Kurt sent me a link to this Daily Mail article about cartograms of the world map redrawen with each country's size proportionate to demographic statistics like wealth, alcohol consumption, HIV, military spending, etc.

[Military Spending Cartogram]

After finding myself surrounded by banks and bars the last 3 months, I'm not at all surprised to see that Luxembourg, a country so tiny it's barely a speck on a global geo-political map, is relatively large on the Wealth and Alcohol Consumption cartograms because Lux is #1 in GDP per capita and #2 in boozin' it up.

It's also fascinating to see that Military Spending and Toy Imports are virtually identical while War / Death is the inverse of the two. "1st World" countries like the US build bombs and play with toys while the people of "3rd World" Countries die of war, famine and disease.

On Ten Amendments Day, May 7th, we come together in support of our Constitution, the freedoms it preserves, and the rights it protects. Why is there a need to support and promote the Bill of Rights?

Powerful forces are working to undermine the principles that have kept Americans free for 215 years and jeopardize the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Religious activists are seeking to install God in our government. On May 7th, the Ten Commandments Day Commission and millions of followers will lobby to replace the Ten Amendments with the Ten Commandments, replacing our civil rights with their religious preferences. Visit the Ten Amendments Day website at www.tenamendmentsday.org to learn about the Bill of Rights and the debates that went into the creation of our secular Constitution. You’ll find articles about the Ten Commandments and the current court cases attempting to force religion into the government, as well as other resources.

You'll stumble in my footsteps...

30 Days

Finally, a thinking man's Reality Show!!!

Morgan Spurlock, the director/star of the Academy Award nominated documentary Super Size Me has created an amazing new reality show that breathes new life into the hackneyed "fish out of water" formula simply by having a social conscience.

Spurlock challenges his test subjects, himself included, to spend not just a mile, but a MONTH in someone else's shoes. And while similar reality shows have been horribly exploitive and blatantly rigged for explosive confrontations by pitting polar opposites against one another*, 30 Days is an exploration of social issues through juxtaposition. Spurlock is trying spark debates, not fights, by transplanting a conservative mid-western homophobe into San Francisco's Castro district ("the gayest place in the world") and moving a devote Christian in with a Muslim family. Sure he lets his fish-out-of-water flop around a little bit in their foreign environments, but Spurlock hardly leaves them hung out to dry.

As the series creator and narrator, Spurlock is more of a spiritual guide than a puppetmaster for his guinea pigs and he demonstrates his humanity for everyone involved by prioritizing the pursuit of knowledge and mutual understanding over ratings-grabbing kicking and screaming. Spurlock ensures that his subjects learn from their eye-opening experiences by surrounding them with people who actively teach them about the differences between their worlds instead of merely parading around for the sake of being polemic. And in turn, Spurlock, the TV audience, and everyone who interacts with the subjects, are also learning about themselves.

Unlike most other reality shows, there are no winners and losers. The test subjects are NOT contestants. When Spurlock and his fiancée try to live on minimum wage for 30 days, they don't "lose" some sort of prize or money just because they are deep in debt at the end of the month, but rather, they become richer in the spiritual sense by gaining a broader understanding of themselves and their fellow working men and women. Again, it's all about the learning to become a better person by facing burning social issues head on.

The really really brilliant thing about 30 Days is that the show is very educational without being the slightest bit preachy. It's also highly entertaining, complete with genuinely tear-jerking drama and laugh-out-loud comedy. Of the first four shows, the second episode had some especially dramatic moments when a 34-year-old man tries to get back into shape with a regimen of growth hormones, diet, workouts, pill and testosterone injections at the expense of his liver, fertility and marriage. The first episode about living on minimum wage** is probably the funniest so far because it features Spurlock throughout and the man is just so damn hilarious. Many of the laughs in the other episodes come sfrom Spurlocks asides and commentaries, but one of my favorite moments in the pilot is when googles "free things to do in Columbus, Ohio" and finds this online Guide to Free Ohio Do-It-Yourself Fun for the Whole Family, which actually suggests visiting an animal shelter as a fun free activity while conceding that it might be "kind of a sad visit if you don't plan to adopt an animal..." Funnier still is that the site gives a "Winter Advisory" for bank tours, warning that "If you wear a ski-mask, take it off before entering the bank."

30 Days has replaced Penn & Teller: Bullshit! as my favorite new TV show ("favorite new" show meaning my favorite among the new shows that I've recently discovered as opposed to my "new favorite" show, which was and still is Family Guy because it continues to make me laugh so hard that I shoot milk out of my nose)

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NOTES:

* It looks like the latest exploitive reality TV show has been canceled before it even aired. ABC pulled the plug on their upcoming show Welcome to the Neighborhood after pressure from civil rights groups who found the show discriminatory because it made diverse families compete for a house in a white-washed neighborhood. The sadest part is this presumably bigoted show probably would've been a hit with the mindless masses of America. Luckily, 30 Days has seen pretty decent ratings. I hope it gets picked up for another season instead of that other reality crap. [BACK]

** The pilot episode of 30 Days is not only funny, but it also features an audio sample of the They Might Be Giants song "Minimum Wage". [BACK]

Michael Connally's Hydro-Foam Plane/Boat/Racer
http://www.michaelconnally.com

MC Frontalot
http://www.frontalot.com/music.html

Link: http://www.thepictureofeverything.com/

I've spent about an hour looking through all the characters and places that Howard Hallis doodled in The Picture of Everything... Incredibly creative and extremely exhaustive. I was trying to find characters that he hadn't drawn, like Nemo and SpongeBob SquarePants, but to my surprise, I discovered that he had an underwater section that not only had them both, but also Blinky 3-Eyed Fish and Gaz from Invader Zim. I'm like "HOLY CRAP!"

This was today's "Nude Tripp" link of the day, which I check regularly whenever I read Tripp's blog. He always has such great links, but The Picture of Everything really blew me away.

So I stumbled upon these pics of Women of the Israel Defense Forces by photogragher Ashkan Sahihi.

I'm not quite sure what sort of social commentary can be inferred from Sahihi's photos, but I'm inclined to think that he's trying to say more than just, "Chicks with guns... sweet."

Then again, his another of his photo projects, Armpits, seem to be aiming for juvenile reactions or shock value. For his Drug Series, he got his portrait subjects high on various drugs (Crack, Cocaine, Heroin, Marijauna, LSD, Psilocybin, Ketamine, Ectasy, Amphetamine, Hashish, and Mescaline) and then photographed their lit faces.

I found the Women of the Israel Defense Forces photos after reading about his Cumshot Series at Nerve.com (read the archived article HERE). I starting reading Nerve back in 1999 after seeing it listed as a favorite site of one of the Kids In The Hall (I think it was Kevin McDonald). Nerve isn't quite what it used to be ever since they restricted almost all of their content to a pay-only "Premium Service," and I don't pay for anything anymore except CDs, DVDs, and food.

As for my reactions to Sahihis photos, I defintely thought, Sweet, chicks with guns, but I also find myself frustrated that these women a forced by their government to take arms and serve in the military. At least I think that's why they're in the army. I know Israeli men are automatically conscripted when they reach a certain age. Kurt, Greg Zetsche and I hung out with a couple Israeli guys at the Red Rock bar on New Years 2001. They'd come to America as students and had already graduated, but didn't want to return to Israel because they'd be forced to join the Army. Even through a beery haze they were clearly scared of what the American government would do when it discovered that their student visas had expired and of what their native government would do if they were ever to return home.