Shunya's Notes

Marketing the Military

Check out these military recruitment ads from around the world: Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Estonia, Japan, Sweden, France, Australia, England, Lebanon, Singpore, and the US. They pack in so many clues to national character and the state of society. Consider, for instance, the ad below from India, where recruits largely come from the lower middle class — from, say, the 40% of the population beneath the top 20%. In a society riven by class, how does the Indian military market itself? — as a ticket to a higher class, where people follow "the best traditions", strive to "be the best", dress smartly, speak Hinglish, attend garden parties, sail, play golf, ride horses, and frequent swimming pools. Indeed, borrowing a page from Bollywood fantasies, it almost makes the military seem like an exciting vacation package! Be sure to check out the other ads, no less fascinating! (Via Leanne Ogasawara)

The Majestic Plastic Bag

(The Majestic Plastic Bag: A Mockumentary, via The Browser)

Rajiv Nema Learns Chatting

It's time for a comedy break with Rajiv Nema, an actor and comedian originally from Indore, MP, the state I grew up in as well. I've seen him in a couple of Naatak productions in the SF Bay Area. In this video, Nema plays a provincial chap from Indore explaining to his wife the power of the computer, or should I say Kumpootar? Watch it, it's quite hilarious (Hindi comprehension required).

He has many more on his youtube channel but here are six to check out next: a typical conversation in Indore,  Indori GPS,  gift planning, Indore style,  asking for directions in Indore,  a shopping experience in Indore, and Nema goes to the Oscars.

Corporations Are People Too!

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court pronounced that corporate speech was no different from human speech and so deserved First Amendment protection for free speech. And since political spending, as we all know, is a form of free speech, the government had no business regulating corporate spending in support of political candidates. In effect, "the Supreme Court threw out regulations that prohibited corporations from buying campaign commercials that explicitly advocate the election or defeat of candidates." I am inclined to see this as a fundamentalist interpretation of the constitution, not an allegorical one attuned to the realities of our age. A victory of Word over telos.

Thankfully, we have satire to leaven this stupidity. A corporation called Murray Hill Inc. is taking the logical next step in the evolution of the oldest democracy: it is fighting for the right to run for Congress. Why? Because in legal terms, a corporation is a person too! It can finally bypass the pesky individual politician who is a mere middleman. Watch their campaign ad below and listen to this funny interview on NPR.

Seafaring Hominids?

Archaeology seems to be undergoing an explosion of new finds in the past decade or so. More and more, new information is completely scrambling old assumptions about human evolution and early modern human and hominid culture.

The latest amazing find was written up yesterday in the New York Times:

Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.

Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats.

This is part of what I love about archaeology: Just when you think you've got it all figured out, new evidence comes to light, which overturns our ideas, and deepens them too. Whether or not it turns out to be the case that Neanderthals were ancient mariners, I, for one, have a strong suspicion that we substantially underestimate what our ancestors were capable of and just what was going on 50K, 100K, or 200K years ago. After all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Econ 101 Rap

John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek explain the markets, yo!

The Hubris of Humble Oil

In 1962, Humble Oil and Refining Co., which later merged with Standard Oil to become Exxon, ran the following ad in Life Magazine:

EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!

The giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet the petroleum energy Humble supplies—if converted into heat—could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second. To meet the nation's growing energy needs for energy, Humble has applied science to nature's resources to become America's Leading Energy Company. Working wonders with oil through research Humble provides energy in many forms—to help heat our homes, power our transportation, and to furnish industry with a great variety of versatile chemicals. Stop at a Humble station for new Enco Extra gasoline, and see why the "Happy Motoring" Sign is the World's First Choice!

ExxonMobil today produces about 3% of the global oil; in case you are wondering how many tons of glacier ExxonMobil can potentially melt today, the numbers are 79 million tons each day and 914 tons per second (source). Enjoy while such boasts make sense.

Friday Cartoons

Shilling for Apples

Friday Cartoons