Missing public service?

There's a porta-potty out front of the construction site down the road from my suburban house.

In the past few days, I've seen the mailman, a UPS driver, a couple of bike riders and a dog walker stop to use it.

Not sure how common this is...but public toilets in suburbia sure would save America a lot of wasted time and gas...as would small convenience stores.

Czechoslovak Legions in Russia...what a ride!

The story of this outfit would make quite a movie.

Wikipedia has a nice article about them here.

They were even a reason for one of America's conveniently forgotten wars...

Lack of content

It may be ironic for someone who only blogged once last month to say this, but:

I don't have a big, new flat screen TV because...there just aren't enough good movies being put out to justify the purchase.

What a bad year it has been for movies.

Maybe the worst.year.ever...craptastic.

The first trillion dollar company

And it's Chinese.

*sigh*

China creep

I randomly selected a few countries and compared where their imports came from in 2001 and in 2006. The 2001 numbers came from this old version of the CIA World Factbook. The 2006 numbers came from the current factbook.

In some cases, China's share of imports came from nothing in 2001. America's share usually drops, too. This is just over a period of 5 years. Growth of imports masks the full story, it is possible that American and EU revenues from exports to these countries stayed the same or even grew, but...China's revenue grew much faster.

Imports:

Iran

$17.2 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
Germany 11%, Italy 8.3%, China 6.1%, Japan 5.3%, UAE 5% (1999)

$45.48 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
Germany 12%, China 10.5%, UAE 9.4%, South Korea 6.2%, France 5.6%, Italy 5.4%, Russia 4.5% (2006)

Canada

$238.3 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
US 74%, EU 9%, Japan 3% (2000)

$353.2 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
US 55.1%, China 8.7%, Mexico 4% (2006)

Brazil

$57.7 billion (f.o.b., 2001)
US 23.2%, Argentina 11.2%, Germany 8.7%, Japan 5.5%, Italy 3.9% (2001)

$91.4 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
US 20.5%, Argentina 8.2%, China 7.9%, Germany 7.5% (2006)

South Africa

$28.1 billion (f.o.b., 2001 est.)
EU 41%, US 11.4%, Saudi Arabia 7.3%, Japan 7% (2001 est.)

$61.53 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.)
Germany 12.6%, China 10%, US 7.6%, Japan 6.6%, Saudi Arabia 5.3%, UK 5% (2006)

Afghanistan not going so well either?

This month marks the start of America's seventh year in Afghanistan.

Coalition forces killed in Afghanistan this calendar year already exceed the number killed last year.

Four years of increasing deaths does not seem to be a positive trend.

Another political candidate Catch-22

Crappy news outlet publishes anonymous charge against a political candidate.

If the candidate ignores the charge, it means they're "guilty," and through repetition, the charge becomes "fact."

If they do respond to the charge, then the big news outfits that wouldn't print the original charge declare that the candidate's response is news and spread the original charge much wider.

The "respectable" press become unpaid enforcement thugs for the screaming tabloid press.