Make money not war

I just recently realized that the location of the Biblical village of Cana is still in dispute. It seems to me that someone should just decide on one spot and arrange to build a large reception hall there to accommodate destination weddings (or, at least, destination wedding receptions) for couples of a New Testament spiritual bent, thus bringing in tourist revenue to a region somewhat deficient in resources and hard by the contested region of the Golan Heights. Surely a lucrative commerce, tastefully done, could serve to ease international tensions in the region, though it might be too much to ask for actual miracles to occur in the process.

The past as it shapes the present

Another Kickstarter project under way, a feature-length film by someone whose family is from Iran.
Update: the project successfully met the creator's funding goal.

Entropy - it doesn't just happen

originally uploaded by theimpulsivebuy.

What fools we were in the 1970s when we did not know that we needed a product like this to ensure that our hair looked messy, trusting instead to literal winds of chance, inadvertent bed-head (before that was a scientific term), and desperate self-barbering upon occasion. For if science has taught us anything, it's that one cannot trust nature to revert to disorder when one's (fashion) life might depend on it. I imagine that the Axe people have incorporated nanomachinery into their product to make sure that no two strands parallel one another over a significant distance, and perhaps a dab of adaptive optics to befuddle the hapless viewer's eye to see more of a fractal Medusa's nest than is practically possible to engineer in reality. Back in those days the mathematics of strange attractors was regrettably unavailable to describe the chaotic hair dynamics that is now understood to be essential to sustain modern standards of presentability.

Private to public

sing love,
originally uploaded by rcameraw.

WQXR, the oldest commercial classical radio station in the US, is going to move over to public radio this 8PM October 8th, moving 9.6 MHz up the FM dial and going from its .com domain to a new .org domain as well. I hope they are able to keep the line-up of announcers: Annie Bergen, Jeff Spurgeon, Elliott Forrest, Bill Jerome, Midge Woolsey, Clayelle Dalferes, and the delightfully named Candice Agree. I will have to listen to the commercial spots between now and then to see if there's anything I'll be missing too.

They'll be swapping frequencies with Univision's reggaeton station La Kalle. Should make for some fun confusion for those not clued in on the shift.

Extremely loud and incredibly deep

1180,
originally uploaded by Andrew Lilley.

With the global economic crisis, we must use all our ingenuity to encourage the flow of cash. Thus it makes sense to consider those areas we here in the US are good at (amusement park rides) instead of those we are no longer so good at (building cars people want).

The world's tallest rollercoaster is here in New Jersey. This is a kind of record that isn't terribly hard to imagine being broken, as it just requires a designer willing to build a structure more than 46 storeys in the air and the financial backing to construct it. But has anyone considered going in the other direction and building the world's deepest rollercoaster? There are so many abandoned mine shafts around the country that there must be one which can be rehabilitated and adapted for the purpose. Could one go fifty meters down, a hundred, a few kilometers deep? Also, to most people, even the rational ones, mineshafts are inherently creepy, especially for the significant number of people with claustrophobia. I am confident that engineers could address the issues of tainted air, of rescue shafts, of inundation, and of evil cave trolls so that such a structure could take over the title of MOST DANGEROUS ROLLERCOASTER IN THE WORLD which would be certain to pack them in.

Of course when one considers technical difficulties, it is well to remember that one is comparing things to the difficulty of building a structure 150 meters up, which is no picnic either. At least you wouldn't have to worry about wind load, rain and snow.

I propose that we turn the problem over to the experts: high-school students.

All round-eye look same

Have you yourself been worried of giving offense because you, a white person, have difficulty remembering or distinguishing the characteristic facial features of those of Asian descent? Well you can relax now, as we find out that everybody is that way.

They’re Caucasians and they look alike. It’s not easy to distinguish them.

The person speaking is a government official of the Philippines referring to a meeting which may or may not have been held with representatives of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. Or perhaps it was the World Bank. Or some white guys with a bunch of money from somewhere apparently.

I blame faulty ethnology, and maybe a lack of name tags.

Note on the title of the post: I have only heard the imagined slur in jest. Also, I have no plans to register that domain, which does seem to be available.

Image generated at the Ultimate Flash Face site