What Caught My Eye Today

Oil Spill - For those of you keeping track, we are up to day 100 since the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. BP managed to cap the damaged oil well on day 87 and is close to completing drilling of the relief well to permanently seal the gaping hole.

Cuba - I had to read this story twice, because I was certain that I had misread part of it. See if you agree. In a rare, tacit acknowledgment that something is awry with government policy, Communist Party officials announced that up to a million jobs were to be cut from the public payroll. Full employment has long been a cornerstone of Cuba's system and almost everyone works in some capacity for the government. But Cuba has been carrying a massive budget deficit and can no longer afford to pay the one in five state workers who do practically nothing. All Cubans will continue to receive free health care and education, as well as subsidized utilities, rent and food. Okay, so did you pick up on it? Maybe I'm taking the definition of worker a bit to literally. I was under the impression that a worker is someone who performs work. So you can understand my confusion when Cuban officials report that 20% of its workforce doesn't actually do any work.

Suriname - We have another first time appearance on the blog, this time from South America. Honestly, how many of you would have picked the right continent? I guessed Africa, myself. Suriname's parliament has elected a convicted drug trafficker who is currently on trial for multiple murders as its new president. Nice. Admittedly, I suppose it is a matter of perspective. I know people who seriously contemplated emigrating out of the United States, after we elected a Democrat to the White House. Desi Bouterse seized power in the former Dutch colony in 1980 and 1990 through military takeovers. He is presently on trial for the 1982 murders of 15 political opponents. Bouterse is one of Suriname's most popular--and wealthiest--politicians and recently compared himself to Nelson Mandela saying he was being persecuted because he "fought for the poor." Dude, I'm pretty sure you are on trial for killing 15 people. Then again, I'm no legal expert. Maybe murder is okay where you come from, but fighting for the oppressed is a big no-no.

Vatican - Let's see what pearls of wisdom have come out of this neck of the woods. The Vatican has revised its rules for disciplining priests accused of molesting children, doubling the statute of limitations for bringing allegations and calling pedophilia a "grave crime". How big of them. Of course, this might have been more warmly received if it included guidelines compelling bishops to report such abuses. Still, the Catholic Church is historically slow to act, so this does represent a rather significant step for the it to take. I am, however, at a complete loss to explain this next bit. The revised rules also list the ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same procedures and punishment as sex abuse. Come again? I fully admit that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I cannot fathom how these guys can compare the possibility of a female priest being a reprehensible as the molestation of a child by a priest.

Progress - In most contexts, progress is usually associated with something desirable, but is it really? I wonder. Consider the following measures of progress:

• Active blogs in 2000: 12,000; in 2010: 141 million
  Including this one.
• Daily Google Searches in 2000: 100 million; in 2010: 2 billion
  Big deal. I still cannot find what I'm looking for.
• Reality TV shows in 2000: 4; in 2010: 320
  Lucky us.
• Books published in 2000: 282,242; in 2010: 1,052,803
  Sweet. More crap that I will never get around to reading.
• Daily letters mailed in 2000: 207.88 billion; in 2010: 175.67 billion
  Really? That many people still use stamps? Fascinating.
• Daily emails in 2000: 12 billion; in 2010: 247 billion
  I'm willing to speculate that most of those are unsolicited or unwanted.
• Text messages in 2000: 400,000; in 2010: 4.5 billion
  Okay, this one is easy. I'd be willing to bet money that 99.99% of those are unsolicited or unwanted.
• Daily newspapers in 2000: 1,480; in 2010: 1,302
  In fairness, I'm not sure how much news these newspapers actually contain anymore. I find editorials and ads don't warrant the purchase.
• iTunes Downloads in 2000: 0; in 2010: 10 billion
  Kind of makes you wish you had loaded up on that Apple stock ten years ago, doesn't it?

No doubt that progress has been made, but is this the progress we wanted? I wonder.

What Caught My Eye Today

Fred's Note: You might need to bear with me for the next few days. I quit Mafia Wars cold turkey this weekend and could quite possibly suffer from severe withdrawals. On the bright side, my actual Friends and Family might see fit to unblock me now that I'm no longer bombarding them with all those annoying notifications. And now, to the headlines.

Afghanistan - We kick off today's posting with a shocking revelation. The war in Afghanistan might not be going as well as we thought. Wikileaks (click here) released more than 91,000 classified Afghan war documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history. So like, does that mean there was one even bigger than this one? Yikes. The leak threatened to create deeper doubts about the war at home, cause new friction with Pakistan over allegations about its spy agency and raise questions around the world about Washington's own ability to protect military secrets. The White House called the disclosures "alarming." I love how the release of 91,000 secret documents is classified as a leak, sort of in the same vein as that the millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is called a spill. And who isn't comforted by the fact that the White House finds this whole episode "alarming." 91,000 secrets, people! I'm thinking you might want to be more than just "alarmed." Despite the furor over the publication of the reports on the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, the information did not reveal any fundamentally new problems in the war effort. Well that's a relief. It's good to know that even with all this noise, we still have no clue how to bring this war to a successful conclusion.

