This photo makes me laugh so much. It ran on the front page of the NY Times, and shows Specialist Zachary Boyd of Fort Worth, TX fighting in Afghanistan in his pink boxers. He had been sleeping when the compound he was in was attacked, and he ran out to help fight in his boxers.

You can read more about it here and here. (via PDNPulse)

I love looking at NY Times photos. They have a certain sophistication, a sense of subtlety that is matched by few other publications. It’s a testament, not only to their photographers but also to their photo editors. That is the kind of photography I would like to see myself doing in the future.

⇒ 2008 – The Year in Pictures (New York Times, via A Photo A Day News.)

A three-year-old boy called Adolf Hitler Campbell has been refused a birthday cake with his name on it by a New Jersey supermarket.

Heath Campbell, 35, and his wife, Deborah, 25, say they are upset at the decision made by their local ShopRite not to write “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” across the cake, and that people needed to move forward.

I seriously couldn’t stop laughing when I read this. 2 reasons:

1) How stupid can the parents be? Take a look at the other kids’ names, I honestly and genuinely feel bad for them. Just thinking of their annual Christmas newsletter had me in tears.

2) I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the workers in the bakery’s head. “Who in the world wants to celebrate Hitler’s birthday with a cake?”

Of course, someone did bake their cake for them, Walmart.

⇒ Little Adolf Hitler’s unhappy birthday | News | guardian.co.uk (Guardian.co.uk via The Plank.)

Bell and Hanis’s aborted foray into the world of discount drone shopping was done on behalf of the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net). Founded at Swarthmore in October 2004 by Hanis and another student, Andrew Sniderman, GI-Net sought to raise money from private citizens to support the underfunded, undermanned AU peacekeeping force. “We treat genocides like natural disasters, and we throw bags of rice at the problem,” says Hanis, who, like Bell, graduated last spring. “We wanted to treat genocide as a security issue.”

It was an out-of-the-box, arguably ludicrous idea– college students passing the hat to support a military force for a foreign intervention–but the idea got people’s attention. After pitching the concept to a host of foreign policy luminaries–”I’d pull all-nighters e-mailing former secretaries of state,” says Hanis, whose prior political outreach experience included running for Swarthmore’s student council–a number of them, such as Romeo Dallaire and Samantha Power, gave GI-Net their endorsements, as did several members of Congress. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank in Washington, gave the group office space. And, most importantly, hundreds of people started giving GI-Net money. … A year after Hanis and Sniderman first conceived of the idea during an International Club dinner in the college dining hall, GI-Net had collected $250,000 to support the Darfur peacekeepers (and an additional $250,000 to support GI-Net’s operations). Now the group’s members just needed to figure out how to spend the funds. But, as they soon discovered, raising money to stop a genocide is a lot easier than giving it away.

As GI-Net’s founders originally envisioned it, their project would involve a straightforward transaction. They would raise the money, and then they would immediately bequeath it to the AU for items like walkie-talkies or tents. “We wanted the money to go to something tangible, something our donors could touch, not just some fund somewhere,” says Bell.

⇒ Student Aid (The New Republic)

“I have never been considered a part of the religious right, because I don’t believe politics is the most effective way to change the world,” he says now. “Although public service can be a noble profession, and I believe it is our responsibility to vote, I don’t have much faith in government solutions, given the track record. It’s why I am a pastor, not a politician. None of my values have changed from four years ago, but my agenda has definitely expanded.”

Warren had an epiphany in 2003. His wife Kay had dedicated herself to the fight against HIV/AIDS, a brave move in a community where it was still often stigmatized. In Africa with her nine months later, he says, he heard a message from above. “God said, ‘You don’t care squat about the sick and the poor. And you need to change; you need to repent.’” He became fond of repeating that the Bible has 2,000 verses dedicated to the poor and that the Gospel of Matthew contains not only the Great Commission, in which Christ bids his disciples to spread his word, but also the great commandment, in which he tells the Pharisees to love thy neighbor as thyself.

