Posts with Category Mad World

Fox Business

I was wearing a suit, and no one was getting married. No one had died. I felt like I was going to my own funeral. I felt like I had lost myself. I was going to be on Fox Business.

This was 2007. Fox was Fox, but it wasn’t quite the Fox it is today. And business? There isn’t much business in my soul. But the PR person at my publisher had booked me on a show on Fox Business to share my “expertise” “on” “trade” “in” “China.”  

I had been to China exactly one time. I met a couple who worked in the factory that made my Teva flip flops near Guangzhou. I had traveled to the…

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Ugly Truth, Beautiful Game

(These ladies in Mumbai showed me how they played the beautiful game)

In Indiana, when I was a kid, we had wooden goal posts painted white. 

In Cambodia, the goals were orange cones.

In the Mosquito jungle of Honduras the goals were piles of fresh wood shavings–leftovers from crafting dugout canoes. 

In a slum in Mumbai, the goal was a puddle of water filled by a monsoon. 

In rural China, the goal was not to have to chase a ball down the terraced fields. 

Beautiful Game

While reporting around the world from some 60 countries, I’ve seen soccer/football played in almost all of them. Often the ball wasn’t a ball but a plastic…

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FTX, SBF, and EA: When a Do-Gooder Does Bad

One of effective altruism’s biggest givers, crypto-bro Sam Bankman-Fried (often referred to as SBF), may have built his billion-dollar empire on lies and under the cover of goodwill bought by his extreme giving. 

Ross Douthat of the New York Times referred to Bankman-Fried’s actions as “playing Robin Hood using proceeds from an over-leveraged Ponzi Scheme.” And he did so from his penthouse of pills and polyamory in the Bahamas. At least he had fun, but now the entire Effective Altruism (EA) movement is under fire. 

Just look at these headlines written after SBF’s fall:

Effective Altruism Committed the Sin It Was Supposed to Correct

Effective altruism solved all the…

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“Each Land has the Magic” to Help in These Troubling Times

During this time of self-isolating, curve-flattening, and social-distancing, we find ourselves removed from the comforts and relationships of our normal world. We may feel alone, isolated, distant, afraid, and flattened. 

COVID-19 is a reminder that we are part of nature whether we understand that or not. A tiny little life-form previously unknown to us has brought our world to a stop. I have friends in Kenya that are bracing for the impact. My friend in Colombia, Maria, is on lockdown and playing Scrabble with her roommates. And here in Indiana and across the United States we are half-heartedly hunkering while the virus closes in around us. 

Nature Therapy

But removed from our day-to-day world, and as disjointed as that…

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It’s HUGE to Feel small

 

I laid on the bottom of the ocean and stared into space. 

The surface of the water was so still and flat that it ceased to exist. The light of the stars traveled unimpeded trillions of miles, through the Earth’s atmosphere and 20 feet of water. 

I held my breath, the sound of my heartbeat joining the primordial hum of the Atlantic. 

I pushed off the bottom. Underwater like in space one is weightless.

That night off the coast of Key West, I slowly kicked towards constellations, no difference between air and space. I swam into eons and lightyears, not an observer of the universe but part of it. 

I stood in my…

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What are the Human Rights anyhow?

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Yesterday Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that the United States was withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

George W. Bush thought about doing the same thing. The Obama administration recognized the group wasn’t the most effective, but decided to work from within it.

But putting the politics aside…do you have any idea what the human rights actually are?

I bet you can’t name all 25 articles. I bet you didn’t even know that there aren’t 25 articles but 30. Ha! Got ya! I certainly couldn’t until I looked them up while researching WHERE AM I GIVING? Here’s an excerpt–probably…

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PRIDE & Prejudice

 

Facing Pride group shot

(Facing Pride volunteers, photo by Kira Childers)

“I don’t think they should be executed, just imprisoned.”

And by “they,” the twenty-something grad student in Uganda meant anyone who was gay.

Throughout my travels I’ve seen that the most consistently persecuted group is anyone in the LGBTQ community. “Homosexuality” is illegal in 74 countries and punishable by death in 14.

Each country seems to have a group, at least one, of people looked down upon. There is usually some regional variance. Costa Ricans aren’t fans of Nicaraguans taking their jobs. The government of Myanmar denies the existence of the Rohingya. Most countries don’t like migrants. Sometimes the hate is fueled by…

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Sociology professors uncovers radiological testing on US citizens

Lisa Martino Taylor

I met Lisa Martino-Taylor when I visited St. Louis Community College for the first time eight years ago.  Since then I’ve spoken with her sociology classes a few times.

Lisa acquired government documents that uncovered a US military program during the Cold War that tested radiological, chemical, and biological weapons on Americans living in urban populations.

This isn’t some chem-trails conspiracy. Lisa wrote her dissertation on this, has been featured in reputable media outlets around the world, has inspired lawmakers to demand a full investigation, and recently released a book on it.

From a recent AP story, Cold War radiation testing widespread, author claims:

Martino-Taylor said the offensive radiological weapons program was a top priority for the government. Unknowing people in places throughout…

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A bird crapped on me from 33,000 feet, this is what it says about my life

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It felt like someone had chucked a marble, hitting me in the shoulder. It stung. But it also stunk because it wasn’t a marble; it was bird shit.

Now I’m no expert in physics, but given the velocity of the bird poop, the bird must’ve been somewhere in the stratosphere, which starts at 33,000′.

I was hobbling down Main Street from my breakfast date at the Downtown Farm Stand with Annie after our morning CrossFit work out. Since I’ve been traveling for my latest book, it has essentially been a month since I did a workout of much significance, hence the hobbling. It doesn’t hurt to sit or lie in one place and not move. But if Rick Grimes saw me walking down the…

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Make the Living Room Great Again: A Fable

House fire by Ada Bee

(photo credit: Ada Bee)

The King of the Living Room surveyed his kingdom. He didn’t like what he saw. He hated his kingdom.

“This living room isn’t what it used to be,” the King of the Living Room said. “So sad.”

“When I was a child, the living room was much bigger. I used to be able to jump off the couch. I peed in the corner and now the whole damn room smells like urine.”

“So here’s what we are going to do. From here on out it’s the Living room first! Not the kitchen, not the bathroom, not the bedroom. Living room first! This living room is a disaster and I’m the only…

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