I was going to say hypocrisy’s not a sin, but perhaps that’s not the right word. Let’s say duplicity. Duplicity is not necessarily a sin. Sometimes ideals need to be out there as a matter of faith before they can be made real. Sometimes you can’t do what you say but it’s important to say it anyways. Though only sometimes. Human ideals have always outstripped our means. The religious faiths we claim to follow, the family values we claim to uphold, no one really follows them. If, however, we limit our words to describing what we do, we don’t create another world (however illusory) that is better. In a strange way, simply saying these things and reinforcing them socially does have a way of making them a reality over time.

Wikileaks has 3,166 documents on Sri Lanka. They’re releasing docs in batches, so we probably won’t see for months, but it should be interesting. The US was actually not that involved in the war and probably not party to much useful information, but perhaps their disapproval for the Rajapaksas would come across. I wonder wonder. This Wikileaks stuff is interesting, but I wish someone would leak what’s going on inside this government or deeper inside Arab governments rather than more information on what is already one of the more transparent government around. Anyways, these documents will come out, so keep yourself and myself posted. As you can see from above, there is info on seemingly every country on earth (the image is only part of the map) and it makes one wonder why the US kept such sensitive information in such a leaky place.

Seeing as we all walked out of Africa and spread, borders are inherently illusory. So, as a thought experiment, this map has been circulating which shows nations given new land based on population. India, for example, gets to occupy Canada while Canada gets Pakistan. Pakistan is moved to Australia. We, sadly, lose Sri Lanka and are sent to what looks like Uzbekistan (uncool). Where people live, of course, has more to do with chance and war than mathematical sense, but it is interesting to see how the world would look if it was divided up equally (34 people per mi²).

My friend Nigel has been DJing a show on Kiss FM for weeks now but I have no idea how to use an FM radio. Instead he sent me a link to his podcast, which I’m enjoying very much. Music in Sri Lanka is bad for me because it’s either the same retro songs, or the same 90s songs, or the same house songs, or the same baila songs. And same, sadly, is often bad. I think the music doesn’t move on because people don’t want it to. At one wedding Nigel was DJing decent stuff and people came up and asked him to play something the old people could dance to. Which is pretty standard. But anyways, these podcasts I can listen to while I’m working and I dig it.

I am a sucker for crime movies, and Un Prophete is reportedly one of the best. My report is, yes it is. I was watching Jay-Z on the Daily Show and he said what people primarily relate to in art is the emotions underneath (I love my mother, hate my father, etc). Despite the vulgarity of the subject matter, I think that is the value of the crime story as parable. Despite how civilized we think we are, life for humans has historically been tough and crime films are one way to access that archetypical (per Campbell) image of hero as someone who struggles. Doing things the right was is a struggle, but not in as much of a ‘Me Against The World’ sense. In seeing people that do wrong, sometimes that hero is more clearly defined. Plus I like the vulgarity.

The Wikileaks Cablegate drama is, on the face of it, interesting because of tidbits like “Qadhafi relies heavily on his long-time Ukrainian nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska, who has been described as a “voluptuous blonde.” What is more interesting is this observation by Issandr El Amrani: “listening to US politicians on the radio says that Wikileaks “is not being patriotic” betrays a complete misunderstanding of what’s at stake here, and an assumption that foreigners should be patriotic to the US. They don’t: they’re not American. The disconnect here is between an American perception of the US as world leader and non-American rejection of this, probably in good part to a loss in moral authority in the last decade.”

Yesterday I wrote something in the Leader about how societies can collapse, including Sri Lanka if it follows the Chinese model, or China itself. “In his study of how complex societies collapse, anthropologist Joseph Tainter found a pattern. Civilizations from the Mayans to the Romans tended to follow a curve of development, a curve that often turns into a cliff. Essentially, they find a good resource and begin to grow. In order to manage this growth, they become more complex. As this resource runs out, that complexity becomes a burden and the society collapses.”

Watched Eat Pray Love last night (watch online, direct link). It is interesting, though I do kinda agree with the review in Bitch magazine that called the book ‘Eat Pray Spend’. They were perhaps unkind call it ‘Wealthy, Whiny, White’. In this story, a woman leaves a marriage that makes her unhappy, goes to Italy to eat good food, goes to India to learn meditation, then goes to Bali to learn from a medicine man and find love. While what she finds is interesting, the whole trip is underwritten by a book publisher, a fact which is completely unexplained in the film. As such, it makes interesting viewing, with some insights here and there, but there is little actual struggle against the odds in the film. It’s mostly a struggle within herself which, to people that actually struggle, may seem spoilt.

I’m not a boxing fan, but Filipino Manny Pacquiao is very interesting. I first heard of him in this excellent GQ article, and he’s now in the news for beating Antonio Margarito and literally breaking his face. He has essentially beat everyone in his weight class and is moving on up, still beating everyone. The Cotta fight is especially powerful. The article by Andrew Corsello is well-written and hilarious, especially since the initially quote from Manny is simply “Yaaah.” As Corsello sums it up, “I think about how Manny Pacquiao’s life is a cyclone of madness and dysfunction and karaoke and tango dancing and fucked-to-death lions and grown men vying to fluff his rice and cut his meat and massage his thighs and sing harmony parts on Beatles songs.”

Journalist JS Tissainagayam was recently jailed for 20 years hard labor for what he wrote and only released by Presidential pardon. This, via Reporters Sans Frontiers, is (I think) his first interview. In it he talks about the state of censorship, and the people who now accept that state through self-censorship. I found this part almost boring as it is so, essentially, obvious, but perhaps that’s because I’ve now become part of the pathology of the thing. He also talks about how international pressure may have spurred this release, and how economic and political support should be contingent on media freedom. Despite working in the media, I actually don’t agree. In (by global norms) moderately repressive governments like this, engagement may be more productive than unenforceable boycotts. But I also haven’t been in jail for over a year.