I’m very, very happy Canada has nothing like FOX.

This video shows how nonsense and conspiracy makes it to the mainstream media.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

For more than 3 weeks I cycled the Dictator’s Highway in Chile.

The Carretera Austral runs about 1,240 kilometers (770 mi) from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins through (sparsely populated) rural Patagonia. …

This area is characterized by thick forests, fjords, glaciers, canals and steep mountains. …

Click PLAY or get a glimpse on YouTube.

Starting with a side trip through the island of Chiloe, I made it as far as Coihaique. From there I continued on to the far south on foot (and bus).

See my trip report for the 23 days.

Literature. Nominated for the Man Booker.

Ondaatje is a fantastic writer. But would his latest be a pleasure to read?

Yes. Most of it for me.

The end was a bit of a letdown.

It’s non-linear reflections of a young man looking back at his upbringing in wartime London. What really happened when his parents left?

Michael Ondaatje is at the peak of his powers with the story of a man piecing together his troubled adolescence

Guardian review

I love Hank.

Love this series. Book 5 was hilarious.

That said, I feel Robot Farts was the weakest so far.

What a shame. This time the theme was mocking government bureaucracy. It could have been SO GREAT.

I took a 4 hour ferry over to Lofoten Islands planning to tent.

Ended up joining some folks headed to the hostel instead.

Checking out the only restaurant open late Sunday, I couldn’t resist ordering salmon.

With my laptop back on the mainland, this is a test post by phone.

The America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost United States non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II.

Started on September 4, 1940, it was dissolved on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor …

Trump does not know history. But I can’t believe somebody didn’t let him know he was using the pacifist catch phrase.

“This is not ‘America First’”: Right wing rages at Trump over Syria strike

Highest priority on my first visit to Washington DC was the Natural History museum.

Age-17 I visited the Deutsches Museum in Munich. And was blown away.

… the world’s largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. It receives about 1.5 million visitors per year. …

I recall many references at the Deutsches to the Smithsonian museum, adding the similarly famous American Museum of Natural History to my bucket list.

It was 40+ years but I did finally get to visit. And it is impressive.

It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2016, with 7.1 million visitors, it was the fourth most visited museum in the world and the most visited natural-history museum in the world. …

It is also home to about 185 professional natural-history scientists — the largest group of scientists dedicated to the study of natural and cultural history in the world. …

One thing that surprised me is that the supposedly evil Republican financier David H. Koch has given the largest donations. He’s sponsored a new Dinosaur Hall. He already paid for the Hall of Human Origins.

Those Republicans who believe the earth is only 6000 years old can’t be happy with that. It covers thoroughly all theories of the 6 million years of evolution.

Another exhibit that surprised me displayed the Shoebill. How can I never have heard of this huge, weird bird?

 

Let’s say Amazon, Walmart and a few other competitors provide 90% of retail shopping in future.

What’s left for entrepreneurs?

Mike Elgin talked about the “Experience Economy” on TWIG (This Week in Google)

The term Experience Economy was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the experience economy as the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy. The concept had been previously researched by many authors. …

An early example is the book of Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, which Pine and Gilmore quote in their work.

In 1971, Toffler criticized how “economists have great difficulty imagining alternatives to communism and capitalism”, and how they could only envision the economy in the terms of scarcity of resources. He talked about the upcoming “experiential industry”, in which people in the “future”, would be willing to allocate high percentages of their salaries to live amazing experiences.

Mike feels selfies are driving the Experience Economy today. Instagram and social media.