Month: October 2010

  • Video: Hardcore rockers in China burn Japanese flag

    On China’s National Day, October 1, fans at the MIDI music festival in Zhenjiang, China, decided to follow up a set by a metal band with an act of their own: burning a defaced Japanese flag while singing the Chinese national anthem. Video at bottom. When photographer Matthew Niederhauser posted this video on his photo…

  • Chinese music in the NYT, and a photo blog to watch

    Photographer Matthew Niederhauser and New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs highlight China’s exploding music festival scene in Sunday’s paper and online, where they have an accompanying video. In other news, Matthew has relaunched his photo blog, where you’ll find coverage of the World Expo, an awkward beauty pageant for foreigners in Beijing, and as always,…

  • Pollution from space, and human geography

    A remarkable photograph published by NASA shows, as Angel Hsu notes, the pollution in the air during the climate talks in Tianjin earlier this month. The high-resolution image is striking, and will live on the desktop of my external monitor for some time. NASA notes that this image captures an event that resulted from increased…

  • Rational choice arguments should carry a standard disclaimer

    If every work that discusses reality under the rubric of rational self-interested actors carried this disclaimer, we all would be saved a lot of grief: Since human nature is profoundly complex and individuals rarely act out of unmixed motives, the assumption of rational self-interest that I have been using to develop this theory is obviously…

  • Xi Jinping moves one step closer to leading China

    The headline says it all. I’m short on time today, so here are a few links. Xi’s the one? – from Blake Hounshell at FP Passport. That pun I guess was going to come some day. Michael Wines at The New York Times. The Economist Blog. Eventually, I plan to gather some background on Xi,…