Regular features

Today in Grey markets: Prostitute reality TV

July 25, 2011

Via Wronging Rights: BBC News reported last week that a Zambian television network “has launched a reality show to help former prostitutes find husbands.” Apparently, “helping” means competing 18 sex workers against each other at a battery of household chores while viewers vote on who will win a cash prize and an all-expenses-paid wedding. “Are you a [...]

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Music for the Weekend: The Memphis Flu

June 24, 2011

Christian Music from the 192os and 1930 features a fairly large number of “flu songs,” mostly concentrated on the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza epidemic, the most deadly epidemic disease in history, which killed 50 million people, or 3% of the world’s population. 675 thousand of those were in the United States, making up 0.8% of the [...]

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Music for the Weekend: John Hardy

June 17, 2011

I’ve been listening to the Carter Family, and have found that despite the general family values image that they present, almost all of their songs are quite good, and they have a fair amount of the mountain music melodrama. John Hardy (after the jump) is one of their more famous songs. It’s a traditional murder [...]

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Today in Grey Markets: Illegal Chinese mining in Ghana

June 15, 2011

Henry Hall is right on with his conclusions here: Informal mining has a long history in Ghana, and historically was a very amateur process. Gradually the demand for heavy machinery has brought Chinese players into the market who have financed these small but highly organised operations. It is important to note that these operations are [...]

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Today in Grey markets: counterfeit beverages

June 6, 2011

From the Chinese press (Chinese), a man and wife couple was fined RMB 5 million for setting up a factory in Tangshan to produce their own branded drinks by day, and “counterfeit drinks” by night. Each six-pack of counterfeit drinks went for roughly RmB 8 less than the real coke or sprite that it was [...]

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Today in petty crime: bee theft

May 20, 2011

Was up chatting with my mother-in-law last night, who for some reason knows a lot about bee keeping. Here’s some of the things I learned: 1. There’s a “bee plague” going around which is wiping out whole hives. When bees catch the bee plague you have to destroy the whole hive. 2. This seems to [...]

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Music for the Weekend – Joanna Newsom

April 29, 2011

My niece, Sadie Louise Chen, was born two weeks ago. (please click through)   Did you like this? Share it:

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Music for the Weekend: Wild Bill Jones

April 15, 2011

I had this song stuck in my head. So I pass that on. While this edition was recorded in the 60s, the song is really really old. It was recorded as early as 1924 by Eva Davis, and even then the story doesn’t really make much sense (as much as I can understand it), indicating [...]

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Music for the Weekend: Ewan Maccoll

April 1, 2011

British singer this week, though he was married to an American and lived in America much of his life. The Flying Cloud is a ballad about an Irish man who goes on a slaving voyage to West Africa, and later turns to piracy in the Caribbean. The song was long more popular in America than [...]

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Today In Good News: Solar power!

March 23, 2011

From Scientific American: Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. … In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as [...]

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