TIME Magazine just did a piece on Rick Warren, and how his aspirations have turned global. Reading this article, I think this is where current day evangelicals are heading. Looking around at my friends, we are not so much worried about abortion or gay marriage as our parents, but more on what we call “social justice.” That could be Darfur, the invisible children, or the AIDS crisis. We’ve begun to think more globally, and less along party lines. We’re less likely to write a letter to our congressman or sign a petition, and more likely to raise awareness or attend a rally to raise the visibility of the problem.

And after reading this article, it seems like Rick Warren is at the forefront of the evangelical arm of this movement. Hopefully he can continue to use his God given gifts to further the kingdom of heaven.

⇒ The Global Ambition of Rick Warren (TIME, via Slate.com.)

My children believe in heroes. I want heroes too, but real life gets in the way. How can I watch China’s Olympic divers without recalling the reports that some are competing with injuries, sacrificing themselves for national pride, and a chance at an apartment? How can I watch the runners’ rippling bodies without remembering Marion Jones? She looked magnificent in Sydney, but last year she admitted doping, after which she lost her medals and her vaunted invincibility. I wonder what will happen to the inspirational children’s biographies of Jones and other disgraced athletes. Will the authors attempt new editions? Or will the books simply vanish from the shelves of public libraries? The media frenzy surrounding Jones was real, but her records were not.

⇒ Competing images of the Games (The Boston Globe)

Enter Erik Prince, the chairman and CEO of Blackwater Worldwide. Yes, that Blackwater. Most of the attention the company has attracted has been for its security work in protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq. But much more of their work is training: from border and narcotics police in Afghanistan to police and maritime forces in countries ranging from the United States and Japan, to nations in Africa and South America. …

Mr. Prince has a remedy. He believes that with 250 or so professionals, Blackwater can transform about a thousand of the African Union soldiers into an elite and highly mobile force. This force would also be equipped with helicopters and the kind of small planes that missionaries use in this part of the world. It would be cheaper than the hundreds of millions we are spending to set up a larger AU/U.N. force. And he says he’d do it at cost. …

Strongly worded resolutions, sanctions and boycotts are generally what you do in place of decisive action. I understand that the whole idea of Blackwater helicopters flying over Darfur probably horrifies many of the same people frustrated by Mr. Bashir’s ability to game the system. But it’s at least worth wondering what that same Blackwater helo might look like to a defenseless Darfur mother and her daughters lying in fear of a Janjaweed attack.

Hmmmm. I’m not sure if this will ever happen, but it’s quite the idea. At least someone out there is thinking of a practical way that mess can be fixed.

⇒ Mercenaries for Darfur (Wall Street Journal)

Ever since I returned to the United States in 2004 from my last posting to China, as this newspaper’s Beijing bureau chief, I’ve been struck by the breathless way we talk about that country. So often, our perceptions of the place have more to do with how we look at ourselves than with what’s actually happening over there. Worried about the U.S. education system? China’s becomes a model. Fretting about our military readiness? China’s missiles pose a threat. Concerned about slipping U.S. global influence? China seems ready to take our place.
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But is China really going to be another superpower? I doubt it.

The author makes several good points in his article. While China may be on the rise, it doesn’t look like they’re going to overthrow the US as a major superpower anytime soon. He bring ups that their demographic isn’t looking to hot, mostly b/c of the 1 child policy that was instituted in the Red Party’s hey-day. He also takes note of China’s horrible environmental situation, as well as their dearth of creative minds.

So if you think the US is on the way out, read this article.

⇒ A Long Wait at the Gate to Greatness (Washington Post)

So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism.

“Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran.

Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.

⇒ Building Schools in Afghanistan (New York Times)

So there’s this mini-saga going on across the pond from us. Apparently a writer for the Guardian The Times (thank you for the correction Mr. Commenter) didn’t appreciate it too much when his sub-editor removed a very important “a” from his last sentence. So he wrote a very biting letter to them. Below is a short excerpt:

And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed ‘a’ so that the stress that should have fallen on “nosh” is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you’re winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can’t you hear? Can’t you hear that it is wrong? It’s not fucking rocket science. It’s fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

While some people may think that this is absolutely ridiculous, Coren does have a point. Sub-editors can many times mangle certain jokes in writers’ pieces. Especially if they aren’t as nuanced in culture as the writers are. But then again, sub-editors are the ones making the writers look good by polishing up the work.

