Matt Maiocco writes a great blog about the 49ers. In a recent post, he had a link to a heartwarming story about a young kid playing Little League baseball with cancer. I’m posting links to both below:

MattMaioccoFootballBlog

LittleLeagueStory

A friend of mine sent me a funny link to a short animated film about Italians. It may not be 100% accurate but it was sort of funny.

ItalianFilm

Thanks to the comment by capananda in yesterday’s post, I checked out The Week and Harpers. I knew about Harpers but had not heard of The Week. When I hit the Harpers website, I saw an article about the Air Force and POGO. POGO is another new group (Project On Government Oversight), sort of a whistleblower / investigative group. Interesting to read a little and I’ll have to check further.

Anyway, there was an article in the Washington Post as well as other places. While the troops travel in beaten up, falling apart seats, the Air Force brass spend time and money designing luxurious travel pods for themselves. You’d think that the Air Force heads would say “Hey, you travel the same as the grunts.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. The Air Force brass seem to be taking their cues from the CEO’s of private industry, living lives of luxury while the grunts get stepped on, abused and mistreated.

To see the contrast, click on the Pogo link for pics of what the troops have, and the Washington Post link for what the top brass have. It’s eye opening.

Pogo article with pics of what the troops travel in now:
TroopTransport

Washington Post story:
AirForceTravel

Ran across two interesting articles about Al Qaeda this weekend. The first was in The Economist. It covered some of the history of the group, how other countries are dealing with it, and some info on how Muslim countries are dealing with it. There were some real interesting statements:

“Al-Qaeda will not be defeated by America but rather by governments in the Muslim world that manage to extend their writ across its lawless areas. This will take time, Western assistance and much diplomatic skill. Until then the West will have to co-operate with other countries (sometimes holding its nose) to contain the threat—and hope that the jihadists continue to wreck their own cause.”

“So why do Muslims in America seem more immune from militancy? According to Mr Sageman, the idea of a “war on Islam” makes less sense to them because of America’s more inclusive attitude to the immigrants, greater social mobility and the bigger role religion plays in public life. Others point out that Muslims in America form a smaller proportion of the population, are more dispersed and usually have higher skills than in Europe.”

Overall the theme was that Al Qaeda eventually loses support among the people due to its propensity for indiscriminate killing, and that the group should eventually burn itself out. It pointed out the success the US had in Iraq when it shifted from strictly going after fighters to instead focusing on helping the local groups with security and jobs and money. It also talked about how Saudi Arabia is focusing on rehabilitation of the non hard core fighters.

The link is below. Once you get to the bottom of the page of the first report, click on “Next Report” below that in blue, and you get taken to the next report. There are about 5 or 6 total reports I think. Interesting stuff.

Al Qaeda (Economist)

The other interesting article was on salon.com. It talked about the number of Muslims (including ex Al Qaeda fighters and ex Al Qaeda aligned people) that were now switching to non violence and turning against Al Qaeda. Link to the article is below:

Al Qaeda (Salon)

Came across an interesting story from Australia about kangaroos. Specifically, about eating kangaroos. Greenpeace Australia argued in an October 2007 report that kangaroo is a more environmentally friendly meat than beef, since cows shoot methane when they fart. The report estimates that replacing 20% of the beef with kangaroo would stop 15 megatons of greenhouse gases by 2020. The kangaroos also do not damage soil as much.

So why don’t more Aussies and Americans “throw a ‘roo’ on the barbie?” Well, just like horses are beloved in America and not readily available for consumption, kangaroos are a big thing in Australia. The government limits the killing of kangaroos to 3 million per year. This despite the fact that kangaroos outnumber people by 4 million.

Kangaroo meat is low in fat, high in protein, and a good source of iron and zinc.

Link to one story about this is below:

Kangaroo Meat

As far as horses, Wikipedia had some intersting morsels:
“It is notable that, despite horses having been bred in England since pre-Roman times, the English language has no widely used term for horse meat, as opposed to four for pig meat (pork, bacon, ham, gammon), three for sheep meat (lamb, hogget and mutton), two for cow meat (beef and veal), and so on. English speaking countries, however, have sometimes marketed horsemeat under the euphemism “cheval meat" (cheval being the French for horse). Also, note that the words pork, bacon, mutton, veal, and beef all derive from an old version of French, because of the class structure of England after the Norman Conquest in 1066 CE: the poor (Saxons) tended the animals, while the rich (French-speaking Normans) ate the meat”

“People in the United States rarely eat horse meat, but during World War II, due to the low supply and high price of beef, the state of New Jersey legalized its sale. At war's end, the state again prohibited the sale of horse meat, possibly in response to pressure from the beef lobby. Harvard University’s Faculty Club had horse meat on the menu for over one hundred years, until 1983. Until 2007, a few horse meat abattoirs still existed in the United States, selling meat to zoos to feed their carnivores, and exporting it for human consumption, but recently the last has closed by court order.”

Some cultures and religions forbid horsemeat. This may have been due to the fact that they are useful for farm production and in some cases are viewed as human companions. Link below has that and more interesting stuff:

Horsemeat