Link Banana

A very cool short video from “the Beeb.” My favorite is probably the view of London taxis during a day, but they’re all pretty good visualizations.

(via Gems Sty)

For the first time in years, China has taken Mao off a denomination of currency (and — it being a commemorative Olympics bill — replaced him with the “birds nest” stadium). Despite relevant historical and cultural issues, my only comment is that it just looks wrong to me.

(via MeFi)

At least on the Peruvian side of the border, the plan is being changed to leave them alone.

It sometimes feels like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is following my program a tad too well.

A convoy carrying the Movement for Democratic Change leader was stopped at a police roadblock at 1000 GMT, party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

The MDC leader and his entourage were taken to a police station in the far west of the country, said Mr Chamisa.

“It appears they want to disrupt our campaign programme,” he said.

UPDATE (06/04/2008): He has been freed.

Where Bolivia’s indigenous women meet the WWE. (The link is to a video story.)

(via Passport, who have some breathtaking images of the sport)

Speaking of language, Portugal has given in and accepted Brazilian spellings of words. (Also, congratulations to the BBC employee that came up with the title: “Reform spells change for Portugal.” Get it?)

The agreement standardises numerous spellings and adds three letters - k, w and y - to the alphabet.

A large majority of lawmakers backed government proposals to phase in the changes during the next six years.

(via Passport)

In case you haven’t been following along:

In January, athletics’ governing body the IAAF banned the 21-year-old South African from able-bodied events.

It was claimed Pistorius’ prosthetic limbs give him an unfair advantage, but he disagreed and went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas).

“I hope this silences the crazy theories circulating about my having an unfair advantage,” he said.

Cas said in a statement that the IAAF had not proved competition rules had been contravened.

“On the basis of the evidence brought by the experts called by both parties, the panel was not persuaded that there was sufficient evidence of any metabolic advantage in favour of the double amputee using the Cheetah Flex-Foot,” the statement said.

This is a few days old, but it’s point is still valuable. Though many would like to see China as a country as backward as Burma’s present or it’s own past, Bridget Kendell points out that it’s treated it’s disaster much better than Burma has.

Whether because the eyes of the world are upon it in this Olympic year, or because the Chinese themselves, particularly the increasingly affluent and empowered urban middle class, demand more of their own government, these days in China - unlike in Burma - there seems to be a greater sense of the need to be accountable.

Calling to mind another recent example of surrealism: The Day with No News.

(via Coudal)

This is an interesting one:

Stephen Phillips, 22, was fighting insurgents when his mobile phone was pressed, causing it to dial his parent’s number in Otis, Oregon.

Most of the sounds were gunfire, but swearing and shouts of “more ammo!” and “incoming!” could also be heard.

Nobody was wounded or killed in Mr Phillips’ unit during the battle.

Inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos are up in arms:

The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.

He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos’s inhabitants.

In case you hadn’t heard, the word “lesbian” in a gay context derives from the poet Sapphos, who was from Lesbos and lived in the seventh century BCE. She wrote openly of a sexual desire for other women.

(via Passport)

A BBC corespondent recently visited Chechnya (the site of a long-time separatist war against controlling Russia) and made an eerily familiar conclusion:

“The locals are idiots,” fumed one Muscovite as the spring sun became comfortably warm and the delay continued. He did not know that the Chechen next to him had just said the same to me about Russians.

I did not feel that the north Caucasus was about to explode again. People are exhausted and the rebels are now thought to number only a few hundred.

But the missing and the dead have relatives and Chechnya has a long tradition of blood feuds.

There are countless unemployed young men.

Moscow must persuade them and their younger brothers that they have a future. If not, joining the militants may appeal more than joining the police.

A new generation of fighters may yet challenge the Kremlin’s control over Russia’s southern edge.

