fools actually attempted to petition The White House to make it illegal for Affleck to star as Batman.  (Per HuffPost, it was taken down due to violatation of the White House petition systems terms of use.)  Really?   A petition?  Petitioning The White House?   Come on now.

This might be awesome.  (Screenrant.com seems to agree and has some cogent, coherent reasons as to why.)  And if it is awesome, Zack Snyder, Ben Affleck and company are going to be laughing- all the way to the bank.  My concern now is just how they're going to infuse 'The Dark Knight Returns' into this movie.  If you're going own any comic in graphic novel form, it should TDKR and Watchmen as well-  it's ready made for it's own movie adaptation and one hopes that Snyder will use that source material judiciously and with care.   But he pulled off Watchmen so I'm not too worried.

In the meantime, everyone needs to calm down.

Numb3rs: Some Thoughts

Listen, I love Fringe and I'm going to go back and finish it up as soon as I'm done writing this but after about season three and a half, it got a little boring.   So I wanted to mix it up and Numb3rs had just been sitting there, staring out at me every time I logged on to my Netflix for what seemed like years now.   One of my sisters (let's call her The Geographer) had been a major fan of the show back when it was on television-  it was like appointment television for her so I figured, why not?  So I started watching it and six seasons later, I've come up with ten thoughts about the mathematically themed series:

1.  I'm not usually one for procedural television.  It doesn't lend well to repeat viewing and the cookie cutter, paint by numbers plotting doesn't lend itself to the greatest writing on television.  Character development is frustratingly vague or, in the case of Numb3rs, occurs off camera- that said, the Numb3rs spin on the procedural formula was unique enough to hold my attention and interesting enough to carry six seasons of a television show.  So nice job there.

2.  Speaking of which, the Numb3rs spin.   I've always said that most of what I learned in high school math classes was completely useless and the whole 'you're going to use trigonometry all the time in real life' line that math teachers insisted on trying to sell you on smelled a little like bullshit to me.  Numb3rs challenges that assumption with super-genius math professor Charlie (David Krummholtz) using math to help his super-cop FBI agent older brother Don (Rob Morrow) solve crimes.   The math he uses to do it is all real- a nice bit of scientific or in this case mathematic accuracy.

3.  Rob Morrow squints.   A lot.

4.  One of the more irritating 'we're going to leave character development to your imagination' aspects of this show is the romance between Charlie (Krummholtz) and Amita (Navi Rawat.)  It just kind of happened all of a sudden and the lack of context was extremely frustrating but by the end of the series when they get married, you kind of felt the chemistry between the two of them had moved from forced to genuine.

5.  Larry, oh Larry.  Peter MacNicol was the perfect actor for this role.   Though having him act more quirky than usual for a good chunk of a season until he reveals apropos of nothing that he's going into space.   And then another 'apropos of nothing' announcement that he's going into the desert to find himself.   Which he does.   Very weird- I would have liked to see more of him.

6. One of my favorite story arcs:  the season 3 finale/season 4 premier which revealed that Colby Granger (Dylan Bruno) was a double agent (and then triple agent) working for the Chinese.  It was a beautifully unexpected twist that shock and surprise! enabled the character to grow and evolve a bit.

7.  One of my favorite characters:  Agent Megan Reeves (Diane Farr) for some reason and I don't exactly know why she left the show but I was heartbroken when she did.  She had a background in profiling, some Daddy issues (her father had wanted a boy and was disappointed when she was a girl) and ended up in a remarkably believable relationship with Charlie's sidekick friend and odd duck Larry of all people- all of which were conveyed to the audience in some excellent moments of vulnerability over the course of her tenure.

8.  Judd Hirsch.  Still remember him from Independence Day and he hasn't lost a step as Père Epps.

9.  How come nobody else got a girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other?  Colby (Dylan Bruno), David (Alimi Ballard), Liz (Aya Sumika) and Nikki (Sophina Brown) all got short shrift in the romance department over the course of the series.  To be fair, I guess Liz did date Don for awhile but that went nowhere.

