Regular readers know I have a love/hate relationship with CNN. I ridicule their infotainment style, but can't resist checking in to see what new frivolity vies for headline space with important world events. It's not to "Bat Boy" levels yet, but I can't resist checking to see.
I have a similar relationship with Rolling Stone. It depresses me to see all the junk - and junk music - in what used be an iconic (or "iconish" as Jessica Simpson would say) magazine. Maybe I've just grown up and the trees don't look as tall anymore. I still flip through it in line at the grocery, and will buy it if there's a P.J. O'Rourke piece, or summer tour coverage, or Flaming Lips news. That's what got me to grab the July 28 issue...some news about the upcoming At War With the Mystics, which supposedly has been influenced by the Lips doing a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody." [note: I heard it live, and was happily surprised at how much the Lips can still "rock" also including their version of "War Pigs"].
The Rolling Stone has been sitting around the house for a while now, and I just picked it up while waiting for the computer to boot. I flipped to the inside "serious" article, about counterfeiting, a profile about a guy from Chicago who has a technique to make very passable $100 bills. A Secret Service representative said they scored 8-9 on a 10 point scale. That pretty good, considering there has only ever been one perfect ten.
Here's the "you might learn something about international affairs" part: the perfect ten is allegedly made by the North Korean government, on a machine like the one used by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, in "vast quantities." And this was just a one sentence aside in an article about a home grown counterfeiter. By this time the computer was booted up, and I did some searching to find this BBC transcript. I also found a more excitable group's view of such counterfeit activity. Apparently this has been going on since the 1980s.
Posted by binky at August 8, 2005 11:55 AM | TrackBack | Posted to International Affairs