MetaFilter posts tagged with europe and japan

Just one planet like it

infini — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:15:27 -0800

Electronics companies all over the world are increasingly reliant on certain rare metals, most of which are mined in China, which controls 97 per cent of the global supply. The Chinese government has promised to slash export quotas to ensure future sustainability of the world's supply of rare metals. China will drop its quota by 35 per cent in the first half of this year as compared with the same time last year. But despite its escalating consumption of rare metals and the need for future sustainability, the West's electronics industry is mistrustful of China's motives and claims that the move has more to do with the mainland's desire to dominate electronics manufacturing than ensuring the future sustainability of the world's supply of rare metals. ~ Greening conscience or resource checkmate? The rare earth trilogy covers eWaste harvesting, restarting interest in mines and dithering around trade regulations, all in one neat package. Previously buried linkdeep in November 2009 "Rare Earth: The new Great Game" which ends almost presciently so: The FT's Martin Wolf reminds us we are stacking up a potentially huge conflict between the US and China over trade and currency - and these two issues are what dominate the thinking of free-market, Western-trained economists when they think of China. But it seems to me that the West has been largely blindsided by the growing importance of resource strategy. While the West was thinking about one thing, the big Asian industrial powers were thinking about another.

A Compendium of Obscure Things

Kattullus — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:43:14 -0800

Res Obscura is a blog by Ben Breen, a graduate student of early modern history, which styles itself "a compendium of obscure things." Indeed, even the asides are full of wonder, such as the one about Boy, the famous Royalist war poodle of the English Civil War, which is but a short addendum to a post about witches' familiars. Here are some of my favorite posts, Pirate Surgeon in Panama (and a related post about 18th Century Jamaica), vanished civilizations, asemic pseudo-Arabic and -Hebrew writing in Renaissance art, and a series of posts about the way the Chinese and Japanese understood the world outside Asia in the early modern period (Europeans as 'Other', Europeans as 'Other,' Redux and Early Chinese World Maps).

Welcome to the Evil Federated Empire of Europe

desjardins — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:05:57 -0800

Europe according to... is a project to map stereotypes of European countries according to other countries and groups of people. Similarly themed, less pretty: The World According to... America Americans (another) The United States of America George W. Bush Ronald Reagan (another) France India Canada Finland Singapore Taiwan China Australia The United States According to... Europe The Rest of the World (another) Japan Californians New Yorkers Utahns Miscellaneous North America According to Canadians Europe According to Sweden How Americans See Europe How Americans (?) See Australia Africa According to the Rest of the World

Journeyman Pictures

Kattullus — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:06:04 -0800

Journeyman Pictures has uploaded nearly 4000 videos to YouTube. Many of these are trailers for the documentaries they sell, but they have also posted hundreds of full-length videos. Most are for short documentarie, but there are a lot of features too. It's somewhat daunting to explore, but the playlists are a good place to start, and so are the shows: Features, Shorts, News and Savouring Europe, a European travelogue series. Here's a few interesting ones: Gastronauts, about French culinary students working to make astronaut food more palatable, Demon Drummers, about student Kodo drummers, India's Free Lunch, about the effects of free school lunches on Indian society, The Twitter Revolution, about YouTube and Twitter's role in the 2009 Iranian uprising, Europe's Black Hole, about Transnistria, the breakaway region of Moldova, Small Town Boy, about a gay male carnival queen in a small town in England, The Vertigo of Lists, Umberto Eco talks about the ubiquity of lists in modern culture and Monsters from the Id, about scientists in the science fiction films of the Fifties.

Old Folks' Homes

ceiriog — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:30:05 -0800

Bert Teunissen - Domestic Landscapes. Photographs of (mostly) senior citizens in their living rooms and kitchens. Since 1996, Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen has been travelling around western Europe, and more recently Japan, making portraits of people living in houses built before electricity was commonplace. His travel diaries give more background, and more photos of the houses. Article in the IHT from last April.

DEVO Lives

SansPoint — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:13:21 -0800

On the cusp of DEVO's first tour of Europe since 1990 , it's become clear that, though largely cast aside after their 1980 hit "Whip It", DEVO's influence is finally being felt on modern audiences, around the world. DEVO has inspired tribute bands, some traditional, some not. They've also spawned new bands, domestic [MySpace link], and Foreign like Japan's POLYSICS [YouTube], and Germany's Mutate Now [YouTube]. With musical inspiration like this, can't we forgive such missteps as Devo 2.0?

Damn La Difference!

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 21 Oct 2002 06:55:03 -0800

Damn La Difference! Europe (and apparently Japan) seem to be going through a Dickies craze. You say work wear; we say American blue-collar chic. You pay $20 for an industrial shirt; we pay $100. Should we call the whole thing off? [More inside.]