The naked ones in the forest

Above is a short documentary about the isolated Mascho Piro tribe in Peru's Amazon jungle region.

The Mascho Piro are hunter gathers who are increasingly coming in contact with the outside world. The villagers they are encountering, and sometimes attacking with deadly force, are Christians. Some of the villagers are also descendants of the Mascho Piro. Regardless of blood ties, they consider the Mascho Piro as brethren who are living a sad life in the jungle and should be brought into the folds of civilization.

Acting as a buffer between the two are the Protection Agents. They're concerned about the effects of contact on the Mascho Piro, particularly exposure to disease and the realization that, were the Mascho Piro absorbed into civilization, they would end up on the bottom rung of society -- the "poorest of the poor" -- as they struggle to adjust.

It is a complex and tragic situation. In their desire for machetes and iron pots the Mascho Piro have no idea what they are walking into. That said, in these situations I always wonder about the logic of keeping such groups of people artificially isolated. What purpose does it really serve? Aren't they already the "poorest of the poor" with short life spans and high infant mortality among the negatives? How much of this desire to isolate is more for the vanity of the anthropologists then the benefit of the Mascho Piro and, more importantly, their descendants? I don't know.

For a related post see He gave us lollies.

Eating birds and drinking snow

Finally, the truth is told. Sheds a whole new light on the election, don't it?

 

Islam's crisis

David P. Goldman, who has long published under the name Spengler, has a very interesting read called Fertility, Faith, and the Decline of Islam: Strategic Implications. He points out that Moslem countries are facing a steep decline in their birth rate and that, along with the implications of such poor countries trying to support aging populations, this is a sign of crisis in their faith.

 I agree. With the growing food crisis and riots across northern Africa, as well as the increasingly violent sectarian violence elsewhere in the Moslem world, it seems that they are cannibalizing each other as the modern world grinds them down.

At any rate, Spengler's article is a good one. Below is an excerpt:

Faith and fertility are linked inextricably. Liberal demographers like Phillip Longman (in The Empty Cradle, 2004) and Eric Kaufmann (Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth, 2010) made the case forcefully. Sociologist Mary Eberstadt, Nicholas’ wife, wrote a brilliant essay on the subject in 2007 at Policy Review. As noted, I made this argument in 2006. Sociologist Philip Jenkins noticed Iran’s demographic freefall in 2007, but drew the wrong conclusions.

Iran may be one of the world’s most secular countries; some reports put mosque attendance in the Islamic Republic at just 2%, lower than Church of England attendance. When the odious Islamist regime falls at length, we probably will find that there are as few Muslims in Iran as there were Communists in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like other religions rooted in traditional society, for example the nationalist-Catholic faith that Europeans abandoned after the two world wars, Islam cannot abide the onset of modernity. Some forms of religion can flourish in modernity; Islam is not one of them.

The variable that best predicts fertility across all Muslim countries is education: as soon as women become literate, they stop having children. That is a hallmark of a faith that melts away in the harsh light of modernity.

It is well that David Ignatius has noticed what Phillips, Kaufmann, Eberstadt, and I (not to mention Ahmadinejad and Erdogan) have noticed for years: Muslim civilization is in catastrophic decline. It is passing from infancy to senescence without ever reaching maturity. Iran has one last bulge generation of military age men, born before the fertility collapse got underway. It perceives one last historic opportunity to achieve Shi’ite dominance. It won’t have another.

   

The world's poorest President

Jose Mujica, the leader of Urugauy, has been dubbed the poorest President in the world. As the BBC explains:

Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.

This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.

President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.

The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.

 

Maori war shields and cultural diffusion

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For some reason the comic book charachter The Phantom has captured the imagination of Maori tribesman. The decorate their shields, which they use in their ritualized combat, with images of the super hero. It must be jarring to see them shaking their spears at each other while holding such a foolish looking thing. I wonder if captured ones hang in [places of honor in their lodges?

From OObject's post 15 Papua New Guinean superhero war shields where there are more and each is linked to a site further discussing them.

Angkor Wat

This is a curious little video by somebody with the slightly spammy screen name paidworldtraveler. They've taken some 16mm footage of somebody's trip to Angkor Wat, edited it heavily and added a soundtrack. The result is rather dreamy and you get a good feel for the scale and condition of the ruins.
   

