Oh yeah: dragging politics into everything relevant or not. Thanks, I forgot about that one.

No, this is kind of special to contemporary Taiwan. Worthless grown adult who can't fend for herself calls on officialdom to help her, the officials inexplicably indulge her, and then the equally worthless media puts it on the air and everybody talks about it. It pretty much sums up everything wrong with the country…

It was just completely unexpected, and came just a few days after finding this in my room:

Phhppt, wrestling is fake. If you want ass-kicking entertainer, this girl (actress Lee Si-young) kicks some actual ass:

I totally believe this. Last night I felt something on my ankle, reached down, and felt something cool and brittle drop off my skin. I'm a middle-aged male and I screamed like a little girl - completely involuntarily. Yes, it was a cockroach. Yes, it was in Taiwan.

Taiwan is a tropical country. And as in most tropical places, cockroaches are bad news.

We might have different ideas about morality. For instance, I vastly, vastly prefer the Chinese people of today than the ones that existed during the Cultural Revolution. They might have left their doors open, but they were also turning in their parents for being counter-revolutionaries to be killed, smashing relics,…

Unless those are printed in very, very big letters, that's a lot of stuff to know to 90% accuracy. Respect.

They are dead wrong how? Propose a better system. Really, I'm all ears.

Then propose a better terminology, bearing in mind all those places I listed created this kind of art.

First of all, you're linking to a Wikipedia article that is part of an Islamic series. That isn't exactly unbiased.

And Wyoming was debunked a long time ago.

I think you do need to blame Mao for the absence (rather than decline - as bad as it is it has gotten better) of morals. You need to compare Mainland Chinese with those who didn't live through the Cultural Revolution, in which all tradition and sense of decency was gutted, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and…

Islamic art is the term used by art historians. David Owen didn't make it up.

Islamic art is the term used by art historians. David Owen didn't make it up.

What is in that thing? What could you possibly need to know that, when you need to know it, also allows you the time to look it up?

This is the best thing he's done in his career.

Win:

Is that ... Heather Graham??

I don't like tipping because it incentivizes the waiter to interrupt me every 15 minutes to ask how I'm doing. Chewing a mouthful of food is usually how I'm doing.