link time!

Came across a number of interesting posts today that I wanted to share (or, if nobody's reading, at least preserve for myself):

TIME has a couple of stories on international and transracial adoptions, a topic I generally find interesting. China is getting more selective with just who can adopt their orphans, and apparently some Americans aren't very happy about it. Too bad for them, the article reports, more or less.

The transracial adoption report I didn't find as compelling. Didn't agree with much of the sentiment expressed by the interviewees, but at least somebody's finally acknowledging that letting white people adopt non-white babies just might impact how those babies view themselves later in life, and a whole spectrum of other things.

On a completely unrelated note, this post of 45 portraits created out of typefaces is pretty much the most awesome thing I've seen in a while--and I've been lately accused of never crediting anything as awesome.

Lastly, an enjoyable post for 80s fans, Justice fans, and typography nerds--a breakdown of the fonts and logo inspirations used for Justice's DVNO video. If you read the comments, you'll find a link to the blog of the maker of the video, who writes angrily about this post. Drama battle between the French artiste and the geeky font blogger, ha.

A Tale of Two Cities

I was in a cab on the way home, thinking how I really ought to just break down and buy a bike, when I started thinking about why it is in Chengdu I've only ever been driven by one female cabbie whereas in Suzhou and Shanghai they were commonplace. Is it something about that Shanghai/Jiangsu culture of "soft men" that allows women to more easily enter traditionally male-dominated professions? Or is it simply more demand for more jobs that sends everybody--men and women--scrambling for more work?

On the other hand, female bus drivers are commonplace in both Chengdu and Suzhou--in fact, I feel like there might even be more female bus drivers than male. In Los Angeles, this might also have been true, but I never encountered a female cabbie there or elsewhere in the States, though, granted, I rarely encountered cabs, period.

It would be interesting to know what the comparison is like in other cities--thinking back, of all the cabs I remember taking in cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Wuhan, Hong Kong ... all the cabbies were men, but I took very few cabs in each of those cities.

Good Reading

Since I'm supposed to be editing for our next issue, and I've spent approximately 7.6 hours reading other stuff online instead, I figure I might as well share some of the fruits of the time I misappropriated.

1. A Taste of Racism in the Chinese Food Scare. SFGate.com's Jeff Yang dissects Stateside reactions to ongoing bickering in the food-import biz. We could all just try the 100-mile diet, but then who would we be afraid of? (The intersection of food and ethnic classification has been on my mind quite a bit lately, and I've been doing some writing on it for both LOUDmouth and a submission to a travel anthology.)
   
2. For my Los Angeles-based friends, carless (are there any of you?) and otherwise, two pieces advocating non-car modes of transportation in downtown L.A. and beyond: Extending the Red Line Will Be Good for Los Angeles (of course it will--at least better than everybody buying yet another SUV) and Downtown Should Bring Back the Streetcar.
3. And finally, to add to my rant on Wei Hui and Annie Wang (I'd link it but no thanks to the GFW, I have no clue what the URL is), here's another annoyed person. Bai Ling Eradicates 100 Years of Feminist Struggle With "Shanghai Baby" (and manages to show a damn lot of marble-like, and I don't mean the stone, nipples while doing so).
4. And while I'm at it, Wikipedia's glorious accessible-from-the-Mainland period appears to be coming to an end. Well, I guess we'll just have to go here. (Explanation in English here.)

Well. That makes this post the clear winner in the most links-to-words-ratio contest. Yesssss. Blog cool factor up 10 points.

Gladder

I just outfitted my browser with the "Gladder" add-on. It is the sweetest thing. For those of you using Firefox in China, I highly recommend it. It's the "Great Firewall Ladder" and its purpose is to automatically redirect you via proxy sites when you're trying to browse any blocked site. No more "Page Cannot Be Found" messages for me!