Doctor Recommended
100% Natural

Via Robin Tovson

Via Ray Daugherty

Okay, maybe not but it does rhyme… one is distinctly Chinese the other is stereotypically Japanese.

Here is an interesting article from the WSJ on a homebrew gadget design (e.g., mashups) movement that is becoming increasingly popular throughout the mainland.

I’ll have to take some pictures of the various stores in this city that offer the shanzhai services. I also saw some in Shanghai by the hotel I was staying at.

In simple terms, here is what the scene looks like. You walk into a electronic market filled with row-after-row of vendors selling a cornucopia of electronic gadgets. At the back of several kiosks is a group of (usually) young men, smoking cigarettes, peering through magnifying lenses as they solder some diode onto a PCB board.

These autodidact, elbow grease engineers could very well become the first generation that moves China from an OEM provider to ODM.

See also: Tech Trend: Shanzhai

So remember when radio dj’s would play the same songs back-to-back? Next to Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, perhaps the most overplayed song in the mid ’90s was Smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana.

And not that I’m on expert on moshing, stage diving, head banging or crowd surfing, but watching this live video of a Nirvana concert is now (18 years later) kind of funny — the guys climbing up from the audience onto the stage prance around like giddy five-year olds.

If I was a performer I’d probably set up bear traps or have them wander through a dimly lit mirror-lined labyrinth behind the stage… that exits into a forest with Captain Tenneal from MXC.