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Fruit Fetish

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If you are a member of the Super Rich, and I hope you are, you probably buy your fruit in Japan. Because no one does fruit like Japan, except maybe a pricycle (look it up).

I started following Japanese fruit fancies back at the turn of the century, when I didn’t sound like an old person by using phrases like “turn of the century.” That’s when I first heard about square watermelons.

Japanese farmers started growing watermelons in the shape of a square whose dimensions fit exactly those of the standard Japanese refrigerator shelf. The convenient shape took up less space in what was prized real estate, given the size of Japanese fridges.

My initial reaction was, “Square watermelons? That’s so fucking weird.” But now, after thinking it through and recognizing that we here in the United States make mini watermelons, my reaction is, “Square watermelons? That’s still so fucking weird.”

These cubic crops are not cheap. They go for about $82 a square melon. For comparison, Tokyo’s real estate average is about $7,600 a square foot. So really, your watermelon should be paying more for taking up all that space.

Which is probably why a pair of Japanese cantaloupe melons sold at auction last year for $15,730.

Slightly more affordable are bananas. Gokusen bananas sell for about $5.70 each. To be considered worthy of this “premium” produce moniker, the banana must be at least 23 centimeters in length and weigh no less than 200 grams. (According to Dole, the average banana weighs around half that).

Some surveys list Japanese men as being on the lower end of the penis size scale, and one has to wonder if this banana fetish is correlated in any scientific way. Ok, one doesn’t have to wonder, but I will anyway. Where are the data?

I feel like I am digressing. Where was I? Penises. No, wait. Fruit.

The Gokusen bananas come in their own box and are often given as gifts. Which should make Justin Timberlake and the Lonely Island proud.

You also can’t be just anyone to pop a Japanese cherry. In some shops, where fruit is laid out in cases like jewels in Tiffany’s, a box of cherries can go for nearly $160. So you better really want that juicy flesh.

Why do the Japanese love their fruit? Why do the French love their wine? Why I am writing this? Actually, because initially I was going to bring this round to some argument about inequality and luxury goods. Clearly that didn’t happen. I got sidetracked, probably right around the time I mentioned penises. But on the bright side, I can write about inequality another day and for now go get angry that my watermelon keeps rolling around my fridge.

The Porn Ultimatum

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The Colorado House this week unanimously passed a bill to outlaw revenge porn, which means I can no longer blackmail my ex-lover by posting nude pics of him on the Internet. So there goes Friday night’s plan.

The risqué rumpus began when Colorado Springs resident and balloon with hair fuzz Craig Brittain launched a web site that posted nude and explicit photos of people without their permission. Critics named it “revenge porn,” but Brittain called it entertainment, saying his objective was to “be big and make money.”

Admittedly, it’s a good business model, especially when you refuse to remove any photos unless the victim pays the Take Down Lawyer $250. An investigation found that Brittain and the Take Down Lawyer used the same IP address and likely the same computer. Extortion? I say he’s just creating operational efficiencies.

Brittain’s real stroke of entrepreneurial genius was linking the photos to people’s Facebook and other social media profiles and to the victim’s phone number. Brittain calls this “background information” to help viewers really get to know who they are looking at and explains that he tells the site’s users not to call the phone numbers.

That’s great customer service, because how is a user supposed to search for that kind of information when he’s got one hand under the desk and the other reaching for a Kleenex?

In an interview with Denver’s local CBS news station, Brittain repeatedly stated he does not want to shame the people whose photos are on his site, which is presumably why—when asked by the journalist why he refused to remove their pictures when they asked—he calls the victims flagrant liars. Because nothing says respect like calling someone a flagrant liar and posting nude photos of them online without their consent. #Winning!

Hats off to Colorado for pushing this bill forward (although all other clothing and accessories will stay on, since I don’t want to risk any freaky photos popping up anywhere). The legislators and attorneys who helped shape this bill have renewed our faith that you’re not all high.

Who wants to live forever?

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Apparently a lot of people. The search for immortality has been around longer than most of us have been alive. Last year, National Geographic published an article about living to be 120 years old. My first reaction was: Who the fuck would want to live to be 120 years old? The guy behind me in the line at the grocery store agreed, which is as scientific a poll as I need to know this is the talk of nutters.

How many years would someone have to work to support that long of a life? Most people are already bored with their jobs. If we had to work twenty or even thirty more years inside cubicles, we might all commit suicide. Which would kind of defeat having the ability to live to 120.

