Link Banana

Elizabeth Dickenson has her list of campaign cliches she could do without. #1 is an ax I’ve been grinding myself.

1)  Wall Street to Main Street. I know the financial crisis affects me and that bashing bankers wins you applause. What I’d rather hear? A solid explanation of how the bailout will work (or won’t), how it will be paid for, and how it will affect government spending in the next administration.

Lloyd points to an interesting slideshow from Scientific American profiling those who should have received (science) Nobel Prizes but didn’t.

On a related note: some analysis of this year’s so-far and likely winners.

Lebanon has announced plans to sue Israel over the food copyright for tabouleh, kubbeh, hummus, falafel and fattoush. The suit relies on the absurdly named feta precedent; as David Kenner describes:

Six years ago, Greece was able to win a monopoly on the production of feta cheese from the European Parliament by proving that the cheese and had been produced in Greece under that name for several millennia.

Speaking of international figures doing unexpected things, Demitry Medvedev has a video blog.

(via Passport)

The headline may be better than the video, but the video is still good for a laugh.

I recently heard — I wish I remembered where — Bill Clinton make the point that a moratorium on the use of the word “Africa” would likely make people see the continent as a little less bleak. While there are still big problems in places like Somolia, Chad, Sudan, and the DRC, there are a number of good and improving governments and economies.

The Ibrahim Index, a quantification of a sub-Saharan government’s quality, highlights the differences. While the aforementioned contries have the lowest scores, places you rarely hear about — Mauritius, Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana, Namibia — are relatively well run. (South Africa’s pretty good too, but we constantly hear about it.)

(via Passport)

Blake Hounshell points to a handful of images of the DAX — Germany’s stock exchange — in decline that all feature the same woman. The Independent even interviewed her.

I think this chart gives the one mentioned here a run for it’s money. There’s nothing like a well-made graph to make reveal the utter silliness of many political issues.

I was torn between linking to this post about what Passport bloggers are reading, which contains a number of interesting suggestions, and this very approachable article from Fareed Zakaria that one mention. Obviously Zakaria won the coin toss; a sample:

It’s also worth noting that ever since World War II, the United States has tended to make its strategic missteps by exaggerating dangers. During the 1950s, conservatives argued that Dwight Eisenhower was guilty of appeasement because he was willing to contain rather than roll back communism. The paranoia about communism helped fuel McCarthyism at home and support for dubious regimes abroad. John Kennedy chose to outflank Nixon on the right by arguing that there was a dangerous missile gap between the Soviets and the United States (when in fact the United States had almost 20,000 missiles and the Soviets had fewer than 2,000). The 1970s witnessed a frenzied argument that the Soviet Union was surpassing the United States militarily and was about to “Finlandize” Europe. The reality, of course, was that when neoconservatives were arguing that the U.S.S.R. was about to conquer the world, it was on the verge of total collapse.

The Paralympics are now occurring in Beijing, and among their events is the new-to-me five-a-side soccer, a version of the sport for the visually impaired. As Passport explains:

Each team has five players on the field — all of whom are blind or visually impaired, with the exception of the goalkeeper, who may be sighted. All except the goalkeepers wear eyeshades to ensure fairness. The ball makes a noise when it moves, and each team has a guide behind the opponent’s goal to direct players. The field is surrounded by walls, so there are no throw-ins.

I’d love to see a game. The photos of people playing soccer blindfolded are themselves intriguing.

Passport has put together a list of 20. Jack Shafer has ten more.

And, somewhat related, Kevin Drum is sick of the lies about Ms. Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere and thinks the fact that the McCain campaign is still able to talk about it is an indictment of the press.

Another coincidence worth noting:

• The Big Picture has a great set of photos of life in Rio de Jinaro.
• While at Passport, Patrick Fitzgerald argues that the IOC should make Rio the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. Though his argument is at times tepid, I find myself in agreement.

Though this quiz is a tad on the detail-oriented side, I did enjoy it. I’m guessing you can do better than 23, but you’ll need to be able to tell an Estonian accents from a Lithuanian. Or a Canadian from an American.

(via Passport)

Some Australian scientists think they’re a natural replacement for beef. Patrick Fitzgerald explains:

Unlike sheep and cattle, kangaroos emit little methane, which accounts for 11 percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. The study suggests that increasing the kangaroo population to 175 million while simultaneously decreasing the the number of other livestock would lower emissions by 3 percent over the next 12 years. The plan would have added benefits for soil conservation, drought response, and water quality as a result of reducing the number of hard-hoofed livestock.

From the annals of the slightly absurd:

Rwanda’s government ruffled some French feathers yesterday with the release of a 500-page report alleging that senior French military and political leaders had prior knowledge of the country’s 1994 genocide and that French peacekeeping troops actively participated in the killings. Among those accused are the late former President François Mitterand and former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

And the reason to doubt:

Given that the Rwandan government began work on the report just a few months after President Paul Kagame was accused by a French judge of assasinating the Rwanda’s former president — the event that precipitated the genocide — the report is going to be read with a pretty large grain of salt.

An interesting look at the reality of the much heralded and fretted over Tata Nano:

Malhotra is having second thoughts. He’s done the math and realized that once taxes and insurance costs are added, the price of the entry-level Nano rises to just over $3,000. For an extra $500, he says, he could buy a decent used car with a more powerful engine and air conditioning, which the Nano won’t have.

(via Passport)

Passport is of divided opinion about which state is most in danger of collapsing. While Patrick Fitzgerald points to the risk for Mongolia…

Following cries of fraud in parliamentary elections — accusations that were disputed by international election observers — hundreds of rioters, many of them drunk, attacked the headquarters of the dominant political party and the neighboring national art gallery on July 1. Fires were started. Five people were killed. More than 1,000 pieces of artwork were destroyed, damaged or looted.

Blake Hounshell advances the case on Yemen:

The failed state narrative, in which Yemen devolves into something resembling Somalia or Afghanistan, has also spread. Yemeni ministers, foreign aid workers, and journalists routinely predict an imminent demise, as food prices skyrocket, drought hurts harvests, the long-running al-Houthi rebellion in the north drags on, and riots erupt in the south over unresolved grievances stemming from the 1990 reunification of the country.

The Big Picture really should try to do a post about this. Even Passport’s rather small picture is impressive.

More than 10,000 people have been mobilized to clean up green algae that has invaded the Olympic sailing venue in Qingdao, Shandong, China. The Qingdao Olympic Sailing Committee estimates that the area will be cleared before July 15.

Apparently it’s going to China. Blake Houshnell calls a chart of China’s cement use “staggering,” while Joshua Keating points out the recent uptake in theft of India’s manhole covers is being blamed on China’s ravenous demand for iron.

Teddy Roosevelt’s famous model for diplomacy was “Talk softly but carry a big stick.” Barack Obama’s model for diplomacy is… Winnie the Pooh?

Mr Danzig [an Obama advisor] spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

(via Passport)