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Monday, December 3, 2007 12:00 AM

Elvis lives! (On Burkina Faso postage stamps)

Mongolia and the X-Men. Chechnya and Groucho Marx. What were these stamp-pandering countries thinking?

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  • Monday, December 3, 2007 04:07 PM

    TV or tv

    One overlooked "pandering" that gained some traction in the 1990s was when a country awarded a certain TDL (top level domain) used it in global commerce, re-awarding it, via registrars, to companies with enough money. Specifically, I remember Tuvalu, 26 sq miles of ....Pacific Island Paradise. They had the TDL .tv and every US TV station seemed to want to have their call letters attached to that .tv. I don't know how much of the money changing hands ever got to the Tuvalu people ... or even its government...but it seems like the "stamp pandering" of the New Media World. Unfortunately, I don't think that ploy worked too well for the buyers, either.

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