Captain Digital

Random musings on politics, society, and pop culture from the Internet's marketing curmudgeon.

Iran

Well-meaning. But stupid.

As I write this, the American Friends Service Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, World Council of Churches, Quaker United Nations Office and Religions for Peace are set to host an “international dialogue” on the topic “Has Not One God Created Us? The Significance of Religious Contributions to Peace” at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. Their Very Special Guest? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Is this for REAL? [Read more…] about Well-meaning. But stupid.

A Perfect Storm.

Okay – full disclosure time, here kiddies: if you’re looking for a blog post that’s going to be uplifting, funny, or one of those “triumph of the human spirit” things, click off, and come back tomorrow. Consider yourself warned.

Did you see the movie The Perfect Storm? If you’re not familiar with it, or perhaps, took a pass on it due to your natural aversion to George Clooney, what happened was several climatological phenomena came together simultaneously to create a killer storm. Change one factor, and it’s a survivable storm. With all the factors in place, nobody gets out alive. It’s sort of like what happens with airline accidents. It’s never just one thing – it’s ice on the wings plus a de-icer failure plus a pilot pushing on through bad weather to make up time for his airline. Or maybe a pilot who didn’t get enough sleep, combined with cracks in the airframe plus wind shear. Take away one of these, and the passengers live. All three, and the NTSB makes another house call.

I’m afraid that we are looking at a perfect storm for the good ol’ U. S. of A., and I’m not sure that anything short of divine intervention is gonna save us. Let’s take a little inventory of what storms are on the horizon: [Read more…] about A Perfect Storm.

Don’t Buy This Book.

Book of DeceptionI love to read. I read just about everything I can get my hands on – from mysteries to histories, tech books to cook books. My favorite for light reading are in the techo-thriller genre…books about heroic Americans fighting the spies and soliders of other countries or terrorists. Glenn Beck (one of my favorite radio/TV guys) had author Christopher Reich on his show recently, to plug the book Rules of Deception. Beck mentioned that he’d not yet read the book (never a good idea to plug something you haven’t read, Glenn), but he was amazed that, as the story revolved around Iran’s attempts to enrich uranium for the express purpose of building nuclear weapons, that the New York Times had given the book a glowing review. Little did I know when I bought it that there was a good reason the NY Times loved it. [Read more…] about Don’t Buy This Book.