Link Banana

I’m an absolute sucker for these things. Some of them are rather obscure, and some a just plain ugly, but they’re always fun.

(via Neatorama, who’ve selected some of the most accessible from the pool)

You may have missed it, but Belgium has been without a government for eight months. Most people see this as a testament to Europe’s stability or it’s stubbornness, maybe you should too.

The Christian Science Monitor sees some interesting demographics within Russia — and goes some small way toward explaining Putin’s popularity:

They are the Putin generation: young, often worldly, optimistic about their country’s future, and enthusiastic about a democracy they see as having more to do with higher living standards than checks and balances or freedom of speech. Acquainted only through history with the Soviet Union’s oppressive grip, but distinctly aware of their parents’ challenges during the tumultuous 1990s, they live in a Russia of unprecedented opportunities – ones shaped profoundly by Putin’s strong hand over the past eight years.

John Dickerson offers the best kind of commentary: pointing to something you hadn’t noticed but see everywhere once you’re aware of it.

The swift reaction from the Obama forces was good damage control and even better umbrage-taking, a political tactic that has been elevated to a high art in the 2008 campaign. There was once a time when campaigns didn’t respond to items like this for fear of giving them too much publicity. But if done correctly, candidates can exploit flamboyant displays of public upset to gain attention, raise money, put their opponents on the defensive, and distract from an unfavorable story.

I’m surprised by how good and readable Gregory Rodriguez’s column about Stuff White People Like is. A taste:

One irony-deficient reader complained that the blog was less about white people than it was about yuppies. And without knowing it, she was cutting to the heart of the joke. Lander is gently making fun of the many progressive, educated, upper-middle-class whites who think they are beyond ethnicity or collectively shared tastes, styles or outlook. He’s essentially reminding them that they too are part of a group.

(via Fimoculous)

Elizabeth Rubin’s piece on Afghanistan in yesterday’s NY Times Magazine is good, if weighted a little heavily toward the mental cost of serving in the military.

One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.

Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, “Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”

The New York Times made the most interesting — and pretty — graph I’ve seen recently. It charts the box office receipts of major movies from 1986 to present.

(via kottke)

I’ve seen many references to new ways of making solar power more efficient recently, The Economist’s article is the only one I bookmarked.

As their name suggests, CSP plants generate electricity by concentrating the sun’s rays, usually to boil water. The resulting steam drives turbines similar to those found at power plants that run on coal or natural gas. There are several different designs. The Nevada plant uses long curved mirrors, called parabolic troughs, to focus light on a tube of fluid running just above them. The Spanish plant uses a forest of smaller mirrors to focus light on a tower in their midst. Other concepts involve long flat mirrors and devices resembling satellite dishes.

Neatorama’s got some pictures of the amazing practice of “oragamic architecture.” There’s no good way to describe it beyond that.

The Economist tackles the troubling situation in Zimbabwe and the hopeful — if remote — possibility that Robert Mugabe may finally have to leave office.

ROBERT MUGABE, Zimbabwe’s ageing president, celebrated his official birthday at the weekend. The 84-year-old threw a party at Beitbridge, on the border with South Africa, and launched his campaign for a sixth term in office. He has ruled for nearly three decades and expects to win re-election in a general and presidential election in March. He rehearsed his usual stump speech, hurling abuse at anyone who dares to stand up to him (he called one opposition leader, Simba Makoni, a “prostitute” and a puffed up frog) and blaming outsiders—notably George Bush and Britain’s Gordon Brown—for his country’s ever more miserable economic collapse.

Having put all their very old paper online, the New York Times — who has the best website of all American newspapers — went a step above to create TimesMachine.

TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in history and flip electronically through the pages, displayed with their original look and feel.

Le Monde — yes, it’s a French newspaper, but you don’t need to know the language for this — has a neat map of what social networks are most popular around the world. I knew that Orkut was popular in Latin America, but I was rather suprised that Friendster’s at the top in Asia.

Related: The Economist’s infographic about “Facebook fatigue.”

Chuck Rosenthal, the district attorney of Harris County — around Houston, has resigned after having developed quite a reputation. Not only did he send 36 people to death row, but he’s also done some colorful things:

Over more than 30 years at the DA’s office, he often ran into trouble. He set off firecrackers in a stairwell and endorsed one judge because “she looks great in jeans.” In 2002 he went before the Supreme Court to argue in favour of upholding Texas’s ban on gay sex. The eventual ruling, Lawrence v Texas, is considered a landmark for gay rights.

Most troubling was Mr Rosenthal’s enthusiasm for the death penalty. He considered it “God’s law”, and asked for it whenever possible.

I — like you — love and loath that little kid videos are so popular. I still feel obligated to share this one.

(via Daring Fireball)

Michelangelo D’Agostino does something many would love to: visit the south pole.

Light floods the plane when the cargo bay opens. The excitement is palpable now as we begin to move towards the door. A colleague once called the moment he stepped off the plane in Antarctica for the first time the best moment of his life. I didn’t quite believe him then. Now, though, stepping gingerly down the stairs and onto the ice, a blast of cold air hits my face, but it’s the brilliant white of the ice-shelf extending in all directions, ending in snow-covered mountains, that takes my breath away.

There’s a fascinating and — to me — counter-intuitive article in March’s The Atlantic. Christopher Leinberger makes this interesting contention:

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

I was rather surprised to hear that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has detractors. After examining their claims, however, The Economist decides that they’re (mostly) meritless.

Therein lies an irony. The WHO, one of whose captains now calls the Gates Foundation monopolistic, used itself to hold a monopoly in the fight against malaria, and it did a lousy job as a result. Indeed, Dr Kochi himself has been refreshingly frank about the WHO’s poor record in fighting the disease. The agency has also been criticised for accepting poor data from member countries which may downplay bad news. As Dr Chan says candidly, that charge “is a reality”. It is not her role, she says, to “name and shame” countries; she prefers to exert private pressure. But she acknowledges that some public pressure is essential, and applauds the role played by the media and charities in “shining the light” on previously obscure places.

A big new non-government organisation, crashing into the jungle like a young elephant, is bound to cause resentment, and perhaps bound to have unintended ripple effects. But without this elephant’s input of new money and ideas, the battle-front against malaria and other deadly diseases might present an even worse picture, especially if the field were left to governments and inter-governmental bodies.

Stephen Hugh-Jones, like many others, says that the American (and European) embargoes of Cuba are useless at best.

That widespread affection, I’m told, still survives, even if it is more qualified, and these days Raulified, than it once was. For that, Fidel should thank, not least, successive presidents of the United States. He’s faced ten, and not one has had the political nous, or will, or maybe strength, to stop beating Cuba with sticks and try carrots instead. Forget the Bay of Pigs — the American trade embargo on Cuba surely ranks among the longest-lasting geopolicy failures in history.

Yet failure was easily foreseeable, and foresight was swiftly proved right. Surprise, surprise. If the mighty neighbour who used to run your country, and cheerfully backed its previous dictator, first lets loose an amateur invasion, and then for 45 years does its best to impoverish you as a step toward removing the new one — well, how would you feel? And would you have rushed to notice how the Cuban road to socialism was quite capable of impoverishing you by itself?

The American make a pretty interesting comparison between the price of oil and Vladimir Putin’s aggression abroad.

We found that as the price of oil rose, the aggressiveness index increased: that is, the more valuable oil became, the more hostile Russian foreign policy became. The reverse was also true: when oil prices dropped in 2001 and 2002, so did Russia’s aggression. The relationship proved strongest at the annual level: a $1.48 increase in oil prices yearly correlated with an additional “point” increase in Russian aggression.

This account of Vernon, CA — an industrial powerhouse in the Los Angeles area — was hard for me to believe. But if it’s in The Economist it must be true.

Vernon caters so diligently to the needs of businesses because it does not have to balance their demands with those of residents. Only about 90 people live in Vernon, many of them cops and fire-fighters. Most rent their homes from the city for a pittance—a one-bedroom flat costs $147 per month. They are the city’s electorate and, in theory, the pool from which mayors and local politicians are drawn.

It does not sound like a recipe for a functioning democracy, because it isn’t. The mayor has held power for 34 years. Contested elections are almost unknown. The last was in 2006, when three outsiders moved into a house just before the deadline and petitioned to stand for city offices. Their electricity was abruptly cut off and their home declared unfit for habitation. The outsiders got ten votes out of 68 cast. That was a surprise: they had expected just eight. Bill Schneider of the Chamber of Commerce says the shenanigans during the election worried him—because of the risk that another regime might take over. “What outsiders miss is that the damn place works well,” says Lonnie Kane, who runs a clothing firm with his wife, Karen.