Ghost Towns: Silver City, Yukon Territory

Kluane Lake is the largest lake in the Yukon, and is close to 40 miles long. It used to flow into the Pacific Ocean but just a few thousand years ago a glacier damned it's outlet. Over time the lake filled up until it eventually created another outlet, flowing north towards the Yukon River. The glacier receded but the flow of the lake has been permanently altered.

On the southern shore of the lake, next to Destruction Bay, is a ghost town called Silver City. The Kluane Lake area was the site of a short-lived gold rush in the early 1900s. Dawson Charlie, one of the discoverers of gold in the Klondike, staked the first claim on 4th of July Creek in the summer of 1903. By the end of that year 2,000 claims had been made in the Kluane region.

The North-West Mounted Police followed closely behind the prospectors, setting up summer camps in canvas tents on Ruby Creek, Bullion Creek and Pine Creek in 1904. A permanent detachment was established at the outlet of Silver Creek where a small community, called Kluane or Silver City had sprung up. The NWMP barracks, a district mining office and a post office were among the buildings in the new community.

Silver City was also notable because it was the end of the road from Whitehorse. Further travel required getting on a boat and using the rivers. This is the way it remained all the way up until 1942 when the Alaska Highway pushed the road the rest of the way to Alaska. When i first moved up to Alaska in 2001 this portion of the highway, which took all day to travel, was still dirt. Today the road is much improved, but there are still some gravel sections.

As far as Silver City, half a dozen large buildings remain scattered among the trees. A Bed and Breakfast operates nearby, and also an arctic studies research station.

Should You Speak Spanish to Your Waiter If You Don't Know that Much Spanish?

Image via Wikipedia

As a fluent Spanish speaker and an American native, I often see American who don't know as much Spanish as I do take every possible opportunity to speak Spanish to people they meet from a Spanish speaking country, whether or not the opportunity is warranted or even invited. Here are some tips for Americans to avoid offending or looking like an arse.
1. When you have a waiter or food server who has an accent, don't speak Spanish to them: Even though it might seem like a good idea to go into Taco Bell and repeat over and over again in almost unintelligible Spanish, "Yo quiero un burrito." in a horrible American accent, it generally isn't. In fact, it's actually a good way to get your food spit in or dishwater poured in your drink. Ask yourself this question: does the server speak better English than you do Spanish? If the answer is yes, please shut your mouth. If the answer is honestly no, please still shut your mouth and find a person to translate.
But, if they come to the country, they should speak English, right? I mean, stupid (mutter something about a sick bird). . . why don't they speak English?
You try supporting a family on 6.75$ per hour and see how much time you have left to learn English. Besides, just because someone is Hispanic, speaks Spanish, or even speaks English with an accent and looks Hispanic doesn't mean that they're an illegal immigrant. As an example, one of my great friends in life is a man from Germany. He immigrated here with his family a number of years ago but never learned more than basic English. However, he's never had too many problems communicating with people, probably because he gets more respect for being German and white than a Hispanic does for being Mexican, etc. and olive colored. Don't ask me why things work this way -- they just do.
In summary, if you speak good enough Spanish that you can say things without bad grammar and a heavy gringo accent, go ahead and speak Spanish to whomever you wish. However, for your own pride, you might want to refrain from speaking Spanish when you don't know much Spanish. It makes you look like a dork.

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7 Secret Ways to Become a Millionaire

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Here are the best seven ways that I could come up with to become a millionaire. If you have better ideas than these, feel free to write your own article.
1. Invest and save: Honestly, if you just can keep from spending your money long enough to save some of it away, you can probably become a millionaire eventually. The online savings calculators that I consulted said that, if you save as little as 200$ a month for 40 years and invest it at 11% interest (about the returns on the historical stock market when you dividend reinvest), you too could become a millionaire -- with a lot left over. However, the trick is to free up 200$ per month to invest. I get the impression that a lot of these eventual millionaires are lucky because they never lose their jobs or have sick kids. Well, good for them.
2. Turn to crime: One of the quickest ways to become a millionaire is (even though nobody admits it) a life of crime. Selling drugs, joining organized crime, and embezzlement can net you millions. However, this method does have the downside that you will probably spend large tracks of your life in prison (or worse) and have to give Bubba a sponge bath every night. If you ask me, the money isn't worth it.
3. Have a rich relative die and leave you a big inheritance: This is probably the most effortless way to become a millionaire. If your rich uncle or grandpa dies, you could be living the life on the beaches of Cancun in no time flat. However, there are drawbacks here too. First, your relative has to actually leave you a large inheritance -- as opposed to splitting it up evenly among you and your undeserving siblings or leaving it to charity. If you think that this might happen, one strategy is to wait until your relative has a terminal illness and then start making a point of visiting him or her in the months leading up to death. Remember -- people can be very impressionable and influenced to change a will easily when they're senile.
4. Marry a millionaire: This is another great way to become a millionaire, and it even has side "benefits" to boot. However, this method is also difficult. For one thing, you have to be the caliber of person that can actually land a millionaire spouse. For a girl, this means that you have to be a knockout and have personality. For the guy, it's a little easier -- women, especially spoiled ones, love a loser. However, this method comes with additional baggage. For a girl married to a millionaire, your husband is likely to cheat on you. For a guy, you're likely to be stuck with very demanding in laws that think you're not good enough for their daughter.
5. Get a high paying job: Using a job to advance your economic fortune is clearly the most traditional path to wealth. However, with this method, you'll usually be required to either work hard, work long hours, or have a lot of formal education -- all of which take time and effort. If you want to put yourself through the torture of a long and hard job or college just so that you can be millionaire, fine; but don't expect all of us to do that.
6. Sell your soul on Ebay: From what I've heard, the devil is paying top dollar for these things on Ebay. However, you should sell yours as quickly as possible -- there is a huge supply out there.
7. Write for Associated Content: I just had to include this one so that I could laugh a bit tonight (he he he). Okay, now that over with, let us reason together: to get 1 million from your AC articles, you would need to get 1/2 of a billion page views. Do any of you see that happening?
In conclusion, becoming a millionaire is more difficult that it seems, which is probably the reason why not everyone is a millionaire.

