New languages for Blogger

Floating across the news on Techcrunch let me see that Blogger is now available in Arabic. That news has wound up on Blogger.com's homepage too. Odd that they now say they're available in Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. I was pretty sure the language was called Farsi.

The article does cite that people blog at their own risk since some countries restrict the freedom of speech. I kinda figure that it's all breaking down now. Yeah, you'll have people who are thrown in jail for people typing article that rail against the state but if you take a look at China, I think we're already at a place where the genie is out of the bottle and you can never fully stop people from expressing what they want.

China still jails more journalists than any other country in the world put together, however, each arrest garners more support for free speech and reflects negatively on their international reputation. I have no reason to think that the same wouldn't happen to any of the other countries in the middle east. The young people will want to be more liberalised and express themselves online like all the other rich countries are doing. Even in KSA, they can see what people in Dubai are doing and they'll want to blog and express themselves too. It may take a while, but I'm pretty sure it's all inevitable as these countries keep increasing their level of affluence.

What is tanking anyways?

On those rare occasions I start caring about the origins of certain words that I use. The one that's come up quite often lately is the word "Tanking". A very a propos word when concerning the state of the American (and the rest of the world) stock market.

The source of all knowledge, Wikipedia (and it's sister dictionary site) say this about Tanking.

1. To fail or fall (often used in describing the economy or the stockmarket); to degenerate or decline rapidly; to plummet.
2. (Online RPG) To attract the attacks of a monster, so that the other people in the group can defeat the monster in question more efficiently.
3. To put fuel into a tank

Looking at today's stock market, I'd certainly say number 1 is the most common use of the term today. This morning the treemap was looking much more red.

A little aside here. I have no idea how to use the definition tag within blogger so I'll put the definition of a treemap here: "a visualization technique in which hierarchical information is displayed within nested rectangles, with each level of nesting corresponding to a level of hierarchical decomposition"

So the financial markets have picked up slightly. The Fed chairman has slashed interest rates to get the banks lending out money again. One will wait and see until this evening to see how well Tokyo and Hong Kong respond.

Thailand's Olive Tree

I'm reminded of Tom Friedman's book, the Lexus and the Olive Tree, when walking through a crowd of people all dressed in black for the Princess Galyani Vadhana's funeral. She's the King of Thailand's older sister and she passed away on the day that I arrived in Bangkok.

I never realised that tradition was so important for the Thai people and it was really evident in how well they revere their royalty. The Guardian reported that the government is spending $9 million on the funeral. There's a 15 day mourning period and company meetings, new years events, and corporate trade shows have been rescheduled or canceled.

Having grown up under British Commonwealth rule, I doubt we'd ever have any major mourning periods if anyone other than the Queen died. I can't see my country closing down for 15 days if Charles passed away. Nor the UK for that matter.

The value of a royal family as cultural/spiritual leadership helped Thailand get through military coups and the latest political meltdown with former Prime Minister Thaksin. I was told not to mention his name too loudly. Apparently he doesn't have that many supporters in Krabi and the police or military tends to detain people that talk about him. But with all the strife, I can see why you'd rather put your faith in a king than in a president.