The fact that I think like this shows I am already too old for this society. I sound like a grumpy old man. And I am only in my early forties. Imagine how pissy I’d be 80 years from now.

If I could be 20 years old for 100 years, I might think differently about this.

Russian millionaire Dmitry Itskov does think differently about this. He wants to upload his brain to a computer so his consciousness will be immortal. As sci-fi as this sounds, we’re moving in that direction.

This poses some interesting questions and gives a whole new meaning to living in the clouds, as I assume one’s consciousness would be backed up on a cloud somewhere and possibly duplicated (will that make me bipolar?).

Do I have to be tech-savvy to be able to do this? If I am not tech-savvy (as I said, I am in my forties and I don’t understand why tumblr and flickr refuse to use the letter e and often ask if I need to show real enthusiasm every time I say Yahoo!), will I experience my own hell, a never ending Code 404 Error or a spinning beach ball for eternity?

And would we all get the same speed for our uploaded brains? Or would some people still have dial-up? And would those of us on fiber optics be allowed to make fun of them for being slow, or would that be politically incorrect?

It’s not likely I’ll be uploading my consciousness. But if I do, I sure hope my brain gets a million Likes.

Guns Everywhere

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The south has given us yet another reason to love it. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal yesterday signed into law the Safe Carry Protection Act, more commonly known as the Guns Everywhere Bill. It is now legal to carry a firearm almost anywhere in Georgia. And I say, Great move, Georgia!

Governor Deal told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “People who follow the rules can protect themselves and their families from people who don’t follow the rules.” And he is absolutely right. As the NRA says, the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And for all of us in the room that is getting shot up, we can seek solace in knowing we can now dodge the bullets of thirty guns held by good guys, rather than just one held by a bad guy.

And in case that wasn’t sport enough, the law allows hunters to put silencers on their guns. Because nothing is sadder than watching a baby deer flinch at a loud sound just before she sees her mother drop dead from a gunshot. Too bad this wasn’t in place a few years ago. If Dick Cheney shoots someone in the face in the woods and no one hears it, did he really get shot?

The law also forbids police from asking someone with a gun if they have a permit for the gun, unless that person is committing another crime. Talk about awkward. Imagine assaulting someone at gunpoint, only to realize you left your permit at home.  

Revealed: NSA has a Shitty Business Model

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Among the worst revelations in this week’s scandal involving the National Security Agency and its capability to spy on Americans is what a shitty business model it follows.

“I mean, Facebook went public and made billions of dollars thanks to its access to my private information,” said George Sneed, an expert in tech company business models. “NSA is already public and yet it is constantly begging for money from Congress and crying about the sequester. Surely NSA could do a better job than Facebook with the ads I see in my news feed?”

Marketing expert Joe Franklin agreed. “Let’s face it, we all click that ‘I Agree’ button without ever reading twenty-five pages of crap written in six-point font telling us these companies can sell our information. NSA is being a little pussy. It should try to get in on that action. I’m a taxpayer, which makes me a stakeholder. I’d like to see NSA make some bank off this info. Maybe then we could all pay fewer taxes. That would totally show those terrorists!”

“They have all that information and they’re not selling it? They just hold on to it?” asked Tim Otto, a man on the street. “Uh, hello? Capitalism? Isn’t that what freedom is about?”

Others, like Amanda Wilkes of Maryland, were pleased to learn their government was capable of accomplishing something. “After watching a do-nothing Congress for so long, I was losing hope that the government actually functioned at all,” she said.

Also Revealed: NSA Spies

Edward Snowden, the ironic hipster responsible for bringing the scandal surrounding NSA’s shitty business model to light, let drop more revelations today. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, he revealed that the United States has been spying on China and Honk Kong for years.

The Chinese government responded to this bombshell with a collective sigh of a billion people. “Phew!” said a Chinese government spokesman. “We thought that building in Fort Meade was a clandestine Apple factory and the United States was plotting to take away our jobs. We are so pleased to learn that the NSA actually spies.”

Snowden, wearing a “You Don’t Know Me” t-shirt, acknowledged the irony in his hiding in China. “It seemed like a good idea when I was fleeing with four classified laptops,” he said, pushing his hipster glasses up on his nose. “I figured with all these documents I had a pretty good insurance policy and could yap all I wanted about free speech and authoritarian regimes intruding on our private lives. But hiding out in hotel rooms gives you time to think, you know. Now that I’ve had some time to read Chairman Mao’s Red Book, okay, I see it now. Yeah, it’s kind of funny. Maybe I should have paid more attention in history class instead of playing Dungeons & Dragons.”