10. It was a crying shame that fugitive hunting FBI Agent Joel Edgerton (Lou Diamond Phillips) didn't get more screen time- or join the show altogether.  His episodes were always standouts whenever he was on.  Ditto for Mildred Finch, Charlie's boss played by Kathy Najimy.   Josh Gad and Fisher Stevens also showed up more than once on the show but neither really clicked the way that the first two did.

Bookshot #65: India After Gandhi: A History Of The World's Largest Democracy

There are history books that are interesting yet interminable and then there are history books that capture you with the eloquence of the author's passion and writing and the sheer volume of material that is both compelling and captivating.  Happily, Ramachandra Guha's well paced and fantastic book chronicling the nearly seven decades of the history of post-independence India falls into the latter category and although it's a doorstop of a book, it's a glorious, glorious doorstop that I was honestly sad to finish.

Picking up right at the moment of independence in 1947, Guha wastes no time plunging the reader into the chaos and sectarian disaster that was Partition as Pakistan (along with East Pakistan- which eventually became Bangladesh) was shorn from India and massive population exchanges and sectarian riots that followed.   The steady hand of the remarkable first Prime Minister of India Jawaharal Nehru, who's firm commitment to a secular India above all else made a lasting mark on the country that despite the rise of Hindu sectarianism in the 80s and 90s still holds remarkably true today proved to be an inspired stroke of good luck for the early years of India.   Under his leadership (though many, many others played a role) India wrote it's Constitution (probably the most significant Constitution written since the American one), started the process of integrating the Princely States left behind by the British and delayed pressures for states along linguistic lines and Hindi as the national language for at least a decade (which proved to be a significant factor in embedding English as a lingua franca of the government and business class- a unifying factor that cannot be overlooked today.)

But where the book really knocked me down was Chapter 7.  Entitled 'The Biggest Gamble In History' it tells the story of India's first elections in 1952 and the achievement alone is staggering:

176 million eligible voters, some 85% of which could not read or write.
224,000 polling booths were constructed
2 million steel ballot boxes were constructed- requiring 8,200 tons of steels.
16,500 clerks were appointed on six month contracts to collate and type up electoral rolls
380,000 reams of paper were used printing the rolls
56,000 presiding election officers were chosen to supervise
They were aided by 280,000 staff members and 224,000 policemen to stop violence and intimidation.
Total area were the elections were taking place: more than 1 million square miles over a variety of different terrain

And you know what?  They pulled it off.   The elections were considered free and fair and provided a huge jump start to the process of consolidating Indian democracy- and decades later, it's still going strong.

With history books, it's not just what I already know that's fascinating, it's learning stuff I don't know as well.  I have a biography of Indira Gandhi kicking around here some place so many of the features of her rise to power and subsequent rule- however controversial I already knew about but reading about it from Guha's broader perspective really provides a lot of context.   While Nehru proved to be a major unifying figure during the early years of Indian democracy, when Indira came to power, her centralizing tendencies had effects on India that are still being seen today-  even Guha at the end of the book says India is more a populist democracy than a constitutional one- and the rise of regional parties as the national image and efficacy of the Congress Party has declined over the decades has forced India into coalition governments more often than not which may seem slightly more stable to some but also have provided new challenges and difficulties that have yet to be overcome.

I knew plenty about the conflict in Kashmir but I knew less about the conflicts in the Northeast with Assamese and Naga separatists and the conflict with the Mizo and the other tribal peoples in the south of the country.   I also learned where the term Naxalite comes from.  (I heard it first from this song thanks the excellent soundtrack from Brokedown Palace.)  Guha also does an excellent of job of explaining and then tracking the rise of Hindu sectarianism and fundamentalism in the 80s and 90s (mainly centered around the conflict over Ayodhya).

Overall:  If you want to learn anything about India, read this book.   I was left with little doubt that India was a remarkable, vibrant country that I now desperately want to see for myself and any history book that gives me this much knowledge to pack into my brain and doesn't bore me to death doing so gets an enthusiastic **** out of **** from me.

