North Korea: so much worse than you can imagine

Got downright stuck into Nothing to Envy, a book about just how nightmarish it is north of the 38th parallel.  Say you're an elementary school teacher in the 90's.  Your class starts out with 50 kids.  By the end of a famine, only 15 kids have not starved to death.  Plus you're not being paid, anyway.

And it goes on like that.  Yet it's suspenseful, a page-turner: what is going to happen to the six North Koreans whose stories the author follows?

I seriously could not put this book down.

Whoa

Our friend Ed was over in Japan years after the war and thought he would go see Hiroshima.  He asked an non-English speaking civilian the way to go.  The local, getting it, just tilted his arm up like a speedometer at 80 mph or so, conveying an angle: just follow and go in the direction of all the leaning buildings and you can't miss it.

Titticut (sp?) Follies II