The sub-editors responded in like, and here’s an excerpt from their letter:

Some years ago, a colleague of ours had a T-shirt printed up with the legend “xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx is a cunt” on the front, which he wore every week when having to deal with the writer to whom it referred, because he, like you, became so disproportionately abusive when his use of language was questioned. We’d hate that to happen to you, because you can actually write, and having “Giles Coren is a sanctimonious little twat who needs to get over himself” could be quite costly in T-shirt lettering. Subs are no more infallible than writers. So, let’s all try a little mutual respect, shall we?

I found it very funny, as did some of my friends who had been in the newspaper field. You might not find it as humorous, and that’s fine.

Here is a page with links to several more letters commenting on this saga.

(via Daring Fireball)

Our primary ideological export should not be fear; it should be hope. We are at war with people and their belief systems, and ideas cannot be killed by bullets. They can only be killed by better ideas.

Without a coherent strategy, America’s “war on terror” has been tragically inconsistent. We say that our mandate is to spread freedom and democracy, yet we try to do so at the point of a gun. We say that our battle must be fought by a coalition of like-minded allies, but we eschew diplomacy and browbeat our friends when they disagree with us. We say that we stand for the highest human ideals, but the world harbors deep suspicions of our indefinite detentions at Guantanamo.

A very thought provoking article about the “War on Terror.” The author, Navy Commander Philip Kapusta, compares our current war to the Cold War. He stresses that our current plan of shooting the daylights out of the terrorist isn’t a very good one. He updates the previous strategy of containment for the current day, stressing the implementation and spread of ideas over widespread deployment of military forces.

However, he does acknowledge that force must be used at some points, just as it was in Vietnam and Korea. He says that force would be justified in Afghanistan under the policy of neo-containment, but not in Iraq. But hindsight is 20-20.

While it may seem like a lot of wishing for what could have been, Kapusta does have a point. The US has been quite hypocritical in the recent past, and we need to focus less on forcing our army down peoples throats and more on educating them, and improving their quality of life:

Our task now is to envelop this nucleus with prosperous, stable countries whose inhabitants are free to choose their own beliefs. Working from the outside in, the United States must partner with nations on the periphery to help them build a stronger middle class, enhance their education systems, improve basic health, and lower government corruption. We must help elected and unelected governments to allow greater empowerment of their citizens, whether through a slow march toward representative government or expanded economic opportunity for all classes.

So, go ahead and give it a read.

⇒ How to contain radical Islam (Boston Bloge)

Yes, the underbelly of journalism involves chasing politicians out of seedy hotels in the dark of night, taping conversations and nosing through quasi-personal records, but it should most definitely not involve stealing personal appeals to higher powers.

Yep, while Obama was at the Western Wall, he left a prayer, as is the tradition. Someone took it and sent it to the papers where it was published.

Soon afterwards, the Israeli paper Ma’ariv that first published the piece claimed that “Barack Obama’s note was approved for publication in the international media even before he put in the Kotel [Western Wall], a short time after he wrote it at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.” That means that it was somehow released by the Obama party.

The Obama party denied any knowledge of the prayer, and after some further investigaiton, it was confirmed that the Obama party HAD NOT leaked the prayer.

And as far as some people speculating that it was a publicity stunt. If it was, it’s a bad one. Obama had enough publicity from the trip, and he didn’t need any more hype to add to it. Plus, by leaking the prayer, the Obama party would have looked retarded. The evangelical constituency would soon find out about the leak, and just lambaste him for further manipulating the media. You can see the comments at this uninformed blog for examples how people would react to the news that the prayer had been leaked.

[A side note: It's ridiculous how much people will believe what they want to believe regardless of what the facts state. The Internet, while also being the harbinger of truth, also is an accessory to ignorance, where rumors can spread uninhibited to the misinformed, who refuse to check their sources and verify their information. The aforementioned blog is a prime example of that. They have yet to publish an update, and the author continues to let his commenters run rampant.]