Albums2010 #64: Trans-Continental Hustle

Well, for starters, I owe an old friend- let's call him The Barrel Roller an apology for taking this long to discover the charms and general face-melting awesomeness that is Gogol Bordello.  Described in Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge) as 'gypsy punk' my first reaction after I listened to this album was:  'where have these people been all my life?'  Then, thanks to the magic of Spotify, I listened to this album again.  And again.  And I probably will do so again at some point in the very near future.

Trans-Continental Hustle marks the major label debut of Gogol Bordello and it's a damn good one-  produced by Rick Rubin (who helped give Johnny Cash something of a late career renaissance with his series of American Recordings) the album is heavily influenced by the sounds and music of Brazil, which lead singer Eugene Hutz has called home since 2008. 

The album opens with 'Pala Tute' which grabbed my attention immediately with it's heavy gypsy flavors (guitars and accordians) and Eastern European flair- but the Brazillian influences become obvious with the next song, 'My Companjera' and especially on probably my favorite track of the album, the Marley-esque 'Raise The Knowledge.'   (Though songs like 'Uma Menina, Uma Cigana' and 'In The Meantime In The Pernambuco' should make the Brazillian connection obvious.)  'Immigraniada (We Comin' Rougher)' brings a more traditional punk vibe into the mix for a pleasant change of pace. 

It's really hard to put into words exactly how awesome I found this.  Gogol Bordello, with this album, have taken genres of music from across the world that I dig but don't really listen to all that much and blended them together to make an entirely unique sound that's fascinating and a lot of fun to listen too.  Will I be listening to more albums from Gogol Bordello?  Bet your ass I will.  

Overall:  A masterful blend of music from across the world that turns into something unique and truly awesome to listen too.  I can't remember the last time I enjoyed listening to an album this much and they should be appointment listening for anyone out there wanting to try something new.   Listen to these guys:  you won't regret it.  **** out of ****

No Easy Answers On Egypt

The turmoil in Egypt shows no signs of ceasing, although yesterday the Muslim Brotherhood did call off a planned protest in the capitol of Cairo and nothing so far- at least publically that the West has been able to come up with seems to have had any meaningful effect on the ground.   There are no easy answers, apparently, whether due to the fecklessness and impotence of this Administration's foreign policy or due to events spiralling beyond the control and even the predictions of even the most seasoned of regional experts with every passing day the problem becomes more complex and not less and harder not easier- and ordinary Egyptians are caught in the crossfire.

I'll be honest:  I've been queasy about the coup ever since it happened.  (Unlike the United States Government, I'm willing to just go ahead and say it:  it was a coup.  Maybe a popular coup, but a coup nontheless.)  My queasiness stems from the fact that despite the fact that a large section of Egyptian society disagreed with the man, President Morsy was elected in a democratic election.  If the dude you pick screws up, you can't really just take to the streets and demand he resign for fucking things up.   Democracy is about the process more than anything else, I think-  the process matters more and popular revolts to overthrow Presidents that you don't happen to like set an ugly precedent that practically invites military intervention.   Morsy wasn't going to be blackmailed by the protestors, the protestors weren't budging and an unacceptable stalemate ensued which again, invited military intervention which is exactly what Egypt got.

Despite all of that...  there were a lot of people on the streets.  When the Beeb of all sources says that this might be the largest political protest in human history.  Not Egyptian history.  Not Middle Eastern history- but human history- that means that there's a metric fuckton of people on the streets who wanted President Morsy to step down.  The process of democracy may matter most if that's what you want to grow in your country but there's got to be a tipping point- when that many people want you gone, then I think we could call that a valid expression of the popular will and you should either see what they want and then do it or step down as they demand.

Once the military took power, a collision like this was probably inevitable.  Tragic yet inevitable.

