• YES!

    From McDonald’s Interactive Division:

    McDonald’s Interactive was formed four years ago to help the company adapt to new market conditions.

    “We began developing a simulation of the fast-food industry, for use by managers in developing market strategies.” said Division CTO Sam Grossman. “When we added a climate simulation module, it showed those strategies helping lead to global calamity.”

    “Management doesn’t seem to care, and we can’t sit back and fiddle while Rome burns, so our team has decided to break away from McDonald’s and do something about it,” said Grossman.

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  • The Yes Men strike again!

    From Gamasutra, via boing-boing:

    According to online reports, the UK-based International Serious Games Event, which deals with games for educational, corporate training, and other uses, this week hosted its conference in Birmingham, England, complete with a session by Andrew Shimery-Wolf, Strategic Comm. Mgr at fast food giant McDonald’s, on “McChange: Serious Games from Training to Corporate Social Responsibility.”

    Shimery-Wolf claims to be part of an organization named McDonald’s Interactive, which has apparently announced that it “is striking out on its own from parent company McDonald’s.” “We can no longer stand by while McDonald’s corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin,” said Andrew Shimery-Wolf, co-director of the former Interactive Division.

    However, as is clear by the apparent text of Shimery-Wolf’s speech at the legitimate International Serious Games Event, someone has been hoaxed – the speech claims that McDonald’s has run an elaborate ‘serious game’ to help work out the future of its business.

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  • From The Salt Lake Tribune:

    The photographs in this gallery were taken by the children of polygamist Winston Blackmore, who were fascinated with Tribune photographer Trent Nelson’s cameras. Their play on a summer day at their home in Lister, British Columbia is easily comparable to a school recess that starts in the morning and doesn’t end until it’s time for bed. Dozens of brothers and sisters join for water fights, jumping on trampolines and riding bikes through the green grass and tall trees of the family’s farm.

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  • From the New York Times:

    Mr. Newman photographed so many of the world’s most prominent and accomplished men and women that it sometimes seemed as if there was no public figure that his lens had left untouched. But there were subjects he generally steered clear of: actors, actresses, rock stars and anyone he considered, as he put it, “famous for being famous.”

    “I hate the whole idea of celebrity,” he said.

    Here.

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  • From Fat Wreck Chords:

    Streaming and downloadable sampler, featuring Against Me!, Dead to Me, Good Riddance, Lagwagon, The Lawrence Arms, The Loved Ones, Love Equals Death, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, NOFX, None More Black, Only Crime, Randy, The Sainte Catherines, Strike Anywhere.

    Here.

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  • From the Digital Journalist:

    For a more perceptive and profound patriotism immerse yourself in Burk Uzzle’s latest book, A Family Named Spot. Here you will find some of the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies that make this country great, all displayed unabashedly and without apology or sentimentality. They are also portrayed without disdain but with great affection. On the lid of his camera case Uzzle has inscribed the words “Celebrate, don’t incriminate,” which is an indication of his affinity with his subjects, whether they are people or landscapes.

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  • Mario Ruiz, from the Digital Journalist:

    I was told I would have five days in Iridimi. We would arrive by plane via a United Nations cargo jet on Monday and leave Friday morning, giving me only four days to shoot at the camps. I had no idea whether that would be enough time to get what I needed. With the amount of pressure I placed myself under it would prove to be enough time.

    Here.

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  • Christoph Bangert, from the Digital Journalist:

    There are maybe eight or nine foreign photographers still trying to cover this conflict from the civilian side. I am by far not the bravest, most committed, talented nor longest-serving of these photographers; I am just one of them. The majority of the pictures that are coming out of this country are taken by Iraqi photographers working for wire services or foreigners who are exclusively embedded with the military. Of course, I am one of them and am sometimes embedded with either the American, British or Iraqi military and so are most of my colleagues.

    I used to be the only blond guy in Baghdad. Well, at least that’s what I felt like. Now I am the only blond guy in Baghdad that dyed his hair black. I look like a fool and maybe I am one. Maybe it’s foolish to be here and tell oneself that it is important to do so. Maybe it actually makes sense.

    Here.

