The Snack Monkey on My Back

I've become addicted to Snapea Crisps and now the bodega on the corner stopped stocking them! I've been to Whole Foods, Harris Teeter and the little grocery store on U Street. No luck.

How could they do this to me? I'm going to have to find an underground supplier. If you find a bag, I'll pay any price! (Original only please; beggars can't be choosers, I know but I need the originals bad!)

Morons Galore

Not that you do, but if you needed just one more reason to hate the Republican party, here you go.

The RNC has removed the video from YouTube.

Found it!

Changing Climate

Another link proves that climate change is man-made and that it affects the most vulnerable among us.

"Climate change magnifies the interactions between disaster risk and poverty. On the one hand, it magnifies weather-related and climatic hazards. On the other hand, it will decrease the resilience of many poor households and communities to absorb the impact and recover."

There are solutions. We know what they are. We need the will.

Go Girls

Kuwait has elected its first female members of Parliament, the oldest in the Gulf. A giant leap for women in the region.

Vital Voices, my former employer, trained Kuwaiti women who have lead the way for women's sufferage and the right to run for office, including Rola Dashti.

The arch of justice is long, but it does bend. In small steps it is bending.

The Sweet Smell of News

The New York Times has a Perfume Editor. Do you think he and Alissa Rubin sit around comparing notes (no pun intended)?

Will the Scent Bureau win share a Pulitzer for their ground-breaking expose that the secret ingredient in Chanel No. 5 is woodchuck?

Friending Mohammed (PBUH)

This is another reason to love Facebook (cause you were looking for one.) Social networking sites are overriding the control of the state in many countries. It has been used to organize protest against some regimes, ex Egypt. And you thought it was only for organizing happy hours and keeping you from working.

So Nice They Named It Twice

A great gallery of photos of New York.

Bring It On

If Mr. Obama extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal workers, he would “provoke a furious grassroots reaction, reinvigorate the conservative coalition and undermine his efforts to portray himself as a moderate on social issues.”Gary Bauer

You wanna see a furious reaction if the president doesn't support benefits?

Thanks, Andrew Sullivan

Confidence

The General Social Survey finds that the only institution that has gained, and not lost the confidence of the American people in the last 35 years is the military.

What price that confidence?

Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight

Greatest Failure of Mankind

On his website, photographer Aaron Huey has posted photos of the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, including several shots of the bodies of those soldiers in their caskets.

His point: "War is death. If we are to engage in war then we should have to stare it straight in the face, and call it by its rightful name. I think we need to be reminded as much as possible that real people are in those flag draped-boxes...War is the greatest failure of mankind. When I go to these funerals all I can see is failure. "

Look at the faces of those who pay for that failure. The dead have just become men, just left behind the high school gyms so many of these funerals are held in.

Happy Birthday

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born within a few hours of each other 200 years ago today. How profoundly both men changed the world.

How would they view the world today? An African American is president. Only forty percent of Americans ----forty percent ---- believe in the theory of evolution.

Both men would be shocked.

Another Lost Generation

“Where’s my son! Where’s my son!” one woman shouted. Soldiers took her to the children, but the woman said her son wasn’t there. The police also took several civilian corpses out of the building. Taliban Attackers Storm Kabul Offices NY Times

Another generation of Afghan children will grow up in the midst of the horror and sickness and soul crushing grief of war. This kind of war, that they are standing in the midst of. How close did those suicide bombers get to this child, this beautiful child whose only choice when he grows up may be to join them?