Sushi-go-round

A bit of random video with some music added gets turned into a nice little film of a conveyor belt sushi restaurant.
  

This harmonica smells like green worms

Two bluegrass playing, redneck brothers drift down the Kentucky River on their shanty boat in a reminder of how many different forms the good life can take.
 

If we target one, we must target all

Click to enlarge

Above is a picture from 1963 of Willard Scott as the first iteration of Ronald McDonald. I must say, that's one insane looking mascot. Interestingly, considering Ronald's prominence in McDonald's advertising, Ronald was not created by McDonald's marketing department. As explained by Active Rain:

From August 1959 to August 1962 Willard Scott portrayed Bozo the Clown on a local Washington DC area television station. When the TV station dropped the licensing rights contract with Larry Harmon and discontinued the Bozo character, Willard Scott wanted to keep the Bozo thing going. So, he created a spin-off version of the Bozo character, which became Ronald McDonald.

Willard Scott created the Ronald McDonald character for the two local businessmen who owned the DC area McDonald's drive-in restaurant franchise.

The McDonald's corporation liked the concept and eventually hired a different actor to portray the Ronald McDonald character in national commercials. Obviously, the character and costume evolved over time and continues to be a cornerstone of the McDonald's corporation marketing campaigns to this day.

So, Ronald bubbled up from the ranks. Of course these days the Food Police would be more than happy to legislate or regulate Ronald into oblivion from the top. As Elaine Fogel wrote:

Is junk-food marketing to kids fair? Should it be allowed? Is Ronald McDonald responsible for childhood obesity and its associated diseases?

Recently, more than 550 very credible health institutions and professionals challenged McDonald’s to stop marketing junk food to kids. Initiated by Corporate Accountability International, full-page ads appeared in several dailies across the country urging people and professionals to sign the open letter and share it with peers.

An American interagency government group has developed standards for marketing food to children to help food companies determine which foods should be marketed as a way to encourage a healthful diet and which foods shouldn’t be marketed to children.

Studies do demonstrate that reducing junk-food marketing to kids could help improve millions of children’s health. But, let’s be honest. Who is responsible here? Ronald, parents, educators, or all of the above?

Personally, I’d like nothing better than to see healthier kids in North America. As a former educator, I’ve seen how vulnerable many kids are to marketing in general. But, why are we penalizing one company? Sure, McDonald’s is the largest in its category, and Ronald McDonald is a widely-recognized figure, but if we target one, we must target all marketers of high-sugar cereals with premiums in the boxes, chocolate syrup that contains high fructose corn syrup, candy bars, sugary drinks, etc.

Well, why not? And if that doesn't work -- and we all know it won't be enough for the likes of Ms Fogel -- we can complete our descent into Puritanism by sticking people in stocks to publicly shame them. After all, it is for the kids.

Me... I would rather put up with so-so hamburgers, a slightly creepy clown and the occasional junior fatso than letting the helicopter moms of the world start managing my life.

Drop those fries and eat some broccoli or else!

Japanese TSA skit

You probably won't understand a word of it, but the jokes are easy to follow none the less. Although, from what we hear and see of the TSA, I think the old lady would have been frisked as well.
  

The simple life

It's not really fair of me to contrast Franky and Camille to the people in the Philippines who are happy to get light delivered via plastic bottles filled with water. The two seem amiable enough, and not really preachy, which is about all you can hope out of anyone.

Still, it is an interesting contrast. It is just two small slices of time, but the undercurrent of anxiety of Franky and Camille about the power going out is striking. Then they tisk-tisk about how far food is shipped as they stand in front of their camera and talk about their planned their trip across the continent to California. A rather odd picking and choosing of good versus bad technology if you ask me. 

For all their spiritualism, compared to the barrio dwellers just happy to have some light in their rooms, perhaps Franky and Camille don't grasp the simple life as well as they think they do. Then again, whatever makes them happy.
  

Advertising a topless contest.

From Vintage Everyday (click to enlarge)

I'm a little pressed for time so I'll just post an odd, old picture and then give this throw-away post a title that's pretty obviously a cheap tactic to try to lure traffic.

