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LifestreamLet them drink Coca-Cola? Just watch for the toxic spills and water shortage. President Hamid Karzai formally opened a 25-million-dollar Coca-Cola bottling plant, one of the most significant investments in Afghanistan since the ousting of the Taliban five years ago. Karzai said it was an endorsement of the government’s efforts to push ahead with reconstruction [...]
Archive for the 'Culture' Category
I noticed this blog (“Sex and Shanghai”) in a China-related story over at MetaFilter. If it is indeed for real, and not some 14 year old prankster, it would be one of the most aggravating, disturbing, arrogant, vulgar, self-aggrandizing and frankly racist colonial stories I’ve read all summer. I find obvious parallels between the type [...]
On the great Ukrainian bride hunt from Harper’s June 2006. On the topic of the effects of globalization on what was once refered to as mail-order brides. Now international marriage brokers. Sad, humorous, or just plain disgusting? (via Metafilter) In one form or another, the so-called mail-order bride has been part of American life since [...]
Swedish IDG rag ComputerSweden made a big splash about Apple getting into the employee home PC market the other day. Sure, I suppose there are people that would believe those fantasies. Not even Apple themselves think they could get more than 10%, at best, to go for their junk even if people had the choice. [...]
Here is the updated World Classification. Sweden is still second with 45.3% of course. But where in the world is the U.S., or indeed Israel? You’ll have to scroll way down to place 69 and 70 respectively to find them. The Congressional Research Service usually denotes these figures as being “record numbers.” A mediocre result [...]
As Sploid reports, consumption and the ferret wheel of materialism doesn’t make you any happier. In fact, it is the other way around. New research suggests that consumer culture has a detrimental effect on your emotional well-being. Not that it should be news to anyone, as they point out, clerics and philosophers have made a [...]
The Unofficial IKEA Web Journal! By Armand B. Frasco of Moleskinerie. Great idea actually. Welcome to Positive Fanatics – The Unofficial IKEA Web Journal. For most of us it starts with the catalog. Or a word overheard. The anticipation builds. Then the inevitable pilgrimage to the yellow-and-blue building. Wherever we heard it first, IKEA intrigues, [...]
Abusters is once again busy organizing the Buy Nothing Day. For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate — in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that’s become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some [...]
Yes, it’s one of those days when you can’t tell up from down. And for some reason I strayed into the subject of anthropomorphic creations. Or androids if you’re into robotic science. Anthropomorphic = “Suggesting human characteristics for animals or inanimate things”. It seems that some peoples projects are even more up in the blue [...]
