What’s with the Asia Pacific bloggers lately? Preston has literally evaporated, Conrad’s been silent for three days, Phil for 5 days (!), and my own posting has been sporadic at best. At least BWG is still at it, but who wants to read about Tai Chi all the time?

What will it take to rekindle our passion and restore our lost lustre? God, what a tragedy…. Taxi, can you drop me off at Beijing please? Yes, that’s what I said — Beijing. At least there’s stuff to write about over there!

Actually, a few things:

1. Apparently the Something Awful site has been around a long time, but I just stumbled onto it during lunch today and for half an hour I was fighting to suppress my laughs as colleagues wondered what I’d been smoking. It’s right up there with the funniest things of all time.

2. Also well circulated is news of the George W. Bush Aviator Doll. I really thought it was a joke at first. It’s not. And that’s not funny. In fact, it’s reallly, really scary.

I went to Google and typed aviator + “george w. bush” and was overwhelmed by all the linksl some of which are among the funniest I’ve ever seen. Like this and this. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Browsing once again through Richard Webster’s great site, I was directed to another site, one of the most indispensable I’ve found, The Memory Hole.

The Memory Hole specializes in keeping track of the government’s Orwellian practice of very quietly removing information from the Internet and elsewhere. It is also in a league of its own when it comes to looking at arcane government reports and spotting the enormous story hiding in an obscue footnote that has gone totally unnoticed by the mass media.

You can browse this site for hours. It’s not only the government that’s called to account, but the media as well. Further evidence that as more and more information becomes available, it only becomes more and more difficult to ascertain what is true.

Interesting article on areas in China where people live well into their 90s, as did their parents and grandparents before them, with many living past 100.

It seems the key trick is avoiding fat and protein and eating lots of savory things like bitter gourds and soy beans. Somehow I can’t see many Americans going for that….

Can anyone, ever, believe anything that Bush says, has said and will say? Everyday we hear of new duplicities, half-truths and outright lies, including this latest report that his much-touted working of “miracles” (“No Child Left Behind”)for the Texas educational system was a lot of malarkey.

Via Mark Kleiman — don’t miss his scathing analysis of the story.

I was shocked to find a right-wing message board that is enjoying a veritable orgy of glee as it mocks the French in the horrors of death by heatwave.

Sample:

Wow. Only 98 degrees and 3,000 people die. That’s not very indicative of a robust gene pool. No wonder the French didn’t want to get involved in Iraq – they’d wither in the sun.

Ha ha ha. And we wonder why everybody outside the USA hates Americans?

[Via Silt]

It appears Idi Amin (for those of us who remember who he is) is having trouble finding a kidney donor. If you think you might be compatible with him (kidney-wise), he’s hanging out in a hospital in Saudi Arabia.

It’s 1:40 in the morning in Singapore and I just can’t fall asleep. Maybe I can blog myself to sleep; god knows, I’ve done it to others.

My trip to Hong Kong was illuminating. I spoke to a few Westerners there and was amazed at their gloomy outlook for the future of the SAR. I was also reminded of just how fundamentally different Honkies are from Singaporeans. This hit me the minute I took my first ride in the subway there and counted no fewer than 11 commuters yakking on their mobile phones. Loudly. Proudly. They just don’t do that in Singapore. Lots of things like that, from the way they walk up escalators to the way they cross the street to the way the taxis drive. More on these topics after I get some sleep. I am not looking forward to the alarm clock going off tomorrow morning.

…an utterly devastating visual indictment of our president’s big fuck-up in Iraq. Do not miss it. I literally trembled toward the end. (Via Daily Kos.)

I thought we were doing the right thing to go in, and I believe Saddam’s downfall is a spectacular event. But there was no serious strategic plan about what to do after the easy part, and all the nightmare scenarios prophesied by Krugman and Kristoff and so many others have materialized, and every day it appears that the glorious hero’s welcome and great liberation were groundless fantasies spouted out by a breathless and delusional Andrew Sullivan and his cult.

On top of the lack of realistic planning is Bush’s sickeningly cavalier attitude (“bring ’em on”), exquisitely captured in the link above. I am now beginning to believe that he truly may be beatable in the next election. God, what a joy that would be.

No, these are not from a sicko snuff movie. This is what happens if you chew gum in Singapore. (Not really; the canee was convicted of rape, and this is just part of his punishment.) An interesting glimpse into an aspect of the culture here that is so different from anything we know back home….

I also thought this would offer a nice balance to Conrad’s weekly “Different Perspectives” photos.