So what do I think?  In a perfect world, our government would be on the side of the aspirations of the Egyptian people and act accordingly by cancelling the billion dollar package in military aid that we give Egypt on an annual basis.  However, the reality of the situation is nowhere near as perfect as I'd want it to be.   A basic rule of international relations is that nations don't have permanent friends, only permanent interests.  The United States doesn't stand for truth, justice and the American way- we probably never have, so what should we do?  I think cancelling our military exercises we had scheduled was a good first step- and continuance of our aid package should be contigent upon the military moving towards an inclusive, democratic transition to civilian government.   Problem is, I doubt the military thinks we're going to actually go all in and cancel the aid package and that's down to lack of leadership more than anything else.  We're just not getting taken seriously over there anymore- and who can blame them?  We waffled while Egypt slowly went to hell in a handbasket. 

It's hard to see any good outcomes ahead- but you can always hope.  The Egyptian people have made their desire for change obvious to all sides- just what kind of change, however is something that they have yet to figure out.  (The Quiet Man noted something interesting:  Egypt had elections and then wrote a new Constitution-  maybe they got that backwards?)

UPDATES:   Turns out Hosni Mubarak might be going free...  so any resemblance that the past couple of years have had to an actual revolution have turned out to be just a coincidence I guess.   One of the more intelligent, thoughtful commentators on the interwebs, Walter Russell Mead also has some thoughts, that are, as always, worth reading.

They Got The Land!

This almost slipped through my radar while the Missus, the Cigarillo and I were on a mini-vacay to Des Moines last week, but the Iowa City School Board authorized three more land purchases- two for new elementary schools and one for the third high school.

And judging by the description of where the new schools are going to be, the School Board has made smart choices in positioning schools exactly where you'd expect development to flow.  The third high school and a new elementary school are going to be located more or less north of Coralville but east of North Liberty.  (More specifically, if you want to get all Google Maps about it, the new high school at the NE corner of Dubuque and North Liberty Road and the new elementary somewhere off North Liberty Road.)  This makes sense-  North Liberty is growing like a weed and Coralville right along with it.  The new schools are going to spur development east and north of their respective towns.

The other two elementary schools are more interesting.  I sort of blinked a little when the school board finalized a land purchase for 15 acres just north of Pleasant Valley Golf Course on Sycamore Street but the more I thought about it, the more that made sense too.  There more development emerging in that area as well--  especially with the new Terry Trueblood Recreation Area opening up out there.  The only thing I question is the relative proximity of the new school to Grant Wood.  Much debate has been had over the attempts by the district to achieve a socio-economic balance in all their schools- you would hope that with new development and a new school, the neighborhoods around Grant Wood might see some benefits from that but it all depends on how they draw the boundaries I suppose.

The other elementary is also interesting:  a site along American Legion Road.   I would not have called that at all-  I was thinking they'd go more northwards, like maybe out by the new St. Patrick's Church but again, the more I think about it, the more that makes sense too.   If anything continues to surprise me (still) after moving back to Iowa City from Minnesota, it's how fast the city has expanded to the east of Scott Boulevard.  (A random fact that makes me feel old:  I remember when Scott Boulevard was the end of town.  Period.  Like nothing but corn and soybeans until you hit West Branch.)  If memory serves me, somewhere on the City of Iowa City website, you'll find plans for the Towncrest redevelopment, some of which also includes the City's plans for development south of American Legion out to Taft Avenue.  (There are a freaskish amount of bike trails already in those neighborhoods as well.  Think I turned what's usually about a 4 mile ride into a 7 mile one last week with a little judicious exploration.)

All in all, I feel like they've made good moves.  I still think hard questions need to be asked about the necessity (or lack thereof) of closing Hoover Elementary but if the School Board Elections (September 10th, people!  Remember to vote!) bring in some new faces to the board, those questions could be answered to the satisfaction of most of the community, I think.

Double Scoop of Lies

So everything that the government has said so far about the NSA Scandals has turned out to be wrong or just plain flat out lies?  Listen, I took a somewhat blasé approach to this initially.  The oodles of outrage seemed a little naive to me- I mean, were we really all the surprised?  Of course the government's been spying on us this entire time.  But with more and more revelations (this time from The Washington Post that broke last Thursday) my positions has moved from 'somewhat blasé' towards 'are you fucking kidding me?'

Let's consider:  WaPo had two big scoops on the NSA- but the one that really raised my eyebrows was the interview with the head of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, where he essentially admitted that they have to rely on the government agencies to tell them if they've broken the law.  I mean, I didn't exactly have a ton of faith in the FISA Courts to begin with- in their three decades or so of existence I don't think they've told the government 'no' once- which seems less like oversight and more like the government is the kid who wants to bum $20 off their Dad who's busy watching an NFL game, so they sneak downstairs and they're all like 'Daaaaaaad, can I have $20' and the Dad goes, 'I don't know, ask you mother.'  Or 'Sure, whatever.'   It's the equivalent of the police expecting criminals to call them to report crimes and it essentially seems that the supposed oversight of our intelligence programs is little more than farcical at best.

The other big scoop:  that the NSA has been giving Congress, the law and our privacy the old double bird for years now-  an internal audit of the NSA obtained by the WaPo reveals that they broke privacy rules thousands of times a year.   Not hundreds.  Not a couple of times a year.  THOUSANDS of times.  I'd be willing to say 'well, they go through a lot of data and maybe they just done fucked up somewhere' if it was closer to hundreds of times a year- but thousands?  Come on now.  That's the NSA just saying 'meh, fuck everybody, we're going to do what we want.'  (And please, please:  don't cue the Jack Nicholson 'You want me on that wall, You need me on that wall' bullshit from A Few Good Men. We are a nation of laws, people- if we can't rely on the government to follow it's own laws, then what kind of country are we going to end up being?)  There was an instance in 2008 (a Presidential election year, by the way) when a programming error started tagging calls from the 202 area code instead of country code 20.  So instead of Egypt, the NSA placed Washington D.C. under surveillance.  In 2012 alone, they logged 2,776 instances of unauthorized, illegal surveillance...  if your computer programs screw up that much, it's time to upgrade from Windows 95, people.

I'm honestly not sure what kind of oversight the NSA is under but it needs an upgrade, badly.  The FISA Courts need some serious teeth or they just need to be abolished, since apparently they don't do that much other than rubber-stamping whatever the government wants and more importantly, people have got to ignore the bullshit and demand some answers.  (EFF website is here, how to contact your Congresspeople and Senators, here and here.)

(Interesting postscript:  I don't know if this was random chance or a remarkably intelligent attempt to get the media to look at a bright shiny object that not related to this NSA business but the CIA has acknowledged the existence of Area 51 for the first time- and placed it on a map!)

UPDATED:  Well this is just wrong:  Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained by the UK police for over nine hours under the Terrorism Act.   So, just so we're clear:  Greenwald writes pieces exposing the shocking level of surveillance by the NSA that's quite possibly (yeah, let's go ahead and call it what it is:  illegal) and his partner gets detained, under the Terrorism Act?  So does this now mean that journalists = terrorists?   Whistleblowers = terrorists?  2016 is just around the corner and I'm hoping like hell people (and this incudes the media.  Any journalist that asks 'boxers or briefs?' at any televised debate should be dragged from his or her podium and tarred and feathered right then and there.  We need real live journalists not stenographers reporting puff pieces for the elites) start asking candidates hard, hard questions about where they stand:  with the new security state or with the Constitution?  (UK Wise: if the LibDems have any backbone left whatsoever, they'd withdraw from the Coalition and trigger new elections, but I doubt they will.  Which means the ball on the other side of the pond is square in the hands of Ed Miliband and the Labour Party.   Enough is enough already.)

