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The personal blog of P. Kerim Friedman.

Month: August, 2007

Tweets 2007-08-22

Unsubscribed from 80 RSS feeds. 290 remaining. Not so bad as it sounds, since they are grouped in folders (eg. academic journals). # NewsTrust seems to give better results than other sites which allow users to rate news stories (ie Newsvine). http://beta.newstrust.net # Now I’m really glad we switched our flight to Eva Air!!! http://tinyurl.com/39dlv9 [...]

Tweets 2007-08-21

Unlikely the same thing could happen twice, but we decided to change our Japan flight from China Air to Eva Air … same price same times. # Qurratulain Hyder passed away. http://tinyurl.com/337qon I wrote about River of Fire here: http://tinyurl.com/2ug5yx #

Tweets 2007-08-20

If corporate meetings were run like the comments section on Digg: http://tinyurl.com/2hlo3j # 1kg encourages travelers to add an extra 1kg of educational materials for underprivileged children to their backpack. http://1kg.org/ #

Prices

Almost every night the news features at least one story about rising commodity prices. A few extra cents for spinach or milk might not seem earth shattering, but I know how hard my students scrimp and save to get buy. At the school lunch buffet I load up my tray with a bit of everything [...]

Tweets 2007-08-18

Planning for our Kyoto Trip (Suggestions welcome!!!): http://tinyurl.com/2du96q # @June: Lots of wind and rain here, but nothing too serious. Biggest problem is keeping the dog happy without her usual morning exercise. # Live radar of the storm: http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/observe/radar/radar.htm The eye is now in the Taiwan Strait, but there’s a long tail … # The [...]

Tweets 2007-08-17

96% of Taiwanese high school grads will go to college: http://tinyurl.com/25zx7m More here: http://tinyurl.com/2p7mbj # Typhoon just downgraded from a "Super Typhoon" to a regular old Category 3 Tyhpoon. http://tinyurl.com/33lbb5 # What will Phil Schaap do? http://tinyurl.com/2zpyrd #

Chinese Democracy

Three interesting quotes about democracy in China. Each pointing in a different direction: The first from a Rick Perlstein review of Mann’s The China Fantasy in The Nation: Nicholas Kristof dishonored the fifteenth anniversary of the massacre in 2004, Mann points out, with a column titled “The Tiananmen Victory.” The democracy activists had won: “After [...]

Tweets 2007-08-16

The story behind the Clearview font used on highways throughout the US. http://tinyurl.com/33s4u2 # My NHI post accidentally got taken offline. It is now back up. http://tinyurl.com/23umm7 # Waiting for "Super Typhoon" Sepat to hit this Saturday. (Don’t worry, we are safe and well prepared.) http://tinyurl.com/3ywzr5 #

Tweets 2007-08-15

Finished the DaVinci Code, now reading about Pierre Plantard on WIkipedia. http://tinyurl.com/ytttbj #

Wikitization

Back in the old days, when Wikipedia was new, there were just a handful of rules, and one of the key ones was “Ignore all rules.” Or, more specifically: If a rule prevents you from working with others to improve or maintain Wikipedia, ignore it. Wikipedia has changed a lot since then. Just read Andrew [...]