As part of my Journalism course we were looking at different magazines that were out there.  Someone brought in a copy of Vogue with the accompanying cover.  Whilst I agreed with the women that it was a striking image, my first thought on seeing it was that it was obviously faked.  Check out the size of her torso compared to those infinite legs.

The women in my group were complementary on my astuteness, although I'd imagine most men would see it given that we probably look at more women than most ladies do.  I'm not sure if "Men's" magazines still distort images of women regularly, as I'm bored by anything that pushes masturbation as a viable lifestyle choice, but I remember it being vaguely scandalous when Kate Winslet got her legs shooped back in the 90s.

Aside from the rather obvious point about creating unrealistic expectations for women to measure up to, what attracted my attention was that this has the same effect as foreshortening.  That is, this kind of technique would normally be applied to a painting hung high above the viewer to make it look more realistic.  In the visual language we all imbibe, if not explicitly, this image is literally looking down on you.

It’s always been a great source of dismay to me that despite predicting the financial crisis in ’07, I didn’t have the foresight to write anything down and thus claim my place amongst the economic gurus of our age.  Admittedly the horror stories I would describe to friends were a little more rooted in a post apocalyptic imagination than a sound grasp of Credit Default Swaps and their likely implications, but I thought it fitting that I get my current vague forebodings down in writing at the start of this blog so that I don’t miss another chance to claim my rightful title as Seer Extraordinaire.

Whilst it’s hardly news to say ‘Keep your eyes on China’, I have a feeling that in the next few years, the meteoric rise of the Dragon may stutter, or indeed change direction.  I must confess to having little insider knowledge – I’ve only spent a couple of weeks in China, and all of that was within Xinjiang.  However, as with the financial crisis, my belief that something will change comes from looking at everything in the public domain and deciding something doesn't make sense.

If you asked the man in the street about China, then you might expect to hear something about its inexorable rise.  Yet there’s something very rotten in this state that comes to the surface with only a little digging.  We have grown immured to the constant strikes and protests, but it still comes as a shock to hear that an estimated 90,000 happen every year.  The current spate of immolations in Tibet will probably be controlled like the riots in Xinjiang before them, but the anger of the Han Chinese majority may be harder for officials to contain.