“The bookstore is that way.”

The North Korean dissident website New Focus International carried an interesting story on Monday. According to insiders, Kim Jong-un is getting into Hitler. In fact, the tubby tyrant digs the Nazi dictator so much that he’s started gifting copies of “Mein Kampf” to his inner circle. Having emulated Stalin for decades, it’s time for the regime to embrace a new villain.

Tags: books & writing, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Long, long ago – for about 15 minutes – Steven Seagal was a big deal in Hollywood. His movie “Under Siege” made a lot of money. But that was pretty much it. Next came a string of big-budget flops followed by a lengthy and ongoing twilight spent in straight-to-video purgatory.

Tags: art & entertainment, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Howdy y’all- the robot LBJ keeps us yukkin’, pic from here

There are 13 “presidential libraries” in the US. These are grandiose shrines that contain the papers and records of every president since Herbert Hoover. Tomorrow the library dedicated to George W. Bush will open in Dallas and all living presidents will be there to celebrate – rather like one of those episodes of Doctor Who where the current incarnation meets with his past selves to foil a Dalek invasion.

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Don’t worry, there are no dinosaurs.

This Friday, April 19, will mark the 20th anniversary of the fire that brought an end to the Waco siege, after a 50-day-long standoff between David Koresh, his followers and the FBI. Seventy-six people died in the inferno, and the name “Koresh” is forever infamous as a result. What most people don’t know is that a century earlier, there was another Koresh – also American and just as messianic, if less randy. [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, religion & philosophy, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I had been in the US for five years before I encountered my first white supremacist. It happened outside a gas station on a rural back road in Texas, next to a used tire lot that I suspected was a front for skullduggery. We didn’t exchange any words; we just walked past each other, scowling. How did I know he was a white supremacist if we didn’t talk? The “White Power” tattoo on his gut was a dead giveaway.

Tags: race & culture, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Who, me? (Pic by AFP/Carl de Souza)

I arrived in Russia in 1997, when Boris Berezovsky’s influence was at its height. The year before, he had managed to get Boris Yeltsin reelected, and we need not think too hard about how or why that was achieved. In those days Berezovsky was often in Chechnya, and I couldn’t keep up with how much stuff he owned. Then Putin became president, and shortly afterwards the “Godfather of the Kremlin” was out.

Boris Berezovsky. I was stunned. Hadn’t the editor done a quick web search before paying this “Russian businessman” to write his screed? Evidently not, although I now understand that serial failure to grasp that not every opponent of Putin is a brave Solzhenitsyn is characteristic of the UK and US media.  [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Ballet: sometimes it’s better if the curtains stay closed.

For somebody who’s not remotely interested in ballet, I’ve watched a lot of ballet. I acquired my experience by accident, after getting to know a Moscow bank executive in the early 2000s. He had a box close to the stage at his permanent disposal, and offered me free access. Figuring I might as well see what this jumping about in tutus lark was about I went very often, for a year or so.

I can’t recall much of what I saw now, and probably remember the weird ones better than the good ones. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Communism: it sucked.

The Berlin Wall was a powerful symbol for me of the rottenness of Marxist regimes as I grew up in the 1980s. After all, no country in the capitalist West ever built a wall to keep its inhabitants from escaping. Thus when I first visited the city in the late 1990s, one of the first things I did was visit the East Side Gallery of graffiti art, sprayed on a surviving stretch of the Wall.

Still, I never thought I’d see a news report about a developer trying to tear down a chunk of the Wall so that he could build some apartments for rich people. But that’s what happened last week, until a crowd of protestors showed up to stop it from happening. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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See y’all later… it’s a fine art, knowing when to quit.

This Monday Pope Benedict XVI surprised the world by resigning, making him the first pope to do so in 600 years. Immediately the media was abuzz with countless instant articles on the legacy of “God’s Rottweiler”. Most of it was written by non-Catholics, none of whom have a dog in the fight, but that didn’t stop them from rambling on.

A non-Catholic myself, my response was nonetheless admiration- that the Pope knew when to call it a day. As spiritual leader of 1.2 billion people, it must be difficult to get up in the morning and deal with all that responsibility when you’re geriatric and sickly. I can barely be bothered with it myself and I’m 47 years younger than Benedict and spiritual leader of nobody. But power has a strong allure, and very few people surrender it willingly. [Read more →]

Tags: religion & philosophy, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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“Space,” as 1970s prog-rock legends Hawkwind once told us, “is deep.” But that’s not all, for as Yuri Gagarin also informed us, it can be a disappointing place for religious believers.

You see, the first cosmonaut apparently took a peek out of the porthole while he was in orbit to see if the Deity was floating about. When he didn’t see an old man with a white beard anywhere nearby, he allegedly declared: “I don’t see any God up here.”

Tags: animals, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Apparently the world is going to end today. That’s what the Mayans said anyway, though I’ve heard this might be a misinterpretation. Ah, well- it was nice while it lasted, some of the time. The world, that is.