This Week In Vexillology #42

Last week we dipped our toes in the Pacific and learned something new about the Republic of Palau- this week, we're headed back to Europe and I'm dipping into my personal collection again so get ready to party like you're in Transylvania, kids because this week, it's Romania*:

Adopted on December 27th, 1989 for national and civil usage, the flag of Romania dates back to it's independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1859.   The flag was created by combining the colors of Wallachia and Moldavia, the Ottoman Provinces that made up Romania.  The blue in the flag, therefore, represents Moldavia, the yellow represents Wallachia and red was a color that was featured in the flags of both provinces and is the color of Romanian unity.

In 1867, the Royal Arms were set in the yellow stripe- and were modified many times over the years until the Communist regime took power in 1948 and replaced the arms with a Communist emblem- so it looked like this:

When the revolution against Ceaucescu's** regime began in December 1989 at Timisoara, the emblem was ripped out of the flag, leaving flags that looked like this:

These flags were called 'the flag with the hole' and after Ceaucescu was overthrown, nothing was placed in the yellow stripe of the tricolor, leaving it in it's current configuration.  In 1992, the old coat of arms was restored by the new Parliament:

The eagle is gripping an Orthodox Christian cross in it's beak- with the sceptre it's holding is the sceptre of St. Michael the Brave of Wallachia while the sword recalled St. Stephen the Great of Moldavia and the shield displays the arms of some of Romania's provinces.

So put your hands together kids and give it up for Romania!  And remember, until next time keep your flags flying- FREAK or otherwise.

*Random bonus fact:  Romanian is a Romance language!   Coolest outlier ever, geographically speaking.

**If you don't know who this guy is, start here with the basics of Wikipedia.  Not at all a nice man- which probably explains how quickly the Romanians got rid of him in 1989.

The Practical Guide To Entertaining The Cigarillo #2

Lucas Elementary
(a.k.a. The Dikembe Mutombo School For Kids Who Don't Read Good)*

Pros:  The playground on the south side of the school is just a short fence hop away from the warm, comforting embrace of the cheap beer on tap at the American Legion Post on Muscatine Avenue.  So if you're really desperate one parent can watch the kids and the other one can go have a beer and then switch off.   Of course the south side playground also had a spicy patina of cigarette smoke, cheap beer, vomit and regret- which adds a certain character to the place, I think.

Cons:  Lucas was a major disappointment.  This is not a toddler friendly playground-  first of all, the swings and one of the playground sets on the south side seem to be designed for the freakishly tall future NBA stars that apparently attend Lucas.  Which is fine- I mean, LeBron James had to go to Elementary School somewhere, didn't he?  However, when you've got a toddler like The Cigarillo who, although he's too young to know who Daredevil: The Man Without Fear is, hasn't really gotten the hang of things like gravity and steep drops from terrifying heights it's sort of a liability.

Not want to give up on Lucas just yet (after all, it could be The Cigarillo's Elementary School unless we move somewhere else) we took a stroll around to the east side playground and it turns out that was a major disappointment too.   Freakishly high, the east side playground had rules (rules vich must be obeyed!  Or zere will be consequences!) and had the look of a playground designed by some fitness freak that's trying to make recess into gym class and fool the children into health- it could have also been possibly designed by a psychotic German drill sergeant from a Monty Python sketch.  It has that whole 'we think death defying pratfalls are HILARIOUS' feel to it.

Verdict: Lame at Lucas.   We either need to put The Cigarillo on growth hormones (which we're not going to do, obviously) or move to a good school with a decent playground because Lucas is underwhelming.

*I just imagine a half dozen six-seven foot elementary school kids blocking shots, scaling the monkey bars and shoving kids aside who get in their way and wagging their little fingers and saying things like 'No, no, no, not in my house,' in their little Cookie Monster voices.   The image never fails to make me smile. 


