From an Al Jazeera special report:

Many of the pirates operating off the coast of Somalia were given special forces-style training from Western firms, a special report by Al Jazeera has found.


Some security firms currently protecting shipping from the pirates had been engaged to train them a decade ago.


One company, Hart Group, coached trainees to be the “coastguard” of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region - providing protection from illegal fishing in the region.


In this exclusive report, Al Jazeera’s Dan Nolan found that Western companies, involved at all levels of the business, can now expect to make up to half a million dollars from the avergage $2m “ransom and release” contracts they are awarded to solve.

(Al Jazeera: Somali pirates profit western firms)

From Ariel Leve of The Sunday Times:

Who knew eating alone was an act of bravery? The other day I was at a restaurant having an early dinner when I got a phone call from a friend. She asked where I was and when I told her she said, ?

 
Spooky classroom commercial from DefeatTheDebt.  And the little kids say:

I pledge allegiance to America?䬺s debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money.  And to the interest, for which we pay, compoundable, with higher taxes and lower pay until the day we die.

Well, debt “stinks,” all right—but it’s kinda cute!

WELLINGTON, FL—Debra Mitchell is a lead code compliance officer for the Village of Wellington. During the collapse of the housing market, the community was left with a large number of foreclosed homes.

Pointing out one example Mitchell said, “It has an unsanitary, abandoned swimming pool, stagnant swimming pool. There’s no electricity running at this location.”

The code compliance department was paying nearly 7,000 dollars a year to dump chemicals into the pools to treat the scummy buildup.

That’s when Mitchell and some of her colleagues came up with an environmentally-friendly idea to get rid of the green. An idea with a much lower price tag of just 700 dollars.

“Some of us got clever and decided to try the fish-eating…er algae eating fish,” she said.

At a typical home that needed help Mitchell revealed, “We have dumped 15 pleco algae-eating fish in here to take care of the algae situation.”

Something’s fishy in Wellington

(via Arbroath )

Ben & Jerry?

Small town, right-winger busybody know-nothings strike again!

The Scopes Monkey Trial was decided 84 years ago this past July, but in Sedalia, Missouri, you’d think it’s the summer of 1925 again.

That’s because the band director at the town’s Smith-Cotton High School recently got in hot water for making T-shirts that depict primates evolving into man. The shirts—based on the popular illustration above—were designed to promote the band’s fall program, “Brass Evolutions,” that explores how brass instruments have changed from the 1960s to today.

On the T-shirt, monkeys and early humans hold trumpets throughout their various stages of evolution.

That didn’t sit well with Sherry Melby, a teacher in the school district and mother of a band member. Yesterday Melby told the Sedalia Democrat: “I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”

Evolution T-Shirts on Trial in Missouri Town

Some generally good news, for a change.

The United Nations military commander, General Martin Agwai, says that although the area will likely continue to see things like banditry and skirmishes of local violence, the ?

I drove past this place the other day and wondered “Could it be?” It can!

There has been an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken in Palms, slumping sadly these past few months on the corner of Exposition Blvd. and Hughes Ave. What, locals wondered, would replace it? A new burger joint? A Peruvian rotisserie chicken stand? It turns out that the KFC has been replaced by… a KFC. In this instance, though, the KFC stands for “Kind For Cures”, and while they do sell things that are edible, you can’t buy them, or even ask about them, without a prescription.

Thank you Wilson Smith!

Having done two tour of duties in the advertising trenches, it’s refreshing to finally see someone speak the truth:

The current agency model is broken. I know it, agencies know it, but luckily for all of us, clients haven’t realized it yet.

After more than a decade of working for an agency (six years on the client side), I have come to several conclusions, none of which are pretty pictures for agencies unless they change. You see, agencies need clients more than clients need agencies, and there has been a fundamental shift in how technology has both enabled and altered that dynamic. It has exacerbated the problem with the explosion of new media channels, and it has also provided the solutions.

We have built an interweaving production process that is designed to produce media the old way, not the new way, and agencies and clients seem to be stuck in this model.

Agencies over the last 20 years have morphed into advanced communication production shops. The offline agencies have desperately been pursuing online projects with their clients, and the online agencies have been trying to do more offline work. What they both have not done, however, is change the process of production. They have been too busy chasing the money.

But agencies used to be so much more than that. They were the creative powerhouses. The ideation shops. The meme creators for their brands across society. Some still are, but is meme creation needed anymore?

Five Reasons You No Longer Need an Ad Agency by Sean X Cummings

Thanks Jose Caballer!

 
And you think America spends too much time online?  Consider China, and the case of 14-year-old Pu Liang, who was often out all night playing games at a local internet cafe.  Seeking to cure Pu of his “addiction,” his mother, Li Shubing, shipped him off to a summer camp notorious for its “extreme methods.”  How extreme?  Well, as the LA Times reports:

Pu now lies hospitalized in critical condition with broken ribs, kidney damage and internal bleeding.  Removed from the camp by police last week, he told his parents he had been beaten by a counselor and fellow campers after he was unable to complete a rigorous regimen of push-ups.

Li remains as upset as she is baffled, “I never imagined they could be so cruel to treat a child like this.  I only wanted him to straighten out his life.”  Perhaps she should have more closely read the camp literature—or consulted the internet herself.  There are now roughly 300 such camps in China, many of them employing such, ahem, proven internet-weaning methods as enforced standing and shock treatment.

But Wu Yongjin, who runs the Chinese Unconventional Education Training Center, defends these methods, calling them, “more important nowadays when children are so spoiled.  It’s okay to beat them, just as long as you make sure they don’t really get hurt.” 

Hmm…they say excessive gaming desensitizes you to violence and diminishes your capacity for empathy.  Well, Pu, look on the bright side—once those kidneys heal, you’ll have no problem landing a job at the Unconventional Training Center!
 
In the LA Times: China’s Internet-addiction Camps Turn Dangerous