I’ve long been fascinated by The End. In fact I once spent a year reading exclusively about the Apocalypse, and my head was duly filled with the wonderful and terrifying visions of countless prophets and messiahs. Some of these fellows were dangerous, most were not. After a while I developed a fondness for certain seers. Here are some of my favorites. [Read more →]

Tags: religion & philosophy, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I don’t feel angry at Adam Lanza. I know that makes some of you cringe, but I don’t have room in my heart right now for anger. I’m too filled up with pain for the lives that were lost, admiration for the heroic acts of our nation’s teachers, guilt for not doing enough to keep things like this from happening, and fear for what the future may hold. If Adam Lanza were standing in front of me right now, I would wrap my arms around him and tell him I’m sorry.

[Read more →]

Tags: race & culture, trusted media & news by Jessica Alfreds
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For a moment, put aside the debate over gun laws that started before the dead had been properly counted in Newtown, Connecticut, and help me understand why there are so many crazy people walking around. I’m not talking about odd people, or angry people with bad tempers. I’m talking psychotic-you-can-see-it-in-their-eyes-from-fifty-feet-away crazy. Jared Loughner. James Egan Holmes. Seung-Hui Cho. These guys didn’t exactly hide their craziness from the world.

Tags: trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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In the local media this past month, some attention devoted to the 25th anniversary of the rescue of Jessica McClure from a well in southwest Midland, Texas, where she was trapped for three days. That attention also provided for me an opportunity to connect with a one-time co-worker of mine – someone I have not seen for many, many years – and gain a renewed appreciation for how much smaller our world has become through the world wide web.
[Read more →]

Tags: technology, trusted media & news by Jeff McDonald
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A robbery of a Chinese restaurant was thwarted because the workers didn’t understand English. Apparently, neither does the writer of the story for the Tampa Bay CBS affiliate. Check out this paragraph:

According to the Sentinel, one robber, wielding a gun, pointed the gun against the head of one male worker. From there, the robbers attempted to bang against the cash register to get it to open, but would accidentally set off the gun in the process, according to police. The men would leave the premises empty-handed.

Maybe someone who can read will edit the article, so here is a screenshot from November 8, 2012.

And can someone explain why the article is accompanied by a stock photo of a Chinese restaurant? Have people reading the story never been to a Chinese restaurant? What pertinent information is conveyed by the image of the Chinese waiter carrying four huge plates of shrimp?

Tags: language & grammar, trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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The first few months

“Historic! Obama becomes first black president to win re-election”

“History! Obama becomes first black president to be inaugurated for second term”

“Obama makes history again, becoming first black president to eat a cheese omelette after winning re-election”

After that

“Unemployment unexpectedly rises”

Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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Bucks County is still the worst in Pennsylvania for power outages. Many schools are closed again today. There is a rumor that Peco is out of transformers. I hope it’s just a rumor. We have had power the entire time, but our neighborhood is the exception. Our family and friends don’t know when their power will return. Each day we hear of another nearby area getting power, so maybe it’ll all be restored soon. Fortunately, some restaurants and stores (supermarkets) near us have electricity now and we didn’t have much flooding because there was less rain than predicted. People here aren’t facing the terrible conditions reported in Staten Island and elsewhere. Here is Peco’s outage map.

Tags: environment & nature, trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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When I heard the Jersey shore was destroyed, I initially blamed Snooki. Then I found out that a Giant-Franken-Super-Mega-Storm of the Millennium known as Hurricane Sandy had hit the East Coast, which would explain why most of my county doesn’t have power and schools have been closed all week. It seems that Snooki isn’t to blame for the people who keep coming to my house to eat hot meals and charge their phones. Still, if you’re wondering what the cast of Jersey Shore thinks about the situation at the Jersey shore, well, first, shame on you. But I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.

They think it’s bad.

Screenshot from CNN.com on November 1, 2012.

(See what I did there with “situation“? Very clever. But  not as clever as the writers at CNN, who tell us that the cast is “devastated” at what in the headline is described as “devastation.” The cast is devastated over the devastation.)

Tags: television, trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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Tags: politics & government, trusted media & news by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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A young elephant attacked a handler at an Australian zoo. I wish I knew what else happened, but much of the article is incomprehensible.

For example, we’re told that at “the time of his birth in March 2010, the young male weighed 116 kilograms and one year later tipped the scales at just over 500kgs.” That’s great, but no one knows what a “kilogram” even is. And “kgs”? Come on, journalists — write in English. How many pounds are we talking about here? I’m not a human unit converter. Is 500kgs a lot? Literally no one on Earth knows.

And what about the journalist’s duty to question the zoo staff for not seeing the obvious? “The zoo said it doesn’t know what provoked the calf. ‘It’s unknown at this time why the young elephant challenged the keeper.’”

Unknown? We all know what caused this. The elephant has crazy eyes. He was doing bath salts.

Tags: animals, trusted media & news by Scott Stein
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