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Help Labour's Abbas win in Tower Hamlets

I got this email this afternoon - spread the word - it is just absolutely essential that we have a honest and competent secular socialist as Mayor.

So please support Abbas to be the elected Executive Mayor of Tower Hamlets. 

I think you know why.

"Dear Member

Helal Abbas is running to win the Tower Hamlets Mayoral Election for Labour  on the 21st of October.  It will be a tough fight.

The Conservatives have won council seats in the borough, the Lib/Dems are fielding a candidate and Respect and George Galloway are openly supporting an ex-Labour independent, who has declared himself a candidate

Tower Hamlets Labour Party will need all the help that you can give. The campaign office is at 349 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9RA and will be open for canvassing and leafleting from 10am-6.30pm every day until the election.

Please ring 0207 729 6682 or email abbas4mayor@gmail.com for further details or to let us know when you are available.

With your help we can ensure a Labour victory on the 21st of October

Ken Clark

Director London Labour Party 

Mormons Exposed: The Truth About Mormonism

Have you ever wondered what those "Mormons" are all about in life? Do you see their missionaries walking down the street, knocking on doors, trying to get people to read their "Book of Mormon"? Here, I try to answer some questions about Mormonism to explain what drives this movement.
Who are the Mormons?
A: They are a religious group, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. They have a following of approximately 14 million worldwide, and that number grows by about 400,000 annually.
What do they believe?
A: Mormons, like most religions, believe in a lot of things. Specifically, they accept Jesus as their savior and believe in a father God to Jesus, referred to as "Heavenly Father".
Are the Mormons Christians?
A: As I said, they believe in Jesus and accept them as a God and savior. That makes them Christians in my book.
But don't they believe in a different Jesus?
A: I've heard this question a lot, and I'm not sure what it means. They believe in Jesus, and, as far as I know, there is only one Jesus out there.
What about this Book of Mormon that they have?
The Mormons believe that this book is another set of scriptures, like the Bible, that their first leader, Joseph Smith, had given to him by an angel called Moroni. They believe that this scripture talks about a group of people that used to live around the time of Christ somewhere in the Americas. They believe that the stories about these people were written down and that Smith translated these stories into the Book of Mormon that exists today.
Are they dangerous?
A: They can be pushy at times, but I think that they are hardly dangerous.
Are they a cult?
A: One man's cult is another mans religion, I say. Even though they have a few things in their religion that would be strange by some Christian standards, I don't think they eat kids or rape goats or anything as bizarre as that.
Do they have more than one wife?
A: They used to, but they stopped doing that a hundred years ago or so.
But, wouldn't it be cool to have lots of wives?
A: It's hard for me to say. The closest I've ever come is that I used to date two girls at the same time, and that was more annoying than anything. If being married to a bunch of women is anything like that, probably not.
Hey, I thought that you were going to "give the goods" on the Mormons? Are they dangerous, brainwashed, weird, or what?
A: I really don't think that there is anything wrong with Mormons. Dangerous? Only if you're dating their daughters. Brainwashed? No more so than anyone else out there. Weird? Yeah. Or what? Or not.
So, that's the inside scoop on the Mormons. They're just another Christian faith. Nothing weird that I can see.

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Environmental Global Reset Button.

Recently Cambodian Buddhist monk Bun Saluth was honored by the United Nations for his environmental preservation work in preserving 18,000 acres of forest land in Cambodia. When asked about his monumental efforts he didn't hesitate to say that he was simply following Buddha's example (not just his words); When Buddha was still alive, he used trees and caves as lodging to obtain enlightenment. In this way, he has taught us to love the natural resources and wild animals.

Additionally, I would add that one of the most prominent reasons that Buddhists are often advocates for nature and animals is because of the core teachings upon interdependence. It's not so much protecting the trees out of a sense of moral superiority but rather a normal extension of being awake to the multi-layered essence of life on Earth. When we awaken to the reality that our very existence is dependent upon a healthy planet then it becomes obvious that protecting the trees (and the rest of nature) is an extension of being alive. It is also true that when we cultivate compassion for others we understand how balancing nature is integral in helping to reduce their suffering.

