Comments on: Cuba, Mexico, USA

By: Happy Birthday, Torture! « Heavy Metal Librarian

Happy Birthday, Torture! « Heavy Metal Librarian — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:28:02 +0000

[...] a completely unrelated story, 53% of Americans now hate America. Hmm, looks like we’ve discovered where the enemy really lies. I’m thinking we may need [...]

By: Babs

Babs — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:11:27 +0000

“…arguing over which raindrop is biggest while you’re standing in the middle of a monsoon.”

The one that hit my left eye. ;)

Editor: I have to agree that the poster on Brad DeLong’s blog got it right.

“Deep poverty is a man old at 50 sleeping on the floor of a mudbrick hut while a single chicken scrabbles in the dirt. It’s row after row of two-story cinderblock shacks clinging to a hillside, without glass in the windows in the freezing nights, no electricity, no running water, unpaved alleys for streets, nothing but people in rags in the doorways. It’s a family digging for potatoes with sticks in a stony field. It’s a mother filling a water jug 100 yards downstream from a latrine. It’s a filthy child eating a half a roll from a garbage can. It’s a twenty-year old woman lying on a mat, coughing her lungs out from tuberculosis. It’s a cardboard coffin eighteen inches long. Deep poverty is hideous. No one who has ever seen it could call it picturesque”(Bloix, February 26, 2008.

The only thing I have to add is that cinderblock buildings are warmer than your standard wood framed houses. They may be ugly, but it takes at least 100 years for cement to disintegrate.

By: Dayv

Dayv — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:54:12 +0000

Arguing over what Megan McArdle meant when she wrote something stupid and trivial is like arguing over which raindrop is biggest while you’re standing in the middle of a monsoon.

By: Uli Kunkel

Uli Kunkel — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:05:05 +0000

You Know what's stupid? Everything I don't understand.

By: You Know Me

You Know Me — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:10:16 +0000

Sean Peters, BFD. If you’re not interested enough in the subject to follow the links why bother posting a comment?

Editor, I am finding this all quite amusing.

By: The Editors

The Editors — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:35:13 +0000

I do a lot of bitching on the internets about poorly constructed graphics …

It’s important to have hobbies.

By: Sean Peters

Sean Peters — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:26:26 +0000

I do a lot of bitching on the internets about poorly constructed graphics, but this one takes the cake. This is the single most baffling chart I’ve ever seen. Some country names and flags surrounded by unlabeled numbers and colored triangles. It’s very pretty, but more or less meaningless.

And in the event anyone plans to tell me that I should go to the linked article(s?) to figure out what all this means, well, with all due respect, blow me. If it’s worth cutting and pasting this data into your web site, it’s worth cutting and pasting the god damned legend. If you can’t be bothered to bring along the information I need to interpret this graphic, I’ll be damned if I going to go chasing it down.

By: iforfi

iforfi — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:16:58 +0000

If you’re going to rural Mexico, take some notebooks and pencils along to give away.

If you’re going to Belize, take a shitload of lures and tackle to give to your guide.

It costs us nothing, but is invaluable to a local kid.

Who they gonna remember? Someone who gave thing something neat? Or someone who bombed the hell out of them?

By: iforfi

iforfi — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:10:34 +0000

I desire to be deafened by an 8500 #, 10 mpg, one pax carrying F350 before it flattens me in the parking lot.

Sounds like Nirvana. I’d be so happy.

Maybe my heirs could move to Costa Rica.

Working with entitled people can jade your perspective, don’t you know?

By: The Editors

The Editors — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:04:15 +0000

I think the United States of The Moon gets a perfect score.