OIl - BP is jettisoning CEO Tony Hayward, whose verbal blunders made the oil giant's image even worse as it struggled to contain the Gulf oil spill, and will assign him to a key job in Russia. The move was being made more than three months after an oil rig explosion set off the spill and less than two weeks after a temporary cap finally stopped the oil from leaking. Boyfriend is getting shipped off to Siberia. You read about this sort of thing, but assume it to be hyperbole. I guess sometimes hyperbole rings true. The job suggests BP still holds more faith in Hayward than much of the U.S. public and political establishment do. Analysts consider the Russian venture one of BP's crown jewels; it accounts for a quarter of the company's production. Yeah, whatever. Dude is still going to be freezing his knickers off in Siberia.

Traffic - Every once and awhile, we Americans need a reminder that things could always be worse...even these days. This particular reminder comes in the form of crappy commutes. Turns out, our traffic jams pale in comparison to some of the big boys. IBM recently released its first global Commuter Pain study which surveyed 8,192 motorists in 20 cities on six continents. IBM compiled the results of the survey into an Index that ranks the emotional and economic toll of commuting in each city on a scale of one to 100, with 100 being the most onerous. The index is comprised of 10 issues: 1) commuting time, 2) time stuck in traffic, agreement that: 3) price of gas is already too high, 4) traffic has gotten worse, 5) start-stop traffic is a problem, 6) driving causes stress, 7) driving causes anger, 8) traffic affects work, 9) traffic so bad driving stopped, and 10) decided not to make trip due to traffic. The cities scored as follows: Beijing: 99, Mexico City: 99, Johannesburg: 97, Moscow: 84, New Delhi: 81, Sao Paolo: 75, Milan: 52, Buenos Aires: 50, Madrid: 48, London: 36, Paris: 36, Toronto: 32, Amsterdam: 25, Los Angeles: 25, Berlin: 24, Montreal: 23, New York: 19, Houston: 17, Melbourne: 17, Stockholm: 15. Now if you were paying attention, you would have noticed that the U.S. managed to place just 3 cities in this list, with Los Angeles getting top honors in 14th place.

Liechtenstein - I'm a bit late on this story, but its still worthy of mention if for no other reason than for the set of stones Snoop Dogg has for even attempting to pull this off. Rapper, Snoop Dogg, directly approached the government of Liechtenstein with a request to use the whole nation as a video set. Officially known as the Principality of Liechtenstein is about 61.7 square miles in total, and sports a population of 35,000. It is renowned for featuring some of the most picturesque nature in the region. And maybe it's just me, but doesn't the name make you think of a really good German beer? Snoop sought the country out because he needed tons of outdoor space to shoot the new clip for a currently unknown song. Snoop’s request was turned down, only because officials didn’t have enough time to properly get things in order to meet the rapper’s timetable. They actually gave serious consideration to this? Dude, Snoop is da man, straight up.

Potpourri - More headlines from the category of "Seriously???"

• Scotland - Diageo, the maker of Johnnie Walker whisky, has dedicated 2 million barrels of whisky to its employee pension plan. The whisky valued at $645 million, will ensure that retirees get a check even if the company were to go bankrupt.
  Surely, you can appreciate the genius at work here. Even if the price of whisky were to plummet, would the beneficiaries really care? They could always drink themselves stupid and never know the difference. Brilliant, I say.
• Oil - Oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process. BP was getting a tax deduction of $225,000 a day for renting the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
  Lemme see here--$225,000 times 84 days that the rig was spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico--.that's a cool $18.9 million. Not a bad haul for totally hosing hundreds of square miles of the local ecosystem. And honestly, what is the deal with all these tax breaks? Exxon Mobil and Chevron cleared $69 billion in profits--profits, not revenue--in 2009. Do those guys really need tax breaks to help them keep the lights on?
• Alcohol - In the Bible Belt, One in nine counties in the U.S still prohibits the sale of alcohol, but in Texas, Tennessee and Kansas, dozens of "dry" counties have voted to go "wet" in recent years.
  A dip in moral values? I think not (that ship sailed a long, long time ago). No, I'm thinking the prospect of taxing the piss out of booze to fill county coffers was incentive enough.
• History - 26% of Americans didn't know that the country won its independence from Great Britain. Some of them named a different country, ranging from France to China to Mexico.
  I'm not sure which is more tragic here: the fact that 26% of American didn't know or that I'm surprised the percentage isn't higher.