Thich Nhat Hanh says in his new book, "The World We Have" that, The situation the Earth is in today has been created by unmindful production and unmindful consumption. We consume to forget our worries and our anxieties. Tranquilising ourselves with over-consumption is not the way. Just like eating a bunch of sugar instead of a meal will give you a rush of artificially inflated energy followed quickly by a depressing physical crash; so to will trashing out planet lead to a crash of the "good times" followed by a deep and painful awakening to a very different world.

I've never been much of a doomsday alarmist but the over-consumption of just about everything by humanity is really starting to show and take its toll. Our greed has over-fished our oceans, poisoned our air, desecrated our forests and swollen our Earth with over-population. It is an unsustainable lifestyle and that centuries long, unskillful behavior is harvesting some sobering karma. I'm not the kind of person who stands on the corner of a busy street, ringing a bell and warning of the "end of the world" but I do see a radical change coming, and I believe awareness is the best tool to adapting.

I can see a time in the near future when our instant, electronic world will crash and fail like an old car in the Mohave desert. This will return us to a simpler way of life where the grocery store is a garden, where the animals are more valuable than cars and where being able to work with others in co-operation will mean the difference between survival and calamity. It won't destroy all of humanity but we'll have to relearn how to live a life similar to that before the industrial revolution, which will be a tough transition for some who lived the delusion that the party would go on forever. We lived through the ugly days of the "Dark Ages" when life was bleak and people died in droves and currently we're living a life of excess that is the exact opposite.

And interestingly, I think it might be a good thing for humanity to get this wake up call because it'll force us to hit the reset button on how we see the world and our resources. It will also mean that we don't have to live again in the "Dark Ages" but we also can't live the life of never-ending consumption either. We'll have to find that sweet spot, or the middle ground where life is the most sustainable. It'll be a shock at first but in the end I think we'll see that living the "hungry ghost" life of over-consumption was never really realistic in the first place.

~Peace to all beings~

Pelosi Gets Muddy

Labour Conference 2010: Life in the Northern Quarter

This year I stayed in an one bedroom flat in the “Northern Quarter” of Manchester. A world heritage site no less. This was not only cheaper and better than a hotel but it was also a far more interesting and cosmopolitan place to stay than the City centre. 

In the mornings I was able to try and shake off the Midland Hotel induced hangovers with an early morning jog around the nearby canals. 

On route I would pass an area near Piccadilly Basin which had been closed off to the public and was being used to film a Hollywood film based on the “Captain America” comics.   Apparently this part of Manchester resembles 1940’s Lower East Side, New York.  It was strange to see cast members walking around dressed as “gangsters and molls” in period hats and trench coats while texting or sheltering from the rain using modern umbrellas. 

Running (very slowly of course) along the canal’s you become very aware of Manchester’s industrial history and the “dark satanic mills” that we sang about a few hours ago earlier at conference.  Many old mills have been turned into apartment blocks similar to the old Bryant and May Matchmakers building in Bow.  There is even an area called New Islington to make me feel at home. The best run to appreciate the new and the old Manchester was along the Ashton Canal to the Man City stadium and back. 

On a sad and depressing point I did notice that thanks to the Banker's recession work has stopped on many construction sites which are moth balled and up for sale.  Some of the newly built apartments and office buildings also appear to be mostly empty.  Regeneration of this part of Manchester is obviously in trouble.

Massive CONDEM public spending cuts will just further destroy confidence. This will mean more construction workers will be unemployed, less taxes will be paid and more money needed to pay benefits.  Which will increase pressure on the deficit and mean more public spending cuts which will mean....We need our new British superhero, Ed M, to save us!

Labour Conference 2010: Harriet Harman, the Red Flag and the New Jerusalem

Labour Party deputy leader, Harriet Harman, gave a witty and unifying closing speech to this year’s conference. 

I liked the self deprecating joke that she was only elected the "most fanciable MP" in a Sky News poll because her husband, Jack Dromey - had used "the Unite block vote". We then all sang the “Red Flag” followed by “Jerusalem”.  Then after several minutes of clapping and cheering Ed, there was the traditional mad rush to pick up luggage and get to the train station. 

Beforehand John Denham MP had given a cracking speech warning the 4,500 Labour Councillors that they will have the fight of their lives to make sure they protect essential public services.  He also exposed the crucial flaw in Cameron’s “Big Society” that volunteers want to supplement public services not replace them. He gave the example of people who volunteer to “befriend” pensioners but they would not want to replace the services of the district nurse. 

Harriet was then introduced by UNISON activist, Norma Stephenson, who had been elected the Chair of the Labour Party NEC last night. 

Building a New Jerusalem is now on hold until 2015 at the latest.  The opportunity may come sooner but it is best to plan for a long and at times very painful slog back to power.

I'll be trying to catch up on my posts about conference over the next few days.

