We must pray for her safe return from the bosom of academia. 

Pyongyang, filmed – and flattered – by Rob Whitworth and JT Singh.

Meanwhile, in where-to-go-on-that-foreign-holiday news: 

One of the most senior members of the Turkish government sparked an outcry on Tuesday, after declaring that women should not laugh loudly in public. The deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinc, one of the co-founders of the ruling Islamic Justice and Development party (AKP), made the comment while lamenting the moral decline of modern society. “A man should be moral but women should be moral as well, they should know what is decent and what is not decent,” Arinc said in a speech on Monday, in the western Bursa region for the Bayram holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. “She should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times,” he added.

Mr Arinc also shares his wisdom on other matters.

He denounced the excessive use of cars, saying that if even the “river Nile was filled with petrol” there wouldn’t be enough to go around. Arinc also slammed the excessive use of mobile phones in Turkish society, with women “spending hours on the phone to swap recipes.”

An equally pious Guardian reader adds this, 

Right up there with… keeping [women] barefoot and pregnant, oh wait, that’s only in America.

Any forcibly barefoot American women are welcome to respond. 

It’s been a while since we’ve had a classic Guardian sentence. Thank goodness, then, for Tracy Van Slyke, who can conjure elaborate grievance from a cartoon about sentient trains: 

For the record, all the “villains” on Thomas and Friends are the dirty diesel engines. I’d like to think there was a good environmental message in there, but when the good engines pump out white smoke and the bad engines pump out black smoke – and they are all pumping out smoke – it’s not hard to make the leap into race territory.

You see, that “leap into race territory” isn’t hard to make because dirtier cartoon train engines producing darker cartoon smoke obviously constitutes a “message about race.” When she’s not explaining the devilish racial subtext of animated puffer trains, Ms Van Slyke “writes about the intersection of social justice and pop culture.”  

Via Tom Foster in the comments here.

Kyungmin Woo’s Johnny Express. Via Metrolander. 

Pallas cat finds camera outside Himalayan den. Via Coudal. 

Here’s a pretty thing. Like Christmas in space.

Its purpose, beyond eye-candy, is to draw your attention to this. 

You wouldn’t want to miss the annual International Buffalo Bodypainting Festival in Jiangcheng County, China. 

Oh, don’t tut. You’ve been culturally enriched.  

From the Sydney Morning Herald: 

Student gets stuck in giant stone vagina.

There’s a photo for the curious. 

Two weeks before its scheduled completion, this hotel in Asan, South Korea, “abruptly tilted to one side.”

Via Mick.