Friday Night Ladybug Blogging

We took a hike up Icehouse Canyon last week. It was hot, humid and the bugs were hungry. It was also ladybug mating season. By the time I could get a few shots, I was covered in them. I like ladybugs, but, well, that's about as far as it goes. No great pictures, but it made for some fun photoshopping as in the second picture.

Friday Cat Blogging from the Left Paw Society

Geoportail / Geoportal

The French government just rolled out it's new geo-portal similar to Google Earth. The servers are getting hit hard right now, so I can't comment on the service yet, but I'm going to go ahead and link to it. (IGN, je t'aime moi non plus.)

Le voilà: http://www.geoportail.fr/index.php?event=DisplayAccueilVisu

And my predictions...

France 2-Brésil 1

Resource Nationalism

The Financial Times reports today on a document received from the U.S. Military:

Future supplies of oil from Latin America are at risk because of the spread of resource nationalism, a study by the US military that reflects growing concerns in the US administration over energy security has found.

An internal report prepared by the US military’s Southern Command and obtained by the Financial Times follows a recent US congressional investigation that warned of the US’s vulnerability to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s repeated threats to “cut off” oil shipments to the US.

The report itself notes that "A re-emergence of state control in the energy sector will likely increase inefficiencies and, beyond an increase in short-term profits, will hamper efforts to increase long-term supplies and production..."

Ah, those darn increased inefficiencies. I'm assuming this means that Venezuela is increasing its taxes from next to nothing to twice next to nothing. I'm assuming that democratic politics which place local needs above those of Barbies and Commando-Wannabes tooling around in SUVs is also an inefficiency.

Question to readers: Has anybody been to the Moonie Ranch in Paraguay? 1.5 Million acres. Maybe Neil Bush is there working on his lobbying skills.

Racism

The Economist has its new edition out with this on the cover:









As Jérôme à Paris says, "...now that they are giving it the legitimacy of their front page, with the usual French bashing (calling the young rioters of last November "Muslims" is simply plain false, and the image of the Eiffel tower is anything but subtle), expect more hand-wringing about Europe's seeming unability to deal with its own problems"

Indeed, the article is full of what can only be called propaganda. To starting with, as Jérôme notes, the not so subtle cover. What exactly are they trying to imply? Is France too Muslim? Are the Muslims taking over?

The article has a telling graphic:
(thanks to eurotrib.com for the image)

Really, now, "Where they are"! That's right. You can't be European and Muslim. I'm glad that's all cleared up.