Oops! Aussie Senate Tells It Like It Is

China is angry. Again. Yawn.  This time their ire is directed at the Australian Senate which had the temerity to involve itself in the closed world of Chinese internal affairs (ps: that world includes any territory deemed valuable enough to add on especially if it neatly chimes with the borders of the colonial Qing dynasty). To wit:

The motion, passed in June, states that the upper house “welcomes the signing of various bilateral agreements between China and Taiwan ... since May 2008,” in reference to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policies.

The motion also encouraged the two countries to further enhance dialogue, practical cooperation and confidence-building steps, saying that would have “a positive effect on the stability and security of the Asia-Pacific region.”

The key words that got Chinese Ambassador to Australia Zhang Junsai's (章均賽) knickers in a twist was the term 'bilateral agreements' implying, as it correctly does, equal state to state agreements between two international parties.  This was too much for Zhang who said that ...

it was inappropriate for the democratic body to “comment on the question of Taiwan, an internal affair of China.”

“There is only one China in the world. Both the Mainland (sic) and China [sic] belong to the one and same China,” Zhang wrote.

What's ours is ours. What's yours is ours. There's only one China. I couldn't agree more except that Taiwan isn't a part of the PRC and never was and Tibet and East Turkestan don't want to be.

His comments are further evidence that the Chinese government is still willing to issue strong condemnations on technical matters, including how Taiwan is termed alongside China. (Despite a so called warming of relations across the strait. So much for the diplomatic truce. Does Beijing think Taiwanese won't notice the cognitive dissonance between what Ma says and what Beijing does?)

Zhang compared Taiwan-China ties to the relationship between “a state or territory in Australia and the commonwealth,” adding that the Chinese government would eventually solve its “sensitive political, military and security issues” with Taiwan.

Rofl. The Commonwealth? That's the new meme?  Notice the UK demanding that all other commonwealth countries move towards unification?  Perhaps he was thinking about the Commonwealth of Independent States (formerly known as the USSR) - that's more Beijing's style. The harder they try to justify and explain the unjustifiable and unexplainable, the deeper they fall into the hole they have dug for themselves.  No big playa in the world regards Taiwan as a part of the PRC - they all just note Beijing's shrill claim that it is.

“[We will] deal with easier issues first and the thorny ones later,” he said, referring to economic and political issues, the SMH report said. “We will … look for the right time to approach and solve them step by step.”

The newspaper also quoted Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) as saying that he was delighted with the motion, adding that Taiwan would continue to “do its utmost to engage in dialogue and negotiations with Beijing.”  

(ROC welcomes the motion despite PRC rejecting it - will this affect relations or is anything Taipei says now about sovereignty generally understood in Beijing to be an election sop by the KMT to avoid looking as weak and disloyal as they actually are to Taiwan?).  Note the prioritisation of economic issues in the short term. I am moving firmly toward the conclusion that China seeks to ensnare Taiwan economically into a position of utter dependence.  This makes sense considering the economic clout China recently wielded with Japan practically forcing it to abrogate its own laws and judicial processes to release a civilian spy Chinese fisherman who rammed a Japanese Coast Guard boat in Japanese waters.  Another clue to this policy of economic unification first came in a business page article about the Chinese vice-minister of commerce Chen Jian (陳健) meeting the Taiwanese Finance Minister Lee Sush-der (李述德):

Chen said on Saturday that he has “three major tasks” to achieve during this trip, the main one being to promote direct sales of Taiwan’s agricultural products to China.

Chen said the second task was to find more suitable ways to facilitate cross-strait trade cooperation and for Taiwan and China to jointly access other markets.

Thirdly, he said he hoped to see the ECFA benefit more people, particularly the large number of small and medium-sized enterprises and fishermen’s and farmers’ association

The first and third tasks are a direct response to the DPP's success in raising fears in Taiwan that ECFA will benefit the big corporations at the expense of small sectors of the economy.  China's strategy is effectively to buy votes for the KMT by buying produce from sectors that traditionally have pan-green support.  It's the second task that sent chills down my spine.  Why does Taiwan need to jointly access other markets?  Can't it do it on its own?  Isn't the logical conclusion that if it starts to conduct negotiations alongside Chinese counterparts to enter markets, other countries will come to see that as a norm and as a result decline to cooperate with Taiwanese businesses unless their market entry is coordinated by and alongside a Beijing entry?

What happens when Taiwanese vote for a pro-Taiwan President? Will China then use ECFA and economic threats, or just 'unofficial' blocks, to force the democratically elected official to concede his or her sovereignty in formulation of Taiwan's foreign and economic policy?

Scary days indeed.

