The economics and politics of instability, empire, and energy, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, plus other random blather. And I’d like a cigar right now.
I am not sure why the New Yorker thought it germane to satirize Vanilla Ice as a business consultant. Is he making some sort of comeback of which I am unaware? Still, the satire is funny.
But as my friend Guy Tower pointed out to me, Vanilla Ice is actually a moderately successful businessman in real estate. He buys homes in Florida, fixes them up and flips them. You can get his advice on TV! If you really want to know, go to vanillaicerealestate.com.
It tells you how much I care about Eurovision that I completely forgot to post this and let it linger in cloud purgatory.
I have no desire to watch the Eurovision song contest by myself. I have no desire to watch the Eurovision song contest with my family. I have no desire to watch the Eurovision song contest with anyone who has not previously watched the Eurovision song contest. I have never in fact watching the Eurovision song contest.
But I would watch it with Doug Muir. I sorely miss his liveblogging of the event. His drunk liveblogging, even better!
Crazy busy these days. Will try to post more, promise!
In the meantime, two things. First, I watched the first episode of Flashforward on ABC yesterday. Not bad! Despite being a little overly “cinematic,” my wife liked it too. To her surprise. The best thing? They had “Quiet Dog” by Mos Def playing when everyone blacked out. Awesome.
Second, this is old, but kinda cool. I think. Libby Dole and Lebed as the presidents? Huh.
An “express kidnapping” occurs when a criminal gang mugs you and takes you from ATM to ATM until your cards don't work anymore. In all the first-hand accounts that I've heard the victim was let go within hours. (I have reliable second hand accounts of ones that ended rather worse: one lasted a few days; in the other the victim resisted, got shot with a small caliber handgun, and drove himself to a hospital.) After nothing that this sort of thing doesn't happen in Cairo, Wood wonders why such a “high-reward and not more than medium-risk [crime] does not happen more in America.”
Sometimes it seems that half my Canadian in-laws are in the Mounties, and my uncle Brent is a cop in Baltimore. So I asked him why it doesn't happen. His answer was fairly obvious: express kidnappings are not medium-risk in the United States. They are superlatively high-risk, in terms of being caught. An express kidnapper needs accomplices, needs to travel with a victim in tow, needs to visit public spaces that are often under electronic surveillance, and leaves a very exact trail showing where they went and when. If they don't want to commit murder, they also usually leave behind an eyewitness who has spent enough time with them for a positive ID. You'd have to be nuts to try it anywhere in the United States outside New Orleans. People do, of course, but they get caught, so it doesn't catch on. The same applies to other countries with efficient police forces, like Chile or Spain. There was a brief surge of express kidnappings in Spain in 2006, but the criminals were often caught.
Mexico City does not have an efficient police force. Not only does it lack anything resembling an investigatory capacity, but response times are extremely slow, and the police are often involved in criminality themselves. The mystery isn't why express kidnappings are rare in the U.S. and Canada. It's why they don't happen in Cairo.
Meanwhile, enjoy Method Man:
UPDATES: Unexpected shout-out from Graeme Wood! Also, in comments, a link to this book, which illustrates why secuestros express rarely happen in the United States. It also looks like a good read.
I have never played an MMORG. I think ... no, I know that I would have loved them when I was twelve, but all we had back then was Compuserve. Thank God. I am sort of glad that I became an adult and lost interest before the technology came of age. These days, the only gaming I do is on an old Atari emulator. Viva Missile Command!
My lack of experience may, in fact, be why I find this hysterical:
The webisodes are even funnier. At least to somebody who has never actually played a MMORG, and probably never will. YMMV, so reviews are desired!
There is an interesting (if rarely updated) blog called “Demography Matters.” It's hit a few interesting topics lately. Randy McDonald is the driving force behind it. For those of you who don't know him, he wrote the defining takedown of the whole “Eurabia” nonsense, aka the idea that immigration and differential birthrates will eventually give Europe a Muslim majority. But the blog is a lot more than that.
Here is a discussion of Greenland. Short version: considering the country's dependence on Danish expats for skilled labor, even a non-independence independence of the sort negotiated by other microstates could lead to disaster. The population is shrinking despite high birthrates. Maybe they'll get lucky and find oil. More likely they will remain a dependency of Denmark forever, most likely de jure but definitely de facto.
The blog also recently discussed Iran. Short version: looks like Europe! Crashing birthrates could fuel an economic boom if only the place could get the policies right. In comments there is an interesting discussion of the fact that American birthrates have stayed above replacement ... and that much of that difference is because urban birthrates in the U.S. aren't appreciably different from their suburban or rural equivalents. The really weird fact? Canadian birthrates are crazy lower than U.S. ones, even in such similar places as Washington and British Columbia.
Finally, it presents a scary version of Cuba's future, in which the country enters a demographic death spiral. All it lacks is a projection of the worst case scenario: what would Cuba's population and age pyramid look like in 2050 if it goes the way of Ukraine and stays there?
Below the fold is a music video. It is for Randy, for reasons he understands. Essentially, while not my cup of tea, it shows what can be accomplished in his preferred genre in both aural and visual terms when attempted by two rather accomplished artists. Enjoy.
