Would you like fries with that war?

McCrap!

It’s known as the McDonald’s theory of war… No country with a McDonald’s outlet, the theory contends, has ever gone to war with another.

The logic is thus: countries with middle classes large enough to sustain a McDonald’s have reached a level of prosperity and global integration that makes warmongering risky and unpalatable to its people.

The Russia-Georgia conflict has finally blown this theory out of the water.

Thomas Friedman, who invented the theory in 1996, said people in McDonald’s countries “don’t like to fight wars. They like to wait in line for burgers.”

The Caucasus conflict shows it’s quite possible to do both.

Read it here, via kottke.

Mac Rogers says interesting things.

I have no idea who this dude is other than that he’s a young indie playwright who lives in NYC. I found an interview with him where he said something I really liked:

…I don’t know what’s going on. I want there to be one spot I can look at and see the whole thing, but there is no such spot. This was something I loved about the recent film Cloverfield, that the glimpses of the monster were metaphorically true to what I experience when I try to look at the world around me, or even at myself: there’s a leg – oh – wait – there’s the jaws for a second – there’s the eyes – wait, there it’s going around the corner and I barely saw anything! I can’t see what’s happening while it’s happening. There’s too much work, too much need for entertainment and sensation, too many places to be.

And then I link-hopped over to his blog, where I found another post I liked, about how to make political theatre.

Sometimes I think about all the good stuff waiting out there on the internet and I freak out a bit.