Social Networks and Blog Promotion: Which Ones Work and Which Don't

Image by jerandsar via Flickr

I have been using social networks now for about a year or so, and I have learned a lot of things: what works and what doesn't. Being that it's 2:30am here and I can't fall asleep, I've decided to share my secrets with you, my esteemed readers.
Here are the networks that work well to attract traffic, in the approximate order of how many followers they attract. Also, a small explanation of why the work (or not) is included to the side.
1. Twitter: In my opinion, Twitter is the "gold standard" when it comes to attracting traffic to your website. In general, I count on a minimum of about 1 viewer per 1,000 followers per day, assuming that I update regularly. If you have more engaged followers than I do, you'll probably have more hits from them too. In any case, Twitter is a godsend for blogging. I actually get about 33-50% of all my daily traffic from Twitter, and I only have about 20,000 followers.
2. Facebook: The Facebook account that I have associated with my blog is relatively newer, but I'm still seeing good results from the initial trials. With only about 200 friends, I'm seeing about 2 hits per day originating from Facebook -- results even better than Twitter per capita. Of course, if you have friends and family on your blog Facebook page (as opposed to strangers), I would expect that you would see higher traffic from this. However, Facebook is still below Twitter in my estimation because it's much harder to add new followers -- meaning that even a lower rate of click through from Twitter will win in the end through sheer volume.
3. Digg/Reddit: It depends on which "camp" you're in here (team werewolf vs. team vampire guy anyone?) but both services are marginally successful in driving traffic to a blog. Both have problems, however. In the case of Reddit, they like to block users who submit a lot of articles to Reddit from a blog, and they are difficult to deal with in general. Also, the interface sucks rocks. For Digg, they have a much cleaner interface and are much more lenient on submission, but they send a lot less traffic to a blog per article submitted. I guess which one (or preferably both) of these sites you use depends on your approach to blogging. More articles -- Digg is better. Fewer, higher quality articles -- use Reddit.
4. Myspace: In theory, this dying giant of a social network site should send lots of hits to my blog -- in theory. In practice, my 1,000 plus followers have generated very few hits for my blog -- probably because many of them no longer use the service.
5. Stumbleupon: I have blogger friends that swear by this, but I've never seen a large number of hits coming from that site. For each article I submit, I can usually expect a maximum of five hits to my blog from that site, I think that the problem here is that they receive such a high volume of article submissions that most of your articles are never "stumbled upon" by the site's bots.
In summary, all social networks are good to some extent to drive traffic to your blog, but some are better than others.

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Best Shots (134) ~ Guillaume Herbaut

(161) Guillaume Herbaut ~ 'Beautiful isn't enough' . . . an Albanian woman
involved in a blood feud (29 September 2010).

How to Get Lots of Followers on Twitter

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is a great medium for spamming people and spreading your message around the internet. However, some of your advertisement spam loses its effectiveness when you're only sending it out to five people, two of whom are Korean and don't know any English. So, here is the way to get more followers on Twitter, or pretty much any other social networking site.
1. Follow lots of people: For some reason, when you blindly follow people on a social networking site, about 1/4 to 1/2 of those people will follow you back. What this means is that the main way to get lots of followers on Twitter (or Digg, Facebook, Myspace, etc.) is to follow lots of people and wait for a return following. I wish that there was some secret that was trickier than this, but this is the main truth. Social networking sites know this, however; and they will often put blocks into their sites to limit the number of people you can follow to be no more than a certain percentage over the number that follow you. For example, Twitter limits this number to 10% -- meaning that, if you have 2000 followers, you can follow at most 2200 people. This leads me to my next point:
2. Use tools like Refollow and Twitter Karma to unfollow people who aren't following back: I know that for Twitter Refollow and Twitter Karma (Google search both to find the exact links) allow you to unfollow anyone who is not following you automatically. I'm not sure if these tools exist for other social media sites, but I'm not sure if these sites have the same following restrictions that Twitter has. In any case, both tools are very useful for getting tons of Twitter followers.
3. Promote your Twitter account on your blog, Facebook, etc.: If you already have a large following on a site like Facebook or your personal blog, you can stick a Twitter widget button on your page (again, Google search to find the address) to gain new followers. If you're only looking to increase your followers by a few dozen or a few hundred, this would be a good option for you. However, if you want followers in the thousands (which is very desirable on Twitter), this method will only take you so far.
4. Get your followers to give you shoutouts, retweets, and recommendations: Another good source to add a few dozen to hundred new followers is by having followers you know and trust give you shoutouts and recommendations to their followers. As with method 3, this can be tedious if you're looking to gain thousands of followers. However, if you're only looking for a few hundred, targeted followers, this method is as good as the three above.
Gaining Twitter followers is hard, but, with hard work and the tools mentioned above, it can be a smooth process.