I wonder if future generations will have the pleasure of getting to listen to music that they like but haven't actually heard for decades. Frex, I just came across an old CD of Fourteen Shots to the Dome. It's far from obscure, but I just hadn't heard it in a really long time, because I lost (well, misplaced, because it turns out to have been at the bottom of an old Army dufflebag, which is weird) my copy before I digitized it. So it's all, well, fresh, in both senses of the word.
And that was your shallow thought of the day. 1993 and all that.
If you'd told me way back in those dimly-remembered days between the time I turned 17 and the day I reached 25 that less than two decades later I'd be listening to teeny-bopper high school music made by a suburban teenager from the San Fernando Valley and liking it, my response would have one word: “chale.”
Then again, if you'd told me that blond suburban teenagers would be making music that sounded just like the stuff we used to roll around to back in the day, my response might have increased to two words: “no m---s.”
One of my nieces sent me the following video for my birthday. (The director clearly knows what he or she was doing. Note some of the shots.) I do believe she used the phrase “old school” to describe it, which kind of frightens me.
Over at Randy's place, he's got a neat post on the survival of Dutch in New York City. Seems like it held on for a couple centuries after the English took it over. In the post, Randy suggests that the “Brooklyn” accent derives from Dutch. Peter takes issue, debate ensues.
Here, I'd like to say three things about New York accents.
There are no geographic variations. None. Zip. Say-roe. All of what seems to be geographic variation is due to race, immigration, or social class. All of it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either confused or f*@king with you. I have been asked this question every goddamned time I go to Britain. It ain't true. Somebody from New York, they say different, they probably be playing games.
The traditional New York accent is dead. (For a brief period in college, I tried to affect one, for reasons which are beyond me. My natural speech is bad enough.) Its more modern variations are also in fact dying, save for ...
... the accent exemplified by Rosie Perez, held by most children of Latino immigrants in the New York metropolitan area, and now spreading throughout the Northeast. It is somewhat different from the previously dominant version of the accent, and it is replacing that version very rapidly. Even among non-Latinos.
For your edification, click here for Ms. Perez on Letterman, with the new New York accent. It's worth it. (For some reason, the damned embedding won't work.) My older sister isn't quite young enough to talk like this, although I have some very non-Latino in-laws in their twenties who do. You can see two more examples of the same accent coming from the eyewitnesses in the below BBC report around minute 2:06.
Finally, here is a fellow who gives pretty good lessons in the older version of New York English, the one I speak with my siblings. He does confuse class and geography, presumably ingenuously, when he describes his accent as a mix of Westchester and Staten Island. There is no speech difference between a blue-collar dude from Rosebank or one from southeastern Yonkers, or between the child of Ivy League graduates in Todt Hill or in Scarsdale. He is simply cottoning on to the fact that there are a lot more upper-class types in Westchester County than in Richmond County, and a lot fewer plumbers and police officers.
Now that you been schooled in the Kings English, what sort of English do you speak?
You will not be able to get this out of your head. But it is a lot of fun.
American readers: please click on the link to the left (or right here) and donate whatever you can. We need donations in any amount, no matter how small. The election is hitting its peak, and there is a lot of work to be done to get every American decent health care and clean up the wreckage of the housing bubble. Not to mention avoid Cold War 2 or Gulf War 3 or whatever other insanity the other side might get us in to.
This video somehow seems very nineties. I don't know why. It's an ad for the Discovery Channel, of all things. But seeing it has enveloped me in an all-encompassing wave of nostalgia.
For the 1990s. This is weird. Especially since I can't tell you why this one-minute bit of fluff feels dated. Or why I'd miss the nineties, either. (No, wait, I can tell you that. Other than lacking Google, a mixed blessing at best, and the state of my immediate personal life, things were like, generally better.)
Anyway, here it is.
Hat tip: Marcia, who don't come around here no more.
Governor Paterson has put me in a nostalgic mood. As has the fact that I have been rather surprisingly productive over the past few weeks. And so, I present to you my favorite song ever.
I still know every word by heart. I even got to yell it in basic training. It is teh awesome.
All right, I was a little disappointed in New York's new governor when he let the City's congestion-pricing plan die in Albany. But he did manage to get through a pretty good budget that guaranteed free SUNY tuition for military veterans. And now, now he's more than made up for the pricing plan failure.
For somebody who grew up where and when I did, this is huge. You just can't get more iconic than "Children's Story." Strangely, I'm always surprised to realize that it wasn't released until 1988 --- I would've sworn (apparently falsely) that I'd first heard it earlier than that.
Anyway, there is a little more justice in the world today. Thank you, Governor Paterson.
It's obviously one of the biggest issues facing the next president. In fact, it's one of the biggest issues facing any national leader, whether their government is deciding whether to proliferate or trying to think of a way to stop it. At least it should be.
Please use your effort on the previous post. This one is merely to show that I am a fair man. The Obama campaign is, in fact, quite capable of astounding lapses in taste, even if they don't occur quite as often as in the other major Democratic campaign.
Below the fold, however, is something genuinely funny, and actually germane to the below post that I'd like you all to scroll down to and make me feel better about.
