Putting My Oar In
Some small news items, or excerpts from large ones or large excerpts from small ones, make me blink. Here are three I've gathered recently.
Police bust counterfeit money syndicate in Bandung.
fr. today's Jakarta Post
Bandung Police chief, Adj, Comr. Irfan Nugraha said that the Rp.100,000 notes, which were printed with simple reproduction machines including photocopiers, "seem almost the same when touched and observed through light. They can pass an infrared scan because they also have security threads like real banknotes issued by Bank Indonesia."
"They may have used very sophisticated technology by just using ordinary printing machines."
If it's that easy, I must fix my scanner and refill my colour cartridge.
The politics of pragmatism
fr. today's Jakarta Post
With the defeat of Jusuf Kalla, chairman of Golkar, in the recent presidential election, Suharto's former party is in some disarray. There is unseemly jostling to take over the helm, with the current Minister of Family Welfare - especially his family's but definitely not the Sidoarjo mudflow refugees' - Abdurizal Bakrie and media tycoon Suryo Paloh the front runners.
However, a 41 year old party executive, Yuddy Chrisnandi, has put his name forward.
Institute of Sciences political expert Lili Romli said,"Yuddy has the capacity but not the funding. He has to face the reality that most of the party's regional elite (who have the votes in internal party elections) are pragmatic people."
fr. Websters: pragmatic (adj) concerned with actual practice, everyday affairs, etc.
ergo: money talks.
Scull Hunting
fr. Pravda
A new term - 'dark tourism' - has appeared in the tourist industry recently. More and more tourists are eager to visit places of catastrophes and disasters which killed plenty of people.
Vladislav Anikeev, a man from the Russian city of Tula, has always dreamt to visit a cannibal tribe. And one day his dream came true. He went to Kalimantan, Indonesia, to the place where scull (sic) hunters live. The group of tourists finally found themselves in the village inhabited by cannibals who willingly told the details of their inhumane craft and shared their secrets and technology of scull processing and showed how to do it.
However, how surprised Vladislav was when at the end of their tour he entered the chief’s house and saw the chief of the tribe putting on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
It turned out that everything the tribe showed to the tourists was nothing but a performance. Scull hunting has been strictly forbidden since 1861. Since that time the tribe has become quite civilized and has taught themselves how to get money from the habits and customs of their predecessors.
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