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• Hollyworld

  Jehane Noujaim, the mind behind Pangea Day, is hoping to bring the world closer together through the power of film.
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  • 010: The China Issue
  • Date: Mar 20 2008
  • Contributors: Corey Binns

• Moving Pictures

  The acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke reflects on what film has meant for the modernization of China.
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  • 010: The China Issue
  • Date: Apr 01 2008
  • Contributors: Jia Zhang Ke

• Chris Ladd on Consumer Justice Online

  "Getting screwed by large corporations is a kind of street battle, with the companies bringing guns to what you thought was a knife fight."
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  • 010: The China Issue
  • Date: Mar 18 2008
  • Contributors: Chris Ladd and Kim Scafuro

• Cinco De Mayo

  ˇHappy Cinco de Mayo! Sure, it's not really Mexico's Independence Day, but that shouldn't preclude you from knocking back a few beers to celebrate our southern neighbor's cultural heritage.
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  • Date: May 05 2008
  • Posted by Patrick James

• The Top 100 Public Intellectuals

  Foreign Policy and Prospect have released a list of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals." The list is dominated by political scientists, economists, and journalists, but also includes many working in the natural sciences and a few of the world's "most introspective philosophers" (the most impressive kind). The whole process of picking a "top" public intellectual is a little ridiculous but it's fun to browse their bios. Anyone you think really should have made the cut (other than Bill O'Reilly, obviously)?
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  • Date: May 01 2008
  • Posted by andrewprice

• China's Secret Weapon

  We bet no one at Hill & Knowlton is smart enough to suggest this, but if the Chinese government really wants to endear itself to the rest of the world, it should kick the dopey Panda to the curb and adopt the Red Panda as the country's new national animal. Native to Southern China (and also—hello!—to Tibet), the Red Panda looks less like a bear and more like a raccoon or a cat; despite its name, its actual relationship to the familiar Giant Panda seems quite distant. An engangered species, the Red Panda simply happens to be the world's cutest animal, and we all know how powerful cuteness can be as an inducement to forgive or overlook various transgressions. Naturally, the Japanese, with their unsurpassed connoisseurship of cuteness, understand the Red Panda's appeal—an episode of "Genius! Shimura Zoo", in which the supercute Japanese hostess Becky is forced to share her apartment with a pair of mischievous Red Pandas stands as one of the signal achievements in the culture of kawaii. The Red Panda is also commonly referred to as the Lesser Panda—to which all we can say is: Please.
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  • Date: May 01 2008
  • Posted by Jaime Wolf

• The Cow's Opinion

  Reminds me of a Joey line from the TV show Friends. Allow me to paraphrase, "It's a moo point. You know, it's like a cow's opinion: it doesn't mean anything." -Dave
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  • Date: May 04 2008
  • Posted by canyoudig

• The China Issue

  I was fascinated by the recent issue devoted to life in China. The realization that fourteen of the most polluted cities in the world are cities in China gives me cause for concern. Infrastructure must be addressed by the government of China immediately. Pollution is not something that can be taken lightly. Tpappas in Hollywood
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  • Date: May 03 2008
  • Posted by tmpappas1

• The New Hoax King: Penguins?

  What is it about penguins that seems to invite all sorts of spoofs and hoaxes, and still remaining utterly endearing? As if the spotlight time with "Happy Feet" and "March of the Penguins" wasn't enough, now the tuxedo chubbies are on a whole other attention spree -- but how and where did the penguin spoof trend really begin? We saw the rather hilarious penguin-driven BBC video player promo. But as original as the BBC can get (c'mon, "The Office" is all the funnier in its original Brit-accent-laden iteration), this particular commercial is eerily similar to an award-winning one for French film channel Canal+. Alas, the French can't claim credit for this particular brand of penguin humor, either. It turns out that in 1995, Discover Magazine pulled a rather believable penguin-centric April fools prank: the mag informed its readers of a newly discovered sort Antarctic of mole, the hotheaded naked ice borer, which lurks beneath the ice, slowly melting it and eating befuddled penguins as they sink. The magazine reportedly received more mail in response to that "article" than it ever had for anything else. So there you have it -- proof that every great cultural trend has its roots in science. Or, in this case, "science."
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  • Date: May 02 2008
  • Posted by brainpicker