Snowden meanwhile has hired a marketing firm to help brand him as a hero, whistleblower, and patriot, after some critics called him a traitor. “I did not see that coming,” he said. “After WikiLeaks and Manning, it seemed so trendy, I figured everyone would just get behind me on this. So I was a little surprised by the reaction of some people. But this marketing company is really helping me out. Good thing I have so much information to sell. Not sure I could afford to hire them otherwise. But I am confident the Snowden brand will be big. The Chinese, at least, have expressed interest.” 

AQ has an HR Problem

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This article by the Associated Press is pretty funny. OK, there’s the serious stuff, like a terrorist carrying out terrible kidnappings and the like; but that Moktar Belmoktar hated expense accounts and never answered his calls? That’s a testament to bureaucracy run amok. The document from which this information comes–found in Timbuktu by the AP–is a fascinating view into branding and franchising terrorist groups. A topic which, by the way, I tackle in my book. If you find this article interesting, you’ll love my book. So stay tuned!

Total Disconnect

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A new theme is emerging in many books coming out these days about war zones and other unstable regions: the yawning chasm between directives handed down by First World cubicle dwellers and the realities faced by workers on the ground.

One I just came across is Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails, by Christopher Coyne. Full disclosure: I haven’t actually read this book yet, as I just discovered its existence. But this review, by Peter Van Buren, who has suffered his own disillusionment with nation building, makes me think it’s a must-read.

As Van Buren points out, Coyne’s book outlines how “internal political rewards drive spending decisions, not on-the-ground needs. A bureaucrat, removed from the standard profit-loss equation that governs businesses, allocates aid in ways that make Himself look good, in ways that please his boss and in ways that produce what look like short-term gains, neat photo-ops and the like. The Man is not incentivized by a Washington tied to a 24 hour news cycle to take the long, slow view that real development requires. The institutions The Man serves (State, Defense, USAID) are also slow to decide, very slow to change, nearly immune from boots-on-the-ground feedback and notoriously bad at information sharing both internally and with each other. They rarely seek local input. Failure is inevitable.”

This is the same theme of my book, Victor in the Rubble, where our hero, Victor Caro is trying to catch a terrorist. But Victor faces more challenges from his own bureaucracy and its short-term objectives than from the terrorist group he is chasing.

Maybe we’ve hired too many consultants. I feel like everything has been boiled down to metrics that look great on a Power Point slide but have no connection to the often messy reality on the ground. And the same metrics are applied, no matter the situation and with no input from the field. A recipe for failure, indeed.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Let me know!

 

Islamic Extremists in the Sahel: Why We Should Care

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The takeover of much of the Sahel by Islamic extremists barely registered with Americans, with the exception of a minor blip back in January when France decided to intervene militarily and the U.S. agreed to provide intelligence support.

Since then, this region of western and northern Africa has disappeared from the U.S. foreign policy priority list. Washington policymakers have hardly noticed the fact that al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is now verbally threatening France and giving the go ahead to its adherents to go after French targets anywhere in the world. Just last month, a car bomb exploded in front of the French embassy in Libya. AQIM was likely responsible.

To most Americans—and most policymakers, apparently—this all seems very far away. I recently attended a conference where the overwhelming majority of “experts” on the region said AQIM had taken the al-Qaida name only for branding purposes and does not have the ability or desire to take on international targets. Its priority, they said, was regional influence.

Years ago, way back in the 20th century, an Egyptian doctor named Ayman al-Zawahiri wanted to take down the Egyptian government. That was his sole aim: to take down a secularist government in his home country. But as the years went on and he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the mujahedeen were fighting the Soviets at the time, he developed the idea of the far enemy: that dictatorships like the one in Egypt were being propped up by the U.S. and as such, the U.S. was the true enemy.

Very few people thought a group of mujahedeen in the middle of Afghanistan could threaten the United States. And then we had 9/11.

AQIM is more than just a ragtag Islamic group in the desert that took on the al-Qaida name for brand recognition purposes. Many of its fighters have fought in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. And they all know, having seen Zawahiri—now the head of al-Qaida since bin Laden’s death—the way to international recognition is to threaten and hit the United States.

And they have already likely done so, by the way. These are almost certainly the same people who attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the ambassador and three other Americans.

And many of them probably already have French or British passports, making travel to Europe and the United States incredibly easy.

