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Marc F. Bellemare Posts

Published July 21, 2011

US Aid to Somalia and Famine Monitoring

“The causes of the famine are complex, and FEWS-NET reviews them in the link above. Please note that FEWS-NET’s passing reference to ‘significant limitations on humanitarian access have further exacerbated the situation’ is probably the single biggest problem we have right now — delivering aid to a stateless place causes all sorts of problems. You cannot imagine the legal and logistical nightmare that we are trying to negotiate at the moment (and are trying to negotiate for the NGOs that want to help as well) — and that is all I am able to say about that.

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Published July 21, 2011

Green Card Blues

Those who know me well know that I hate paperwork, filling out forms, and dealing with any kind of administration, and that I will only do these things when coerced. So when faced with the fact that my H-1B visa was going to expire at the end of July 2012, I finally decided to apply for legal permanent resident status (also known as the “green card”) in March.

I did so after nearly four years of post-marital procrastination. Indeed, spouses of American citizens have a much easier time when applying for legal permanent resident status. Since my wife is an American, I did not need to do much in order to get my green card save for gathering a number of identification documents and filling out a number of forms.

Last Friday, less than three and a half months later, I received my green card in the mail.

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Published July 20, 2011

Bill Simmons on Hollywood

More specifically, Bill Simmons on Will Smith and Ryan Reynolds:

“Fact: People believe Will Smith is the world’s biggest movie star (even though he doesn’t make great movies).

Fact: People believe Ryan Reynolds is a movie star (even though he isn’t).

That’s all you need to know about Hollywood right now. Everyone is complaining about the quality of this summer’s movies (probably the worst ever), this year’s Oscar race (potentially the most ghastly in years) and a general lack of imagination by the studios (it honestly feels like they gave up), but really, everything comes back to Will Smith and Ryan Reynolds.

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