Honk 4 Ignernt Assholes

Oh, the irony!

You are not alone.

Just make sure you remember where "your country" came from and how you got it in the first place.

Conflicts generally known as "Indian Wars" broke out between American government and Native American societies. The Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) was one of the greatest Native American victories. Defeats included the Creek War of 1813-14, the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the Sand Creek Massacre (1864) and Wounded Knee in 1890.[68] These conflicts were catalysts to the decline of dominant Native American culture. By 1872, the U.S. Army pursued a policy to exterminate all Native Americans unless or until they agreed to surrender and live on reservations "where they could be taught Christianity and agriculture."

Of course. How the hell did the savages get by for 20,000 years, before whitey showed up, without knowing a damn thing about agriculture?

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

This land is my land, it is not your land
I've got a shotgun, and you don't got one
I'll blow your head off, if you don't get off
This land was made just for me.

You sure about that? Or do you just want the portion of it back that benefits you at the expense of others?

New World Order

I like.

Via The Chemist and a meme in which I shall not endeavor to partake.

Now I Know Where Almaty Is

We drove down to the new Hill Country Galleria in Bee Cave after lunch today and I got my atlas at the Barnes & Noble. I decided to go ahead and use my $150 gift cards for this $165 purchase rather than order from amazon.com where I would have saved about $60, but couldn't use the gift cards.

It worked out OK because I was able to pay $20 to join the B&N club and immediately got 20% knocked off the atlas which more than covered the membership fee and I get discounts on future purchases. I splurged and got the 2008 World Almanac also.

Each day on the New York Times' weather page I see the temperatures for Almaty in the Asia column but never had a clue where this place was exactly. But I opened the atlas to take a picture and happened to open on the page with Almaty.

It's big. It's heavy. It's mine.

I Have a Map Fetish

I got myself three $50 gift cards from Barnes & Noble when I cashed out my American Express points prior to cutting up the card. I wanted to splurge on a really nice large world atlas.

Today we stopped at a Borders just to check out the selection because I really haven't browsed a store for their atlas offerings in years. I'm pretty sure I want the National Geographic World Atlas because their maps have always been my favorites. The question is whether I want to pop for the larger atlas or get one that's more lap comfortable. The large one is $165.00 retail.

What sucks is that amazon.com has it for a tad over $100 with no sales tax and free shipping. I'm contemplating that option and I could use the gift cards for something else. After all, by the time I pay retail plus sales tax, I'm still spending almost $40 with the gift cards!

Meanwhile, I was searching on the National Geographic web site and found this Map Machine which rekindles my map fetish on so many levels!

Check out these two images from the population density map theme. This is rather frightening.

We think of the east and west coasts of the US as being crowded. California alone has well over 30 million people. I can't even fathom the density levels of China and India.

Keep in mind these are still developing nations with a rapidly rising middle class who will increasingly develop a thirst for energy at an alarming rate.

We may soon find ourselves longing for the good old days of $100 a barrel crude oil prices.

It seems like the body heat from those folks is enough to raise the air temperature a degree or two, aside from all the usual emissions attributed to global warming.