A Busy Marketplace

This video is strangely compelling. It says something about the adaptability of human nature.

Via gizmodo.

Virtual Outreach

Some interesting links on a theme:

• Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds 1
• Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds 2
• Virtual Journalism: Inside the Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo
• The Launch of a Journalistic Experiment: The Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo

New Careers

After the gold digger, comes the gold farmer. A new career for the 21st century.

One thing the article does fail to address is that the companies that manage these MMORPGs consider gold farming to be a criminal (or at least less than honorable) act, because a. ) it may cause them to be liable for taxes on in-game monetary transactions under various national tax laws, and b.) most probably because they don't get a cut.

Though certainly there are many people trying to make a go of making a living off of Second Life.

I confess to being torn between condemning those who obsessively turn something meant for pleasure into a tool for profiting from others and applauding their initiative and pluck.

Although, in World of Warcraft, the problem is lazy players who want the fastest route to power and thus will pay others to play for them, so they can just run-around with a powerful character and whomp things. I have at least one friend who sold their account for about as much as I make in a month to someone who couldn't be bothered to level up their own characters. If this is the attitude they take with them to the workplace, they are in for disappointment. Or perhaps I am just jealous because I refuse to stoop to that kind of laziness. Easier to just write "I pwned this game!" on the cover and never even bother to install it. Cheaper too.

While in Second Life the problem is those who go beyond industriousness to plain greed. For instance, thinking they can sell small plots of land for more than it costs to by an entire in-game region directly form linden Labs. It is one thing to make something wonderful (or even something mediocre) and sell it, it is another to think you can corner the real estate market in hypothetically infinitely expandable game world. (By the way, for those who haven't figured this out yet, when real estate prices go to high from speculators trying to corner the market, Linden Labs builds more land, until the speculators go broke paying rent on the land they are trying to hoard and sell for prices nobody is willing to pay.)

So I suppose the two really are worlds apart in terms of their relations to people trying to profit of them in real life. Though in both cases, I guess I laud those who earn money or succeed through effort and don't have much respect for those who think they can get money or power easily with some seed capital and no real effort on their part.

Japan Inducts Ambassadors of Cute

The Japanese government has decided to take a more active role in exporting cuteness to the rest of the world ... it was only a matter of time.

From CScout Japan

Memes

from kottke.org

Words Without Borders

For every book or literary work that is translated from English into other languages, something like 0.01 are translated from other languages into English.

Moreover, things translated from English tend to sell better than things translated into English, because ... well, would you rather read Harry Potter or The Tin Drum? This is not because other cultures don't write good world class mass market entertainment, as well as world class literature. Instead, it is because publishing houses translate English-language books into other languages to increase sales. But, by and large, it is academics that translate books from other cultures into English. They too would like to sell their books, but they are not giant publishing houses, and are going to key in on what they think are critical works of literature, not what they think will sell really, really well.

No wonder the rest of the world knows us so well and we know absolutely nothing about the rest of the world.

Words without Borders is an online 'zine seeking to fix that.

Oh Flu-ey

Okay, supposed to be very busy for the holidays but Friday either earned me some food poisoning from leftovers or a realy nasty flu, so brain totally out of gear. Still hurts to laugh, but this bit of pain was so worth it.

Nerf factory riot in China [via boingboing]

Okay, the article isn't funny, just the headline, so you don't actually have to click on it or anything.

In good news, my post-Thanksgiving diet is doing amazingly well. Gonna go have another cracker and whimper a bit more.

The Audacity to Build

BLDGBlog recently ran an article entitled Offshoring Audacity about a conference panel coming up next week of the same name.

Here is the theme:

The specific goal, then, is to discuss the idea that the West has begun "offshoring audacity" – urban and architectural audacity – to places like Dubai, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Beijing, and South Korea.

With some key questions:

The question becomes: How can we discuss all of this without resorting either to chest-puffing nationalism (it's not true, the West is the best) or to a kind of knee-jerk Spenglerian resignation (it's true, the West is over)?

Put another way: Is there really any purpose in celebrating the newest mile-high tower or solar-powered private golf community, as every architecture blog in the world seems to think we need to do right now – or, conversely, is cynicism in the face of mile-high towers really the most interesting or appropriate response?

Note the nature of the discourse, which in spite of the questions still assumes that Western civilization is a dominant force around which the rest of the world still revolves in their attempt to worship and emulate us.

