The Decliner

The Economist has great art direction in general, but the letter below sent in by a reader in Poland makes a good point: they do go overboard with “ethnic representation” in some of their accompanying photography.

The editorial mindset is still sometimes one of seeing Eastern Europe as the fringe frontier — though, in many ways, it still is in terms of foreign capital investment (and that is their perspective, after all). Though it’s worth noting that they are one of the few magazines that bother to cover a wide spectrum of issues that aren’t so much as a blip elsewhere, like Latin American politics (that don’t involve heads of state meeting with Fidel Castro or the FARC).

It was a day packed with excitement in Casper, Wyoming, since the Casper Star-Tribune received a letter containing an unidentified white powder on Friday:

Casper police identified white powder found in an envelope addressed to the Casper Star-Tribune as cocaine.

It was roughly one half of a tablespoon, on a dollar bill.

An odd thing to be mailing out in this recession, and the fact that it was intercepted by customer service may have ruined someone’s day:

The letter was sent to the Star-Tribune in care of an employee.

None of this is particularly unusual in itself (newspapers get mailed lots of white powder!) save for the fact that the Star-Tribune’s Managing Editor, Ron Gullberg, put together an evacuation blog:

I’m blogging from a mobile phone in my buddy Tris’ Jeep Commander in the parking lot of the Casper Star-Tribune. We’re listening to Sirius, and I want to slap him for continung to change from the Springsteen channel. We’ve been evacuated since a little after 9:00. They’ve just begun to test the suspicious powder found in an envelop mailed to the Star-Tribune.

…The firemen on the scene are tending to the needs of the displaced employees … Now Eminem is playing on the radio.

Seriously. No. My body will cease to function if it is not constantly permeated by wi-fi signals, and maintained in an artificially cooled/heated environment, constantly sheltered from the elements.

The Guardian’s Tonya Gold asks us (fun read):

What would happen if you awoke one morning and everyone was dead? Or if, less melodramatically, the world as we know it - and our teetering financial systems - ceased to function? What if you awoke to find your bubble-wrapped, gilded life was over, and for good? Could you survive?

Again, no. I would be one of the first to go. Actually, this entire article is kind of a huge downer.

You can steal food from supermarkets but the rotting corpses on the floor of Sainsbury’s [supermarket] will be fetid fonts of infection. And if you try to sit out the plague in your home, you could burn or drown. After a lightning strike, fires will begin and they will not stop.

Fetid fonts.. ok! But yeah, when the fires come, I’ll lie helplessly on my side, and just wait.

But, seriously, Tonya, thanks for the tips.

And if I meet other survivors? Be cautious, she advises. “They too will be lonely and paranoid. Of course you are stronger in a group. But you do not know whether they will help you or just steal your resources. Trust no one.”

Groups. Check.

Her final tip is to construct a small craft and sail to Canada.

When he’s not busy invoking the gospel of globalization, Mr. Friedman meanders aimlessly through his expansive estate, reciting random portions of prior columns (I added the bold for extra pedantic effect):

Indeed, it may be — I presume nothing — that you have never heard of either city. Doha is the capital of Qatar, a tiny state east of Saudi Arabia. Dalian is in northeast China and is one of China’s Silicon Valleys because of its proliferation of software parks and its dynamic, techie mayor, Xia Deren. What was stunning is that I hadn’t been to either city for more than three years, and I barely recognized either one.

So many nouns! My insoles are made of silicon valleys. Hey, but seriously, his Re-boot America column made the holiday season a little brighter.. somehow (?).

Let’s visit Friedman (via mnftiu):

(side note: please, don’t actually visit him).