(via Passport)

I’ve always admired the BBC’s news coverage from afar. Stephen Hugh-Jones says it’s suffering from the same peril as nearly every other television news source:

The BBC has an admirable network of admirable overseas correspondents. Its World Service is still the most reliable radio source of world news, its Radio Four a reminder of the days when the Beeb took being serious seriously. But the news judgment of its domestic television bulletins often strikes me as weird: the editor of the Puddlecombe and Much Chattering Gazette, staffed by two journos and a dog, could do better.

Among the long list of countries I know next-to-nothing about, South America’s land-locked Paraguay has always been one of the most interesting to me. It doesn’t seem that the BBC knows much more about the country than I do — maybe that’s just their style — but this is probably good news:

Former Roman Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo has won Paraguay’s presidential election, ending more than six decades of rule by the Colorado Party.

With results declared in most polling stations, Mr Lugo has 41% of the vote.

His main rival, Blanca Ovelar of the Colorado Party, has 31% and former army chief Lino Oviedo 22%.

Clive James’s wide-ranging essay about “why we need dilemmas” is too wide-ranging for me to recommend it, but I did think there was something valuable at the end of this paragraph.

It’s only a few years since the British poet Philip Larkin got the Naipaul treatment. It happened after his death instead of before, but there were similar calls for his books not to be read. In his collected letters he had revealed himself to be a racist, a misogynist, and a lot of other kinds of “ist” that nobody sensible could admire. But in real life he would rather have drunk water than be discourteous to anyone of any race or gender, and he also wrote dozens of the most magnificent poems to have graced our literature in modern times. They’re magnificent not just because they are lyrical even in their despair, but because they register the real world, in all its complexity. Poetry like Larkin’s, and prose like Sir Vidia’s, is still the best safeguard we’ve got against the rage for simplicity, the total view that wants to achieve a false peace by silencing everyone who might contradict us.

I should also note that Philip Larkin wrote one of my favorite poems.

Earlier this week, We Made This heaped praise on the internet’s favorite celebrity tech enthusiast’s search for the Gutenberg press, and made me green with envy. Now it’s available on YouTube, though I have no idea how long that will last.

(via Textism)

I’d already mentioned the BBC redesign when I came across a charming chronicling of opinions about it.

But I thought it was more fun to give the last word to Ed, who didn’t just dislike the new design, but found it: “Very insulting!”

(via preoccupations)

Get it? US as in “we Americans” and as in United States. Anyway… the BBC — who recently redesigned — are reporting that around the world opinions of America are less bad than they recently were. Hardly a vote of confidence — still more people think we’re bad than good — but a step in the right direction.

The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey.

Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.

(via Passport)

Zimbabwe’s been under the thumb of Robert Mugabe for over two decades. The difficult-to-read election this coming weekend will determine if his time is up. I’ve been saving stuff on this topic for a week, looking to avoid flooding readers with it. Now here it.

From The Economist’s massive — and well done — article:

And yet, despite this stack of advantages, Mr Mugabe is plainly on the defensive. He must fear that Zimbabwe is in a state of such economic and political ruin that he needs more of a head-start than the 20% or so of votes provided by the standard forms of rigging. For Zimbabweans, however, there are two worries. One is that Mr Mugabe steals the election. The other is that he just fails to, especially if that means the president is forced into a run-off. In that case, he may resort to outright violence. “The violence has so far been contained, more or less,” says a former ZANU-PF minister who has joined Mr Makoni, “but if the election goes to two rounds it’ll go right up.”

Also:

• In a review, The Economist tackles the making of Mugabe
• The Financial Times says Mugabe’s denying his opponents food
• The Guardian says the opposition had to eat it’s campaign poster (via BB)
• The BBC reports that Mugabe won’t let the opposition MDC win during his lifetime
• Newsweek has a story about the country’s hyperinflation

This is such a simple idea I’m amazed I’ve never heard of it before. The BBC has a new nature documentary filmed in India’s Perch National Park with hidden cameras, and a few attached to elephants (I wonder if that constitutes animal cruelty?). Looks interesting. More pictures at The Daily Mail.

(via BB Gadgets)