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  • From The Online Photographer:

    For his limited-edition Leica, Ralph Gibson chose the MP, but with the angled rewind crank; 35, 50, and 90mm framelines, each visible singly in the finder; matte black finish to be “less conspicuous” but then some notably conspicuous red leather; and he eliminated the preview lever. (And note the absence of the ever-controversial red dot.) It’s pleasing that for the $5,500 it costs (which doesn’t cover the 50mm Apo-ASPH. lens he favors) it does include the braided leather lanyard camera strap of the type Ralph has always used.
    Here.

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  • With a photo by Edward Keating (is he back with NYT?), from the New York Times Magazine:

    Late one afternoon in February 1978, according to sworn testimony, a squad of revolutionary guards arrived at the home of Edgegayehu Taye, a 22-year-old civil servant. They told her she was wanted for questioning. She went without protest. The guards pushed her into the back seat of a Volkswagen and drove her some distance, until the car reached a corrugated metal gate marked by a sign that read: “Higher Zone 9.” The guards took her into the main office. Edgegayehu was ordered to strip naked and was bound with rope at her wrists and knees. Then the guards ran a pole through the loops in the rope and hung her between two desks, like a pig on a spit. They lashed her with plastic cables.

    Over and over again, the man behind the desk, the one with the afro, asked her, “Are you a member of the E.P.R.P.?”

    Years later, when she saw the man standing by the elevator at the Colony Square Hotel, Edgegayehu wasn’t sure it was Kelbessa at first. He’d gotten older, gained some weight, lost his swagger. He certainly didn’t seem to recognize her. Then Kelbessa smiled widely and greeted her, and she knew for sure. “The voice,” she told me. “You don’t forget the voice.”

    Here.

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  • From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids:

    To signpost the wicked world she was being brought into, first, Kehinde lost her twin sister two days after birth. Three weeks later, she lost an arm owing to alleged staff negligence at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. And worse still, her parents are HIV positive.

    Here.

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  • From the New York Times:

    “He’s strong, and he doesn’t waver,” said Jaren Olsen, 18, a freshman at Brigham Young, the nation’s largest religiously affiliated private university, who is from Albany. “I like that he is for the family, that marriage should only be between a man and woman. And the war, we need to finish what we started.”

    Another student at Brigham Young, Danielle Pulsipher, a junior, offered blanket approval of the president. Asked to name which of his actions as president she liked most, she was hard-pressed to answer.

    “I’m not sure of anything he’s done, but I like that he’s religious — that’s really important,” Ms. Pulsipher said.

    Here.

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  • From Manowar:

    MANOWAR – the only band to have headlined the Gods Of Metal 3 times – is proud to announce they will make their 4th headlining appearance on the 2007 edition of the festival in Italy on Saturday, June 9th.

    Along with MANOWAR will be special guests RHAPSODY and HOLYHELL bringing you the Demons, Dragons & Warriors World Tour for a day that you will never ever forget!

    Here.

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  • From the New York Times:

    Beachland has kept up with the times. Mr. Mancino was skeptical when video games came out, but now they dominate the place. Devotees of Dance Dance Revolution, a game of quick feet and moving arrows, have held tournaments there.

    These days, though, there are not many havens left for a machine like Big Bertha, a floppy figure with orange-yarn hair, a flowered tent dress and an insatiable appetite for plastic balls. For each one thrown into her gullet she gains 25 pounds (and spits out a ticket). “I’m not on a diet, so feed me!” she called out to a boy pelting her uvula. “Faster! Feed me faster!”

    Here.

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  • From the New York Times:

    It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of the country’s most popular Internet bulletin boards from a husband denouncing a college student he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack.

    “Let’s use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons,” one person wrote, “to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband.”

    Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.

    Here.

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  • From the International Crisis Group:

    Ten actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated in May 2006, according to the new issue of CrisisWatch,* released today. Afghanistan saw its worst violence since 2001, with  some  350 insurgents, civilians and security personnel killed across its southern provinces. There was heavy fighting in  Mogadishu, Somalia,  between the Islamic Courts militia and the U.S.-backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, leaving over 200 dead. Tensions increased in the Democratic Republic of Congo ahead of 30 July elections, and clashes in Ituri province killed 60. Security collapsed in Timor-Leste after renegade soldiers clashed with security forces. In Israel/Occupied Territories, mounting violence in Gaza fuelled by a power struggle between Fatah and Hamas loyalists raised fears of civil war. Lebanon experienced its worst cross-border fighting in six years after rockets were fired into northern Israel in apparent response to the killing of an Islamic Jihad group leader in southern Lebanon. The situation also deteriorated in Brazil, Mali, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

    Here.