Hoover Elementary
(SAVE HOOVER!  http://savehoover.blogspot.com)

Pros:  Decent to good playground that isn't freakishly tall or designed by a gym teacher.   The big kid stuff features a pair of strangely phallic slides split in two (immediately in my head, I labelled it 'The Splitter' because, well, I'm 12 years old.)  The small kid stuff is a decent size and has a slide for The Cigarillo and the weird netting thing he seemed to enjoy a lot.  Not a lot of heart attack potential for the Missus here-  I tend to follow The Cigarillo when he's on the big kid set just to make sure he doesn't take a left turn to see if he can fly/jump off of something and it works out pretty well.  The small kid set has a bouncy bridge which makes a lot of noise.  He likes that a lot.

Cons:  There's not a lot of shade and they've installed a weird fence thing on the back side of the school that seems a little 'Big Brothery' to me.  (After all, there's no corresponding fence on the other side of the school, so it's no like you're securing the playground at all.  Interesting sidenote:  there's also a gigantic temporary classroom where there didn't used to be one.  Why do they want to close this school again?)

Verdict:  I'll admit, not the most impressive playground we've seen so far but it is entertaining enough.   And it's moderately toddler friendly.  As a bonus, it's also just around the corner from The Cigar Parentals so if the playground alone can't cut it, there's more entertainment close by.

Hype of The Hyperloop

Well, billionaire visionary Elon Musk unveiled his latest and greatest design this past Monday- for the 'fifth mode' of transportation, a system that would be known as a 'Hyperloop.'  Basically, it's like a gigantic pneumatic tube that would shoot people between Los Angeles and San Francisco so fast it could cut travel time down to as little as thirty minutes.   Futuristic flight of fancy, you say?  Not at all.  Per Musk, all this technology current exists and as a nice bonus, this could be built at a fraction of the estimated cost of the high speed rail link that's currently being built between the two cities.

There was some concern that this could be unworkable- as even higher speeds are possible if this is done underground.  (And how does that work?  You gotta dig, you gotta get land to dig on- just makes the whole idea seem even more expensive) but Musk seems to have worked around that saying that this could be built above ground and run alongside the I-5 between SF and LA.

This is kind of exciting to me...  it's new, different, could be be built- since we've got all the technology invented already and most importantly of all, it's really, really fast.   Don't get me wrong:  I'd love nothing more than a beautiful network of high speed trains all over the country but it's just not feasible.  Too many tracks aren't graded to handle genuinely high speed rail- too many routes have to be shared with freight rail service.  The problems are too many to count.  Hyperloop represents an investment that could be well worth making for the transportation infrastructure of this country.  (The fact that it's estimated price tag comes in at a fraction of what's estimated for the California High Speed Rail project should really make people sit up and take notice.)

In other words, all the right boxes get checked off with this idea:  it can be done right now with existing technology, it's cheaper than building a high speed rail line by a significant margin and it'd would be an incredible fast, efficient way of getting between point A and point B.

Do I think it's got a chance in hell of getting built?  I doubt it.  Too many vested interests are behind rail projects now and unless Governor Brown drops the high speed rail line like a bad habit and doubles down on this, I think this will get filed away under 'perfectly plausible and money saving ideas' and forgotten about.  Though if I'm a California GOPer, I'd be raising holy hell over pissing away so much money on high speed rail when you could build this for less and have it go a hell of a lot faster.

It'd be awesome if people did get their shit together and build it though.  Just a thought...

Butter Is Murder?

 

They got old Bessie and they got her good!  Members of Iowans for Animal Liberation broke into the State Fair sometime Sunday night, broke into where the famed Butter Cow was being stored, doused her in red paint and scrawled their charming note on the glass for everyone to read.  Statewide media has been all over this as you would imagine-  though the Butter Cow has been safely restored and everything cleaned up already.

 

Apparently, the vandals/eco-terrorists/liberationists- whatever the hell you want to call them, hid in the building until after it closed and then broke into where the Butter Cow was housed to do the deed... (at least that's what the DM Register is saying) unfortunately, it seems to have amounted to no more than a publicity stunt.  People across the state probably took axes to trees and ate red meat slathered in butter when they heard the news (I, sadly, did not-  though I will undoubtedly partake of some beef when we get to the State Fair this week.)

