Your daily dose of poverty porn

The International Herald Tribune provides one of the best examples I’ve seen yet of the burgeoning genre of poverty porn, with this glimpse of life in Katmandu:

For all of its color and life, though, Boudhanath is beset by some very visible poverty as well – as is all of Nepal. Year after year, I encounter the same homeless people in its lanes: the blind woman who beats a small drum for coins; the shoeshine boy with no shoes of his own.

A shoeless shoeshine boy! Well, Nicholas D. Kristof is going to have to wake up pretty early in the morning in a Cambodian whorehouse to top that.