As I’ve mentioned before, the Chinese think BIG when it comes to engineering. Peep their new project.
Tag: China
Categories
A Medical Tourism Tale
Africans Boots of Beijing is a documentary film about an African soccer team in Beijing. The film was produced, filmed and edited by Luke Mines and Jeremy Goldkorn, long-time residents of Beijing from the USA and South Africa.
For ten years Afrika United F.C. has been a force in the amateur soccer leagues of Beijing, China. It is also a fascinating window into the growing African community in Beijing and the cross pollination among cultures that is occurring as the world grows ever smaller.
(Via Danwei.)
“China and India, still desperately poor. Chinese children in a village pick garbage (above); An Indian child in a slum (below).”
Pranab Bardhan, writing in Yale Global Online:
The media, particularly the financial press, are all agog over the rise of China and India in the international economy. After a long period of relative stagnation, these two countries, nearly two-fifths of the world population, have seen their incomes grow at remarkably high rates over the last two decades. Journalists have referred to their economic reforms and integration into the world economy in all kinds of colorful metaphors: giants shaking off their “socialist slumber,” “caged tigers” unshackled, and so on. Columnists have sent breathless reports from Beijing and Bangalore about the inexorable competition from these two new whiz kids in our complacent neighborhood in a “flattened,” globalized, playing field. Others have warned about the momentous implications of “three billion new capitalists,” largely from China and India, redefining the next phase of globalization.
While there is no doubt about the great potential of these two economies in the rest of this century, severe structural and institutional problems will hobble them for years to come. At this point, the hype about the Indian economy seems patently premature, and the risks on the horizon for the Chinese polity – and hence for economic stability – highly underestimated.
(Via A&L Daily.)
Turns out that video I linked to a few days back is only one of many available from China’s own “The Back Dormitory Boys.”
Categories
Chorks: Approved for Use in Outer Space
AFP:
Talk about a Chinese take-away. Astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisjeng blasted into outer space with a full larder of Chinese specialities including cuttlefish and meat balls, and beef with orange peel.
But the pair of orbiting diners will have to do without chopsticks, which were considered too difficult to manoeuvre in the weightlessness of space. They’ll use forks and spoons instead according to the state Xinhua news agency.
(Emphasis mine.)
These particular taikonauts — as well as citizens throughout all of Asia — clearly need my chorks. (Note to self: have patent lawyer draft proposal for China National Space Administration STAT.)
Some background, for those of you who’re new to my chorks concept. While living in Taiwan last year, I really enjoyed using chopsticks — but I found that they failed in one crucial regard: picking up little pieces of food (vittles that’re too small to be grasped, and can only be poked). So I constructed the prototype you see above by fashioning tiny dumpling pokers to the ends of conventional chopsticks. And the chorks, thus, were born. Chopsticks plus forks equals chorks.
I’m still tweaking my current working model; in the meantime, I’m accepting overtures from angel investors who’re ready to change the world. Consider that the population of Asia is over three billion, and most of the people on the continent uses chopsticks. It wouldn’t take much market penetration to earn boat-loads of cash. But, of course, the chorks have never been primiarly a commercial endeavor: I just want the world to eat more efficiently. It’s that simple.
(News link via Ni Howdy.)
Categories
Building a Nest Egg, 1% at a Time
I had to laugh when I saw an ad on TV last night for American Express’s new credit card: 1% of eveything you charge on your card is put into a savings account with a 3.15% interest rate. There’s a $35 annual fee for the card.
Okay, so let’s do the math. You wanna save some cash. But you have a hard time putting aside the dough on your own. The solution: keep buying stuff on credit — stuff you probably wouldn’t pay for cash for — and then you won’t have to worry about building your nest egg.
Go ahead and buy that new 42″ plasma screen TV for $2,200 — and a whopping $22 will go into your savings account! What a bargain! Throw a $2,000 Rolex (it’s used, so it’s cheap!) on the card, as well, as you’ve saved another 20 bones. When you substract the $35 annual fee, you’ve come out seven dollars ahead! (Of course, you could always pay cash for a cheaper TV and a less extravagent watch — and save the difference, plus the interest you’d have to pay on the credit card — but we all know what a hassle that can be.)
When most people think about saving money for the future, they try to figure out a way to make more cash — whether it’s through higher income or a hairbrained 1% savings plan like this. It’s much simpler, of course, to simply modify our lifestyles so we spend less than we make. It’s not necessarily easier, but it’s simpler.
One of my favorite passages in Rolf Potts’s excellent book “Vagabonding : An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel” is when Potts recounts a scene from the 1987 film “Wall Street.” Charlie Sheen plays a young stockbroker on the make; at one point, he tells his girlfriend that he wants to work hard and make a killing so he can one day retire and “ride a motorcycle across China.” As Potts points out, Sheen’s character — or anyone — could work for a year cleaning toilets, living inexpensively and saving as much as possible, and have enough funds for such a trip.
(Or, of course, assuming the journey might cost $3,000, you could always charge $300,000 on your new AmEx card and have the necessary loot saved for you automatically! Making the minimum monthly payments might be tough, however…)
AP: “Piggies swim in a pool during a piggy sports contest held in the Yaohai Park in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Liu Bingsheng)”
(Note: “piggies”!?!)
(Via Robot Wisdom.)
Justin Logan at the Cato Institue argues that Taiwan needs to take a more active role in defending itself from China. From a recent Washington Times op-ed:
For the last 4 years, the Bush administration has continually begged Taiwan to purchase a special $18 billion package of weapons designed to help defend against the threat from China. Due mostly to relentless obstructionism on the part of the opposition pan-Blue coalition, Taiwan has failed to pass this special budget. If the United States fails to seriously pressure Taiwan — in the form of diplomatic “sticks” — Taiwan will continue to balk, emboldening China and endangering the security of both Taiwan and the United States.
Taiwan faces arguably the most precarious security environment in the world. It sits roughly 100 miles away from the behemoth People’s Republic of China, which is aiming a considerable campaign of military modernization directly at tiny Taiwan. In the face of this dire threat, Taiwan has displayed a stunning neglect of its own defense, and not just in terms of its refusal to pass the special budget. Over the last five years, Taiwan’s overall defense spending has dropped roughly 25 percent, to an anemic 2.4 percent of gross domestic product.
The reason it has the luxury to do so, according to Taiwan expert James Mulvenon, is Taiwan’s belief in a “blank check of military support from the United States.”
Michael Turton disagrees and has some interesting analysis of Logan’s position.