Today’s New York Times article about how Swedes are choosing new names for themselves probably belongs in the large folder of non-trend trend articles in the Times. (“Last year, there were 7,257 name changes” out of a population of over nine million…) But be that as it may, it gives me an excuse to link [...]
Re-posted from Savage Minds. This is a view of the building where I work. The College of Indigenous Studies at National Dong Hwa University, in Hualien, Taiwan. And here is a picture of the view (on a more typically cloudy day) looking back, from the balcony near my office. Most of the people who live [...]
Shashwati and I finally got to the Taipei Biennial, on the last weekend before it closed. That means we missed most of the site-specific pieces around Taipei, but we did get to the main exhibit at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which was surprisingly busy – perhaps because admission was free. The highlight of the [...]
I’m glad that Taiwan is going smoke-free in public spaces and offices, but this PSA just made me laugh. Its so Taiwanese somehow …
Yesterday Chhara playwright and documentary filmmaker Dakxin Chhara posted a short “musical documentary” to YouTube which shows an original composition by the children of Budhan Theatre. What isn’t revealed until the end of the film is that the musical instruments they are playing are entirely composed of utensils used to brew liquor. Brewing liquor is [...]
If you google the letters “GTD” you’ll get seven million hits back. GTD stands for “Getting Things Done,” a time management book, method and philosophy promoted by David Allen which has spawned a huge array of self-help blogs and task management webservices. Wired magazine described it thus: Allen’s approach is not inspirational. Instead, it is [...]
A very happy year of the (Mickey) mouse to everyone from Taiwan! PS: Its worth noting that this is not a pirated product, but an authentic Disney product marked with a hologram to that effect. Disney must be raking it in this year!
It bears no relation to the main point of his article, which focuses on how economic ideology led the Fed into the current “unmitigated disaster” known as the subprime lending debacle, but Paul Krugman chose this interesting quote as the lead-in to his article: When announcing Japan’s surrender in 1945, Emperor Hirohito famously explained his [...]
The other day I went to see an interesting performance built up around the life and work of Gao Yi-sheng 高一生. Who is Gao Yi-Sheng? There isn’t much about him in English on the web, but here is a short blurb from the Taipei Times: Better known by his Chinese name of Kao Yi-sheng (高一生), [...]