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5 Reasons to Join a Cult

Image via Wikipedia

 What You Never Knew Before About Loving the Leader

Even if people around you (family, friends, police) say that cults are dangerous institutions and that you should stay far away from them, you know better than they do. In fact, joining a cult can be one of the most rewarding and life changing experiences that you could ever have, regardless of how much money you have to pay the leader or how many orgies you have to have with him (or her). Here are the top 5 reasons to join a cult:
1. Free food: Are you one of those food junkies who walks around town looking for a free eat? Well, you're in luck -- cults provide an endless source of free food to all who join. Of course, everything in the cult is "free" already -- mostly because "money" and being "paid" for your "work" is of the "devil". If you don't like that, the leader will make sure to put you into hell for your blasphemy.
2. Hot women: In a cult, you will find a never-ending source of naive girls and young women that are potential dating opportunities. Of course, all of the good ones have already had at least 3 kids courtesy of "the leader" -- and most of the rest are either married to his lieutenants or promised to the god Zeus. However, you could still find some easy picking among the leftovers -- like the fat girl with a small mustache. Remember -- facial hair makes a person look distinguished.
3. Lots of exercise: In cults, they don't believe in the sissy western lifestyle where member sit on their arses in front of a computer all day. They believe in hard work and discipline -- mostly while the leader makes out with his "spiritual wives" in the next room over. In any case, you can be assured that you will work so hard and in such high heat that the fat (and for that matter your skin) will melt right off.
4. Physical and emotional pain: If you're one of those weirdos that likes to get hit so that they can get excited sexually, you're in luck. A cult will provide literally dozens of opportunities per day for members to be hit, slapped, beaten, and possibly sexually assaulted by the cult organizers. For just the price of constant work and your first-born son, you can be spat upon and made to feel lower than Satan's toilet. Sounds like a great deal, huh?
5. Salvation from eternal hell: Of course, the ultimate benefit and the reason why cults exist is to save their members from an eternal hell. Remember: however badly you get hurt in the cult, God is going to kick your arse twice as hard when you get to heaven.

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• Tears of joy as Oko Poly students renounce cultism (vanguardngr.com)

How to Make Tons of Money with Associated Content

Image by casasroger via Flickr

 Tired of working a 9-5 job just to feed your bratty kids, only to put hot dogs, raman noodles and spam on the table? Learn to make hundreds of dollars per week extra with Associated Content.

I often have people ask me (or theoretically would have them ask me, if I knew anyone who cared enough about it), "Josh, how do I make a truckload of money with Associated Content? I know this farmer's housewife who makes billions of dollars per month on AC, yet I still can't figure out how she does it." Well, my scarecrow-headed friend, you're in luck. Let me explain exactly how to make the most money possible on Associated Content.

1. Article Spam, Article Spam, Article Spam: Remember, you don't get paid if people read your article, like your articles, recommend your articles to others, or even find anything useful in your articles. You get paid if they clickon your articles. So, what do you do to ensure that people click on your articles more? Well, you could just write better articles (laughs anyone?). But, that takes time and effort. Instead, what you should do (and what most people on AC do) is to just write more articles. Write articles about everything: your clothes, your dog, your kids, how to pick a lock, video games you've never played before, your mom, and lots of other things that you have no expertise about. If someone calls you out on what you've written, just remember: you don't know that bozo. Even if your advice is nothing more than to go and read a book about the subject (i.e. the article on lock picking) or long citations courtesy of Wikipedia (about 1/2 of the other articles on AC), you still get paid. Remember, to paraphrase T.S. Elliot (or whoever -- for an AC article I'm too lazy to look it up), "Good writers borrow, great writers steal, and AC writers spit stolen articles from a fire hose").

2. Don't worry about grammar, punctuation, spelling, citations: Anything that slows you down in your article writing is generally not your friend. Remember: you need cash, not kudos. If someone wants correct grammar, they ain't gonna get it. If they want punctuation,,,, tell them - to * date; a friggin' English teacher. If they want spalling, well, to bed. Citations? Really, citations? You're the world expert in this field (for all they know) -- you can claim anything you want! If all else fails, just point to rumor and vague innuendo. If it an article about Japan, just remind everyone how the people there eat to much rice and wear samurai armor to work. If they disagree or try to cite "authority" to disprove you, what do they know? Besides, you get paid anyway.

3. If all else fails, just write nonsense: You really only have to write 300 words to keep "the man" at AC off your back. Remember, it's your article and you can write about what you want -- even if it's not what "the man" wants you to write the article about. "The man" can go write his own articles if he wants them written so badly.

I hope that this helped. If it did and you do make billions, give me half.

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Glenn Beck, Nazi Hunter

Glenn Beck ~ Both Portraits
© Nigel Parry for The New York Times.

Today we are treated to the latest installment in the series of New York Times puff pieces on right wing ideologues. We already have had portraits (all by celeb photographer Nigel Parry) of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. This time the portraits are less scary, but they remind me of Richard Avedon's portrait of Karl Rove - the similarly buffoonish look on both faces is striking.

Karl Rove, Republican National Convention, NY,
2004 © Richard Avedon.

The problem, of course, is that Rove and Beck are no joke. They use their cleverness in more or less thoroughly malevolent ways. The Times reporter depicts Beck as genial and approachable and sensitive and so forth. The guy (Beck) is full of it. And instead of an argument he regularly simply closes off debate in the best way possible - accusing those he disagrees with of being Nazis.

ON THE AIR and in person, Beck often goes on long stretches that are warm, conciliatory and even plaintive. He says he yearns for the cohesion in the country after Sept. 11, 2001, and will speak in paragraphs that could fit into Barack Obama’s plea for national unity in his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “There’s a lot we can disagree on, but our values and principles can unite us,” Beck said from the Lincoln Memorial.

