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Misc.

Bhutan: Opening Up?

Bhutan: Opening Up? [not my image]

Here’s a great IHT story by Somini Sengupta about outside influences creeping into Bhutan.

Once, Bhutan guarded itself from the world outside so ardently that it allowed in satellite television only seven years ago. Today, globalization is officially sanctioned, and it is rushing in fast.

Today, at least here in the capital, outside and inside coexist.

Tall white prayer flags grace the side of a hill as offerings of good will to what Buddhists call sentient beings, even as the naughty rhymes of Snoop Dogg throb at the disco.

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Misc.

Pattaya Reborn

Pattaya, Thailand

My latest Globorati post is about how developers and hoteliers in the resort enclave of Pattaya, Thailand are aiming to shed the city’s bad-boy rep.

Solar Power Tower

Solar Tower

BBC News:

There is a scene in one of the Austin Powers films where Dr Evil unleashes a giant “tractor beam” of energy at Earth in order to extract a massive payment.

Well, the memory of it kept me chuckling as I toured the extraordinary scene of the new solar thermal power plant outside Seville in southern Spain.

From a distance, as we rounded a bend and first caught sight of it, I couldn’t believe the strange structure ahead of me was actually real.

A concrete tower – 40 storeys high – stood bathed in intense white light, a totally bizarre image in the depths of the Andalusian countryside.

Essentialist Explanations of Language

The Language of Dance

The Essentialist Explanations page “comprises a list of 876 ‘essentialist explanations’ of the form ‘Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z’.”

Here’re a few I like:

Vietnamese is essentially Thai with a Chinese vocabulary.
–Danny Wier

Korean is essentially angry Japanese with a speech impediment.
–Aeron Lempert

Basque is Klingon spoken by people who don’t want to be Spanish.
–Gordon Boddington

Argentinean is essentially Italian spoken so that other South Americans can catch on.
–ilvi

Taiwanese sounds essentially like a room full of rubber balls.
–Adam Walker

Dog is essentially a language spoken while begging for food.
–Dan Seriff

(Link via. Image via.)

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Misc.

Stowaway Cat

Astronaut Cat

cbcnews:

A New Brunswick woman is wondering how she made it through Saint John Airport security and all the way to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., with a live cat in her suitcase.

Mary Martell discovered Ginger, the family pet, in her luggage after a two-hour plane ride to Toronto and an hour’s drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake. The cat apparently snuck into a bag while Martell was packing.

Martell said her bag was scanned at the airport, but she was not stopped.

“They had asked me, when they put … the luggage through the X-ray, whether I had a turkey,” Martell said.

“[Security] kept going back and forth with [the suitcase],” Martell said. “I was adamant. ‘Look, I have no turkey.'”

(Emphasis mine.)

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Misc.

Restaurant Mascot Autocannibalism

The Suicide Food blog:

What is Suicide Food? Suicide Food is any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed. Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise. Suicide Food identifies with the oppressor. Suicide Food is a bellwether of our decadent society. Suicide Food says, “Hey! Come on! Eating meat is without any ethical ramifications! See, Mr. Greenjeans? The animals aren’t complaining! So what’s your problem?” Suicide Food is not funny.

(Via.)

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Misc.

Taiwan’s “Leisure Farm” Resorts

tainan

I have a new post at Globorati. It’s about “leisure farm” resorts in Tainan county, Taiwan.

What’s a Backronym?

I recently stumbled across this remarkably complex Wikipedia entry for “backronym”:

A backronym or bacronym is a portmanteau of backward and acronym[1] coined in 1983.[2][3] It usually refers to a phrase that is constructed backwards from the phrase’s abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or acronym. Sometimes backronym refers to the initialism or acronym itself,[4] but usually in those cases, it is a “replacement” backronym, the abbreviation already having an associated phrase. When the backronym phrase becomes more popular than the original, the word becomes an anacronym.[5]

Got that?

Related: “I Must Take Issue With The Wikipedia Entry For ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic.”

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Misc.

RSS in Plain English

You may recall my friends Lee and Sachi, who I met up with here in Bangkok last year. They’ve finished their year-long round-the-world trip and are back in Seattle working on social design and online community issues. And they’ve just created an informative video that explains RSS in plain English. Check it out.

And if you’re not already subscribed, grab my RSS feed! Paste this URL into your favorite RSS reader (I prefer Google Reader) or click the RSS feed button over there on the left, below the search box.

RSS has fundamentally changed my interaction with the Web, and I’m eager for more folks to take advantage of the technology, too.

Categories
Misc.

Thaksin to Buy Man City?

Is Thailand’s ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra aiming to snap up English football club Manchester City?

IHT/AP:

Toppled Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, who earlier made an unsuccessful bid for Liverpool, is planning to buy another English soccer club, according to a Web site close to Thaksin seen Monday.

The site — http://www.hi-thaksin.net — said that the former prime minister was ready to pay more than 6 billion baht (US$185 million; €136 million) for the Manchester City Football Club with partners from China and the Middle East.

Nopadol Pattama, Thaksin’s lawyer and de facto spokesman in Thailand, said he had read about the bid on the Web site but had not yet had time to ask Thaksin about it.

Thaksin, one of the country’s richest people, was toppled in a bloodless military coup last September following months of mass street protests accusing him of massive corruption and abuse of power. He has since been spending time at his home in London and traveling in Europe and Asia.

In 2004, the then-prime minister made an unsuccessful attempt to buy Liverpool and had also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring other English soccer clubs.

Note: Perhaps Everton FC would be a better fit, given the club’s prominent Beer Chang advertising partnership.