While most of America was staring at burly men charging at each other and ads for things they can no longer afford, the rest of the world was being interesting yesterday:
- * Iceland Elected (imagine the Super Mario coin sound with each word when you read this) a(n?) Apparently Qualified, Gay, Green, Leftist, Social-Democrat Woman as prime minister of their interim government while they restructure after their recent financial crisis. Good job Iceland, Congratulations Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir.
- * Someone in The West noticed that China is imploding MUCH faster than Chinese officials claim (via BoingBoing). Surprise everyone! Or not. This should at least slow the paranoid ramblings about China getting hegemonic aspirations in the near future, they’ll be busy dealing with their own internal unrest. Couple this with the Satyam scandal news of late; all the favorite threats to America’s ridiculous (but comfortable for a substantial fraction of Americans) international dominance are going to be defeated by their own incompetence. I’m not sure how that makes me feel.
- * France has decided to prop up their print newspaper industry by buying newspaper subscriptions for all French teens on their 18th birthday. In related news, a few days ago, we learned that its so inefficient to print and distribute traditional newsprint that the New York Times spends at least twice as much each year printing copies for subscribers than it would cost to buy each one a Kindle (For the non-nerds, a Kindle is Amazon’s “Wireless Reading Device”. I’m not particularly found of the implementation, but the idea seems sound. I use my N810 this way.). I shouldn’t have to explain why these facts are incongruous. Death to print media.
This collection of interesting news (and discovering a new musical guilty pleasure) probably contributed to my not getting enough done over the last few days, but isn’t it all interesting?