However, to make it look like I did put a molecule effort into this post, I'll add that I am wondering what an amateur/professional lineup is -- strippers and college girls? Or is it an attempt to make it look like there will be something other than skanks putting on the show?
 

Random mobs

Who knows what really proceeded the events in the above video, but the crowd in the video thinks that the foreign driver, after getting in a traffic altercation with a Chinese woman, slapped her twice and spit on her.  

The clip is in Chinese, but the China Smack post I found it at, Foreigner Slapped & Spat On Chinese Woman, Angers Crowd, breaks it down into its major pieces and explains what's going on. It is an ugly scene, but the resentment isn't really directed individually towards the Westerner in the car. A lot of it is directed towards the police, who they see as serving the elite, as well as against the humiliation Chines feel their 2,000 year old civilization -- which is surely the finest on the planet Earth -- has suffered over the last few centuries.

For example, the woman in green who is seen emotionally yelling towards the end of the clip is saying, “Why must us Chinese be like this? Why is it like this? We demand that he must make an apology, make an apology on the internet, he must. Why did he spit on us Chinese people? Why? Apologize. He must apologize to Chinese people.”

The leap in logic from a traffic accident to the need for a blanket apology to the Chinese seems like a bizarre leap in logic, but to be an outsider is always fraught with a certain amount of danger when things go pear-shaped.

We can see that in today's Mail Online article, Grieving mother blames mob for suicide of her son after rumours he was one of James Bulger's killers in hiding.

The James Bulger killing is a notorious crime in England where two 10 year-olds lured James Bulger, who was a toddle, to some railroad tracks where they tortured and killed him. Because they were juveniles the two killers only spent 7 years in jail before being released and then given new identities. One ended up back in jail, but the other id still free under his secret identity.

Scott Bradley, the man who hung himself, was a handyman and pretty thief who moved to his Mother's house in a rural Scottish village. From the article:

Scott Bradley, 36, was accused of being child murderer Robert Thompson, whose real identity is protected, and suffered months of malicious abuse and torment from a hate mob in the village of Garlieston, Wigtownshire, in Scotland.

His mother Sue Bradley, 66, found her beloved son hanging from the top of their stairs three weeks ago.

Mrs Bradley said her son, a handyman, had turned into a nervous wreck after a campaign of hate in which he was branded a killer and a paedophile.

She said: '(One man) went round telling everyone that my son was definitely Thompson. People started shouting abuse at Scott in the street and calling him a child killer.'

'It was a build-up of months and months of pressure. The worst part for him was feeling helpless. He just couldn't take anymore.'

She said she was shocked at how callous people have been about his death and how little remorse his tormenters have shown.

She told the People: 'The night Scott died a friend was at a party and a woman talked about it and said, "Good result".'

Lest you think the crowd got the right man after all, James Bulger's mother Denise Fergus was horrified when she heard of Bradley's suicide. Also from the article:

Mrs Fergus said: 'What happened to Scott makes my blood run cold.

'I’m shocked and upset that he has apparently taken his own life.

'Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, this is one that shows how dangerous it is to spread false rumours and gossip about something as serious as the identity of child killers.'

She said: 'Sadly Scott’s death goes to show it is other people who are left to suffer as a result of the official conspiracy, lies and deceit that the authorities have used in this case.'

Old Soviet era bus shelters

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These pictures come from the Vintage Everyday post Strange Soviet Bus Stops. There is no  commentary with the post, so the only reason I know what the structures are is from the title. Why they are so elaborately designed is a mystery to me.  It also isn't clear how remote they are. Some seem to be in the middle of nowhere, others show at least a few building in the background. 

Whatever the answer to those questions, they are marvelous little buildings. A surprising amount of effort went into designing and decorating them. I wonder what the buses that service them are like?

There are more samples after the jump, and even more at the above link. 

The perfect cup of coffee

The above video is the Coffee Brewing Institute's 1961 panegyric to a cup of American style coffee. I haven't had a cup of peculated coffee for years and wouldn't mind having one to remember what they taste like. I was also interested in the vacuum brewed coffee. I've never heard of that method of brewing a cup of Joe. 

