I know it can be difficult sometimes to click on a 15-minute video, but this TEDTalk is both timely and worth it -- timely because Apple held its iPhone 5 unveiling yesterday in San Francisco, and worth it because Leslie T. Chang is awesome. She's best known for Factory Girls, by far the best book I've encountered about the people -- the actual people -- who live and work in the factories that churn out much of the world's retail goods. Read more »
In a cab yesterday evening, the first words the driver said to me were, "They gonna fight?" I was confused and signaled as such. He nodded at the radio. A broadcaster was in the middle of reporting on the Diaoyu Islands -- sold on Tuesday to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's administration from their Japanese owners -- and that's when I realized he really meant, "Might they go to war?" Read more »
Via Corvallis Gazette-Times, an offending mural in Oregon promoting independence for Tibet and Taiwan. NFL Game Pass is free this week thanks to City Weekend, so go here to watch some American football. AMERICA. Links. Read more »
You want to know why people are sometimes reluctant to help strangers? Take this incident from Monday in Shenzhen, as reported by Hebei News. It’s a sad reflection on society when even a lost toddler can pose a hazard to one’s health. A 33-year-old man surnamed Chai was with some friends on a public plaza... Read more »Read more »
Usually when you see a headline like this in Chinese media — “Detect mentally ill in your neighborhood” — you think: Uh-oh. And then you find out the story is about authorities asking community residents to help “detect” those with mental illnesses “as the result of new regulations,” and you think: Oh snap, they made... Read more »Read more »
Before we get into the who-what-when-where-why of this, just a simple question: how can a man ever bring himself to kick a woman half his size multiple times in broad daylight while she's already surrounded by the man's goons and has a young child standing next to her? There's something wrong here. There's something deficient in the man's character, to say nothing of his brain. I understand that petitioners can be annoying, and this woman technically was trespassing, but surely there's a better response than kicking her several times like you're some MMA wannabe? Read more »
Presumptive Chinese president Xi Jinping has gone missing. He cancelled high-level meetings with Hillary Clinton and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week, and HOLY CRAP FREAK OFF PANTS OFF. Normally rational media organizations such as the Associated bleepin’ Press have published sentences such as, “More dramatically, the U.S.-based website Boxun.com cited an unidentified source inside Zhongnanhai as saying... Read more »Read more »
Recently in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, a traffic accident has led some people to praise two men for being Good Samaritans, but... pardon me for not completely seeing it. In the video, it looks like the female scooterist knocks herself out when she rams her head into the side of an encroaching vehicle. The man next to her then scoops her off the ground (what happened to stabilizing the neck?), and we're told that he -- along with someone else who stops to help -- hails a taxi to send her to the hospital. Whatever happened to ambulances? Oh well. Thought that counts! Read more »
Sunday marked the 36th anniversary of Mao Zedong's death, and if there's one thing we know the old Chairman would never, ever approve of, it's the senseless beating of people who voice opinions contrary to his own.
At Zijingshan People's Square in Zhengzhou, Henan province, the man you see getting slapped around apparently took an anti-Mao stance, which is not something you normally want to do around elders who continue to wear badges of Communist dogma in their hearts -- holdovers from the Cultural Revolution -- but definitely not something to do amid a celebration of Mao's life. Groupthink is alive and well. Read more »
By RFH Idea for an honest advert: Scene: A log cabin in remote woods. Five teens of mixed ethnicity/affability convene in a spooky basement to investigate a noise. Suddenly, the cast-iron stove in the back noisily cranks into action, pipes groaning. The teens gather round as, inside the stove, coals glow red-hot and wisps of smoke emerge.... Read more »Read more »
