What is “widely used by lawyers to cheat you, by doctors to scare you witless and by houseplant sellers to shift their wares?” From The Economist, comes a review of a new book that attempts to put Latin back into everyday life. I was going to say that I studied Latin at school, but that…

The local news still seems to be dominated by the rather tedious debate about democracy and patriotism. I am at a disadvantage watching the TV news because my Cantonese is nothing like good enough to understand what they are talking about, but I think I recognize those sinster guys who are wheeled out to tell…

Hats off to BWG for noticing this amazing photograph of Hong Kong taken from space.  As he says, if you have a fast connection then you should certainly look at the high-resolution image.

This tale from Shaky reminds me of something similar that happened to me. A while back my idiot boss (based in another Asian country) sent an email to all her staff in the region advising them of their bonuses. Thinking she was clever, she pasted the appropriate figure from an Excel spreadsheet into each email…

This is an interesting and very positive view of Hong Kong, from the Toronto Star: “Here,” explains leading Hong Kong architect Rocco Yim, “the end product must contribute to the working of the city. The idea is to enable people to get from one part of the city to another, preferably through your project. A…

Yesterday the executive committee of the English Schools Foundation voted against the appointment of Mike Haynes as chief executive, thus rejecting the advice of the ESF chairman and vice-chairman, who promptly resigned. The original decision to select Mr Haynes for the job was highly controversial because (1) he was a member of the committee that…

I have read about this before, but someone sent me an email (that nearly got deleted as spam) about it, so I thought I’d mention it here. The concept of BookCrossing is that you “set a book free” by giving it to someone or just leaving it around where it might get picked up. Then,…

Fumier points out that Hemlock has now been posting his diary on-line for two years. For some reason, I had imagined that it was longer than that, but I’m not sure why. Like Fumier, I came across Hemlock on IceRed in the days when it was possible to have an intelligent debate there (didn’t happen…

This is a rather odd story from the UK. An elderly man was apparently unaware that the brother with whom he shared his mobile home had died – until he went into his room and found a skeleton. Here is the report from the local paper.