My Serbian Statues

Oh you crazy Serbs. In the past 4 years, Serbian government allowed the public to vote on which statues they should erect to symbolize the fight against ethnic violence, repelling bad luck and peace & tolerance. According to the results, the public decided Bruce Lee(!) should represent the fight against ethnic violence, fictional Rocky Balboa(!) to fight off the bad luck and Bob Marley(!) to symbolize peace and tolerance. There you have, there's a bronze statue of Bruce Lee hanging out somewhere in the town square of a Serbian town. While those three wouldn't be my personal choice for their respective honors, I'd say it's a bit of an amusing choice. I wonder how many people have already ran the Rocky steps next to the Serbian Rocky... (Bloomberg)

My Hari Puttar

Would this be considered defamation? Warner Bros. decided to proceed with a lawsuit against Mirchi Movies of India for a recent release of 'Hari Puttar: A Comedy Of Errors', a film about a 10 year-old who moves from India to England. Hmm.... the name is familiar but the plot obviously is not. If anything, the plot seems more like the recently debunked CW series 'Aliens In America'. (Yahoo)

My Chinese Smog

It seems like every time the Olympics rolls into its final month of preparation, the host city scrambles to make everything complete. For Beijing, it's no exception. It appears ever since the it was awarded this summer's Olympic games, Beijing's biggest dilemma was its air pollution. And like the way many things are done within the Chinese government, they chose to hide this fact and alter results. 

But as the news of its pollution became more public, the Chinese government began to force local factories down and reduce car commute. I gotta hand it to them, if they were dealt with NYC's congestion problem, they would solve it in a heartbeat with their no nonsense attitude. Anyway, will this last ditch effort convince the World it is ready? I sure hope so, because my family and I have been anticipating the Games in China for a long time now. (AP)

My New Coke Flavor

Coca-Cola has come out with a new healthier flavor currently being test ran in Japan. I'm kind of hoping it sticks around just so I can taste carbonated cucumber the next time I go to the Coke Museum in Atlanta. So who's going to make this beef flavor ice-cream I've been going on about for years? (MSNBC)

My Olympic Lighting Ceremony

It surprised no one that protesters would emerged at the Olympic Lighting Ceremony this morning regarding the Tibet situation. What did surprise people was that the protesters were from a French-based media group, Reporters Without Borders. Over 1,000 police officers were called on to patrol Ancient Olympia as the ceremony began, but as Chinese Olympic Committee president Liu Qi began his commencement, the protester rushed behind Qi, wearing a the Olympic rings as handcuffs and waving a banner. Of course, the live telecast was cut away in Chinese household. This is going to long few months before the ever-doomed Olympic games in Beijing. (NYT)

My Bad Magician

Who says there is no evil magic? A magician in Italy hypnotized a cashier into giving him cash! One of my college buddies was under hypnosis once and boy, they got him to do some interesting things. Watch the video:

My Generous ATM

Why doesn't this stuff ever happen to me? An ATM in London started giving out twice the amount it should- for free! I'm surprised it took as much as three hours before it ran out of cash. Authorities are trying to hold those who benefited from the mechanical error with charges, but only if the operator of the machine complained. Okay, so who's going to be the first village idiot to be honest about it so they can be arrested? (Yahoo)

My Cartoon Ambassador

Japan might be the only nation in the world to have a cartoon department in government to promote animation in other countries. The annointed ambassador for the newly created department is none other than Doraemon- a giant blue cartoon cat. So there you have it, a cartoon in government.... and I thought we had it bad. (Yahoo)