Spreading the Literary Word

Sometime last winter I saw a paperback novel on a table in the lounge and thought, "what the frick is this?" Turns out the book had been registered at Bookcrossing. At this site, they urge people to register books and leave them in public places. The next person that picks up the book is supposed to read it, go on the website and mention where they read it and what they thought of it, then leave it in another public place. Dynamite idea! Although to be honest, I did not read the book I found; it didn't appeal to me. But the idea appeals to me, and that's why I have written this short, informative, but mostly useless blog entry about it. However, books have travelled the world in this manner.

Best book ever, by the way, is William Goldman's The Princess Bride. It took me years to figure out that the book was a hoax (sorry Mike that I didn't tell you once I found out). Some excellent books that I didn't list in my profile: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards, Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen, and Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer. I own a lot of books and will gladly lend them out to willing disciples. End of commercial.

When We Run Out of Land, We'll Build Some More

Off the coast of Dubai in the Arabian Gulf, investors are building the ‘eighth wonder of the world’: the Palm Jumeirah. This man-made island is made of 7 millions tonnes of rock, 9 million m2 of sand, and is set to become the world’s most luxurious resort area. It is one of three identical Palm islands being built. Dubai first started the project as a way to rely less on petroleum exports and more on tourism. It will contain 25 of the world’s top hotel brands. One of the major partners is the Trump organization, which has exclusive rights to develop real estate in 19 Middle Eastern countries (are there even 19 Middle Eastern countries? That must include Iraq, me thinks). The largest investor is IFA Hotels, a Kuwait-based company financial company. What is kind of cool is that you can watch a slideshow of the month-to-month construction.

The same developmental company (Nakheel) has also built The World, a series of 300 man-made islands off the coast of Dubai that roughly form the shape of the continents of the world. Island F34 is named Saskatchewan, and is 4 hectares in size! Sweet! Rich people are buying up this land like crazy. I hope they enjoy it.

The CIA World Factbook

I've already forgotten what odd trail led me to the World Factbook, published and updated every two weeks by the United States Central Intelligence Bureau. As you've probably guessed, it's a compendium of facts relating to every country and region on earth. It's just chocked full of crazy and useless statistics. Under the Frequently Asked Questions section it states that the purpose of the Factbook is to supply quick and accessible data to members of the government. I take that to mean if you want to comment on Argentina, you don't actually have to be an expert on that country; you just read the Factbook for five minutes before scribbling out the memo. It even lists the names of the current leaders, in case you have problems remembering that, too.

Some fun facts: The US and Russia have not made any territorial claims to Antarctica, and do not recognize any claims made in the past by 7 different nations. However, the US and Russia reserve the right to make claims in the future (In other words: We don't own it, but if we want to own it later, we do, and what the hell are you guys going to do about it anyway?).

Also, Canada's population below the poverty line is listed at 15.9%, but the statistic is accompanied by a note: "this figure is the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO), a calculation that results in higher figures than found in many comparable economies; Canada does not have an official poverty line." Despite the problems that come with assuming things, I'm going to assume that the LICO is the personal living allowance that we see on our tax returns, and thus people who make less than this are not taxed. That figure is currently something like $9,000. This is not a lot of money. Yet the above note suggests that other countries use a much lower figure. Now I ask: does that mean Canada's numbers result in higher figures as the note says, or that Canada is just a bit more honest about the amount of poor people in the country? The same figure for the US is 12% (which by the way, would be the population of Canada).

US Media Depiction of the Middle East Conflict

I found this radio show transcript about how the American media is portraying the mess in Lebanon. It actually covers a lot of ground for such a short piece and leaves much food for thought, including tidbits like this:

"There's a CNN show called Reliable Sources, the media discussion show hosted by Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post reporter. It has been obsessed with the idea that television might be too graphic in the United States, that people will get the wrong impression, the wrong impression being that Lebanese civilians are the ones who are suffering under this bombardment from the Israeli military. That is underscored by CNN reporters -- Anderson Cooper, Paula Zhan, Wolf Blitzer -- constantly reminding viewers after a particularly gruesome or graphic report that Hezbollah hides among civilians, so this is the trouble you get into when do you this.
"It's reminiscent after 9/11 and when the war in Afghanistan began, there was a memo inside CNN. If you're showing graphic images of Afghanistan, remind viewers that this is happening because of 9/11. CNN would cut back to ground zero to remind people that however you feel about those images, if you feel that these people are suffering for no reason, you should be reminded that they're getting something that they deserve. And I think that's the message that CNN and much the rest of the media is sending right now."

Aside: I think Paula Zhan is an idiot. I watched her show once and couldn't believe what she was trying to present as journalism. She tries to sound hard-hitting and passionate but the emotion was completely misdirected. The show I watched involved the murder of a man on a cruise ship and she was interviewing the captain of the ship. She kept repeating, with much anger and disgust, that she couldn't believe that passengers had been allowed to move on and off the ship and were not detained for questioning until many hours later. She didn't even listen to the answer, given at least 4 times, that the ship had docked at 7am (at which time passengers were allowed to shore) and that the murder was not discovered until 11am. She just wanted viewers to see her moral indignation, and damn if the truth was going to get in the way of that!

Spamming the Comment Board

I was excited to see that a comment appeared under my post "Child Abduction", but my emotions quickly turned to anger when I read the post. It was spam from some stupid company (I left it there, go and see yourself). When I first started this blog, I debated putting the word verification on the comment section and decided that I would only do it if I began to have problems with spam. This did not take long. It's only one message, but one is too many. I am personally sick of being advertised to every second of the day. Advertising used to be about fulfilling needs; now it's about creating wants. No thanks, compadre. My blog is for talking about social and political issues that I feel are relevant, not for selling someone's crappy product. For this reason I have also decided against allowing advertising on my blog. I noticed that bloggers can make a little extra money by allowing companies to advertise on their blog. If others want to do that, I'm not going to judge. I decided from the beginning that my blog isn't the place for it.

Long story short: sorry guys, but I've turned the word verification on. It only takes an extra second to leave a comment. Thanks for understanding.