⇒ Barack Obama’s prayer at Western Wall intercepted en route to God (Los Angeles Times)

(Photo: Paul J. Richards/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Although I lived and worked in New York City, this woman–I’ll call her Heather–was one of the few Americans I interacted with during the course of a typical workday. While in law school, I had applied for an internship at the Israeli U.N. Mission. Instead, despite not even being Israeli, I was offered a full-time job as the Mission’s speechwriter. I spent my evenings in law school, my nights frequenting bars with my American friends, my weekends playing softball in Central Park–and my days engaged in diplomatic warfare with half of the Arab world.

One of the perks of being a U.N. “diplomat” was free lunchtime language lessons, and I elected to take Arabic. I chose it simply because it seemed interesting, and at the time I was naïve enough not to anticipate that someone from the Israeli delegation taking Arabic classes at the U.N. might encounter some awkwardness. When the course started, I found that–save a couple of Scandinavians and Heather–everyone else served on delegations that refused to speak to Israel: Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran.

A very good short story on personal interactions can make all the difference in politics.

⇒ School Ties (New Republic)

If you had a spare $10 billion over the next four years, how would you spend it to achieve the most for humanity?

This is a small amount compared to rich-government budgets. But if we could set aside an extra $10 billion, we could achieve an awful lot.

Would you spend your money tackling diseases like malaria, HIV and tuberculosis, which claim millions of lives each year? Would you battle hunger and malnutrition? What about climate change, which many believe is the biggest challenge facing the planet?

A look at how some of the world’s greatest problems might get solved, and how much money it will cost.

⇒ How to Get the Biggest Bang for 10 Billion Bucks (Wall Street Journal)

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth – for the first time – to bring the light unto all the world.

Great stuff. Who says there’s nothing to make fun of in Obama?

⇒ He ventured forth to bring light to the world (Times Online, via World on the Web.)

NINE years ago, Ahmad Batebi appeared on the cover of The Economist. He was a 21-year-old student, one of thousands who protested against Iran’s government that summer. He was photographed holding aloft a T-shirt bespattered with the blood of a fellow protester. Soon afterwards, he was arrested and shown our issue of July 17th 1999. “With this”, he was told, “you have signed your death warrant.”

The power of a photo. Sometimes, I wonder how I, as a photographer, can influence so much with such a small movement as pressing the shutter on my camera.

⇒ Silent No More

But the eruption of the angry youth has been even more disconcerting to those interested in furthering democracy. By age and education, Tang and his peers inherit a long legacy of activism that stretches from 1919, when nationalist demonstrators demanded “Mr. Democracy” and “Mr. Science,” to 1989, when students flooded Tiananmen Square, challenging the government and erecting a sculpture inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of that movement, but the events of this spring suggest that prosperity, computers, and Westernization have not driven China’s young élite toward tolerance but, rather, persuaded more than a few of them to postpone idealism as long as life keeps improving. The students in 1989 were rebelling against corruption and abuses of power. “Nowadays, these issues haven’t disappeared but have worsened,” Li Datong, an outspoken newspaper editor and reform advocate, told me. “However, the current young generation turns a blind eye to it. I’ve never seen them respond to those major domestic issues. Rather, they take a utilitarian, opportunistic approach.”

A stimulating read on how the new “angry youth” in China are turning from the movement of their Tiananmen Square predecessors back towards Chinese Nationalism.

⇒ Letter from China: Angry Youth

Environmentally and nutritionally, insects are more appealing than meat: you get more for less. But persuading flesh-loving, ento-phobic westerners of this is going to be tricky. “We’re not going to convince Europeans and Americans to go out in big numbers and start eating insects,” Mr Durst concedes. The trick might be to slip them into the food chain on the quiet. Supplements composed of insect protein could be added to processed food and perhaps also to animal feed. That might help to make meat a little more environmentally palatable.

I guess that means bugs will be the new beef.

⇒ Let them eat bugs

If the civilized world is serious about saving Darfur, it is toward that end that it must set its sights—and not the false moral comfort of a meaningless indictment from an illegitimate court.

