My friend Navin Weeraratne is a master of the Facebook photo album as art form. This is his most recent work, a photo interview with an Uzbek prostitute, told through captions. I haven’t included all the photos, only two. It’s a great story, well told. Search for local prostitutes accounts for a large amount of Google traffic into this site, but it’s rare that anyone actually talks to one. Great work by Navin.

Following TamilDiaspora on Twitter is a guilty pleasure of mine. He recently linked to an actually sensible dialog on a Canadian TV channel. It’s striking how the young people from both sides have basically come around to a common place. A positive, forward looking place. Also striking that the older people still seem intent on fighting the old battles.

FirstPost has run an interview from KP saying that Indian political parties used the Tamil cause for votes. Well, duh. And the LTTE used them. It was a mutually exploitative relationship. I liked FirstPost when it came out, but they have some rather loose standards for a news site. This article, for example, says that this is KP’s first interview since the war ended in 2009. It’s definitely not. Off the top of my head he’s given interviews to:

I just finished reading Dune. It’s pretty good. Very good actually. I’m coming off of Ender’s Game (all tension and build-up) and the constant violence and suspense of Dune was a thrill. Dune is also a very deep book, drawing on a holy book that combines the three monotheistic faiths plus. It also plays like a modern political parable, what with the people addicted to a natural resource and being dicks about it. I won’t review the book, it’s worth a read, I think it’s the best selling sci-fi, so just give it a read if you so interest [sic]. These are a few thoughts I had.

My old nemesis Sanjaya Senanayake has done some interesting infographics on the SL budget. Namely, why we don’t spend on teachers and yet spend millions on protecting cows, preventing alcohol, etc. Please note that I haven’t check the numbers, but they look about right. The one above is a bit off in that it compares Mathata Thitha spending for a year vs. salary demands per month. Actually, that’s very disingenuous in that cutting the program really couldn’t pay for increments. It’s still a very interesting way of getting a point across about government spending using Facebook and funny visuals.

I was reading about these immortal jellyfish. Apparently they do it by reversing sexual maturation. Basically, sex kills. This doesn’t necessarily transition into anything, I just thought that immortal jellyfish were pretty cool. I’m a Buddhist but I don’t really believe in rebirth. For a while I thought that the idea was a Hindu corruption of the faith, but Bhante Gunaratna, who I consider a practicing Buddhist, has said that he believes in it. I also read thru the Dhammapada and some other books and the concept is clearly there. It’s not an item of faith, however, it’s there as in, ‘meditate for a while and you will see’. I haven’t seen.

I’ve been reading Dune, which is pretty cool, but one thing strikes me. A lot of our pop culture heroes are basically terrorists or, at best, vigilantes. Take this example from the Galactic Empire Times: “Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday” (GET). If you look at from another side, all of these movie heroes are quite tainted by their killing and quite easily spun in the other direction.

Wired’s Chris Anderson has said “Our children will not believe that people used to drive cars and drive airplanes. We are the weak link in the chain” (NYTimes). I believe it. In Sri Lanka we go a step backwards by having humans directing traffic, as Himal and PravNJ have been debating on Twitter. The beauty of trains, for example, is that they just run. With automated cars we could theoretically have a similar system, just automated.

I wrote a post about adult film theatres that has somehow turned into a debate about obesity. As in, are Americans fatter than Sri Lankans. The answer is, of course America are fatter. This is not because Sri Lankans are better people, it’s really just for lack of opportunity. As I was reading in a recent UN Food Ag Org report, one third of the food in the world is wasted or lost. In the west the waste it at the consumer level, here we lose it at the production level.

There’s a lot in the news about how the news is dying. It isn’t true. Newspaper growth is booming worldwide, it’s just become a saturated industry in America. So, yes, US papers may have to close foreign offices. However, The Times of India could start setting up foreign offices there. Around 75 of the top selling newspapers are Asian and 70% of countries are reporting stable or increased circulation over 5 years. There are more newspapers being launched and many more people to be reached in Asia and Africa.