The Bow and Grimace: Exploring the Human Side of a Globalized World: We'll do the work

For quite some time, we've been keeping a bookmark folder called "Interesting Articles" in our firefox browser. Every time we read an article, saw an interesting video, etc. which was, how shall we put it, interesting? We put it in this folder. We're news junkies, so we have a lot of media in the folder.

Until now, we didn't really know what to do with these articles, so we decided for the people who don't have the time the least we could do is present certain articles that hit us as important (and pertinent to the B&G of course).

In a sense, we'll do the work for you. We'll read all the world papers in the langauges we know, and we'll relay the stuff to you. We won't tell you to like the articles, though we will kindly suggest that our combined intelligence is far superior to yours, hence the articles are of great import.

Consequently, by reading the articles, we're certain that you will learn how we got so wicked smart.

These are not all of the articles, we'll try to put them up every so often. Let's say, 3.4 times a week, on average.

China

Remember that Simpsons episode when they go to China for Aunt Selma to adopt a Chinese baby? When they land, the planes in the airport are loading boxes of "Heartland Oatmeal" and "America's Choice Apple Pie."

Well, add Mexico to the list. Their Chili peppers are Chinese. They're not the only ones, Egypt's Ramadan lanterns are made in China....and so on.

The point here isn't to be trite and show that lots of things are being made in China, it's to show that China's production costs so little that even developing countries are losing jobs to Chinese workers.
Then again, your good ole American patriotism, probably made in China. Bill Hicks, could you elaborate?
There's some conflicting stories about how far Chinese familial ties have changed in the last decade. Are their parents finding it easier to choose a mate for their children? Or is it more like this?

Trends

Seeing shouldn't be believing. Though war is war, there's quite a bit of evidence to show that the world is becoming more peaceful, though at a slow rate. Yet, increased media saturation makes it harder to believe.
And here we were thinking suicide bombing was an Islamic thing.
With all those people who, for quite some time have been saying, "We need to act in a manner that will be at least acceptable to the international community," someone should have been listening. More often than not, though, the response was, "America doesn't need the permission of the rest of the world to do what's in it's best interest." Unfortunately, to a large extent, the rest of the world is in America's best interest. God bless a flattening world.
Afghan heroin addicts: with all that poppy it was bound to happen one day.

Current Affairs

Meanwhile in Iran, it's time for some basketball. Put in the "Great Satan." On one level, we don't get along. On the other, we're teaching them to play basketball.

Russia, too.
A good article from the Iraqi paper Azzaman about the cartoons.
Pretty good evidence that America is often a symbol of everything that is humiliating to people in the Arab world. To our knowledge, no Americans drew the cartoons in question, nor did any American newspapers publish them. However, American buildings are being attacked as a result.

For many, this seems to validate the cry that America was attacked for what it is and not what it does. We don't think so (see previous post about truce with Osama).
Bush, double standards? From Saudi Arabia?
We've sung our praises for Wikipedia in the past, but we don't like wikipolitics.

We're becoming less civilized

Do people really listen to Pat Robertson? Well, appartently some do. He has his own law school to teach lawyers to fight the "culture wars" in America. But, in his free time, Pat Robertson is duping good Christian bodybuilders.

If Jesus can't help you live forever, Pat Robertson's shakes will take a few years off.
If you thought Ashley Simpson was bad, take a gander at Prussian Blue. Lamb and Lynx, two white-supremist twins, are out to rock your Arian world.

We're becoming more civilized

African desolation and sexy Angelina Jolie, nice juxtaposition. If that's what it takes to get people to watch, fine. Jeffrey Sachs' book The End of Poverty has been referenced several times in the B&G. It's one of the most inspiring and hopeful economic books we've read. Not to mention that Sach's is like an economic James Bond, flying to communist countries and writing economic strategies overnight in smokefilled rooms, having meetings in the Kremlin, saving Bolivia, etc.
There's nothing Bruce Lee can't do. Even when he was kicking ass, Bruce was always a uniter.
For all those artists who want to romantic and say, "Music can heal everything," just be more specific, because it can fix some problems.