so this was originally gonna be the Awesome Dude of the Week blog (I'd embed the hyperlink for you, but the myspace is intimidated by my revealing of Muslims as more than towelheaded suicide bombers.  Perhaps Rupert Murdock put Bill O'Reilly in charge of censorship), but I kinda have a tendancy to ramble and it sorta evolved into something that goes far beyond the limited scope of ianm1121.blogspot 4.0

been very conscious of distributing the Awesome Dudes of the Week according to my arbitrary quota system.  I find great humor in well-meaning affirmative action and contrived classification.  Like Chinese people in South Africa being "black."  First they were just Chinese, then they were "coloured," then Taiwan Chinese got to be "honorary white," and now pre-1994 Chinese South African citizens and their descendants are "black"  

labels are stupid.  Have yet to run into any disparities with mine yet, but just to illustrate the comedy:

can't really disagree too much with those.  Mongolian v. Chinese, but dude was Emperor of China.  Totally qualifies him as Chinese.  Timur was a Turkicized Mongol in Persian Uzbekistan.  Kinda a lot of ethnicities there, but he was Muslim so that one is settled.  Akbar was Muslim too, but he was  Emperor of India so he gets to represent India.  With me thus far?  Alright, how 'bout Babur?  Directly related to Genghis and Kublai Khan through his mother, so he is of Chinese descent.  He is also related to Timur from his father's side, which makes him Muslim.  Plus he was Muslim and he was born in Persian Uzbekistan, so he should be Muslim.  Self-identified as Timurid and Chaghatay-Turkic though (and you thought Tiger Wood's Cablinasian was multi-cultural).  Ok, so he was a Mongolian Turkish Persian Uzbeki, that is still Muslim.  Yeah, but he founded the Mughal dynasty.  Emperor of India makes him Indian.  So he is legitimately Chinese, Muslim, and Indian.  And a blood relative of all three of the dudes pictured above

fortunately, I have an "other" category, but that is reserved for Europeans (non-Andalusians of course), 'Mericans, Africans (again, just the non-Muslims), and SE Asians ('cept for the 200 million Mohammedans in Indonesia).  Suppose Japanese and Koreans can be "others" too, as can anyone who pays jizya.  Is Bruce Lee an "other"?  How 'bout Cat Stevens?  Norah Jones?

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while my distribution of dudes across eras and fields is still kinda haphazard, geographically they are looking pretty nice.  Of course Greenland will most likely remain empty, as will the Pacific Ocean and other regions lacking in recorded history.  I'ma do my best to mix it up, and am open to recommendations from the fanclub, but ain't gonna do any token ADWs 

easy to associate people with the place of their birth, but often times that ain't necessarily where they're "from."  Let's take our most recent presidential election as an example as to how place of origin can be difficult to ascertain for the jet set.  Vice President Biden was born and spent his first 10 years in Scranton, but his family moved to Delaware and that's where he attended high school, university, raised his family, and commuted to DC via Amtrak.  Joe Biden is from Delaware.  Cousin Sarah was born in Idaho, but her family moved to Alaska when she was a baby.  Graduating from Wasilla High School, being Miss Wasilla, serving on the city council and being mayor = she is totally from Wasilla.  Cousin Barry was born and raised in Hawai'i (and Indonesia), but as an adult carpetbagged and married into the South Side of Chicago.  John McCain was born in Panama, bounced around as a military brat, attended high school in Virginia, college in Maryland, had various military assignments, lived in Vietnam for a while, then Florida, and finally left his wife and the Navy to shack up with some rich broad in Arizona.  John McCain is from Arizona and has been representing the state in Congress for over 25 years, but he didn't move there 'til his mid-forties

most of the ADWs have similar discrepancies between their place of birth and the hood they represented as adults.  The only controversial decision I really had to make was ibn Khaldun.  I gave him to Tunis, since that's where he was born and raised, he did live there for a while as an adult, and it is the location of his most popular google image search result statue.  Gave Zhuge Liang to Chengdu, since that was the capital of Shu Han and he was loyal to Liu Bei and it just seemed like the right thing to do

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this blog then starting to transition into applying that whole rotating quota deal to the allocation of other hobbies/usage of non-devil idle time.  Since I am way past my self-imposed deadline however, I'll just deposit that part in the vault and compensate for it by giving y'all part 5 in the series of police/military/immigration officers adventures