But “standing together” can be a tough sell from someone who is so willing to pick at some of the nation’s most tender scabs. Beck’s statement that the president’s legislative agenda is driven by Obama’s desire for “reparations” and his “desire to settle old racial scores” is hardly a uniting message. While public figures tend to eventually learn (some the hard way) that Nazi, Hitler and Holocaust comparisons inevitably offend a lot of people, Beck seems not to care. In a forthcoming book about Beck, “Tears of a Clown,” the Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes that in the first 14 months of Beck’s Fox News show, Beck and his guests mentioned fascism 172 times, Nazis 134 times, Hitler 115 times, the Holocaust 58 times and Joseph Goebbels 8 times.

In his quest to root out progressives, Beck compared himself to Israeli Nazi-hunters. “To the day I die I am going to be a progressive-hunter,” he vowed on his radio show earlier this year. “I’m going to find these people that have done this to our country and expose them. I don’t care if they’re in nursing homes.”

“Raising questions” is Beck’s favorite rhetorical method. Last year during the health care debate, Beck compared Obama’s economic agenda to Nazi Germany — specifically he paralleled the White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s statement that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” with how Hitler used the world economic crisis as a pivot point. Photos of Hitler, Stalin and Lenin then appeared on screen. “Is this where we’re headed?” Beck asked. He allowed that “I am not predicting that we go down that road.”

If you treat people as Nazis, then you hound them like criminals and dismiss (or worse, eliminate) them rather than, say, addressing them as a interlocutors to be taken seriously enough to disagree with. That's Glenn Beck, Nazi hunter.
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Update: Today, Michael Shaw, perpetrator of the terrific BagNewsNotes, poses this nice query the folks at The Times at HuffPost: just what is your puffery meant to convey? The problem with The Times is that when their ideology is not just blatant (as when they disparage any vaguely progressive politics), they tend to pretend that being objective means being 'non-committal' or 'neutral' (whatever that means). And they end up being irresponsible by giving right-wing nutters a pass.

Labour Party Conference 2010: ETUC Day of Action

Today is European Trade Union's Council "Day of Action" against spending cuts.

Across Europe there was lobbies and protests against cuts.  I missed a Lobby this lunchtime outside Manchester City hall, since I got the timings wrong. 

Local UNISON member Grant Higgerson (carrying placard) had been at the lobby.  Since he had taken the whole afternoon off to attend the rally he had decided to spend the rest of the time reminding Labour Party delegates and visitors about the importance of saving public pension schemes.  Grant is supported here by another trade unionist - from the NUJ!

Update: Picture of UNISON Bromley Health Branch banner at a ETUC rally.

Health SGE member Mike Davey on real left.

China Post Fail

The Foreigner in Formosa has an excellent post .. go read it.  It inspired me to leave this comment at the China Post website (though I think it may not have worked since there is a 3000 character limit).

Dear China Post, you do realise that the same map you are using as a justification that the Senkaku islands belong to China, particularly  on account of the color used to identify them, also clearly indicates, by colour, that Taiwan was NOT a part of China even though the western coastal plains had been colonised by the Qing since 1682 but were yet to be made into their own province (1885)?.

Furthermore, whether Madam Chiang had included the Senkakus in the Cario Declaration or not would have made no difference since that war-time Declaration has no internationally recognised legal force and certainly does not supersede the 1952 San Franciso Peace Treaty in which the islands of Taiwan were removed from Japan's possession but not actually given to anyone.  Likewise, the Treaty of Taipei, nulled in the 1970s when Japan recognised the PRC, also lacks legal weight to supersede the SFPT.  

And do you really believe that the Okinawans would have been granted independence?  Can you tell me why when Taiwan was 'liberated' Taiwanese didn't win their independence but instead had to face brutal colonisation and martial law dictatorship for 38 long years?

Finally, none of the parties will shelve disputes over sovereignty when physically  establishing that sovereignty will likely come with the reward of millions of barrels of oil.  Your Japanophobia to support an irrelevant claim to the islands by the ROC exposes your role as a cheerleader , not for Taiwan, but for the ROC and a 'unified' China.  Taiwan has no need to get involved in this dispute and if anything should sympathise with the Japanese for the continuous provocations China has made to test Japanese authority and sovereignty in the region.

Maybe if you realised the importance of history you would recognise that doing deals with the devil will never work out well for a person in the end.  To help, I suggest you read more on the rise of German and Japanese nationalism in the 1930s and then compare the background economic, political and diplomatic conditions to today's rise of China.

Since when was it ok to make an enemy of a democracy and a friend of a dictatorship?

Group Photography: Tips and Beautiful Examples

We come into this world, we grow, we make friends, we look for opportunities and ultimately, we have to part with our friends and family members. Each one of us has been through this or will cross this path in our life eventually. We wish to live those beautiful and unforgettable moments again by turning back time which is obviously still a fiction. This is why we rely on photographs.

