Sick video game promotion

Sacrificing a goat for a video game press conference... What has this world come to?

What is it like in the People's Republic of China?

Pretty awful (Brief nudity)

Some vegan jerk named Justin

This guy goes from meat-atarian to vegan. Shock: he loses weight. For those of you who don't actually want to read the whole thing, you might be interested in the grody facts at the end of the article.

Testing, testing...

1, 2, 3

Pi-ano

Each numeral 0 through 9 is assigned a note, then the digits of pi are played.

Democracy comes to Bhutan

We are not starting a party because we have an ideology. We’re not starting a party because we have a vision for a better Bhutan. We are starting a party because the king has ordered us.

I wasn't planning on living past 30 anyway...

I <3 Bees.

This one is for Paul

A million insane cars.

The PRC is even crazier than I thought

Follow-up to Chinese racism against Tibetans, vis-a-vis Internet censorship: They apparently also want to brainwash Chinese (even more than they have before.) What an evil empire...

Google, Tibet killers

Google is killing Tibet. Excerpt:

Cultural genocide is a scandalous charge. But what exactly does it mean? Raphael Lemkin, a legal scholar, was the first to use this term in 1933. Mr. Lemkin had some expertise on the topic both as an intellectual and as a Holocaust witness. According to Lemkin, the term means the "deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political or military reasons." Since no recognized academics dispute that "historic Tibet" has been subject to government-sponsored population relocation programs, creative map-drawing, and wholesale destruction of its cultural institutions, then by definition cultural genocide has taken place...

In 1950, the People's Liberation Army "peacefully liberated" Tibet, something akin to saying that Adolf Hitler was a good friend of European Jewry. From 1950 to date, 1.2 million Tibetans have died as a result of mass slaughter, imprisonment, or starvation; 7.5 million Han Chinese have migrated into historic Tibet, now appended to Sichuan, Yunan, and Gansu provinces, and the more recently chartered province of Qinhai; over three thousand Buddhist monasteries have been razed and their cultural properties destroyed or plundered; and iconic religious leaders -- the recognized figureheads of traditional Tibetan culture -- have been forced into exile, imprisoned, executed, or kidnapped.

Cultural genocide is subtler than physical genocide -- its tools are less obvious. So now China can extend its dilution of Tibetan culture into cyberspace with expert assistance. Google has agreed to filter out every aspect of Tibetan life that the Chinese government finds offensive, leaving only propaganda, misrepresentations, and outright lies about Tibet and Tibetans. It's amazing. The Tibetan people spent thousands of years developing their history and culture, and Google managed to make it disappear in little more than a year with only a few algorithms.

For those of you in Indianapolis, are you going to see the mandala by the Gomang monks? It's pretty sweet... Barring that, visit Emory with me in October to see the Dalai Lama.

Mursi tribeswoman with AK47 and iPod

That says it all. Sidenote: does this strike anyone else as fundamentally wrong in many ways?

What it's like in Western Sahara

Again, sorry, but I had to... (Video: 56k okay.)

Ambigrams!

They read the same forwards and backwards/upside down.

The appropriate response to tragedy

This was written about the September 11 terrorist attacks, but apply just as well to the tragedy in Virginia a few days ago.

3-D Paper and Audio Illusions

Comics artist Jim Woodring has created pop-up art with the world's hippest notebooks. If that didn't freak you out, this will.

You got math in my art! You got art in my math!

I would have thought this was the coolest thing in the world when I was 13. It's still pretty cool.

Good-bye blue Monday

I hope you've found peace.

P.S. - As I posted this, Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" started playing.

Kant Would Be Proud

This is amazing. It is definitely worth the time to read it. (Printer-friendly version linked; go here if you'd rather see all the ads.)

You are what you eat.

Or at least these scientists say it will change how you smell.

Democracy Inaction

This is democracy for you.

I'm useless

Well, *this* blogger is willing to tell you...

Thanks for nothing, Mitch Daniels

This is what I've been saying for years.

The pre-TISP

This is insane. Yay Indianapolis.