Goodbye, Lenin (and Kim)

I just watched Goodbye, Lenin! on the recommendation of Shuhui, and I have to say I enjoyed it immensely. It’s about a young man going to extraordinary lengths to keep his frail mother from discovering that her beloved East Germany has dissolved while she was in a long coma. The film casts East Germany in a rather sympathetic light, and carefully pokes fun at the East Germans for their frenzied rush to embrace consumerism. No doubt some of the humour slipped past me, since I can’t say I’m familiar with German political history (or German anything, for that matter), but I found it to be a funny, witty and sad film nevertheless.

Which got me thinking.. Why don’t we “corrupt” the North Koreans — esp. the men guarding the border zone — with capitalism? (Gotta degrade that first-strike capability.) The U.S. airforce can bomb them with planeloads of Playboys, BigMacs and Ben & Jerry’s; Japan can send a full shipment of Playstation3’s and pachinko machines; and the South Koreans can blow them away with Korean flicks/soaps/porn and quality purkogi. I bet the cumulative effect will be substantial.

We are all wonderful..

Just that some are more so, it seems. It looks like Kiyomizu Temple of Kyoto, Japan (misspelled in the article) has been shortlisted as one of the 21 candidates in the runup to deciding the New 7 Wonders of the World. The seven winners are to be announced on 7 July 2007, 07:07:07 (heh).

Webcam bot

It’s no secret that the Japanese are absolutely obsessed with robots. Well here’s the latest (I think). A webcam robot that’s controlled through WiFi and email. Out this December!

Nuke threat

So it looks like NK has pulled off the nuke test.

Folks in Japan will have front-row seats to the latest international crisis, though of course you can’t rule out the possibility it’s all a hoax.

Mosquito attack!

A British engineer has successfully reproduced and commercialized the sound of a mosquito flying near our ear — designed for the purpose of warding off teenage gangs — and was awarded the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize in Peace. Read about it here. The whole list of laureates and their research can be found here.

For those of you affiliated with the chemical industry, may I draw your attention to the 2006 award in Chemistry: “Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature.” And that for 2005: “Can people swim faster in syrup than in water?”