A ipod, of course, and it’s a sign of my age that I can't stop referring to it as a “walkman.” It’s equally a sign of Apple's fine marketing that I am not representative in having this tic.
A few months ago, the question “what’re the top ten songs on your ipod?” flew about the Internets. Most of those who bothered to respond lied, of course. Responders also tended to post song titles with no explanation of review, because of course those who were cool enough knew them and those who weren't should simply trust in their taste and go look them up. Props to Randy McDonald for posting explanations with his song videos. After all, these lists were interesting because of what they said about the person owning the ipod, not for the music itself — that’s why people lied. But it always is possible to discover stuff that you never even knew you liked.
So here’s my real top-ten list, with reviews and explanations and the occasional video. Plus, a view of a typical suburban subdivision in Ponce, as mentioned in a previous post.
This post is from my good friend and colleague, Carlos Yu. He's a native Wisconsonian, an adopted Brooklynite, and completely brilliant. His occasional posts here (mostly lifted from another blog, Halfway Down the Danube, where he used to post) can be identified with the coffeecup logo.
I first saw this video in Belgrade, which should tell you how much in the loop I am, after visiting an exhibit of national historic Yugoslav Serbian costumes:
Do I think that, should the American experiment fail, people will adopt demented Uncle Sam, biker, and cheerleader outfits as markers of national identity?
Yes; next question. (The Yugoslav costumes had belts made of dinars. I've seen Navajo jewelry made from silver dollars and turquoise, but this was all about the bling.) Anyway. Noel called me on route to Florida informing me that there is, in fact, one demographic the Obama campaign has not fully reached in musical form, the headbanging sunburned Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker. Hell, enough of them are blood kin, so I'll just say it: the redneck.
PS: Southern rock as American turbofolk. Discuss.
PPS: Yes, it's possible to change the "KID ROCK" logo in the video to "BARACK". No, it's not worth the effort.
I could have used the same title as the last post for this one.
Anyway, I do worry about the same issue. I also wonder about this whole "plagiarism" thing. Is it getting traction, or dying the heat-death that it deserves? Same for the new McCain non-scandal: the "scandal" is ridiculous. The only good that could possibly come of it is if the press starts holding McCain to the same standards that it holds everyone else. But I'm not here to talk about any of that. I am here to talk about foreign policy, but not yet.
No, rather, I am here to lament the fact that Matthew Yglesias doesn't read this blog. (We's done got the reggaetón first, and we gots yer video here.) I read his, though, and there I found this:
No demographic left behind, indeed. I think that's a good thing, by the way.
Will Baird wants to know about Obama's “Latino problem.” The short answer is that he doesn't have one. His majority in Virginia only demonstrates what we already knew, after he got 41 percent of the Latino vote in Arizona and a majority in Connecticut.
Of course, the race is far from over. Hillary is ahead in Ohio (by quite a lot, actually) and Texas is up for grabs. After all, as I shout from the rooftops to any Anglo who will listen, there isn't any reason to believe that Mexican-Americans in Texas will vote like Mexican-Americans in Arizona, let alone Puerto Ricans in Connecticut.
That said, here's a good sign. Music doesn't get much more all-American than this:
It's always a great thing when you see the next generation give props to the older one ... and out-do them in the process. I therefore present to you, direct from the island of Puerto Rico, the World's Greatest Video:
And here, for completeness sake, not-so-straight outta Brooklyn by way of Los Angeles, I present the Former World's Greatest Video:
This interlude brought to you by K Mal Goosto, the vidja king. Enjoy!
Yes, there are still two more posts in the Trinidadian series. (Any guesses as to what they'll be titled?) But right now let's take a step back to Puerto Rico. In September 23, 2005, the FBI shot Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in a house outside the town of Hormigueros. Ojeda was a leader of the independence movement; he was also wanted for a 1983 bank robbery in Connecticut. In point of fact, he'd been caught for that heist, but his lawyers managed to tie the courts up in knots and keep his case from coming to trial for seven years, at which point they got him released on bail. Ojeda cut off the monitoring bracelet and skipped town. From hiding, he claimed responsibility for a 1998 bomb blast outside a branch of the Banco Popular, but many observers think he was just fronting --- the blast (which didn't hurt anyone) was most likely set off by angry workers protesting the phone privatization deal I alluded to in ¡Acuérdese del Álamo!
Anyway, witnesses reported that the FBI fired first, and the coroner's reports indicated that Ojeda bled to death over several hours. This did not make people happy. Better yet, the FBI managed to pick the very same day in 1868 that a group of independentistas launched a failed rebellion against Spain with the Grito de Lares.
One result was this video. You can see Puerto Rican independence flags with the ugly sky-blue canton and the flag of the 1868 rebels. It's also got flow, and if you speak Spanish you can tell that these guys are the greatest thing to hit hip-hop since Eminem. Hell, since the Fu-Schnickens. Enjoy.
Crazy busy these days. Will try to post more, promise!
Governor Paterson has put me in a nostalgic mood. As has the fact that I have been rather surprisingly productive over the past few weeks. And so, I present to you my favorite song ever.
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