Mutantfrog Travelogue

Upskirt photography: Police in upstate New York recently ran a sting operation to catch an upskirt photographer in a clothing store, which led to the unsuspecting victim suing the store.  Expensive airports that nobody goes to: “Local officials were so confident that tourists would flock to this beautiful, mountainous county in southwestern China that they made [...]

Exhibit 1. Michelle Malkin’s blog (hat tip to Adamu):Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s [U.S. Census] form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business (despite the New York Times’ assurances to the contrary on today’s editorial page). So until we succeed [...]

Everyone, stop what you’re doing and read Tokyo Damage Report’s epic piece on the visual kei music scene. The way it’s written makes it hard to quote, but here are some relevant facts. The interview is long but well worth your time. Read to find out: The coming together of of shojo manga and glam rock [...]

Due to aggressive evangelism and indoctrination over the course  of three centuries of Spanish colonial rule (ending in 1898), the Philippines today is overwhelmingly Catholic. A  few percent, mainly in the far south, are Muslim, a very few communities still practice pre-colonial indigenous religion, and maybe 10% or so have converted to Protestant or evangelical [...]

Recently I’ve been doing most of my online contributing via Google Buzz and Twitter these days. I will be sure to weigh in here when something comes up, but until then you can follow me at these links: Google Buzz Twitter One thing I’ve been focused on tonight is this documentary “Hip Hop – Beyond Beats and Rhymes.” [...]

Once again, I have made a promise to post all of my backlog of travel photos and narratives before embarking on my next journey, which yet again lies unrealized. Tomorrow – or technically today as I write this at 3.30am – I depart for a primarily research-justified trip to Manila, Philippines and Taiwan. I will [...]

Also posted at ComingAnarchy—please weigh in with comments there. On the summit of Jebel Hafeet, on the border of the UAE and Oman, I found this graffiti—the characters for “China” spray painted on the rock. I saw similar graffiti in a natural valley in Sapa, Vietnam, back in 2005. As China grows richer, and its citizens [...]

Spurned lover’s poisoned curry revenge Day after day Lakhvir Singh sat in the dock at the Old Bailey, usually with her eyes closed, as family members and her love rival gave evidence against her. From her arrest – of which a police officer said: “She appeared calm and controlled and did not show emotions” – [...]

My long post the other day on the history of department stores in Kyoto naturally included a lot of discussion on the relationship between department stores and railways. In that I mentioned that: The predecessor to the Hankyu Railway Company was Minou Arima Denki Kidou (箕面有馬電気軌道), or the Minou – Arima Electric Railway, and called Kiyu Densha (箕有電車). (kidou [...]

Marmot has a post titled “Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Mr. Fujita…” that looks at the case of Scott Fujita, a 6′5″ 250 pound white football player with a Japanese name who plays for the New Orleans Saints. He’s not ethnically Japanese, or even Asian, but was adopted by a family with a [...]