"Shanghai, a coastal haven located midway on China's mainland..." - CNTO Tourist Map of Shanghai

And I always imagined a coastal haven to be a small town on the beach...

The Korea Tourism Organisation's Korea Seoul Tourist Map's Jeju-si City section displays one location as the Myeongdoam Tourist Recuperation Pasture. Somewhere to graze after a holiday? For our friends across the Tasman?

"If you are my bosom friend in the world, then let's meet each other in International Hotel." - Yichang International Hotel website

"The eNetwork would self-organize in appropriate resilience patterns using a novel context-awareness mechanism envisioned to tune the autonomy across the holarchic levels according to the detected/anticipated intent of eventual malicious holons."

From the abstract for "Synopsis and Tutorial on Adaptive Risk Management for Distributed Sensors and Systems" by Professor Mihaela Ulieru (University of New Brunswick)

Oh no, the malicious holons are after me! I had better tune the autonomy.

So far as I can understand (after only reading the abstract) the professor is discussing the use of a self-organising and autonomous system running within a large network to protect that network from damage. 

Is the character Le Chiffre from the latest Bond movie Casino Royale actually Dr Rudy from SBS Television's mock home improvement show Life Support? 

I can see it now... once Bill starts concentrating on his foundation you will find a push to make all contributions to charity go through the Gates Foundation. You will still be able to send money to other charities, but will be "encouraged" to do so through Gates' Charity Explorer, bundled for free with all Gates Foundation's packages.

Unfortunately, the Gates Foundation won't work very well with other charities and will not respect their protocols. The Gates Foundation will claim to be innovative, with projects like handing out computers to the poor, even though others have been doing so for many years previously.

Quarantine had better watch out too, because, through the Gates Foundation, many bugs will be introduced into previously pristine locations. You will also find that their projects will often compromise security.

Naked numbers are dirty!

If there are pure mathematicians, does that mean that applied mathematicians contain contaminants? Should they have warning labels?

While we are on the subject of the Amazing Race I've come up with a couple ideas for future series...

The Pimp and his Ho

The Amazing Race has featured a wide array of different couples, so why not the Pimp and his Ho? No taxies for the Pimp - he only travels in stretched limos. Stripped of all his possessions and cash at a non-elimination pitstop the Pimp can still rake in the replacement dough by doing his job and pimping his ho. He's travelling the world and firming up his suppliers. When they were finally eliminated the Ho was asked what she thought she'd got out of the adventure. She replied "gonorrhea, syphilis, and a host of other diseases I don't know what they called."

Amazing Race Sydney

In this leg of the race contestants must make their way up from the airport to the Blue Mountains using their own choice of transport.