We are featuring group photographs today and group photographs are the perfect testimonials of age and experience. You will want to tell yourself you have live the best moments in life in the future therefore do not commit a corny group photographs. Instead of looking fun and young, it might look bored as dough. Therefore we are here to share some awesome group photographs that can give you inspiration on how to make a memorable group photo!

5 tips to better Group Photography

1. Routine to Break

Most of the group photograph I see down the line looks somewhat the same. They are all lack creativity because most photographers tend to follow a basic rule of just setting a group of people, standing stick still in front of the camera, count to 3, and press the shutter. The trick for capturing amazing group photographs is to break these photography rules. We all have a mind that has infinite creativity. Utilize it, be sure to throw yourself out of the comfort zone and be spontaneous. The outcome may surprise you.

Smile..1,2,3...Click...

2. It’s all about timing

A good timing is absolutely necessary for a good photograph. By saying good timing, I am not only emphasizing on suitable time of the day to take photographs, but also the correct timing to press the shutter release button. Having a good grasp on a correct timing to shoot a picture will reduce your efforts of taking multiple shots for the same thing in the chase of that "perfect shot".

3. Lights, lights, lights

Lights are everything, period. Light is actually the ultimate factor in photography. Any good or awesome pictures are determined by skillful lighting control. And that’s exactly what a photographer might lack of. Here are some tips on how to use lights effectively:

• Make sure everything is brightly lit and there is no shadow overlay on any of the faces.
• If possible, use strobe lights. They always give better results
• Ever thought of reflection while considering lights?

Image credit.
Bonus: Did I just say that "Lights are everything"? Well, I also said "Break the rules". Have a look at the following photograph :D. Ultimately again, it’s your creativity with lights and shadows

4. Background Matters

In photography, background is as important as the subject itself. A photograph taken with the same subject in a field could sometimes result better than taking it in a closed room. Although it is subjective, changing backgrounds often results in better photographs. Take your family or group outside. Try photographing in a field or any open space where you can also use the larger surface area rather than just shooting in a room or a studio. Plus you will also have the benefit of natural lights :-)

5. Don’t stick to the ground

Perspective is what gives a photograph an edge over thousands of others. Want to take an edgy group photograph? Just don’t stick to the ground. By that I don’t mean that you should try out to anti-gravity, but just change your perspective. Take a group photograph from the second floor of a building while making your buddies stand on the ground. Alternatively, go down on your knees and shoot straight up! Use your imagination and just stay away from the ground.

Image credit.

Beautiful Examples of Group Photos

Last but not lease, we’ll end the article with a showcase of some creative and beautiful group photos. Enjoy!

(via smashpoppler)

(via macmoov)

(via vstrash)

(via kellyhofer)

(via chelseaelizabethphotography)

(via talikf)

(via d1production)

(via gloriazelaya)

(via picture_bunny)

(via churchillcarling)

(via laura_sobenes)

(via Donna & Antti)


Source

Cynicism is Unbecoming

"Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them.

[. . .]

The individuals in the Tea Party may come from very different walks of life, but most of them have a few things in common. After nearly a year of talking with Tea Party members from Nevada to New Jersey, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear in nearly every interview. One: Every single one of them was that exceptional Republican who did protest the spending in the Bush years, and not one of them is the hypocrite who only took to the streets when a black Democratic president launched an emergency stimulus program. ("Not me — I was protesting!" is a common exclamation.) Two: Each and every one of them is the only person in America who has ever read the Constitution or watched Schoolhouse Rock. (Here they have guidance from [Dick] Armey, who explains that the problem with "people who do not cherish America the way we do" is that "they did not read the Federalist Papers.") Three: They are all furious at the implication that race is a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed by reports about how the New Black Panthers want to kill "cracker babies," support politicians who think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to enact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Barack Obama's birth certificate. Four: In fact, some of their best friends are black! (Reporters in Kentucky invented a game called "White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo," checking off a box every time a Tea Partier mentions a black friend.) And five: Everyone who disagrees with them is a radical leftist who hates America.

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are."

Those are some of the entertaining bits from this report by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. Taibbi gets bogged down in the duplicity of Rand Paul and trades is some unfortunate analogies: "Tea Partiers . . . really don't pay attention to specifics too much. Like dogs, they listen to tone of voice and emotional attitude." After all, if we call it insulting and degrading when right wing wackos compare people to animals, it hardly is excusable to turn around and dehumanize the wackos. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy. And it is not useful.

The reason why the the party types are so reprehensible is that, unlike dogs, they should be able to marshal some semblance of self-reflection. We fail them for not managing to do so. Finally, Taibbi goes more or less wholly off the rails in the final paragraph.

The bad news is that the Tea Party's political outrage is being appropriated, with thanks, by the Goldmans and the BPs of the world. The good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that those interests mostly have us by the balls anyway, no matter who wins on Election Day. That's the reality; the rest of this is just noise. It's just that it's a lot of noise, and there's no telling when it's ever going to end.

If the deck is as stacked as all that why write critical political analysis - or argue back with tea party types - in the first place?
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* Thanks Jörg!