Global warming good for water-skiers

Economist William Nordhaus on global warming:

Snow-skiing will be hurt – but waterskiing will benefit.

As a fella who has dreamed about SCUBA diving around the ruins of Angkor Wat, I think I would enjoy an early morning ski through Manhattan or Athens.

(I read the quote in Bill McKibben’s book Deep Economy)

What irks me most about climate change

Forget melting ice caps, rising sea levels, displaced people, spread of disease, and other bad stuff. What irks me the most about climate change and, in general, our crappy stewardship of our planet is the disappearance of quality dive sites around the world.

Yeah, that’s selfish…oh, well.

Here’s a NY Times piece with more evidence that our dive sites are fading fast.

Save the reef!

What’s really happening in this pic

I was scrolling through photos the other day, searching out details, and I came across the photo below. It seems like a nice photo of me and some Bangladeshi garment workers, doesn’t it? Well, you don’t know the whole story. I had forgotten all about it. Such memories are repressed.

See that dude to the right of me? I don’t want to go into details, but as this pic was taken, he was trying to molest me. If you look close, you can see my innocence drifting away. Following this photo, he received a quick elbow to the ribs and then he disappeared, back to whatever creepy lair he crawled out of.

The fortune cookie says: The one who is truely wise won’t spend 6 years thinking about his cookie

The New York Times has an interesting article on the origin of the fortune cookie, but I just couldn’t get over this…

Ms. Nakamachi, a folklore and history graduate student at Kanagawa University outside Tokyo, has spent more than six years trying to establish the Japanese origin of the fortune cookie…

6 years!? Researching the fortune cookie!? Is the world a better place? Does anyone really care about the fortune cookie – that much? I’m really not sure if I can think of a less worthwhile topic to research for 6 years. One month – maybe. A year – that’s pushing it. 6 years – no way.

Get your online fortune cookie (more fortune, less cookie) HERE. Share ‘em if you like. Mine says…

“It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as warning to others.”

Islam and Girl Power

Remember that movie with Sally Fields? The one where she is a successful businesswoman or doctor and she marries a fella, specifically Dr. Octopus, from Iran. And when they move to Iran her social status and her face take a few hits. She’s not allowed to eat with the men or join in their conversations and other stuff like that. When she oversteps her bounds she gets a beat down. This is all I knew about the role of women in an Islamic culture until I actually spent some time in Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh, some women wouldn’t shake my hand or make eye contact. (Yes, it was pretty touronic of me to try and shake their hand, but hey, I’m big into the handshake and, culturally sensitive or not, I think it’s a nice gesture. Why not exchange a little culture now and then? I don’t get upset by someone bowing to me.) Other women wouldn’t hesitate to converse or interact with me. Even so, I still feel that women living in an Islamic dominated culture don’t have the freedoms that women do in the USA.

But why is it then that a woman has never been President of the United States and women have held the highest positions of power in Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, India, and Bangladesh?

I don’t have a clue.

What I do know is that watching Dr. Octopus beat Sally Fields in Hollywood’s version of Iran and spending over a month in Bangladesh is not enough education to safely know what the heck I’m talking about. I think it’s important that we embrace our preconceived notions about religion, culture, and Marvel evil villains, and try to understand why they exist. It’s not bad to have prejudices, but it’s wrong to try and pass them off as knowledge. However ill-founded, they are a starting point that can’t be ignored.

Prejudice: Dr. Octopus is evil and Spider-Man should wrap him and his tentacles in a tight web and never let him go.

Reality: Otto Octavius was abused by his father and hovered over by his mother. He was engaged to the love of his life, but his mother and his dedication to his work as a scientist put an end to his engagement. He was in a nuclear accident.

Maybe if we understood Dr. Octopus and why he is so angry, we could give him a hug or therapy, or something.

Maybe before we herald the freedoms of women in our own culture and bemoan the lack of freedoms in others, we should know what the heck we’re talking about. If Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency, maybe then we can’t start preaching about gender equality. Until then maybe we should shut-up.

When I think of Islamic culture, I don’t exactly think girl power, but maybe I should.

Muslim Barbie Doll

Move over Going Home Barbie meet Fulla, the Barbie with Muslim values.

Warning! Warning! Cultures colliding in 3…2… AGHHH!!!!

If you are a little girl in Syria – chances are you aren’t – and you want to play with a doll, I think that it’s great that you have a doll to play with fashioned in the style of your own culture. Mattel thinks it’s great, too. A Fulla doll costs $16, which is more than some Barbie dolls costs in the USA. The average monthly income in Syria…$100.

And some people think that Muslim girls aren’t treated right. They’re treated like Princesses. My parents never bought me an action figure that was 16% of their monthly income. Granted the article in the NY Time linked to above throws out these numbers, but I highly doubt that the parents of girls earning $100/month are buying their daughters Fulla.

Chinese Labor Protests

In 2005 there were over 87,000 labor protests in China.

I always thought the basic unit of communism was the laborer. It seems to me that if you are a communist country and you aren’t treating your laborers right - to the tune of 87,000 protests - you might be missing the point.

IDIOT Touron quote of the day…

“I only got seven dives in. I hope they didn’t jump the gun too soon.”

-Bob Shearer of Pennsylvania who was evacuated by military helicopter from the island of Roatan shortly before hurricane Felix devastated the region.

I really hate to use “Touron” to describe Bob. How about Inconsiderate, Dolt of Immense, Obtuse, Thoughtlessness (IDIOT). Thousands of homes and lives are threatened by one of nature’s most violent forces and Bob bitches about missing out on a few dives. They should have left Bob tied at the reef off of Roatan and let him do all of the diving he wanted to do, hurricane or no hurricane.

Here’s an update on Felix

Bill Maher on Cheap Chinese Crap

From the “New Rules” portion of his show on 8/24/07:

“If you (consumer) demand products that don’t cost anything, people will make them out of poison, mud, and shit.”

“Because in China their kids don’t play with the toys, they’re the ones in the factory making them.”

“I (impersonating American consumer) don’t have time to ponder whether these twelve-dollar jeans are a product of child labor. I just know that I’m an American on a budget and our lifestyle is a blessed one and I want to look nice standing in line for an iPhone.”

“Let’s buy toys from a communist police state, you know they’ll put in a little extra love.”

You can watch the entire segment or if you want to skip right to the bits on China skip to 3:20.

PC problems

I need some help. In the paragraph below I refer to “Muslim prayer pajamas”. This is the best description I can think of for the outfits the individuals were wearing. But is it PC? Or is it offensive? I had changed it to “Muslim prayer outfits” but it just doesn’t have the same ring or descriptive aspects of the phrase in question.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

A crowd gathered. Men in full-length Muslim prayer pajamas wearing flat-topped Muslim caps stopped. Businessmen who look like businessmen everywhere except sweatier and dustier stopped. The traffic cop came over from his station in the middle of the intersection.