world buzzwords

Foreign people not only make up queer English words, they also have interesting words of their own. Please add any that you know of in the comments. Queer means odd, by the way.

1. Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time
2. Taarradhin (Arabic): a way of resolving a problem without anyone losing face (not the same as our concept of a compromise - everyone wins)
3. Razbliuto (Russian): The vacant feeling you have for someone you once loved, but no longer love.
4. Meraki (Greek): doing something with soul, creativity, or love
5. Yoko meshi (Japanese): literally ‘a meal eaten sideways’, referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language:
6. Duende (Spanish): a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc.
7. Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions
8. Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbour’s house until there is nothing left
9. Manqué (French) having failed to become what one might have been
10. Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery
11. Waldeinsamkeit (German): the feeling of being alone in the woods
12. Dai Lu Maozi (Chinese) Translates to “He wears the green hat”; Meaning his Wife is sleeping with someone else.
13. Faire Du Leche-Vitrines (French) Literally, “to lick the windows”; Window Shopping.
14. Harami (Arabic) An electrical plug adapter that allows more than one plug to be plugged into the same socket. Literally means “thief”
15. Guanxi (Mandarin): in traditional Chinese society, you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favor, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favour to be repaid.
16. Handschuhschneebalwerfer (German) Germans like to smash words together into one. This one translates to “Somebody Who Wears Gloves To Throw Snowballs”, used in general to describe cowards.
17. Geisterfahrer (Austria) Someone driving the wrong way on the Autobahn. Literally: Ghost Driver.
18. Shitta (Farsi) Leftover dinner eaten for breakfast.
19. Schadenfreude (Guess Who) To derive pleasure via someone else’s pain or misfortune
20. Gorerro (Spanish) Someone who never picks up a check.
21. Rujuk (Indonesian) To Remarry your ex-wife.

found on MisanthropyToday

an intelligent protest against copyrights and patents on yoga

This is definitely a great book - for invention enthusiasts as well as for the alternative, new age and yoga world:

Can you patent wisdom? By Suketu Mehta Published: May 7, 2007; International Herald Tribune

I grew up watching my father stand on his head every morning. He was doing sirsasana, a yoga pose that accounts for his youthful looks well into his 60s. Now he might have to pay a royalty to an American patent holder if he teaches the secrets of his good health to others. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There's big money in those pretzel twists and contortions - $3 billion a year in America alone. It's a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages. The Indian government is not laughing. It has set up a task force that is cataloging traditional knowledge, including ayurvedic remedies and hundreds of yoga poses, to protect them from being pirated and copyrighted by foreign hucksters. The data will be translated from ancient Sanskrit and Tamil texts, stored digitally, and available in five international languages, so that patent offices in other countries can see that yoga didn't originate in a San Francisco commune. It is worth noting that the people in the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas. We know a business opportunity when we see one and have exported generations of gurus skilled in peddling enlightenment for a buck. But as Indians, they ought to know that the very idea of patenting knowledge is a gross violation of the tradition of yoga. In Sanskrit, "yoga" means "union". Indians believe in a universal mind - brahman - of which we are all a part, and which ponders eternally. Everyone has access to this knowledge. Knowledge in ancient India was protected by caste lines, not legal or economic ones. The term "intellectual property" was an oxymoron: the intellect could not be anybody's property. Perhaps it is for this reason that Indians do not feel obligated to pay for knowledge. Pirated copies of my book are openly sold on the Bombay streets, for a fourth of its official price. Many of the plots and the music in Bollywood movies are lifted wholesale from Hollywood. Still, Indians get upset every time they hear reports - often overblown - of Westerners' stealing their age-old wisdom through the mechanism of copyright law. The fears may be exaggerated, but they are widespread and reflect India's mixed experience with globalization. Western pharmaceutical companies make billions on drugs that are often first discovered in developing countries. But herbal remedies like bitter gourd or turmeric, which are known to be effective against everything from diabetes to piles, earn nothing for the country whose sages first isolated their virtues. The Indian government estimates that worldwide, 2,000 patents are issued a year based on traditional Indian medicines. Drugs and hatha yoga have the same aim: to help us lead healthier lives. India has given the world yoga for free. No wonder so many in the country feel that the world should return the favor by making lifesaving drugs available at reduced prices, or at least letting Indian companies make cheap generics. If the lotus position belongs to all mankind, so should the formula for Gleevec, the leukemia drug over whose patent a Swiss pharmaceuticals company is suing the Indian government. For decades, Indian law allowed its pharmaceutical companies to replicate Western-patented drugs and sell them at a lower price to countries too poor to afford them otherwise. In this way, India supplied half of the drugs used by HIV-positive people in the developing world. But in March 2005, the Indian Parliament, under pressure to bring the country into compliance with the World Trade Organization's rules on intellectual property, passed a bill declaring it illegal to make generic copies of patented drugs. This has put life-saving antiretroviral medications out of reach of many of the nearly 6 million Indians who have AIDS. Yet the very international drug companies that so fiercely protect their patents oppose India's attempts to amend World Trade Organization rules to protect its traditional remedies. There's more at stake than just the money. There is also the perception that the world trading system is unfair, that the deck is stacked against developing countries. If the copying of Western drugs is illegal, so should be the patenting of yoga. It is also intellectual piracy, stood on its head. Suketu Mehta is the author of "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found."

Junk PCs for collectors mean business

Sellam Ismail at http://www.sellam.com/ runs a fun business. In the first purchase of his collection, Sellam Ismail loaded the trunk of his car with old computers he stumbled upon at a flea market for $5 apiece. Soon he had filled his three-car garage with what others would consider obsolete junk. Years later, his collection of early computers, printers, and related parts is piled high across shelves and in chaotic heaps in a 4,500-square-foot warehouse near Silicon Valley. And it is worth real money. Even as the power and speed of today's computers make their forerunners look ever punier, a growing band of collectors are gathering retro computers, considering them important relics and even good investments. "There has been a real steep upward trend in prices in the last year, year and a half," said Ismail, 38. "It seems it's become like the new collectible to moneyed people. Before it was just nerds and hobbyists." He states his own affiliation clearly: he wears a black T shirt with the word "nerd" on the front. He recently brought a quarter-century old Xerox Star computer back to life to be used as evidence in a patent lawsuit. The pride of his collection is an Apple Lisa, one of the first computers (introduced in 1983) with a now standard graphical interface. Such items sell for more than $10,000.