 

It's not clear whether Iowans for Animal Liberation has any connection the Animal Liberation Front- which is sort of what makes this story fascinating to me.  One of my undergrad classes that stuck with me was one on the politics of terrorism and we did discuss eco-terrorist groups like the ALF, but here's the catch:  they're sort of 'open source' if that's the right term.   You go to a website, find a list of suggested acts of vandalism/destruction and if you do it, they'll claim credit on your behalf to publicize it.   It's a stark contrast to the decentralizing franchising type of evolution that's going on with groups like Al-Qaeda and it's a model that (at least to me) would seem to be harder to get a grip on.  I mean, how do you catch these people?  It's not like they're organized in a typical cell structure you can infiltrate and break down as you go.

The whole thing kind of annoys me though.  It's not like everybody in the state is a huge fan of massive, corporate agribusiness.  Quite the opposite in fact.  The local food movement is big, farmer's markets seem to get bigger every years- and there's more organic, sustainable meat out there for purchase by consumers than ever before.  It's not a perfect world, I'll grant you- but there are a growing number of consumers out there who are about what they eat and where it comes from.  Is it large enough to TKO the big food industry?  Not right now- but if you plant enough seeds, something's gonna grow, right?*

The whole 'meat is murder' crowd is just not something I can get behind, I'm sorry.  I like steak.  Humans are built to be omnivores not herbavores.  I'm not going to disagree with anyone's lifestyle choices (except maybe vegans--  how can they give up cheese?  Seriously.   I tried no carb once on the South Beach Diet and I was irritable, moody and ready to seriously consider shanking a hobo for a crust of bread by the end of the first two weeks.  I gotta have bread- but if I had too, I could probably live without it.  After a lengthy de-tox of course- but no cheese?  I don't want to live in a world without cheese.  To me there is no greater culintary pleasure in this world than a freshly baked loaf of bread and a gigantic slice of Stilton to smear on it.)

Either way, seems like an epic fail.  Nobody saw the damage and Old Bessie was back to normal before the Fair opened on Monday morning.

*I'm not a huge fan of factory farms but neither am I possessed of the deep pockets necessary to buy all organic, free-range, grass fed meat.  I would love nothing more than to live in a world where the organic, free-range, grass fed, sustainable meat was cheaper than the regular stuff but I don't.  It ain't cheap to put your money where your mouth is and politically, I prefer pragmatism over fiscal foolishness just to 'eat the right meat.'

Whiskey of The Month #11: Yukon Jack Jacapple

We're heading north of the border once again, this time to explore an interesting corner of the world of whiskey infusions...  that's right, we're sampling some apple spice whiskey.   Described as 'blended whiskey with spice, apple and other natural flavors', Yukon Jack's Jacapple whiskey is eminently drinkable though I do think it'd be better in the winter than in the summer.  There's something pleasantly warming about it that brings to mind shitty winter weather and hot apple cider more than a refreshing way to cool down on a hot summer afternoon.

Color:  Dark honey, shades of lighter colored amber

Body:  The spice is predominant and the apple forms a nice undertone to it.  Spice wise, I'd say mainly cinnamon with just a touch of nutmeg in there.

Palate:  It's heavier than you might think-  it's not syrupy but it doesn't sit lightly on the tongue either.  There's sweetness there but the flavors of the whiskey burst onto the tongue and are far more evident here than in the body of the whiskey.

Finish: Just about perfect.  There's hardly any burn going down and while I'm not entirely sure where one's cockles are, the phrase 'it warms the cockles of your heart' springs to mind.  The warming sensation spreads gradually and pleasantly from your gut on out.

Overall: LIke Tennessee Honey, you could sit down with a handle of this and drink way, way too much of it in a hurry.   I've tasted honey infusions and cherry infusions but this is my first apple infusion and it's an excellent addition to the infusions I've tasted so far.   I can heartily recommend this- though I stand by my original thought:  wait until fall.  When hot apple cider weather hits, snag a bottle of this stuff and go to town.  You won't regret it.