Data, words, code
Interesting bits from David Sifry (of technorati)’s annual [state of the blogosphere](http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000443.html) post:
Remember the Free Hugs meme? Somebody in Australia started hugging people in the streets, it spread to Russia, Italy, Taiwan, Korea, Poland, and pretty much the rest of the world.
Then, some people in Shanghai tried it – and were promptly arrested
Before the arrest, presumably
The huggers were released after a couple of hours, but still: a big ‘meh!’ to the Chinese police
[cross-post from livejournal]
John Updike reviews Salinger’s _Franny and Zooey_. Reading about the Glass family, like [reading about the Bagthorpes](http://lzz.livejournal.com/229036.html) or watching _The Royal Tenenbaums_, is a guilty pleasure tinged with recognition and wish-fulfilment. Updike says much the same:
>Of Zooey, we are assured he has a “somewhat preposterous ability to quote, instantaneously and, usually, verbatim, almost anything he had ever read, or even listened to, with genuine interest.” The purpose of such sentences is surely not to particularize imaginary people but to instill in the reader a mood of blind worship, tinged with envy.
Many of the stories are online [here](http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/)
It was only a matter of time until somebody wrote it. But it’s a pleasant surprise that they wrote it really quite well
FIRST VOICE Listen. Through the compromised quiet of Cardiff’s early, toe-stubbing, lavatory-flushing morning there comes a strange sound. A rhythmical seesawing, like a latchkey scraped along a bass string of a piano, appropriately edited and enhanced. A sound that has challenged and comprehensibly defeated onomatopoeic artists for many a decade.
(thanks, whotheheckami)
Remember the Free Hugs meme? Somebody in Australia started hugging people in the streets, it spread to Russia, Italy, Taiwan, Korea, Poland, and pretty much the rest of the world.
Then, some people in Shanghai tried it – and were promptly arrested
The huggers were released after a couple of hours, but still: a big ‘meh!’ to the Chinese police
This US opinion poll analysis is interesting: apparently religious whites have basically the same political priorities as everybody else. They “
do not tend to list moral or values issues as their top priorities at all
“.
In lieu of content about Georgia, here’s some of what other people have been saying…
Vilhelm Konnander had an excellent post on Georgia a fortnight ago. He turns up a recent opinion poll saying that 61% of Russians consider Georgia “a bandit state”.
Registan also has plenty of posts on Georgia, and DJ Drive is still at it, blogging both in English and Russian. This translation from Kommersant seemed particularly interesting:
The Kommersant Daily speculates that Andrei Illarionov, ex senior advisor and an outspoken critic of Putin’s economic policies (which include arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky), might become the next economics advisor for the president of Georgia.
Illarionov, who recently has been hired by Cato Institute, a US libertarian economics think-tank, visited Tbilisi a few days ago to participate in “Freedom, Commerce & Peace: A Regional Agenda” international conference and, according to Kommersant, was invited for a dinner with president Saakashvili.
Nice bit of linguistic trivia/hearsay: mandarin and shaman are ultimately derived from Sanskrit. Sanskrit mantrin (advisor, counseller) gets adopted by Malays (because India was historically almost as good at exporting pundits as the USA is now). The Portugese pick it up from the Malays, and apply it to the Chinese (who don’t use the word mandarin themselves) – and we take it from the Portugese.
Better yet, how about shaman. Old Mircea Eliade is responsible for this one, getting it from a Russin version of the Tungus sâman. That comes from a Mongolian word for a Buddhist, which in turn came from China, and ultimately from Sanskrit.
Lingustic history taken unquestioningly from [here](http://www.takeourword.com/Issue092.html)
[DJDrive](http://djdrive.livejournal.com) points out this wonderful satire on the Russian crackdown on Georgian immigrants:
Georgia’s treachery almost took Russians by surprise. To prevent that from happening again, Vlast analytical weekly has prepared a guide to Russia’s neighbors and methods of combating them…There are recommendations for every country that will minimize their evil influence no less effectively than canceling the performances of dace ensembles and expelling schoolchildren whose last names end with –dze and –shvili.
Their suggestions include: