grljduplisea's blog

My knowledge of North Korea is limited to a couple of anecdotes and the debate whether North Korea is building an atomic bomb. It doesn't seem like anyone at all has a pure idea of what it's really like: perhaps more than any other country, it is entirely shrouded in mystery.  Read More »

Black cats have been regarded as harbingers of bad luck for centuries, even considered instruments of the devil. Their reputation is the worst in Italy, where thousands are killed every year. This has prompted animal rights activists Italian Association for the Defence of Animals and the Environment (AIDAA) to have a Black Cat Day, distributing literature and trying to get petition signatures.  Read More »

A new website, CARMA, ranks power companies and power plants by the amount of power and emissions they generate. It's a great statistical tool. Results can be filtered by country and other variables, and can be viewed in list format or on a map that ranks power plants by cleanliness and amount of power generated.  Read More »

The American dollar is worth 93 cents in Canadian currency. That's embarrassing. Most foreign currencies are totally dominating the dollar and believe me, it hurts--I'm currently living in Edinburgh on money I saved over the summer, and the exchange rate is about $2.15 to one GBP.  Read More »

How many books do you read in a year? If you're like 25% of the American adult population, you didn't read any.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released last month studied the reading habits of Americans, and found that one in four adults say that they read no books in the past year. Blame it on the Internet or our fast-paced lives, but 25% of the population is not reading books.  Read More »

On Thursday the U. S. Senate passed the Matthew Shepard Act 60 to 39, which expands the federal hate crimes laws to include, amongst other things, violence toward a person because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. This is a huge victory for GLBT rights, and human rights in general.  Read More »

My love affair with H & M was over almost before it really began. I am a bit of a miser and hate spending a lot of money on clothes when I tend to ruin them. Since we don't have an H & M in Maine, I was pretty excited that there are like three in Edinburgh. I hadn't been to one since last summer, in Boston--funny how my perception's changed.  Read More »

A week ago, I was sitting in the Edinburgh airport, waiting for my luggage to come in from Amsterdam. This would turn out to be a five hour wait, but that is, I suppose, another story. I am here in my favorite city in the world as a visiting undergraduate for this semester. My Freshers' Week has probably been uneventful by some people's standards, but for me it has been absolutely amazing.  Read More »