Nobody thought these people could plan a 9/11-style attack from Afghanistan. And now policymakers seem to be ready to exhibit the same kind of ignorance, choosing to believe AQIM does not pose a security threat to the United States (despite its success in Benghazi). This is short-sighted and I hope President Obama’s Africa and counter-terrorism policymakers push the Sahel to the top of the priority list.

What do you think? Should the Sahel be a foreign policy priority for the United States? Send me your thoughts!

Props for Karin Tanabe’s The List

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I’ve just finished reading the book The List, about a DC journalist and her quest to make a name for herself in Washington’s overflowing power smorgasbord. The author, Karin Tanabe, was a reporter at Politico, that most inside-the-beltway of publications that has grown to set the media (and often political) agenda of the nation’s capital.

Tanabe clearly has a great sense of humor and a handful of self-deprecation to boot. Through her affable voice, she captures the incestuous nature of DC and its navel-gazing culture. She adds to the realism with some badly dressed bureaucrats who are enthralled with their own power. (I find Washington to be the frumpiest city I have ever been to. But many Washingtonians think that adding a badge on a lanyard makes a polyester suit classy.)

Many of her descriptions of trying to interview important people in the so-called halls of power brought me back to my time in the mosh pit of Washington journalism. I discovered that the halls of power were more like the halls of high school, with every wannabe prom king or queen manipulating the masses for votes, often using the most childish tactics. This is a place where legislative correspondents speak as though they are saving the world, rather than opening mail from constituents.

It is this same culture that I try to capture in Victor in the Rubble. While my manuscript deals with an intelligence officer, the overall theme is Washington’s inability to see beyond itself.

Check out The List. And take a Sneak Peek at Victor in the Rubble.

And send me comments about both, or either, or anything at all. Even if it’s just to tell me it’s raining where you are. Where are you, by the way?

Judith Miller’s Absurd Take on Boston

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Judith Miller’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “How to Stop Terrorists Before They Kill,” is just as bad as you think it would be.

In its basest form, Miller’s article contrasts the New York Police Department’s robust counterterrorism program with Boston officialdom’s jester-like handling of the Boston marathon bombings. She even goes so far as to state, “some terrorism experts say that the attack…may well have been prevented entirely had the perpetrators lived in New York City.”

Leaving aside the questions of who “some terrorism experts” are, Miller’s own questionable track record as an expert reporter, and the article’s completely ridiculous title, this piece is both meaningless and mean. It pits New York against Boston in the aftermath of a tragedy so bad that even the Yankees came out with support for Boston.

Miller’s article is so full of such subjunctive phrases as “almost surely would have” and “would likely have,” that even a politician’s response to sexual allegations sounds more straightforward.

She also quotes experts who have a stake in pimping for New York’s program, since they helped build it. They play Monday morning quarterback like pros, saying things like, “[Tsarnaev’s] behavioral changes alone—never mind his overseas trip and Russia’s warning to the FBI that he was a radical—would have been more than enough to trigger NYPD scrutiny.”

Sure, maybe. Maybe not. Let’s not forget that the would-be Times Square car bomber only came to NYPD’s attention after some street vendors noticed smoke coming from the car.

And according to Miller, “In New York, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mosque quarrel and his sudden behavioral changes might well have been reported by concerned worshipers, the imam himself, or other fellow Muslims. The NYPD maintains close ties to Muslim preachers and community leaders, as well as a network of tipsters and undercover operatives.” There’s that subjunctive phrasing again, “might well have been reported,” falling well below any threshold of certainty. In addition, Miller fails to supply any evidence to say such relationships between law enforcement and the community did not (or do not continue to) exist in Boston.

She concludes, “Finally, there is the NYPD’s continuing effort to understand Muslim communities and follow tips and leads by sending plainclothes officers to mosques, restaurants and other public venues where Muslims congregate. This effort—which follows court-ordered guidelines—might have secured information preventing last week’s bombings.” Again, using her subjunctive phrasing, she fails to prove that such efforts did not take place in Boston.

It is true that New York has an incredibly robust counterterrorism program. The program has its supporters and its critics. But no matter what you think of it, writing an article that essentially sets New York against Boston in the sport of counterterrorism, as if New York is sneering at Beantown saying, “Ha-ha, we would have done better than you,” is just simply absurd.

Let me know what you think. Do you approve of the NYPD’s program? Do you think Boston  officials dropped the ball? Send me your comments!