Perhaps the reason there is an increase in audacious architecture around the world is that many people are simply realizing that there is a rest of the world.

One of my pet peeves is history of architecture books that run on for hundreds of pages and umpteen chapters, and have one chapter at the end devoted to absolutely everything non-Western, all lumped together in a mush, including many things that have been subsumed into the Western tradition through extensive contact and interaction. The wording of the essay indicates that not much has changed.

The other countries are apparently just passive receptors to our audacity and brilliance.

One could almost believe that everyone lived in holes in the ground until the Greeks showed up and thought of the idea of the building.

Old hubris leads to more hubris ...

Though here is a nice response from Architecture and Morality. It takes a little wind out of the sails and takes a much more pragmatic stance toward the entire thing. I don't always agree with what they say there either, but I always respect it.

Words of the Day

borders

• superfluidity
• extraterritory
• thresh/hold
• recognition
• preemption
• futureclosure
• underneath

From Mute magazine.

Tourists

Apparently, Dubai is very concerned about tourists acting like, well ... tourists.

From BBC World.

And a follow-up article.

Although I am all for respecting cultural traditions, problems arise when the host culture wants to both maintain their own culture and embrace a foreign culture in an attempt to redefine themselves. History has proven time and again, you don't get to pick and choose which elements you adopt, no matter how hard you try.

Of course, it probably doesn't help that the people trying to make money off Dubai are more interested in the money than in Dubai.

When Eating Becomes Art

If you aren't talking those cheap disposable things from Chinese restaurants, chopsticks, 箸 (hashi), can and should be really beautiful things. I know I buy them for beauty. I only regret that my set of jade ones broke last time I moved. Average age of my collection is ten or so years.

I remember my first week getting back from Japan and sitting down to a big bowl of veggie soup I had just made, with nice big chunks of veggies and some soba hidden underneath. I looked at the soup. I looked at the spoon in my hand. I looked at the soup. I wasn't sure of what to do next. I got up, went into the kitchen, and traded my spoon for some chopsticks.

By the way, the elegant, and expensive, ones often cheat a little for your benefit and mix some grit in with the enamel or lacquer, giving the tips a good solid grip on all but the slipperiest of pieces.

And you really just need to remember three rules when dealing with chopsticks:

• Never stick them upright in anything, especially rice. It marks it as an offering to the dead.
• Don't use them to point at people when talking. In this case, because it is just plain rude. It is rude with Western tableware too, but we seem to have forgotten that over time.
• Don't give metal ones as gifts, except to friends who are Korean. (Okay, not sure about the Chinese on this one.) Giving a Japanese friend a gift of metal chopsticks is not too far off from complimenting a Korean friend on their kimchee. They'll understand you're an ignorant Westerner, but they'll still be slighted.

Anyway, the article on the store is via treehugger.

The German Perspective

One of the online news sources I tend to follow is the German magazine Spiegel. In part because their English language edition does a wonderful job of covering American news from a position of relative safety, where they can comfortably say things American news services would shy away from. It is sort of their equivalent of Time of Newsweek, but with the occasional page 3 girl.

Anyway, for those really interested in a big picture view of the current state of the American economic crisis, unclouded by election politics: America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role and America: Where It Pays to Fail.

They are worth the read. Perhaps a little depressing and dark, and may insult some, but still worth the read.

Capital is as terrified of the absence of profit or a very small profit as nature is of a vacuum. With suitable profits, capital is awakened; with 10 percent, it can be used anywhere; with 20 percent, it becomes lively; with 50 percent, positively daring; with 100 percent, it will crush all human laws under its feet; and with 300 percent, there is no crime it is not willing to dare, even at the risk of the gallows.
- Karl Marx

Consumer Ideology

Some interesting observations regarding design, ideology, consumerism, and the Cold War, courtesy of the BBC.

Real Virtual Cities

When gentrification takes real cities and makes them virtual...

Living in a Tourist City is No Vacation.

From the National Post.

John Thackara: We Are All Emerging Economies Now

John Thackara: We Are All Emerging Economies Now

Been catching up on my backlog of reading and came upon this wonderful article on Design Observer.

It is well worth the read.

Foreign News

Just in case you don't think the world isn't paying attention. Or reporting the news with a different spin.

The best part is the "party" quote. I wonder if there was cake at the party.

Okay, the next one is kind of funny too. Apparently, anarchists want to go back to an anarchist government, just like we used ot have before some point or another, I guess, maybe, sort of ... ummm ... nevermind.