Author: Fahad Mustafa

This survey, which uses an analysis of over 100 million Facebook accounts across the world and provides country wise information about popular brands and user networks, hints to something that I have long held true: Megan Fox (and, to a lesser extent, Vin Diesel) have the power to unite people across cultures and biases.

The actress tops the list of ‘likes’  across cultures and continents, bridging even bitter rivalries such as that between India and Pakistan (her popularity amongst South American and African nations seems significantly lesser though, perhaps a hint of cultural preferences)

The graphic also elaborates on another interesting aspect: how Facebook users across the world are linked. Europe and North America show high degree of regional connections. This is also true with China, whose population seems to be connected to those of East Asian countries. On the other hand such connections seem to be absent amongst South Asian nations, who seem to be significantly more connected to the US and UK.

It also highlights how historic and diasporic links between nation are reinforced in people-to-people connections (except in the South Asian case). It also shows that the sun may have set on the British Empire, but the UK still seems to have the most globally-connected population.

Link via ChapatiMystery

A tragi-comedy of greek proportions seems to have played out at Bratislava airport this Wednesday:

In what no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time, Slovak officials decided to test airport security in Slovakia on Saturday by concealing plastic explosives in eight suitcases and waiting to see what happened next.

Here’s what happened next: airport security workers intercepted seven of the suitcases but failed to detect 96 grams of the plastic explosive RDX loaded into one bag, which belonged to a Slovak electrician who lives in Ireland and had no idea his luggage had been tampered with. The man boarded his flight to Dublin, retrieved his bag and went home to his apartment.

The man then unpacked but, The Irish Times reports, “the explosives had been concealed so well that he did not find them.”

Three days later, on Tuesday, it apparently occurred to someone in Slovakia that the fact that one of the explosive-packed bags had gone missing was a problem and Slovakian airport authorities contacted their counterparts in Dublin to ask for help.

On Tuesday morning, the Irish Army’s bomb squad paid a visit to the apartment of the Slovak electrician in Dublin and secured the explosives. (NYT)

Apparently “the whole of English speaking India woke to this message today”.

Talk about hopeful beginnings. 2010. Bring it On

Globalistan has been a little dormant the past few days since we were reworking blog design and adding some new features. More shall be told about the latter when the time is ripe, but we are still working on things so expect some changes.

Hats off to Teresa for the awesome header. And to Ben, who reworked the design for us.

Let us know what you think of the design. Is there anything in the reworking that you see missing or different? Opinions shall greatly help us as we work on the design. The soul of a blog, after all, is in his clothes.