Mischievous Ramblings II

"We really shook the pillars of Heaven, didn't we?"

Big Trouble in Little China is coming back as a comic, with new adventures of Jack Burton starting in June!

Alive In Joburg

Internet Archive: Details: Alive In Joburg

A fantastic short piece about aliens in Johannesburg. Where is Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner when you need him?

Yet another example of how current digital tools allow great creativity at relatively low cost.

Warning Label Generator

Michael Yon: The Battle For Mosul IV

Michael Yon : Online Magazine: The Battle For Mosul IV

Some of the good that we're doing in Iraq.

I don't deny that some good is happening, but the price is awfully high. I don't think it's worth it. I think we could have done the good without doing nearly the harm -- to us, or to the Iraqis, or to the world at large.

Making Healthcare Work: Principles, Rules, Actions

How to Save the World has an extensive piece comparing the US and Canadian healthcare systems and how to improve the Canadian one.

Yeah, how to improve it, even though it's already so much better.

Why Canada’s Health Care is Better

Surgery Without Insurance

75% discounts for pay-as-you-go. Do you realize what that means? Doctors think 75% of the money they get goes to handling insurance paperwork. I thought it was only 40%.

Basic health care is a right here. Yeah, taxes are high, but not that much higher. Cost of health care here is less than it is in the US (on a per-capita basis), and only about 2% of Canadians ever go to the US for treatment. Waiting times are apparently comperable.

Health problems without insurance (actually, even with insurance) are a stone bitch in the US. I remember.

For All of Us who will have to carry US Passports

Electromagnetic Field Shielding Fabrics

Raw material for shielded clothing.

Amerika, Amerika, Fascism Comes To Thee

Civics Student...or Enemy of America?

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster."

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

"At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

She says the student was upset. "He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business," says Jarvis. She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

“My Name is John…”

This apparent takeoff (5 MB) on the Molson "I Am Canadian" ads is awesome! Unfortunately it looks like his web site is gone.

(update: it appears that this may in fact be a takeoff on the Apple "Switch" ad campaign instead. Unfortunately, the web site is definitely off the web and there seems to be no cache or archive anywhere.)

Venezuela moves reserves to Europe

Chavez: Venezuela moves reserves to Europe

Might be nothing more than one person voting with "his" money. But if it's the first domino, get ready for a really rough ride. Remember Krugman's analogy: US deficits and trade balance look a lot like Argentina's, only scaled up.