so.... earthquake in the midwest. what's up with that?

i know i've talked about fake things in china before on here, but each new thing i read about it just kills me and i have to share:)

today, the link comes from boingboing.

"This article is about cheap soya sauce that is being manufactured in the East as an alternative to the original. The 'secret ingrediant' is amino acid syryp, a concoction ( Read more... )

there are currently 600 reported cases of mumps in iowa this year. usually, there are only about 300 in a whole year for the whole country. most of the people with mumps are college students who did have their mumps shots when they were little. weird.

i watched yet another documentary on china tonight. this one was a whole hour just about ( shanghai )

tornadoes yesterday. spent some time with the kids in the closet. spent the whole day watching the local news channel. like 17 people died something like half an hour or 45 minutes from here. coming from iowa, this was nothing new, of course. still--a tornado is a tornado. last weekend, the winds were bad enough to do a lot of minor damage to our ( Read more... )

so now china is putting new taxes on disposable wooden chopsticks. some other things too, with the idea of helping environmental issues, which is good. those disposable chopsticks are EVERYwhere in china. every vendor on the street, of course, will give you a new pair with every bag of fried rice or whatever. and no way would they ever be good for ( Read more... )

the newest episode of this american life is super good. two of my favorite this american life reporters (jack hitt and some british guy jon ronson) do all the reporting. you should listen to it. it's called "Habeas Schmabeas". be a responsible, aware citizen of the world. listen to what america's doing right now.

china. is so. weird.

today, yahoo tells me that they're banning tv showings of cartoons combining live action and animation. my highlight of the article? "One such film, 'Babe,' was earlier banned in China on the grounds that animals don't talk."

one: i subscribed to get links from yahoo to stories from the past day about china every day. here's what the links usually are ( Read more... )

agh! there's been a mining cave-in in a city in china where i've visited and have friends. it was in xingtai, where margaret (who i've often mentioned) lives. or where her family does, anyway. 20 dead, more injured. i'll have to email her to ask about it. so in honor of xingtai, i'll post a picture of that city.


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weird. i thought i paused my launchcast station while i went to have a conversation class, but it was playing when i came home. but it only played five and a half songs in the hour i was out. weird ( Read more... )