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Unlike what lots of people say about dogs and clothes, Muki has always loved wearing outfits! He has a pretty big wardrobe, even for a Yorkie. This Winnie the Pooh outfit is straight from my favorite dog clothing boutique in Tokyo!
If you want to see some pretty cool photos of Halloween around the world, check out this slideshow!
Happy Halloween!
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TRAVEL: Zanzibar is developing quickly--perhaps too quickly for those familiar with the East African island.
OCCUPY: This small Orange County city demonstrates that it is possible to be both conservative and reasonable when it comes to public protest and dissent...
ARREST: …but this larger Southern California city, along with Oakland, isn't quite the model example of how to handle the public.
ROYAL: So now females who have brothers can still become queens within the British monarchy.
TECH: The saga between "frenemies" Samsung and Apple continues.
TOURISM: The Maldives now has a new logo and slogan for its tourism industry.
KPOP: A video of the Cover Dance Festival Roadshow in Los Angeles this week.
More mellow than soju but recently touted as a cancer-fighting adult beverage, makgeolli (막걸리; "mah-kkuh-lee") is traditional Korean alcoholic drink made of rice and wheat.
Once primarily indulged by manual laborers and farmers, the beverage's popularity has surged in recent years and is now "beloved by the generation of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak as it is by twenty- and thirty somethings." Many Koreans view the drink as a symbol of the country's rise to global prominence from its humble beginnings.
Trendy cafes-bars are now serving the drink all over South Korea. Makgeolli exports tripled in 2010 and this year even Japanese sake makers began producing the drink under the name "makkori."
Yemeni women are fed up with President Ali Abdullah Saleh's brutal crackdown on protesters. With no reasonable hope for safety or progress during Yemen's turbulent past year (didn't this begin in early 2011??) and backed up by the inspiring Nobel Peace Prize recently awarded to one of their own (female activist Tawakkul Karman), hundreds of women gathered on Wednesday to burn their veils in the middle of Sana'a, Yemen's capital.
The internet continues to threaten traditional media--below is the first page of the cease-and-desist letter from the New York Times to Arianna Huffington. Apparently the HuffPost's new blog, Parentlode, is deemed a rip-off of NYT blog Motherlode by the newspaper.
Two things to note: the writer behind both blogs (she left NYT for Huffington Post) decided that "Motherlode" is an outdated term today since female parents aren't the only ones raising children in 2011. Also, apparently the "Parentlode" blog is tagged with "Motherlode" in its index.
The trademark issue is also interesting here. NYT spokeswoman Eileen Murphy asserted, "Trademark rights accrue from the time you begin using the word/phrase, etc., which in the case of Motherlode, was three years ago."
Either way it's clear that Ms. Huffington knows what she's doing, whether her competitors agree with it or not.
So the Washington Post is being criticized for its meager reporting on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's official state visit to Washington DC last week.
While the critique is certainly valid, we should remember that we're referring to a publication that has consistently been criticized for imbalanced reporting for years, just like so many of our country's other dwindling newspapers.
Washington Post would do the American public some good to inform them on exactly how the new free trade agreement between South Korea and the US is actually taking place. Although it "passed" here in the US, there is actually a lot more legislative legwork in South Korea before this becomes real for either side. Perhaps, though, these are details that are beyond their economic analysis or intent.
To be fair, WaPo did have a nifty little slideshow on what everyone wore and ate at the State Dinner. COOL!
At this point in my life I've visited numerous remote beaches and islands around the world and so far none of them have ever come close to the atolls of the Maldives in terms of beauty, privacy and uniqueness. While most people from the US bristle at the +24-hour trek to reach this distant and secluded place, the exhausting journey is amazing in and of itself (we call it the "Indian Jones" journey).
The region's sugary white sands are primarily submerged only a few feet below warm crystal blue waters that reach the flat horizon in what seems to be in the middle of nowhere -- and indeed, the nearest land mass is at least 1,000 miles away from any given Maldivian island. For me, it is truly the most stunning location on our planet.
These amazing low-level waters is what makes the Maldives claim some of the most spectacular sandbars and lagoons in the world. But this very same attribute is what worries the leaders of this Muslim nation: rising sea levels have thrust this small country at the forefront of planet Earth's climate change battle.
It's very easy to dismiss notions of climate change when you're living so comfortably in the US or any other western society. Even though first world countries are the ones creating the majority of the world's pollution, it is the less-powerful states that often end up dealing with the aftermath before anybody else has to.
Fabien Cousteau, who took the photo above (yes, he's Jacques' grandson) recently went diving deep in the Baa Atoll with a crew of concerned environmental experts and discovered that much of the area's coral is in pretty bad shape (what they call "bleached"), thanks to pollution by man, natural causes, as well as rising water temperatures.
The poor health of the region's oceanic plant life -- and the rising water levels in these atolls -- is an ominous signal for us to keep researching the effects of climate change and strive to discover what can be done for those in the most urgent need. The Maldives will ultimately have to make some kind of extreme decision over the next decade, as many of these beautiful islands will be submerged in our lifetime.
Any disruption to the Maldives will be a huge loss for this planet. I just can't imagine not having this travel option as the destination it currently is -- let's not only be relegated to the accessible and conventionally-pretty landscapes of most tourist traps!
Other cool news: prominent Chinese artist (and environmentalist) Yuan Xikun is currently exhibiting his art in Male at the National Art Gallery. His opening talk was attended by local artists as well as the new Chinese Ambassador to the Maldives Yu Hongyao and Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts & Culture Mamduh Waheed.
Yuan's upcoming sculpture project will comprise of sand from five continents and water from the two Arctic Poles, which he will discuss with Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed on Wednesday.
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HOLLYWOOD ABROAD: The US State Department has awarded University of Southern California (my alma mater!) a $1-million grant to administer a program of film screenings to US embassies abroad.
VISUAL: More State news--smARTpower has officially launched (see my Huffington Post piece on this program).
HEADING HOME: Today President Obama announced that US troops will leave Iraq by the end of December 2011.
CUNNING: How Qaddafi managed to fool the world while gaining unlikely but widespread power.
LOCKOUT: The NBA talks are going…not so well.
EXCHANGE: If you're in Seoul this weekend, the "Prague Days in Seoul" festival will be full of art, music, dance and film from the Czech Republic (a reciprocal event from Prague's successful 2009 "Days of Seoul in Prague.")
DEPICTIONS: This new fashion magazine from London is full of hand-drawn images -- no photographs -- of both current and historical female fashion icons.
BACHELORETTE: These days single ladies simply aren't interested in marrying the growing numbers of deadbeat guys or middle-aged wannabe playboys.
MUSIC: Sauti za Busara, Zanzibar's annual music festival, has announced their lineup for 2012 (see my post from Sauti za Busara 2011).
In a goodwill political gesture, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda returned five copies of historically significant Korean royal books that were looted during Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula. Noda is in Seoul this week to solidify a currency swap plan between the two countries.
1,432 stolen artifacts returned, 4,479 to go…supposedly ALL of the looted artifacts will be returned to Korea by December of this year. That's coming up, better get moving.
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A copy of “Wangsejagaryedogam,” a record of the 1881 wedding of Sunjong, the last emperor of the Daehan Empire. (Yonhap News) |
