4 Generations: A Water Buffalo in China

by Justin Glow on

Last month, blogger Philip Greenspun wondered aloud on the morality of charitable organization Heifer International’s questionable “Helping Hooves” program, designed to give an Asian farmer a much needed water buffalo for a $250 donation. A good idea perhaps, but upon reading the fine print, Philip found out that no actual water buffalo is delivered to an Asian farmer. Instead, “the money simply gets dumped into the common fund at the charity.”

Enter Robert Thompson, a musician living in China who, after reading Philip’s blog post, set out to purchase an actual water buffalo (in financial collaboration with Philip and Craig MacFarlane) and give it to a real farming family in need. Robert — video camera in hand — recorded the process of searching out a young water buffalo, finding a family, and delivering the animal. What follows is a beautiful 7 minute video of the entire process, from conception to delivery.

What a great story.

Click on the image below to view the video in a new window:

[via Kottke]

License Plates of the World

by Justin Glow on

The other day I ran across this website, LICENSE PLATES OF THE WORLD, which has got to be the largest collection of – you guessed it! – license plates on the Internet (and not just because the title is in all caps, but that helps). If it’s not, well, then please show me an online collection of license plates larger than this one. I dare you! I spent the better part of an hour going through and finding some truly bizarre plates from places like Antarctica and – get this – Texas!

It reminds me of when I was a kid, traveling the country with my family, kicking the back of the driver seat and asking, “Are we there yet?” No, my father would say, encouraging me to play one of the many car games kids played to pass the time. I always enjoyed the license plate game, where you had to find a plate from every state in the US. Alaska and Hawaii were usually quite rare, but if you spotted one you were pretty much ensured a victory.

Think of this website as an online, globalized version of that game. Only the license plates on the website are indexed by country and state, so you don’t have to sit in the car and search the backs of random cars. Okay, so it’s nothing like the game I played as a kid. But it does involve license plates!

LP’s The Perfect Day

by Erik Olsen on

I have to say I love the fact that Lonely Planet is really branching out in the travel writing genre. Take a look at their catalog, and you can see that they’ve really moved beyond basic travel guides into vast new realms. I posted recently about the lusciously photo-illustrated book “The Middle of Nowhere” which I have right here on my shelf and which I go to whenever I need a quick inspiration for where to go next. But that book is hard backed and rather pesado, and so as I carry around a version of something similar, albeit smaller.

I just got my hands on “The Perfect Day” by Lonely Planet. The book provides bite-sized summaries of what constitutes the perfect day in multitudinous cities around the globe. From New York City to Phuket, Madrid, Dubai and so on, pretty much every major and medium city is covered. The writers are mostly LP authors and/or travel writers, so I suspect you can trust their advice. I like this book for its quick insight and it portability. It lacks a certain depth, but that’s not what it was intended for; The Perfect Day was written to whet your appetite about a place, and I think it pulls that goal off nicely.

The Craziest Drivers in the World Are…

by Iva Skoch on

How does one define a “bad driver”? In a good portion of the civilized world, we tend to think of it as someone who drives fast, passes without seeing what’s ahead, doesn’t stop for pedestrians, honks impatiently … and frequently breaks the law.

This definition does not apply in other places. Take Eastern Europe: Bad driver is typically seen as someone without the skills to drive a bad car 100mph on icy roads, someone who frequently slows down traffic by driving the speed limit or someone who doesn’t take off within exactly one second of the light changing. This school of thought automatically makes every person above 55 and 95 percent of women bad drivers. Really, the only “good drivers” would be single, childless men between 18 and 30. And, according to some, good drivers would definitely not be Australians.

Some say that the people of Rome are the world’s worst; others think Buenos Aires is crazier. Several sites are dedicated to the awful drivers of the Arabian Gulf (aka Persian Gulf). A few Mexico Cities, LAs, Rios. And finally, one study shows that Russians are the worst in Europe, with 25 percent admitting to having sex while driving.

I cast my vote for the drivers in Egypt, the world’s most enthusiastic honkers.

Word for the Travel Wise (01/14/07)

by Adrienne Wilson on

I’m not a collector of anything really. I have a couple of scrapbooks, old letters from friends across the globe, and my DVD’s which I’ve slacked on buying new ones recently. Nothing I have is of any value (at least now) and if I were ever to start putting together a collection of something that is, I’d go after stamps. First off, they tell so much about a place in such tiny space. They reveal history, national flowers, popular sports and religion. This web collection of Afghan stamps was fun to click around for a few minutes. They have two of Buzkashi, Islamic stamps and some depicting the Communist takeover. Good stuff and though today’s word isn’t stamp, I offer a closely related one that could be off help when mailing your letters and postcards from Kabul back home.

Today’s word is a Pashto word used in Afghanistan:

khat – letter

Pashto is spoken by 40-50 million speakers in Afghanistan, western Pakistan and northern India. It became an official language of Afghanistan in 1936. Persian or Dari is also an official language. Good example sentences, historical information and links are all found at Wikipedia. Pashto.org has video, music, downloadable dictionaries, software and book lists. Yorku.ca has a long list of words to start along your Pashto learning path for at least a few weeks. Visit the BBCPashto page if you already have some understanding of the language under your belt.

Past Pashto words: mujasemy