Foooooood!

Here's a list of what the Times OnLine says are the fifty best food blogs....

How can Mugabe get any more shockingly awful?

ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have secretly bought a £4m bolt-hole in the Far East while his country struggles with hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and a cholera epidemic.

The Mugabes’ house, in an exclusive residential complex in Hong Kong, was purchased on their behalf by a middleman through a shadowy company whose registered office is in a run-down tenement block. When a reporter and a photographer called at the house last week, they were attacked by the Zimbabwean occupants. The assailants were questioned by the police.

The property came to light during a Sunday Times investigation into the Mugabes’ financial interests in Asia, where a web of associates has helped them to spend lavishly on luxuries and stash away millions in bank accounts. In Zimbabwe, meanwhile, inflation has reached 231m%, unemployment stands at 94% and 3,467 people have died in recent months from cholera.

According to sources in Zimbabwe and Asia, Grace Mugabe has splashed out £55,500 on marble statues in Vietnam and £8,700 on a handbag in Singapore. She and her husband have enjoyed some of the region’s finest hotels.

In Hong Kong, where she has discussed a venture to have Zimbabwean diamonds cut and polished in China, her aides paid one hotel bill with a bag of cash containing £10,500. [Times]

Endangered Languages

The world has lost Manx in the Isle of Man, Ubykh in Turkey and last year Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak, Marie Smith Jones, died, taking the aboriginal language with her.

Of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world, some 2,500 are endangered, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said Thursday as it released its latest atlas of world languages...

There are 199 languages in the world spoken by fewer than a dozen people, including Karaim which has six speakers in Ukraine and Wichita, spoken by 10 people in the US state of Oklahoma...

India tops the list of countries with the greatest number of endangered languages, 196 in all, followed by the United States which stands to lose 192 and Indonesia, where 147 are in peril. (Yahoo.com)

So, what is the impact of a language being lost? Clearly, language is an important part of culture and so with the loss of a language, the world loses part of the global cultural heritage.

On the other hand, how do you keep these languages alive? People must not be passing them to the next generation because they are not useful. I remember reading years ago that these languages are largely lost to languages linked to political or economic power, like English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic...

Fascinating Chicago Buses

According to the Chicago Tribune:

The CTA Bus Tracker Web site has received 15,395 visits since last year from people in Norway or whose computers or personal wireless devices were registered in that country.

That's more Web "hits" than any other country outside the United States, according to the information-technology gurus at the CTA.

But it doesn't appear that most of those 15,000-plus Norwegian folks happened along to the Bus Tracker site ( www.ctabustracker.com) by accident because 75 percent of them clicked through to visit other pages on the CTA Web site and spent more than 18 minutes there before moving on, officials said.

"Many people just like to watch buses on their computer, even if they are not planning a trip," CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney said.

It is kinda cool to watch the buses go 'round. Give it a try.
Hat tip: Margaret.

China vs. India

Here's an interesting excerpt a review in Foreign Policy of the book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, written by the first Chinese-speaking Indian journalist in Beijing:

Whether it’s the breathless pace of China’s economy versus India’s slower, more measured growth, or China’s communist political system rated against India’s complicated democracy, the two countries are endlessly dissected in relation to one another. Yet amid all the hand-wringing over which country is “beating” the other in their race to industrialize, one simple question sums up very pointedly the debate over which one is making life better for its citizens. It’s a question few dare to ask in polite circles: If you were born today, would you rather be Chinese or Indian?

Delhi-born Pallavi Aiyar, the first Chinese-speaking Indian journalist based in Beijing and author of an engaging new book about the two countries, takes on the charged question. The best option, she contends, is to be a high-caste Indian man. His political freedom would certainly outweigh the economic opportunities of any Chinese citizen, she argues. But if that weren’t possible, she’d choose to be a wealthy Chinese woman, because she wouldn’t be as constrained as her Indian counterparts by low literacy rates and limits on female participation in the public sphere. If she had to be poor, she’d go with China. An Indian latrine cleaner may get to vote, she says, but a Chinese one is far less likely to be viewed as completely subhuman.

PJ O'Rourke on Adam Smith

In today's FT...

How then would Adam Smith fix the present mess? Sorry, but it is fixed already. The answer to a decline in the value of speculative assets is to pay less for them. Job done.

We could pump the banks full of our national treasure. But Smith said: “To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families, by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils.” [440]

We could send in the experts to manage our bail-out. But Smith said: “I have never known much good done by those who affect to trade for the public good.” [456]

And we could nationalise our economies. But Smith said: “The state cannot be very great of which the sovereign has leisure to carry on the trade of a wine merchant or apothecary”. [818] Or chairman of General Motors.

Hyde Park - at the center of the Universe?

Well, there are some who would say that the University of Chicago has always been the center of the Universe, but it's certainly stepped up since the election of our home-town boy.

This afternoon, an an incredibly gorgeous unseasonably warm day in Chicago, I opened the door to the fire escape and say four Marine Corps helicopters flying over.

Is our Prez in town visiting home?

Almost missed it!!

The Westminster Dog Show is already 1/2 over already and I've missed the terrier group. :-( Here's a link to the Westie judging.
But you can still watch the final judging and Best in Show tonight!

Here are some great pics.

This is, of course, also a great time to watch the 2000 movie Best in Show - a classic for all times.

I wonder if George realizes that some day he'll be the proud papa of a Westie and an Afghan Hound.

More on Enlightenment

I'm so glad to see that the subject of Enlightenment elicited so many responses!

To follow on in a bit less light-hearted vein, here's a great quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

The time is always right to do what is right.

How Enlightened Are You?

A Test:

If you can live without caffeine or nicotine;
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;
If you can resist complaining;
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you any time;
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;
If you can ignore friends' limited educations and never correct them;
If you can treat the rich and poor alike;
If you can face the world without lies or deceit;
If you can conquer tension without medical help;
If you can relax without liquor;
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs;
If you can have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender, sexual preference, or politics;

Then you have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog.

Davos Psychology

Here's an interesting piece on the Foreign Policy site on the behind-the-scenes mood at Davos:

When participants were asked whether they think they have done something in their career which "might have contributed, even in a minor way, to the financial crisis," 63.5 percent opted for a clear "no"; 31.5 percent went for a "yes," often adding in the same breath that nobody in the industry can honestly claim otherwise; and 5 percent said "maybe."

The "yes" people were then asked to explain what triggered their wrong decisions. They had three options: "too much optimism" (68.7 percent), "I felt I had to keep dancing while the music was playing" (31.3 percent), or "greed" (0 percent)....

For all the talk of the more "somber" mood at this year's event, there were about 100 more private jet movements at the Zurich airport last week than during last year's event. I'm not sure if the irony was lost on the organizers who handed out pedometers to forum participants, to encourage them to walk and reduce their carbon footprint.