Aaron Weber

Lebanon’s Going to Shit All at Once

The Washington Post’s Anthony Shadid writes that Hizbullah (as we seem to be spelling Hezbollah these days) attacked Israel to make Israel treat Lebanon as though Hizbullah were running Lebanon, and hope that the appearance will eventually become the reality (that’s what Ezra Klein’s take is, anyway). And Hizbullah isn’t the government there, despite what people think. It’s a force, yeah, it’s there, like the IRA and Sinn Fein are/were in Northern Ireland, and needed to be reckoned with, even though they derived a lot of their support from places like, well, Boston.

It’s not as though most Lebanese really want Hizbullah or the Syrians running the show. They like it when Hizbullah does good stuff for them, and they aren’t exactly fans of the state of Israel, but mostly they want peace; they mostly want to get on with their farming and cafe-running and cedar-growing. This blockade put a real damper on the tourist season– great beaches and historical sites, a vibrant pop music scene…

My friend working with the UN for the summer is looking at an evacuation to Jordan, or possibly to the West via Cyprus, but it’s not clear how it’s going to happen.

The important thing is that the bombings have not let up on either side of the border, that people are spilling blood that doesn’t need to be spilled.

It makes me pine for cheerier subjects like global warming, coal, and slavery.

Practical Jokes of Pathology

Narcolepsy is one of those diseases that seems half awful and half tasteless practical joke, like Persistant Sexual Arousal Syndrome. Sure, it’s horrible, but a video of a narcoleptic dog is the sort of thing that animates a slow news day. And you know, of all the things that could happen, it’s not awful. It’s not as bad as, you know, snakes on a plane.

MySpace

SpaceCadetz links to the Worst of MySpace, but they haven’t really updated in awhile. So I’ve put together a few horrors I’ve come across in my promotional efforts on the StyleFeeder group:

Group Name: Winnipeg Hotboxers
Description: For all the cool kids in Winnipeg
Members: 1
Katie’s Layouts will crash most browsers.
Someone asking for HTML help with a message made of sparkly graphics.
Fashionistaz Galore has really annoying mouseover effects for all its links.
Miles is the narrator of a chick-lit novel. He is a dog. He lists his income at 250k+, and wants to meet horny dogs. He liks crotches. The author’s homepage also features a clueless introduction and a bio consisting of an interview between the narrator and the author. The dog narrator and the author. Did I mention that the book is semi-autobiographical?

Perspectives on Lebanon

Maybe you’ve been preoccupied with the Boston tunnel collapses or the Mumbai train bombings, but if not, you might have noticed that the long-standing animosity between Israel and Lebanon has heated up, thanks to perpetual troublemaker Hizbullah.

A friend of mine is doing aid work in Lebanon this summer and writes to tell me just how bad the situation is: her office is closed, so she’s reduced to paying for Wi-Fi at Starbucks.

That is, she’s not near the recent fighting (if you haven’t been paying attention, Hizbullah kidnapped some Israeli soldiers, so Israel dropped some bombs on southern Lebanon, where there is a strong Hizbullah presence. Hizbullah has started firing rockets back into Israel, and threatens to bomb Haifa if Israel bombs Beiruit. For background, see the Reuters chronology of Israeli/Lebanese conflict going back to 1968).

She reports that, at least for now, Beiruit seems safer than certain parts of Chicago.

News of the Obvious

In the Forbes list of overpriced places to live, Boston and environs score three of the top ten spots: Essex County, Boston, and Cambridge. To be fair, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose also got into the list, and they’re pretty much the same place too. Let’s count a single metro area as a single metro area, huh?

What Motorcycling Means to Me

Motorcycles mean freedom, power, speed, ostentation. They are expensive, dangerous toys. They are an instance of the technological sublime. But they are also promises. Riding a motorcycle is a promise to wear boots all summer long. It is a promise to be hot and sweaty when it is hot and sweaty out, a promise to get bugs and dust splattered all over you on dry days. And a promise to get wet when it rains.

Today, that meant very wet.

An Inconvenient Truth

“But there is something tragic, even a little pathetic, about Gore’s stubborn faith in the ability of facts and reasoned argument to save the world.”

The inconvenient truth is that we’re all going to die and nobody’s going to stop it. The inconvenient truth is that I am wasting carbon dioxide right now. The inconvenient truth is that facts and reality have nothing to do with policy and everything to do with pain.

MySpace meets Regicide

Via Jalopnik, several Tongan Royals were killed in car crash near San Francisco on the 6th. Allegedly, the accident was caused by a young woman out street-racing. My guess is that she was blinded by the horrible background on her MySpace page.

Is that too mean? It’s not the ugliest MySpace page out there, I know. But she’s getting charged with vehicular regicide. You gotta make a joke of some kind.

Friday Evening Links

Oh, some of you may have stuff to do tonight, but I am blogging it up in style at home. Since the World Cup is ending this weekend, you may be in a soccerish mood. I suggest that you have a look at a classic Monty Python soccer sketch courtesy of Pito Salas, and a soccer-themed watermelon carving from this gallery of carved fruit, courtesy of Gethen.

Patent Headache Medicine

CNN blogs about the Friendster Patent. No wonder the Friendster investors just put more cash in.