Don’t miss Matt Gross’s fascinating piece in today’s New York Times detailing the rise in luxury tourism in Cambodia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia:
In almost every part of the country, you can find a conceptually and architecturally ambitious hotel: In mountainous Ratanakiri, there’s the Terres Rouges Lodge, a former provincial governor’s lakeside residence that has, […]
James Surowiecki has an incisive piece in this week’s New Yorker on Bolivia, development, and neoliberal economic policies. Neoliberalism didn’t work, but neither will Evo’s proposals to nationalize the economy, Surowiecki says.
But I agree with Winterspeak: Morales (ugly sweaters and all) wasn’t elected chiefly because voters believe he offers the best chance for developing their […]
I rarely write about my day job here in DC; I spend my time helping foundations and nonprofits communicate online. I launch Web sites, publicize existing ones, and give clients advice on how to build effective sites or re-design existing ones. My employer is Burness Communications, a 30-person public relations firm that works exclusively with […]
The WSJ reports that Taipei’s burgeoning WiFi grid:
…is expected to soon become the world’s first citywide wireless-computer network in a major metropolis. The network, initiated by the Taipei city government and built by a private company, already includes more than 3,300 wireless “access points” that cover half the city’s 106 square miles.
And speaking of the Cult of the Nalgene Bottle (of which, I must admit, I am an agua-swilling member), Stanley Goldfarb, in The Daily Standard, writes:
The supposed health benefit of consuming large volumes of water has become one of those urban myths that even some physicians have come to endorse without real insight into the […]
SNP:
Bottles in Translation is a company that takes Nalgene Bottles and prints foreign language translations of popular words and phrases.
If you’re travelling in a foreign country and you’re embarrased of having to pull out a little translation book, you can pull out your drink bottle instead and look up foreign language translations while maintaining your […]
Great column from Simon Dumenco in AdAge:
…it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, […]
– “Shutting Themselves In,” about Japanese boys who hole up in their rooms for years at a time;
– “10 things to do for free in Tokyo”;
– Weird Japanese TV clips compilation.
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Tagged Japan
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The December 20th issue of the Economist contains a fascinating, must-read story about robots and Japan. Why is that Westerners tend to be afraid of artificial intelligence, and yet many Japanese actually prefer the company of robots to real humans? The answer, the Economist says, has to do with religion and popular culture:
Few Japanese have […]
BBC:
Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that “glow in the dark”.
They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.
The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.
I totally […]
“According to Google, people in the world are known for…”
The map doesn’t include data for two particular nations I’m interested in, given my history. So here’s what Ecuadorians and Taiwanese are known for, at least according to google.
Wonderful, wonderful stuff. (Via Kottke.)
– Brangelina are with child!
– New gadgets from Apple! Drool!
– Chuck Norris responds to the Facts About Chuck Norris Spoof Site. My brother has some commentary. (Via BB.)
More links to my Bloggers’ Favorite Books of 2005 survey:
– del.icio.us/popular/books
– Largehearted Boy
– Fimoculous.com’s massive 2005 compendium of year-end lists
– Simplicity
– The Olive Reader (Harper Perennial’s blog)
– Troy Worman’s Orbit Now! Personal Development blog
– Chip’s Spynotebook
– Hard, Cutting
– Nervous Breakdown
– And don’t miss the ever-expanding comments to the post, which have proven to be […]