Great report here from Reuters:
A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda as he spoke to journalists at a news conference on Wednesday.
Banda softly shouted: “You (monkey) have urinated on my jacket,” and paused as he looked up to see the animal playing in a tree just above his chair.
“Perhaps these are blessings,” he said […]
Yesterday evening I was watching videos that have leaked out of Iran. I watched a video taken inside some kind of university - students being beaten and shot, gunfire, screams and breaking glass swirling around the microphone. I was totally shaken by the images: left with a physical feeling of fear and nausea. I can’t […]
“Short girls”, apparently. I analysed a random selection of a couple of thousand tweets, to find out what is most mentioned in the construction “I love …”
Here are the all the things that were mentioned more than once in my sample:
you 106
it 85
them 13
my job 10
me 10
YOU 9
him 8
her 8
u 6
this song 6
the smell 5
the fact 4
THIS 4
Mondays 4
the sun 3
the rain 3
my wife 3
my life 3
my friends 3
my baby 3
Twitter 3
IT 3
your work 2
your designs 2
watching it with […]
Father’s Day and Mother’s Day are normally such schmaltz-generators… but finally someone has made something meaningful out of the day. See the collection at PostSecret:
Maryam Beheshti, 23, another student, said: “We will continue this till we get our votes back. I don’t afraid of being killed while many of my friends have been shot to death by this dictator government. My friends have cried today when they saw the pictures of the dead students in front of Tehran University […]
I can’t resist gleefully highlighting this fine book review in the Economist:
The “efficient market hypothesis”, the Nicene Creed of the market rationalists, inspired a wave of innovative financial products, such as derivatives and securitised subprime mortgages, that believers claimed would allow users to exploit the wonders of the market. This gospel was embraced so enthusiastically […]
I arrived late on Thursday night, walked up Bowery through a quiet Chinatown. I found my hostel, haggled over prices (which they had changed since I booked the bed), ate a delicious slice of pizza, then went to bed by about 1am. I slept briefly, then got up early, excited to see what I could […]
I’ve noticed that the Guardian published at least one article in Chinese, on May 20th.
This is rather strange - and for the moment, mysterious. There is no surrounding content to tell me why they published in Chinese. And Google yields nothing.
(I only found out about this because it turned up as a huge blip in […]
I’m actually beginning to “get” twitter (after months of thinking: “that’s just blogging with a character limit”).
I think the best thing about it is the search function - you’ve got to be logged in to use it. This can get you latest info on things in a way that Google can’t touch. I wonder though […]
Asked if he thought the pictures might upset Catholic voters, he replied: “Excuse me. When you take a shower, do you keep your jacket and tie on?”