This photo was in the Taipei Times today:

BRAKE DANCING
Volunteer traffic police integrate traffic direction gestures into a dance while performing in the “traffic dance” segment of the first national competition for applied police skills at Taiwan Police College in Taipei yesterday. (Photo by GEORGE TSORNG)

I don’t even know where to begin trying to parse this one.

The Guardian has an article by Priyamvada Gopal on the troubling tendency of Western liberals to see the fight for gender equality as an exclusive quality of Western civilization, with its corollary — its frequent invocation to justify dubious interventions in the name of saving Brown Women from Brown Men.

The article is a butchered version of the original — all the significant details have been taken out. Read the original underneath:

Read the rest of this entry »

After thinking about it for 22 years, a declaration on the rights of indigenous people was approved by the United Nations. Global Voices has a round up of all the blogs that have covered it. Sadly, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have voted against it.

The above is from Anu Matthew’s portfolio, “Bollywood Satirized.” Regarding which she says:

Bollywood Satirized, is a critical commentary on the societal expectations that I experienced as a woman growing up in India.

More images by the very versatile Annu Matthew on her website.

This American Life did a show back in June about Deception. The second story (24 minutes into the show) is about an upper middle class African American Lawyer who worked in a country club in Greenwich, Connecticut, as a bus boy. That was the only way they were going to admit him. Its a fascinating story in its horribleness. The funny thing is, its really hard to understand what era these people belong to, they sound so 19th century. Unfortunately, the reality is, its our own. And these people are hardly an exotic sub-species, they probably own everything and we can thank them for our lousy jobs.