A recent episode of Marketplace — one of my favorite podcasts — contained an excellent story from Ruxandra Guidi. It’s about how cars that were damaged by hurricane Katrina have ended up for sale in Bolivia. While the automobiles may look fine, many are mechanically beyond repair.
The New York Times’s Alex Williams on “life lists”:
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Once the province of bird-watchers, mountain climbers and sufferers of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the life list has become widely popular with the harried masses, equal parts motivational self-help and escapist fantasy.
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Evidence of the lists’ surging popularity is all around. The travel writer Patricia Schultz currently has two “1,000 […]
Bangkok Post:
Greenpeace’s protest against the lifting of a ban on open-field trials of genetically-modified (GM) papaya yesterday was met with an unexpected reaction from a crowd of onlookers.
Passers-by took matters, and tonnes of papayas dumped by Greenpeace, into their own hands, and ran off.
The environmental group dumped the papayas in front of the […]
Star Trek Inspirational Posters. This one reads: “CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK. I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.”
Related: Demotivators.
(Via.)
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Tagged Humor
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Jennifer Chen has an excellent story in the Wall Street Journal about Thailand’s Jatukam Ramathep amulets. Don’t miss it.
Not so long ago, Nakhon Si Thammarat was a sleepy town with no obvious tourist attractions — or tourists. Its economy revolved around shrimp farming and fishing.
Now this provincial capital in southern Thailand is crawling with […]
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Tagged Thailand
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CNN/Reuters:
Thailand’s voters have approved an army-drafted constitution, but a hefty “No” vote suggests December’s general election will be messy, with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra still a potent political force.
With 98 percent of votes counted on Monday in Thailand’s first referendum, the Election Commission said about 57 percent of people had accepted the charter, […]
I’ve got a travel story in today’s New York Times. It’s about how Bangkok’s legendary Khao San Road, long a meeting place for backpackers, now offers a variety of upscale amenities.
Time’s Hannah Beech:
The guy selling spears of chilled guava down the street sports a Chelsea football jersey. Everywhere in soccer-mad Bangkok, in fact, people wear garments proclaiming their affiliation with one or another English Premier League team. But one jersey you’re unlikely to spot? That of Manchester City. It’s not because City has struggled, unsuccessfully, […]
Gaisma provides “sunrise, sunset, dusk and dawn times for thousands of locations all over the world.”
The image above is “Manhattanhenge: A New York Sunset,” by Neil deGrasse Tyson via APOD.
Here’re three amusing visions of the US from the blog Strange Maps: The United States of Florida, Ex Unum Pluribus: New American Nations, and (pictured above) The United Countries of Baseball.
That’s the name of Stephen Cysewski’s photo gallery, where you’ll find various images of Bangkok as seen through “Taxis, Cars, Buses, and Trains.” Don’t miss it.
I’d seen this amusing item a few days back, but thanks to reader Paul D for pointing it out again.
Seth Mydans, in the New York Times:
It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as can be with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts.
No matter how […]
My cell phone rang at 2:41 a.m. today. I had been in a deep sleep and was more than a little confused when I answered.
Me: “Hello, this is Newley.”
Woman with an American accent: “Oh, Hi is this John in…?”
Me: “Sorry, no. I think you have the wrong number. This is Newley in Bangkok.”
Woman: “Oh, wow, […]
UPDATE (August 18): I’ve done some additional tweaking and settled upon a design. Finally. I invite RSS subscribers to click through and view the updated newley.com in all of its newfound graphical glory.
UPDATE (August 9): I’ve changed the design. Again. Sadly, not everyone shared my passion for the ultra-minimalist layout I was using a few […]
Newley.com readers who are interested in fantasy football (soccer) are invited to participate in my annual Yahoo English Premiership group. Here’s more info on the game. It’s free. And fun. (Though FC Newley — a perennial force in the late 1990’s — has had several down years of late.) Team selections must be made by […]