No thoughts or ideas burning to be expressed tonight, so I guess I will just diarize at you nice people instead.

I learned something from a Cracked list recently that is just so damned beautiful that I have to share it.

During the Maidan revolution that led to the current problems in the Ukraine, the protesters did a hell of a lot more than just “occupy” some spaces. They basically went to war with their own government, They build an ice fortress made of compacted snow and defended it against all the government could throw at it.

It helps that some of the protesters were ex-military, including some that were ex-Spetsnaz, which is Russian for “Green Beret”, more or less. These are some tough motherfuckers.

Among the many brilliant non-violent tactics they invented, like having a whole bunch of people with cars form a kind of non-violent armored infantry unit called the Automaidan to keep supply lines running, was a move so absolutely poetically (and practically) perfect that it still shimmers in my mind every time I think of it.

When the jackbooted thugs of the previous regime came to try to kick them out and arrest them, they confronted with the usual things like Molotov cocktails (okay, so it was not entirely non-violent) and catapults full of rocks (they truly got medieval on their asses), they also used…. mirrors.

It’s simple. When the government thugs come, hold up a mirror to them and let them see themselves as individuals instead of being just one part of a faceless mob. Let them see what they have become. It is one thing to be one indistinguishable cog in uniforms designed to make them frightening anonymous, and another thing to see you, the individual you, staring back at you from the mirror and seeing what you have become.

I have no idea what effect this actually had, but it doesn’t really matter. It was such a genius move in terms of tearing away the veil of anonymity and making people see what they truly look like to others when they put on the scary uniform and start cracking the skulls of everyday citizens just like themselves.

And they kept it up, too, even adding “take your helmets off so we can see your face” to their demands at one point.

It is just so beautiful that it makes me want to fall to my knees and weep in front of it. It is so brilliant that I wish I had thought of it. It is so poetically perfect that I can’t believe it actually happened.

I think this should be a standard part of the revolution handbook from now on. Want to defend yourself from the stormtroopers of oppression without direct violence? Just snatch their face-concealing helmets or masks off, and see how willing they are to commit brutal acts when everybody can see who they really are.

It is the moral pressure of shame, and I am a big believer in shame. Shame is one of the forces we use to remain moral. In times of temptation, the thought of the humiliation and shame you would feel if anyone found out what you had done is a very good aid to remaining true to your ideals.

In fact, honestly, I think it is all keeping some people in line.

So by taking their helmets off, you are applying shame to them. It’s made even better by the fact that everyone can snap pictures of said faces with their cell phones and tablets these days. Then boom, that face is subject to shame from the entire fucking Internet, which will be able to provide real names, addresses, and so on for said faces in no time at all.

So face what you do, you goddamned thugs. See what you have become. Know that you will be considered personally responsible for all you do. And we do not care if you were “just following orders”.

That’s what is known (to me) as the Nuremberg Defense, and it works a little less every day.

Another cool thing I learned recently, this time from a podcast : Way down south in southern South America, there is a mosquito factory that produces over 20 million mosquitoes a day.

Sounds like something an 80’s cartoon villain would do, doesn’t it? “Ah yes, put the mosquito factory right next to the bad smell generator and the broccoli flavored liver boutique…. ”

But these are not ordinary mosquitoes. For one thing, they are all male. For another thing, they have been given a very specific genetic modification : any babies they sire will die almost right away.

So the idea is that you release these killer daddy skeeters in a mosquito-rich area, they follow their biological imperative and get it on with as many lady mosquitoes as they can, and all the babies those mamas have die.

This throws a spanner into the works of their entire reproductive cycle, and the upshot is that in a very short period of time, you have cut down the mosquito population by as much as 96 percent.

And as someone who grew up in a place with mosquitoes so big they rape ducks, I think that is bloody marvelous. I have absolutely no sympathy for mosquitoes as a species and I would be quite happy to see them all go.

But that is neither wise or possible. All we really want to is to get rid of them in places where humans live. They will do just fine out in the wild, biting other mammals.

We must also remember that for us in North America, mosquitoes are a persistent nuisance, but for a lot of the rest of the world, they are downright deadly. Whether it’s dengue fever in South America or malaria in Africa, mosquitoes kill millions every year.

If we could simply eliminate them from human occupied areas, we could save lives and prevent tons of human suffering, not to mention the suffering of the local fauna.

So screw you, mosquitoes! Go bite a bear in the forest and leave us alone.

That’s it from me for today, folks. Talk to you tomorrow!