opticoptic - LiveJournal.comBooks - June 08- July 5, 2008 Anchee Min - Empress OrchidBrett Dakin - Another Quiet American: Stories of Life in LaosAnchee Min - Wild GingerRight out of college, Brett Dakin spent a couple of years in Laos in 1999-2000 working with their tourism bureau, trying to figure out how to increase tourism to Laos without compromising its essential Laos-ness. At the time, Laos was still in a fairly primitive state (compared, anyway, to tourist-friendly neighbors like Vietnam and Thailand), still nominally communist, and run by a...http://optic.livejournal.com/718029.html The Oklahoma Sonics- July 3, 2008 I've been rooting for the Sonics to win their trial, so they would give the city some money and get out of here before somebody figured out a way to bribe them to stay with taxpayer (i.e. MY) money (presumably by renovating or replacing Key Arena). So imagine how excited I was to read that the Sonics and the city had settled, with the Sonics paying $45-75 million to get out of their lease and leave. But what's this That extra $30M is conditional on the city trying and failing to get another NBA.http://optic.livejournal.com/717753.html |