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Pickings today is different because of long photo essay and Dave Barry’s end of the year review.
The first item will make you like your job, whatever you do. It shows the shipbreaking operations of India and Bangladesh.
There are places on our planet, which literally resemble hell on earth… a place that you’d think was conceived by minds of apocalyptic science fiction writers… but is however quite real…
A place, closed off to the tourists, a place where no photographers are allowed to go… and those that do, get their cameras taken away and arrested by the police…..
Today we shall travel to Chittagong, Bangladesh. Chittagong has a territory of 144 000 ??² and population of 144 million people. Several beaches around the area bear strange ships, parked in sand as seen from space:
This is a city of ShipBreakers. …
Speaking of shipwrecks (sort of), London Times reporter describes to his UK readers Caroline Kennedy’s disastrous debut.
Caroline Kennedy’s quest to enter the US Senate has suffered a self-inflicted blow in a series of interviews in which she can only be described as . . . um . . . excruciatingly, you know, unerudite.
During a series of meetings with the New York press, one of which was recorded and is now being admired on YouTube in all its ineloquent awkwardness, the daughter of President Kennedy was vague, unconvincing and displayed a potentially ruinous verbal tic.
In one sequence, lasting 2 minutes and 27 seconds, Ms Kennedy, 51, revealed that she had inherited none of the eloquence, energy or charisma associated with other members of America’s foremost political dynasty: she used the phrase “you know” no fewer than 30 times.
Asked to justify her candidacy – after days spent with handlers advising her on how to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant New York Senate seat – she began in a dull monotone: “Um, this is a fairly unique moment both in our, you know, in our country’s history, and, and in, in, you know, my own life, and um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges, our economy, you know, healthcare, people are losing their jobs here in New York obviously um, arh, you know. . . ” …
After shipbreaking and shipwrecks, Dave Barry entertains with his end of the year review.
How weird a year was it? Here’s how weird:
O.J. actually got convicted of something.
Gasoline hit $4 a gallon — and those were the good times.
On several occasions, “Saturday Night Live” was funny.
There were a few days there in October when you could not completely rule out the possibility that the next Treasury secretary would be Joe the Plumber.
Finally, and most weirdly, for the first time in history, the voters elected a president who — despite the skeptics who said such a thing would never happen in the United States– was neither a Bush nor a Clinton.
Of course, not all the events of 2008 were weird. Some were depressing. The only U.S. industries that had a good year were campaign consultants and foreclosure lawyers. Everybody else got financially whacked. So, we can be grateful that 2008 is almost over. But before we leave it behind, let’s take a few minutes to look back and see if we can find some small nuggets of amusement. Why not? We paid for it, starting with . . .
JANUARY . . . …