A Suit, a Visa, a Bridge, a Dog…

1. The Suit - Well I’m not sure if they managed to pull off the Don Draper look (a man can dream, right?), but I do know for a fact that this is the nicest I’ve ever looked in Cambodia. Now I just need to wait three years until I have a job to wear it.

2. The Language Test – I took my language test this morning and apparently I’m an advanced (advanced low) speaker of Khmer. In all likelihood I’ll maintain this level for exactly one more week and then it will all  start going downhill. My hope though, is that as my Khmer gets worse I can figure out a way to make my Spanish better.

3. The China Visa – I’m still bitter about having to pay $140 for a visa, but after swinging by the Chinese Embassy this morning I’m all ready for my Beijing trip. I’m leaving in eleven days and if anyone out there has been to Beijing recently and has any travel tips I’d love to hear them. At this point I have no idea where I’m staying or what I’m doing and any help would go a long way.

4. The Final Week in the Prey Sundek Theater - I’ve only got one more week in the mosquito net and I’m planning on making the most of it. In seven days I’m hoping to watch all of season 2 of Treme and season 1 of Justified. I also have seasons 4-7 of the West Wing, but after sixty episodes in under two months I don’t know how much more of the Bartlet administration I can take.

5. My Next Marathon- This week the world’s longest cross-sea bridge opened in China. The Jiaozhou Bay bridge is 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and links China’s eastern port city of Qingdao to the island of Huangdao. Is it just me or does this sound like a very cool marathon? 26.2 miles on water. I wonder how long it will take for someone to come up with this idea. As soon as it happens, count me in.

6. Quote of the Week - From Bruce Springteen’s eulogy of Clarence Clemmons: “Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet. You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together, you might be able to do. You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you. Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety, and in some funny way we became each other’s protectors; I think perhaps I protected “C” from a world where it still wasn’t so easy to be big and black. Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it. Clarence’s celebrity and size did not make him immune. I think perhaps “C” protected me from a world where it wasn’t always so easy to be an insecure, weird and skinny white boy either. But, standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet. We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself. And we were coming to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Together, we told an older, richer story about the possibilities of friendship that transcended those I’d written in my songs and in my music. Clarence carried it in his heart. It was a story where the Scooter and the Big Man not only busted the city in half, but we kicked ass and remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship would not be such an anomaly.

And that … that’s what I’m gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and double down on that story on a nightly basis, because that is something, that is the thing that we did together … the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fucking big to die. And that’s just the facts. You can put it on his grave stone, you can tattoo it over your heart. Accept it … it’s the New World. Clarence doesn’t leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die.”

7. The Invisible Army - In the June 6th edition of the New Yorker, Sarah Stillman wrote an amazing piece about the “Third County Nationals” working on our military bases: The Invisible Army. It’s first-rate journalism about a topic that deserves way more attention…

The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls, and host dance parties featuring Nepalese romance ballads and Ugandan church songs. A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.

The wars’ foreign workers are known, in military parlance, as “third-country nationals,” or T.C.N.s. Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses. Previously unreleased contractor memos, hundreds of interviews, and government documents I obtained during a yearlong investigation confirm many of these claims and reveal other grounds for concern. Widespread mistreatment even led to a series of food riots in Pentagon subcontractor camps, some involving more than a thousand workers.

Amid the slow withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, T.C.N.s have become an integral part of the Obama Administration’s long-term strategy, as a way of replacing American boots on the ground. But top U.S. military officials are seeing the drawbacks to this outsourcing bonanza. Some argue, as retired General Stanley McChrystal did before his ouster from Afghanistan, last summer, that the unregulated rise of the Pentagon’s Third World logistics army is undermining American military objectives. Others worry that mistreatment of foreign workers has become, as the former U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, who co-chairs the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting, describes it, “a human-rights abuse that cannot be tolerated.”

One more interesting note from this article: “For the first time in American history, private-contractor losses are now on a par with those of U.S. troops in both war zones, amounting to fifty-three per cent of reported fatalities in the first six months of 2010. Since many T.C.N. deaths and injuries are never tallied—contractors are expected to self-report, with spotty compliance—the actual numbers are presumed to be higher.”

8. Chart of the Week - According to a recent U.N. High Commission for Refugees study, nearly one half of the world’s refugees are from Afghanistan and Iraq, 3.05 million and 1.68 million, respectively. Just think about that for a second. Our country is responsible for HALF of displaced people in the entire world. Crazy.

9. The Most Expensive Colleges - The US Department of Education has a new website that allows you to compare the prices of colleges in America. Here are the twenty most expensive…

1. Bates College ME $51,300*
2. Connecticut College CT $51,115*
3. Middlebury College VT $50,780*
4. Union College NY $50,439*
5. Colby College ME $50,320*
6. Sanford-Brown College (for-profit) VA $45,628
7. Sarah Lawrence College NY $41,968
8. Vassar College NY $41,930
9. George Washington University DC $41,655
10. Columbia University in the City of New York NY $41,316
11. Kenyon College OH $40,980
12. Colgate University NY $40,970
13. Carnegie Mellon University PA $40,920
14. Trinity College CT $40,840
15. Bucknell University PA $40,816
16. Tulane University of Louisiana LA $40,584
17. Skidmore College NY $40,420
18. St John’s College NM $40,396
19. St John’s College MD $40,392
20. Tufts University MA $40,342

And here are a few more stats from Gawker: 96% of the most expensive schools are private, not-for-profit institutions. 4% are private, for-profit. The public college with the most expensive tuition is Penn State, at $14,416. 36% of the top 25 most expensive schools are in New England, including four of the five most expensive. 28% are in New York. 24% of the schools on this list also appear on this list of America’s Top 20 Hippie Colleges. 100% of the Top Two Annoying Liberal Arts Colleges are on this list. 0% of these schools have good football teams.

10. RIP Scout – And finally, on a sad note, the Knowlton family dog, who we’ve had for over 13 years is being put down today. Shes lived a good long life and had a happy retirement out in Denver, but it’s still incredibly sad to see her go. You couldn’t have asked for a better dog.