Archive for November, 2006
ClaimID
Are you a social web junkie? Then you might want to gather all your online identities into one place. Even better, registering for a ClaimID account automatically gives you an OpenID account, which can be useful as more and more sites start offering support for OpenID.
Here is my ClaimID profile.
(via Alex King)
{openID, identity}
Interlocals
True bilingualism is a rare thing. As we get flooded by more and more information, who has the time to painstakingly read through hundreds of blog posts in a foreign language on the vague hope that there might be one good article? No matter how much I try I rarely read more than a couple […]
Sergei & Uncle Walt
Speaking of the Guardian … a piece in the Observer discuses how Walt Disney was a raving McCarthyite:
Disney had a ferocious temper, especially against people he saw as left-wing. He testified enthusiastically before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and detailed what he saw as communist plots to take over Hollywood. He branded some former animators […]
Mad Chen
I initially pointed out Jonathan Watts’ awful Guardian UK piece in a comment on Taiwan Matters. But after urging from both Tim and Michael, I decided to sit down and write a letter to the editors of the Guardian.
I have long felt that the biggest problem of media “bias” is not the political leanings of […]
Big Mac
How long does the average worker have to labor before they can afford to purchase a Big Mac at McDonald’s? A recent study compiled the data for cities around the world. Here is a small sample of the results:
Tokyo - 10 minutes of work
New York - 13 min
London - 16 min
Taipei - 20 min
Kuala […]
Oversight
Charles Miller makes an important point:
As such, it still baffles me that a week later, the news is blanketed with Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and Iraq, while the number one issue for voters has dropped out of some hole in the bottom of the news desk. To me, this says that either the Republicans are […]
Vijay
Ever secretly wish that a good friend fails to achieve their dream? That’s how I felt when I learned Vijay Indrekar Chhara wanted to become a policeman. Vijay is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met, a natural leader who commands respect without imposing it. He spends most of his time working […]
Pandora
Want to create your own radio station, one which plays music you like?
Pandora is amazingly simple to use: you enter the name of an artist whose music you like and it starts playing additional music similar to the one you listed. You can add more artists to the same “station” or you can create multiple […]
Gravel
I think Taiwanese tend to lack a sense of perspective about their national problems. They seem to think they live in the darkest backwaters of the third world and look up to America as a paragon of modernity. For this reason I often try to put things into perspective when talking about Taiwanese politics. While […]
Sunlight
Now that I live in the tropics* with a south-facing window, I no longer have much trouble waking up in the morning. The huge flood of natural sunlight makes me feel like I’ve overslept when it is still seven AM. Still, I feel I owe it to my readers to update the roundup of high-tech […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