Via Open Culture. 
 

Easter Island heads have bodies?

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Archeologists have excavated some of the Easter Island heads and have discovered that they have bodies as well. Apparently this has been known for some time; in 1914-15 there was an expedition which excavated, and photographed, some of the bodies. Still, this was news to me.

The Easter Island Statue Project (EISP)has recently excavated several more of the bodies. They have hands and feet carved into them, as well as petroglyphs. There is some controversy over why the bodies are buried. Some people believe they were intentionally buried, while others -- the EISP included -- believe the bodies were covered by material eroding from the above hill tops.

There are more pictures at Wall to Watch's post: Statues of Easter Island. 

Chimp culture

Scientists generally have held that culture is unique to humans. That said, there has been mounting evidence of differing behaviors in distinct animal populations that points towards culture existing among other species. However, the groups studied have lived remote from each other, so environmental or genetic differences may account for the different behavior patterns.  

The Max Planck Gesellschaft website reports in their article Chimpanzee cultures differ between neighbors that scientists have been studying three groups of chimpanzes that live in close proximity and exhibit signs of cultural behaviors. As the article reports:

The Taï chimpanzee project field site in Côte d’Ivoire presents the unique opportunity to study three neighboring chimpanzee communities at the same time, making it possible to directly compare the behaviors present in each community. Chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire use stone and wooden tools to crack nuts. Lydia Luncz was therefore able to observe how the chimpanzees were selecting hammers to crack Coula nuts in the three adjacent communities. After placing gathered Coula nuts on root anvils, the chimpanzees of all three neighboring communities primarily select stones to use as hammers. However, as the nut season advances and nuts get drier and easier to crack, the chimpanzees of two of the communities select a greater proportion of wooden hammers which are easier to find in the forest, while the members of the third community continue to favor stone hammers. Furthermore, the two communities that select wooden hammers choose distinctly different sized hammers. All of the chimpanzees live in a contiguous stretch of the large Taï National Park and therefore ecological differences are unlikely to explain the differences in tool selection.

Interesting stuff. It does seem intuitive that apes are smart enough to learn behavior and pass it on to their peers. I wonder -- do females ever pass between ape bands? Apparently not, as you would think that the nut cracking strategies would diffuse if that happened.

By the way, I apologize to any apes reading this post for the slightly insulting video that accompanies it -- I looked for ape culture and landed on cultured ape instead. You've got to admit that the James Bond ape looks spiffy in his tux.
  

A small Christian chapel in India

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Asia Obscure has a post, Jesus and Mary in a little Indian boat, about a small concrete block building in India that serves as a Christian chapel. Some of the cultural blending is puzzling, for example Christ and the Virgin Mary pictured in a boat on its roof; while others -- like the clean lines, bright colors and Indian style statuary -- is quite charming. As always, cultural influences swirl around in time and space, transforming and growing as they move through us all.

Ice cream trucks

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Summer is just over the horizon, and so our thoughts turn to the rhythms and icons of summer. The tinkling music of an ice cream truck is one of those icons. When you're a kid, ice cream trucks are wondrous things, and so the chase after them is always fondly remembered. 

I live on a dirt road so I don't get visited by ice cream trucks, but I hear them in the nearby neighborhoods. I wonder what sort of hoops you have to jump through to run an ice cream truck these days? I hope not too many, every kid should have the pleasure of chasing one on warm summer days.

There are more vintage ice cream trucks after the jump, and even more at Vintage Everyday's post Vintage Ice Cream Trucks where I found these examples.

Hand drawn Indian movie posters

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The Indian artist Ramachandraiah hands draws and prints small movie posters. They are hung up on walls and street poles at night to advertise films, many of them bootlegged, that are being shown in local cinemas.

The blogger Dean Pickles heard of Ramachandraiah, and wanted to commission a poster of a film he made some time ago. His post, India’s Incredibly Cool Hand-Drawn Movie Posters, at AsiaObscura discusses how he managed to find Ramachandraiah and get the poster he wanted.

The sample pictures in this post are from his article, as well as a followup he did called A Sweet New Batch of Indian Movie Posters. You can find more examples after the jump, and even more at either of the two AtlasObscura links.