Archive for March, 2006
Relative Deprivation
One topic I discuss a lot here on Keywords is inequality, but one thing I’ve never thought about before I read this New Yorker article is proposing a change in the way that the poverty rate is calculated. By using a relational, as opposed to absolute, measure, the poverty rate can better reflect the importance […]
Mishegass
Another link from Michael Manning, who asks the ever important question:
Why does China need so many people trained in Jewish law?
{china, Judaism, kosher, law, 中國}
Uyghur Pop
Via Michael Manning,
the group that’s been bringing down the house in Uyghur discos all over Xinjiang, all the way from Uzbekistan, the beautiful girls of [Insert Band Name Here].
He doesn’t know the name of the band, and the video is very low budget, to say the least, but it is great to have a glimpse […]
Landlocked
For developing countries, being landlocked poses a special burden:
Consider these statistics. Outside of western and central Europe, the average income of landlocked countries is just $1,771, compared with $5,567 for coastal nations. It has been estimated that growth rates of the world’s thirty-one landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are 0.7-1% lower than they might otherwise have […]
Traffic
Not the first time I’ve been linked to by BoingBoing, so I know from experience that after the link disappears from the front page of BoingBoing few of those readers will come back (few even read anything but the linked post), but it is still quite phenomenal to see the difference a link can make:
Both […]
106 Houses!
Last night Shashwati and I called Roxy in Chharanager and heard some terrific news. (Skype’s conference calling feature is amazing!)
Just after New Year’s, we’d visited a road-side settlement of Denotified Tribal people who had been displaced from their homeland by urban development. This was in the Ahmedabad district of Maninangar.
Last week, the Budhan Theatre and […]
Binglang Xi Shi
“Betelnut Beauties” 檳榔西施 are a unique Taiwan phenomenon that have garnered a fair amount of attention on the blogsphere, including three posts (here, here, and here) on BoingBoing. And an extensive set of links on this page maintained by David of David on Formosa. Some of the pictures and links are really quite good, but […]
Obscure Characters
In Taiwan it is not uncommon for someone to change the character used to write their name as a means of averting a streak of bad luck. Although sometimes people will actually change the pronunciation of their names, more often they will simply find a homophone with a different number of strokes in the character. […]
MRT Blog
Now that I’m in Taiwan, I guess I should remove my listing from the NYC Bloggers subway map. Too bad I’m not living in Taipei, then I could be on the MRT Blog:
Unfortunately, it turns out that the MRT blog isn’t a blog at all, but rather a housing development.
Nor is it the only housing […]
Ma
From the personals section of the Hindustan Times:
To Rajitha: I want you to say that I love you and I miss you. Want to know who I am mail ma at [email address]
Of which Dilip asks:
Yes, but why are you bringing your mother into this?
I’ve watched enough Bollywood films to know the answer […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
