This is a daily collection of links, some with commentary, to news stories and interesting blog posts. It will be updated throughout the day with a new timestamp for the updates.

Scroll down for today's other posts.

• Eaglespeak has a great map, albeit from 1993, of major sea lanes for oil in South East and East Asia. And are the Chinese contemplating a trojan seahorse?
• The Japanese are growing....taller, but with an interesting correlation.
• John Negroponte, new American uberspy, views on China.
• iTunes is coming to Japan (although still no sign here in Honkers). It was held up by the major labels and their worries over copyright. When will they realise it's their business model they're protecting, not copyright?
• China released its now annual human rights white paper. No word how many in slave labour camps were used to compile the report.
• Why haven't you read Andres' post titled 0.3% and the free society yet?
• Indonesia's having a bad run with nature at the moment. Now its volcanoes are coming to life.
• The good and the bad in China, right from the horse's mouth.
• The history of slavery in Korea.
• Brad DeLong points to an FT article again heralding the end of China's fixed exchange rate. A thought: if China liberalises the exchange rate before it liberalises the capital account it will only hurt its export sector, which has been driving growth. If it liberalises the capital account fully, its just as likely the exchange rate will fall as China's domestic savings and capital leave the country for better investment opportunities and returns. The false assumption often made is the yuan is undervalued. That's not so obvious.
• China and the Catholic Church.
• Trying to solve China's piracy problem. Perhaps the US should welcome piracy. If American culture and software can create the means to subvert further the rule of the CCP, wouldn't that be a good thing? And that's only going to happen if these goods stay cheap enough for ordinary Chinese people can afford them. Han has a very comprehensive look at the piracy strawman.
• The topic of Myanmar's chairmanship of ASEAN next year is so poisonous ASEAN could only talk about it during a coffee break so their comments couldn't be recorded. It pits ASEAN's principles of non-interference against, well, if they had other principles...
• Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on New Zealand's plan to sign the non-aggression treaty with ASEAN:

  "Australia is a proud and independent country, we're able to beat New Zealand at rugby, we thrash them at cricket and there is no reason why we should always do what New Zealand does. We're a more confident country than that."

• Tyler Cowen of MR has started a new blog on avian flu.
• Beloved benevolent MuNu host Pixy Misa is two years old today.
• (16:58) Blogs as Singapore's intellectual platforms.
• Is China's gambling ban doomed to failure?
• Bill Rice has written on China's military capability, the challenge it poses and argues why the US will create alliances with India, Japan and Australia as a counterweight against a potential war over Taiwan.
• Blasphemous but plenty of potential. Paula would be her usual self and add nothing of value, except to mock applaud and say condensendingly "I'm so proud of you". Randy would use dude four times, wolf like a dog, use the word "pitchy" and finish saying "It was alright, man, it was alright", which could mean anything from it sucked to it rocked. Simon is the voice of reason. Shaky's right - this thing has legs.