I won’t be posting anything here until mid-January. I may be on Twitter in the meantime, though.
Happy holidays. See you in 2013.
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Author: Newley
Hi. I'm Newley Purnell. I cover technology and business for The Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. I use this site to share my stories and often blog about the books I'm reading, tech trends, sports, travel, and our dog Ginger. For updates, get my weekly email newsletter.
As I Tweeted yesterday, I was delighted to see that my piece on all things vintage Thailand was included in WSJ Scene Asia’s list of their top Asian travel stories of 2012.
The story, which ran in August, is online here.
- “Monks Lose Relevance as Thailand Grows Richer” — The New York Times
- An Economics Masterpiece You Should Be Reading Now — Bloomberg
- The Basement — cabel.me
- Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption — Forbes
- In a New Era of Insider Trading, It’s Risk vs. Reward Squared — The New York Times
- The Best 10 Economics Papers of 2012 — UDADISI
- The New York Times Paywall Is Working Better Than Anyone Had Guessed — Bloomberg
- Timeline of the far future — Wikipedia
- 2012’s Most Popular Locations on Instagram — Instagram blog (Thailand watchers will be interested to note the first two spots)
- Video embedded above and on YouTube here: “Holland vs the Netherlands.”
(Previous link round-ups are available via the links tag.)
More later on this topic, perhaps, but I wanted to post this for now.
Is there truly no e-book version of Nicholas Negroponte’s 1995 book Being Digital?
What’s wrong with this picture?
The text I’ve circled in the image above is Amazon’s standard “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle.”*
Is this situation ironic? (It would seem so. It depends on your perspective on technology and traditional media, I suppose.)
Is it telling? (Perhaps.)
*My initial searching reveals there isn’t an e-book version available elsewhere, via any other retailers.
UPDATE: Here’s a new post — there’s an ebook available now!
I’m a little late in noting this, but Thailand watchers may be interested in this Bloomberg story from December 11:
Facing eviction from her home of six decades, Amporn Pannarat personifies the dilemma facing the fund supporting Thailand’s monarchy as it seeks to boost returns and regenerate Bangkok with its first commercial development project.
The 78-year-old watched over the years as office towers and Four Seasons and St. Regis hotels went up around her aging concrete house near Lumpini Park, now one of several dozen left on land about the size of Manhattan’s World Trade Center site. The Crown Property Bureau’s plan to build condominiums on the location puts it at odds with an image of altruism maintained by a fund that eschews profit as its central objective.
The shift to build commercial properties, instead of just leasing land to private developers, risks exposing the CPB to scrutiny it has largely avoided because of laws used to shield the monarchy from criticism. The bureau, which has a portfolio estimated at $41.3 billion — more than three times that of the British throne — provides few details of its earnings and how they are spent.
Just a quick note to let you know that I have a new story over at Covering Business, a Columbia Journalism School site.
The piece is called “How to Write About Shocks to the Tourism Industry.”
The video is embedded above and on YouTube here.
There’s also a BBC text story.
- It’s official: Austerity Economics Doesn’t Work — John Cassidy in the The New Yorker
- The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like — The Atlantic
- Dear Journalists at Vice and Elsewhere, Here Are Some Simple Ways Not To Get Your Source Arrested — Forbes
- The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time — Rolling Stone
- How do you pack your bag for a seven-year, 22,000-mile international reporting assignment? — Nieman Journalism Lab
- The enduring Apple TV Fantasy — Monday Note
- Gertler Earns Billions as Mine Deals Fail to Enrich Congo — Bloomberg Markets Magazine
- The impossibility of tablet-native journalism — Felix Salmon
- Google’s Lost Social Network — BuzzFeed FWD
- Thai Tycoons Top Dealmakers With Record Spending — Bloomberg
- David Chase Doesn’t Care About the Russian — Slate
- Syria Deeply — An “independent digital media project led by journalists and technologists, exploring a new model of storytelling around a global crisis.”
- Retronaut — “The past is a foreign country. This is your passport.” (Via @fergle.)
- Video embedded above and on YouTube here: “Call Me Maybe – Harvard Economics Department.”
(Previous link round-ups are available via the links tag.)
There are stories from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The AP, Reuters, and The Financial Times. And Bangkok Pundit has some analysis.
The AP reports:
Vast crowds of devoted Thais turned out Wednesday to catch a brief glimpse of their beloved king as the world’s longest-reigning monarch celebrated his 85th birthday with a rare public appearance.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej sat on a throne on a balcony overlooking a plaza packed with a crowd that police estimated at 200,000 as he delivered a brief homily on national harmony.
The WSJ says:
Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej – the world’s longest-reigning monarch – emerged from the hospital Wednesday to speak to his country and mark his 85th birthday, calling for unity in the politically fractured nation.
The monarch said that he had always believed “that your best wishes and goodwill to each other is an important key to making unity happen,” speaking softly at the balcony of the Dusit Palace while seated in a golden throne. “If Thais keep this morality in mind, I hope that Thailand will … maintain its strength in the long run.”
And the BBC has some video footage.