⇒ More Darfur Posturing

We asked Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton and Co-Director of the Princeton Project on National Security, to respond to Eli Lake’s cover story on what an Obama Doctrine would look like if he were to become president. Lake suggests that Obama’s approach to foreign policy would resemble Ronald Reagan’s far more than Jimmy Carter’s largely because Obama isn’t afraid to reach out to undesirables if they could help produce a good result for the United States. Slaughter sees things a little differently…

A little food for thought. Personally, I think it’s a bit presumptuous, since we don’t know much about Obama’s foreign policy. But I guess there’s nothing wrong in supposing.

⇒ Anne-Marie Slaughter on the Obama Doctrine

Until then, I had drifted along with the do-it-yourself economy. I bused my own lunch trays. I booked my own movie tickets. I checked myself in at hotel kiosks. I even succumbed when an upscale seafood restaurant expected me to swipe my credit card through a handheld computer as if I were in a supermarket.

But maybe it was the election-year rants about the offshoring of American jobs from steelworkers to computer programmers that finally got me. The outsourcing of work to other countries has produced endless ire. But what about the outsourcing of work to thee and me?

I love doing things myself, because then they get done the way I want them to get done. This writer brings up a good point though. At what cost reduction has the personalization of our modern world come, and is it really worth it?

⇒ The Boston Globe: Self-serve and slave

“When something is destroyed you don’t necessarily rebuild the same thing that you had. You might use updated technology, you might do things more efficiently. It bumps you up,” says Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University. “Disasters help people think about things differently.”

Studies have found that earthquakes in California and Alaska helped stir economic activity there, and that countries with more hurricanes and storms tend to see higher rates of growth. Some of the most recent work has found a link between disasters and subsequent innovation.

This article especially makes sense for Christians, in light of the idea that God is omnipotent, and nothing happens without His knowledge or a spot in His good and perfect plan.

⇒ How Disasters Help

(photo courtesy of Getty Images / The Big Pictures)

These engineers, scientists, doctors, and researchers entered the country legally to study or to work. They contributed to U.S. economic growth and global competitiveness. Now we’ve set the stage for them to return to countries such as India and China, where the economies are booming and their skills are in great demand. U.S. businesses large and small stand to lose critical talent, and workers who have gained valuable experience and knowledge of American industry will become potential competitors.

⇒ America’s Other Immigration Crisis

Due to the firm grip of communism, labor can be found cheaper in Vietnam than in its northern neighbor, and the perennial powerhouse of inexpensive labor, China. Weak labor laws, as well as the lack of unions in Vietnam, contribute to lower worker wages, attracting the interest of corporate execs across the world. Communism’s stranglehold on its people allows for them to be mistreated, at a profit to the world.

And while this saddens me, especially in light of the Vietnam war, and what my father, as well as his brothers in arms fought for. To see how communism has kept its hold on the Vietnamese people is saddening. Especially saddening is how many people view this predicament. They point at the war and say, “See, that was a waste of a war. Those men died in vain.”

But even in all the sorrow and shame, I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. If we look at where China was during the past, they were the king of cheap labor and entrenched in Communism. Made in China was synonymous with low quality, dirt cheap goods. But now, with all the increased business and exposure to the Western world, their goods have improved ever so slightly, and their society was loosened up and westernized quite a bit.

With this drift from China to Vietnam, I can only hope that this marks the beginning of the end for Communism in Vietnam.

via
⇒ Why Were We in Vietnam? (Washington Post)
⇒ Investors Seek Asian Options to Costly China (NY Times)

For each of the four countries, knocking oil off its pedestal is no longer a theoretical proposition but a reality in the making. But despite the lip service our own politicians pay to the need to reduce our oil dependence, none of the solutions offered by Iran, Brazil, China and Israel are even under consideration in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This article presents four real life examples of how other countries slowly weaned themselves off of the addicting substance known as foreign oil. In light of the current oil situation, it’s a stimulating read.

⇒ Iran and Brazil Can Do It. So Can We.