Random Thoughts

Been doing too much online reading and browsing lately. Here are some highlights:

"If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote." --David Foster Wallace quoted by Roy Clark in Poynter Online.

A very harsh, well-documented analysis of the beginning of 2007 for New York Times Andean correspondent Simon Romero, who I happen to think is a fantastic writer. Juan Forero of the Washington Post, however, has been breaking the great stories lately. The article is by BoRev, who has no end of criticism for American reporting on South America and reserves particular bile for Romero.

New long-form quarterly planning to do away with the false mantle objectivity in foreign reporting while publishing, among other things, 19,000-word pieces on the real Borat of Kazakhstan. They've got a lineup of heavy hitters and a minimalist website to try to convince you to pay $60 for four magazines. Try an excerpt if you're not convinced--they're longer than most articles you'll find anywhere.

New Yorker staff writer Tad Friend--is that the coolest name or what?--speaks out about how he chews pens and other subjects. Rabid fans of the magazine that uses umlauts over the second 'o' in words like cooperative and never says unique when sui generis will fit take note.

On a personal note (Colombia being a personal topic these days), I came across a five paragraph story (Spanish) that hid under a very numerical lede that the country's Prosecutor's Office say reported disappearances have cuadrupled since 2007 and grown by a factor of 14 since 2003. President Alvaro Uribe, in unrelated news, was elected in 2002.

And I discovered that the Economist agrees with me that Semana magazine, which just released an English edition, is badass. Incidentally, the present cover story published Monday about the military possible murdering citizens is a translation of the Spanish version, which Adriaan reported/transcribed the Saturday it was published. In other words, we beat them to their own story (while giving them credit).

Finally, a virgin appeared on a ceiling, one model 'almost pushed' another and police prevented two people from being resurrected in a busy day for our Trivia section. The most read story I've written for Colombia Reports, by the way, is about Satan's influence over Colombian teenagers. Guess people opt for imaginary evil over the real thing.