Monthly Archives: October 2006

22 Oct

Mardi Gras: Made in China

Show us your…beads. This documentary addresses the global production/consumption chain of Mardi Gras beads from a Chinese factory to the streets of New Orleans. As you might expect, the trailer contans some nudity.

19 Oct

Pronking Towards Bethlehem

The other day, one of my colleagues used the term potlatch. I assumed that a potlatch was just Liverpudlian for potluck, but he set me straight.
The hunter-gatherer economy of these North West Native American peoples was based on huge seasonal gluts - a wealth in berries and game plus the riches of the sea that [...]

19 Oct

Origin of WMD

Did you know the term “weapons of mass destruction” was coined in response to the bombing of Guernica? It didn’t refer to a class of weapons as much as to the strategy of their use against a civilian population. Some consider Guernica the first “shock and awe” campaign, though there are precedents in the theory [...]

19 Oct

The Onion on the DPRK

…North Korea joins an exclusive group of nations that spends a huge percentage of their GDP on nuclear weapons programs…