As a high school and college student, I worked at a local grocery store to help pay my way. I learned a neat way to save money on my groceries from the way the cashiers put away the “misplaced” items that customers picked up on an earlier aisle and then decided against purchasing. When putting up these items, it was much faster to start on the opposite end of the store than customers normally started from. As we picked up items that were out of place, we were on our way to where the item originated.

Bill Gates and Hu in the gaze of the mighty Thought-o-Tronic

Regular readers will know that Imagethief in his spare time recently invented a device called the Mighty Thought-o-Tronic that can read the thoughts of people in news photographs. I use this device sparingly because it has the potential to be extremely annoying, but I couldn’t help but be tempted after stumbling on today’s China Daily story about President Hu Jintao’s meeting with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Here is what it revealed:

Fascinating. In fact, it may have been pointless to use the Mighty Thought-o-Tronic, as what was actually said was as surreal as anything it could have revealed:

Google isn’t getting much of a break in China. Last week someone who had been to their launch party sighed to me that, had it been any other company, people would have thought it silly and pretentious. Not being among the “in crowd”, I have no firsthand impressions to report, and others may feel differently. This week Shanghai Daily reports that Chinese net users are giving the company a savaging over its choice of Chinese name, 谷歌 (”Guge”), or “harvest song”:

Reasons cited for [a petition calling upon Google to rethink its Chinese name] are the name is “weird,” “unsophisticated” and could damage the “cool” image of Google in China.