flickering pictures

Just a little stub of a post today — I’m swamped at the moment, and I my typing fingers need a rest after that little novella the other day on press freedom in Gaza. A new mall in Nanjing, China will apparently host only stores that sell knockoff brands, such as “McDnoald’s,” “Pizza Huh” and [...]

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If this isn’t the strangest thing you’ll read today, it’s up there. A woman in China has apparently lost all hearing in her left ear after a session of “passionate” kissing with her boyfriend. The BBC reports: The doctor who treated the girl in hospital was quoted in the paper explaining what had happened. “The [...]

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Surely it had nothing to do with the title of G&R’s new record. And since when do Chinese foreign affairs officials moonlight as music critics? The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports: In a rare comment on rock’n’roll, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang dismissed the creative output of US rock band Guns N’ Roses [...]

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Knowing that this story combines three of my favourite things — beer, Eastern philosophy and neat-o whatnot — a buddy of mine sent me some info about this most postworthy endeavour. Lloyd Alter at Treehugger reports: Fifty years ago the Heineken Beer company looked at reshaping its beer bottle to be useful as a building [...]

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Why shallots? Why not shallots? From the Times of India: India would make Pakistan a barren land in the next six years by blocking its water through construction of dams in violation of the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan Indus Water Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah said on Monday. [...] Dismissing India’s claim that it had stopped [...]

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With the world’s oceans expected to rise dramatically this century, the new president of the tiny island republic of Maldives is getting proactive about climate change. The Guardian reports: The U.N. forecasts that the seas are likely to rise by up to 59cm [nearly two feet] by 2100, due to global warming. Most parts of [...]

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Husain Amer, a photographer, filmmaker, modelling agent, erstwhile English teacher and good friend of mine has been tromping through China for the last year and is recording his exploits as he goes. Recently he documented a trip from Beijing to Xi’an via the ancient trading city of Pingyao, in China’s northeast. And for all you [...]

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If you didn’t know who he was, you’d swear he looked more like a merchant of used cars. Or plaid suits. Or kielbasa maybe. Anything but semi-automatic rifles, grenade launchers, helicopters, surface-to-air missiles, armour-piercing rockets, “ultra light” airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, anti-aircraft guns and armoured vehicles, with a client list that includes guerilla groups and [...]

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Reason #874 why I love the Times of India. The article is actually pretty interesting too — apparently the Indian state of West Bengal is losing out on millions of dollars from the international Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use because its chief minister refuses to set an example by kicking the habit. West Bengal [...]

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About a million North Koreans died of starvation in the late 1990s, and the World Food Programme says 6 million more are on the brink. But just as the world is starting to think that Kim Jong-Il doesn’t care about his starving people, he comes up with new super-noodles designed to fight hunger. From the [...]

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