Tags – Updated!
Not in a blogging mood today, so instead, I finally installed a new plugin to support tagging.
Much to say about tagging later on, but for now, go check out the tag cloud in the categories menu above. Cool innit? Slowly working my way through my old entries, only entries up to June 2004 are correctly tagged at the mo.
UPDATE: moved the tags over to their own page (and tagged a few more entries). It’s all here now.
Nifty innit?
麻布十番
For most Japanese, “Azabu Juban” is kinda what French should sound like..．
Don’t let the slighty decrepit look of some houses fool you though: the neighborhood is one of the most expensive in the city.
Gastronomico-Theological Thought
So I was wondering:
Can the fact that tofu tastes absolutely nothing like bacon be taken as objective evidence that God hates vegetarians?
Guava Chu-Hi
Gotta love Japanese obsession with seasonal drink editions…
Science Fair
Useful tidbits of Physics we’ve learned the hard way this week-end:
- Leave a bottle of bubbly rosé exposed to Tokyo’s Summer temperatures for long enough before opening, and add some ambiance to your party with a lovely geyser fountain. And I do mean a geyser, not a bit of overflow and bubbles… The ceiling just got a nice new finish coat with that one.
- The combustion point of alleged “deep-frying oil”, as sold by local supermarkets, is way lower than you’d expect.
- The melting point of the plasticky faux-woodfloor is also lower than the temperature of that bare 150W lightbulb I always keep at foot-tripping level in my bedroom.
- The only great thing about the Third Law of BBQ Thermodynamics, is that the guarantee of the heaviest rain of the month on the night of your BBQ, is also the assurance that your garden won’t catch on fire, no matter who’s handling the BBQ.
- Powerbook keyboards like to remain sober. One glass of wine, and they get f4c2ed 4* f6r g66d.
- The life expectancy of your average shower door is roughly until the next time you stand butt naked, blinded by shampoo and turning your back to the door when it decides to unhinge and fall on you.
Still wondering why I decided to go back to bed and not move until this week-end is over?
Samurai Cook
Samurai of the BBQ?
Atsushi trying start a fire. I think we wont be eating for a while.
〓Tracey〓
In the name of Science
Going boldly where no KitKat has gone before…
The flavour reads 治字抹茶: unknown to my dictionary, but should have something to do with green tea (I think it may be some sort of Japanese pastry, made of red bean paste and green tea, like pretty much every Japanese pastry out there).
What does Africa owe You?
As often, this entry started as a comment on one of my own entry, specifically addressing Mark’s comment… Then I realized it may as well become its own entry. Consider this the heady and serious counterpart that had to follow last week’s joke…
Mark,
Where do I begin…
No, I do not think poverty exists in African countries just because they need to be freed from their despots and embrace the market.
All these despots, like about every other plague that’s befallen Africa over the past few centuries can be, without a hint of exaggeration, directly traced to one western nation or another. Sure, there are lots of Africans killing and oppressing other Africans. There are bad people in Africa, like anywhere else. But the people manipulating these dictators and benefitting ultimately from the insane amount of corruption and plundering that is underway: they are most definitely not Africans.
Africa is not “dependent”: it currently provides most of the oil that’s running your SUV, my friend. Can you tell me what it gets in return? Beside funding and weapons to whatever warlord agrees to give the best protection for Oil companies, that is.
Entire African countries are currently run, without any pretense at hiding it, by US and European corporations. Countries lucky enough to be devoid of valuable resources (or whose wealth was exhausted in the previous decades) usually have to deal with impossibly stupid artificial borders that make tribal wars a given.
Believe me, it would be a while before whatever money the IMF “invests” in African countries comes any close to even-out what is simultaneously being pumped out of the continent straight into the hands of private corporate interests. And talking about these investments, I hope you do realize that we aren’t even talking about “financial help” here: the debt some of these countries have, was loaned at such rates that the mere interests sometimes overcome their GNP, making it practically impossible to pay back. That is, unless they’d do something like repossess national resources and re-negotiate actual trade agreements that do not just give it away to foreign companies… And I’ll let you count how many government have survived to tell their successful tale of taking on such enterprise (cf. South America).
So in the end, I’ll tell you why that half of the world slowly dying from its excess of fat and junk food, ought to do something for the other half:
Not just out of simple human decency, not just because of that Book they love to flaunt whenever it’s time to burn or stone a sinner but conveniently forget when it comes to the part about human life over material possessions and such other Nazarethian hippy nonsense, not just because even the most raging capitalist ought to realize that there is a problem in a system where people die daily for lack of 5 c. worth of food, while others accumulate more wealth than they could possibly spend in a lifetime…