Readings: Market Fundamentalism

According to market fundamentalism, all social activities and human interactions should be looked at as transactional, contract-based relationships and valued in terms of a single common denominator, money.

-From The Crisis of Global Capitalism by George Soros

Barcelona Win the Champions League '09

What a great game that was. And believe it or not, Wayne Rooney proved himself to be incredibly gracious in defeat: "Barcelona are a brilliant team and in my opinion Andres Iniesta is the best player in the world. Against a team like that if you don't take your chances, they will punish you. That is what happened. It is very disappointing and the feeling at the moment is not a good one. We are hurting. But we have to forget it and look forward to next season."

It should be easy to be gracious when you've already won the premier league and the carling cup but it's clear that many Man U players believed that they should be European Champions regardless of the loss to Barca.

Danger from South of the Border

The swine flu? OMG that is so two weeks ago.

Seriously, what is it with people in the US and freaking out about things crossing our southern border. If it's not some disease, then it's people, or criminals or even bees.


Killer bees that is.

(image via percussivity)

Artifacts of Racism

Just wanted to take this opportunity to remind people how overt racism in the US just a few generations ago.



These "licenses" were very common in the 40's and were not a joke. Race relations really used to be that bad.

Globalization: Boom and Bust in Saipan

I had a couple of comments to add. First, Adam Yamaguchi's comment, "this reminds me of Detroit" was on point. I lived in Michigan for years and even before the housing crisis much of Detroit and other manufacturing towns had already been abandoned.

Second, do most Americans even know that Saipan is part of the American territories? Saipan is in fact the capitol of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands.

Third, gender doesn't seem to be addressed much in this video. The garment workers as you can see are largely female. The massive influx of female garment workers has completely thrown off the sex ratio of the island.

Forth, Saipan and its efforts to circumvent US trade laws were directly involved in the Jack Abramoff scandals. Remember that guy?

Cold Rain

Last night, I dreamed about French snow. I was at some kind of ski lodge or something and a large number of my friends and acquaintances were all mingling outside. Someone I've known for a long time told me that she was getting married and wondered if I could teach her to speak french so that she could impress her husband.

I told her that French is a really easy language to learn. All you need to know is:

1. "devoir" is the verb to indicate that something is nessessary. "je dois" means "I must."
2. "Il pleut" means "it's raining."
3. "Il neige" also means "it's raining" but in this case it's a kind of a strange cold rain.

I'm not sure why I considered those phrases to be the entirety of the French language or why I choose to translate "neige" as "a strange cold rain" instead of the more common "snow."

This Kick is Ridiculous

(via milkandcookies)