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  • The Few and the Proud: Marine Corps Drill Instructors in Their Own Words

    The Few And The Proud; Marine Corps Drill Instructors In Their Own Words, by Larry Smith.
    [rating:4/5]

    Okay, if I gave out C+ or B-, this would be there. The book contains profiles and interviews of various drill instructors from the WW2 era to today. Some of these are very interesting, and others are not.

    “There was a kid, some bohunk kid from Mississippi or somplace who didn’t know his left foot from his right, kept marching badly. The drill sergeant walked over, very cordial and sweet, and said to him, ‘Are you having trouble, keeping the rhythm of the march?’ And the kid said, ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ He said, ‘Well you seem to be having trouble knowing which foot to pivot on when we’re making those fast turns.’ And the kid said, ‘That’s right, Sergeant.’ So the D.I. lifted up his foot and he slammed it down on the kid’s foot and he said, ‘Now, pivot on the one that hurts.’ I never forgot that.”

    That one was from the 50s. Here’s a guy from the present day, Will Post:

    “The thing that really ticked me off in Kosovo was, you know, they called this crap peacekeeping. How do we keep peace? We kill the bad guys. If you act up, we’re going to kill you. After what happened in Kosovo when the bad guys shot at my guys, I believe that 99 percent of other units would have let go and just radioed in. But I asked the Marines, I didn’t know if any of my guys were hit yet, and I asked them, Can you see them shooting? They said yes. Are they shooting at you? They yelled back to me yes. I said, ‘Kill ’em. Kill ’em.’ And that’s why we wound up doing what we did. Peacekeeping to me is horseshit. It only takes one bullet to end your war, and I’ll be damned if it’s going to happen to one of my Marines on my watch because of being restrained. And those Marines understood: My God. This ain’t peacekeeping. These people are trying to kill us. You turn your back on them for one minute, they will kill you. Damn right.”

    Another bit from Will Post:

    “As for Iraq, a lot of my friends, first sergeants and sergeants major are over there, and they report the Marines are just performing superbly. Nearly all Marines are chomping at the bit to get over there. You don’t hear them complaining about deployment time. This is what they came in the Marine Corps to do. They’re warriors, dealing with snipers and IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices; I’m old school. I call them booby traps, because that’s what they are. Mostly, it’s very frustrating, but they’re doing their job wonderfully, and as usual 99.9 percent of the stuff that’s going on don’t make the papers, just the bad stuff. The people over there absolutely love them.”

    The Few And The Proud; Marine Corps Drill Instructors In Their Own Words, by Larry Smith.
    [rating:4/5]

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  • From KSL:

    Bill Tibbitts, Anti-Hunger Action Committee: “Extremely frustrating, very sad.”

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  • From the Guardian:

    The report also shows that in a single year checkpoints run by a warlord in a medium-size town can earn him more than $4m (£2.1m).

    There, in dollars and cents, lie the reasons that Somalia has remained a byword for anarchy for so long. Chaos equals cash for those with guns.

    A functioning national government, which President Abdullahi Yusuf is trying to install, would spell financial disaster for the warlords and the cartels.

    Here.

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  • Please read the comments below. They are more informative and correct than this article may have been. It seems obvious to me that the article I quoted here is not up to snuff. -Trent

    From the Guardian Newspaper:

    “First, I cut off your head. Then, I cleave you in two.” Eugene, my travelling companion and a fluent Japanese speaker, translated as a 450 year old samurai sword sliced a curving arc around his body, inches away from his face and chest. The words, and the sword, belonged to Hamamoto, a 70-year-old sensei and founder of the Hamamoto fighting style. The Hamamoto style, we soon discovered, is extremely violent and quite unsporting: he beckoned Eugene to kneel opposite him and encouraged him to bow. Mid-bow he suddenly unsheathed his sword and told him: “Now I take the butt of my sword and break your chin. Then I disembowel you.”

    More Here.

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