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Map amusement
The PakTribune article isn’t amusing for its content: 90 militants killed in S Waziristan clashes.” But the map accompanying the text is solid gold.
The geographic features on that map belong to a different place entirely.
(Spotted in a comment on the Strange Maps blog.)
Honda prepares robot overlords
The Yangpa has a fun post on Honda’s ASIMO* robot:
The crowd at the 2007 Auto Expo in Hiroshima, Japan, clapped politely as they watched simple tricks and exercises being performed by a prototype of the robot that will one day rule all of humanity with unfeeling ruthlessness. The demonstration, given by Honda corporation, featured the latest model of the ASIMO humanoid robot which has been under development for several years. According to Honda, the robot has been programmed to perform a variety of useful tasks, such as walking backwards, standing on one leg, and commanding an unstopple droid army to topple all existing political systems and bring them under the iron-fisted rule of Honda corporation.
* Advanced Step in Innovative MObility. Seriously.
Reformer without friends?
Abe had a reform agenda, he just had zero skill in actually communicating it to the public, or pushing it through his own party. This is a theme I’ve seen in some recent commentary. Clay Chandler, the Asia editor for Fortune, writes in this post about someone else who agrees:
As news of Abe’s abdication broke, Fortune International Editor Robert Friedman and I happened to meet with Heizo Takenaka, the economics professor who served as economic policy czar under Abe’s predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Takenaka, who withdrew from politics after Abe replaced Koizumi, speculated Abe had finally come to grips with the fact that he had no allies within the party. “I am sympathetic to him,” said Takenaka. “He is a reformer. But he was surrounded by enemies.” Takenaka fears Abe’s departure could be the death knell for economic reforms championed by Koizumi. “I’m quite concerned about the effect this could have on economic policy,” he said. “Politicians from the old guard are coming back. The policy tribes have returned. Interest groups pushing for more public spending see their chance.”
Now that the DPJ has found it can win elections by promising pork to the countryside, will the LDP jump back into that same game? The country’s productive urban residents might once again get the rubber end of the plunger as the resources flow into the nonperforming sinkholes of rural Japan.
North Korea photos
A Western traveler to the hermit kingdom of North Korea has posted some great photos of his trip. The one shown here is on Flickr, where he has a few; click that link for a larger set on Picasa.
Nice timing on this shot, showing the instant that the “mass games” picture card gang flips from one set of pixels to the next. It’s also good to see that the scuba demolition warriors happy playing children of the North have so much fun in this warm summer weather.
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Flickr photos
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