Hilarious Screaming Frog

The War on Democracy..

John Pilger (ITV) presents a documentary on the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, the coup that attempted to overthrow him, and the people (the poor Venezuelans) who demanded their President back… It then delves into the past, and the crimes we, the USA, have perpetrated upon the world’s democracies who we have not agreed with…. I knew most of the things in the documentary, but was still blown away by it and feel everyone should sit down to watch it… “The War on Democracy”.

He Can Read?!?

In a recent speech about the Iraq War, George W. Bush inexplicably brought up a novel entitled The Quiet American, written by the famous novelist Graham Greene. Here’s what Bush had to say about the novel:

“In 1955, long before the United States had entered the [Vietnam] war, Graham Greene wrote a novel called ‘The Quiet American.’ It was set in Saigon and the main character was a young government agent named Alden Pyle. He was a symbol of American purpose and patriotism and dangerous naivete. Another character describes Alden this way: ‘I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.’

“After America entered the Vietnam War, Graham Greene — the Graham Greene argument gathered some steam. Matter of fact, many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people.”

Bush goes on to say that our early withdrawal from the Vietnam War caused millions of deaths in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s reign.

Jon Stewart once said about the Bush administration, “It’s not that you can’t make this stuff up–it’s that you wish you had to.” I am utterly stupefied that the President chose this book and this comparison to support his argument. Perhaps he has become unsettled by the increasingly frequent comparisons between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War, and hoped to put an end to those who said the same mistakes we made thirty years ago are reoccuring today.

However, his argument is really bizzarre because he doesn’t actually address the book or its contents after bringing them up. When he says “the Graham Greene argument”, I guess he’s talking about criticism towards the Vietnam War, but his supposed refutation of this argument is historically inaccurate. Read this:

Historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge. Kiernan and Owen argue that “Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began,^[3]. In his study of Pol Pot’s rise to power, Kiernan argues that “Pol Pot’s revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia” and that the U.S. carpet bombing “was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot’s rise.” ^[4]

Wow, that sounds familiar.

Mr. Bush, what are you doing? This excerpt from your speech was so ineptly written that I believe it actually succeeded in hindering your effort to galvanize support for the war. I know you don’t write your own speeches, but in this case it sounds like you did. How could you “name drop” a novel that criticized U.S. foreign policy and then fail to address its arguments? You spend more time lending weight to Graham’s criticisms than you do to dispelling them!

Furthermore, how could you try to dismiss it by using a blatantly false historical example? Didn’t you realize that comparing the Iraq War to Vietnam is not in your favor? Did you think no one would notice that you had lied about the Khmer Rouge? Did you think that journalists wouldn’t call you on this? This isn’t historical minutae; this is something a person can learn through five seconds of research. Finally, didn’t you realize that once people looked into your claims, they would realize that your examples overwhelmingly prove that you are wrong?!

More about the book itself: The Quiet American is a harsh condemnation of American involvement in Southeast Asian politics. It condemns our country’s hubris in thinking it can conquer an unwinnable fight solely through its superior military technology. If this book had been written yesterday, many would assume that its protagonist was modeled after Bush himself.

I hope that the war supporters listening to the President’s speech go to the library and check out this book. In the end, the person who does the most to alienate supporters of the Iraq War may be the President himself.

If there was ever a museum that needed to be blowed up, this is it…

The Creation Museum in Kentucky is one of those things that I just can’t believe Americans would be that stupid. Way to make us look like a bunch of morons, guys! The idiotic museum opened in May. Here, three students attend the opening and make a short documentary. Enjoy.

Clowny Clown Clown Clown Clown Clown

Technology is phenomenal…

Wooden Mirror: by Daniel Rozin

A mirror made completely of wood, comtrolled by a camera and computer: 830 square pieces of wood, 830 servo motors, control electronics, video camera, computer, wood frame.
Size - W 67″ x H 80″ x D 10″ (170cm , 203cm, 25cm).

“Built in 1999, this is the first mechanical mirror I built. This piece explores the line between digital and physical, using a warm and natural material such as wood to portray the abstract notion of digital pixels.”

Shark Attack 3’s special effects may rock…

…but they have nothing on the writing attention it received…

and this is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen…

Internet Commenter Business Meeting

I think this is incredibly funny. Anyone else?

Easter Island

On Easter Sunday, 1722, a Dutch explorer named Jacob Roggeveen discovered a small island approximately two thousand miles west of modern day Chile. Due to its isolation, Roggeveen initially suspected that the island was deserted. When he arrived on its shores, he discovered a small society of natives who called themselves Rapa Nui (Roggeveen estimated their population stood between two and three thousand people.) The natives Roggeveen met were emaciated and sullen; their lands were barren of agriculture or plant life, and the soil was sandy and thin. They fed themselves by eating chickens, rats, snails, and occasionally each other.

It was not always this way. Archeologists estimate that Easter Island once supported a population of over twenty thousand inhabitants. Their society was delegated into clans, each of whom had their own chiefs and customary laws. The Rapa Nui ate porpoises, fish, sea birds and shellfish in addition to their bountiful farm yields, which produced taro, bananas, sugarcane, and sweet potatoes. They devoted much of their time to erecting stone monuments, called Moai, for which the island has become most famous. The largest of these statues weighs 75 tonnes, making their construction and transportation extremely arduous and more importantly, an enormous waste of resources. The statues represented deified chiefs and acted as a status symbol.

What happened in the interim period from these prosperous times to Roggeveen’s encounter?

Scientists have discovered petrified pollen of many trees that have vanished from the face of the island, including a species of palm that would have been the largest on earth. The Rapa Nui felled these trees to clear land for their farms. They used the palm wood to build their infrastructure: canoes for fishing, huts for shelter, and machines for transporting and raising the mammoth Moai.

However, the reigning rule about ecosystems (and island ecosystems in particular) is that they are exceptionally fragile. If you alter one element, or introduce another, things change radically. The Rapa Nui were cutting down their enormous palm trees faster than the forests could regrow. Additionally, the stowaway rats who accompanied the Rapa Nui on their initial settlement had ravaged the island’s flora. The rats gnawed on plant seeds, which prevented their germination and infested their root system, thereby leeching their nutrient source. By the year 1400, the enormous palm trees became extinct. Without the palm trees, the soil could not refurbish with the appropriate minerals, and as a result it ceased to support agriculture.

Without the palm trees, the Rapa Nui could not build boats to fish. The sea birds had no nesting grounds, which led to their eradication. These losses initiated a severe population decline and forced the islanders to seek sustinence in whatever they could find. Less nutrition, along with a decreased standard of living, led to increased infighting between clans. This eventually erupted into an endless civil war. The introduction of Europeans, along with their diseases and slave ships, caused the whole society to implode.

So, to summarize: a society uses its natural resources to support population increases and to build enormously inefficient and impractical monuments for its elite ruling class. The society disregards any potential ecological side effects of this behavior. When those ramifications manifest themselves, war begins and does not end until civilization itself is eradicated.

Beware.

Recommended reading: Collapse, by Jared Diamond