Random thoughts

An uncommitted blog on just about anything

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Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'

Pathetic

July 9th, 2009 · Comments Off on Pathetic

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2009/07/06/daily37.html There’s a lot of activities that can be helped by video conferencing. Medical care is not one of them. I don’t need a doctor who can’t even touch me to feel if I have a fever. How much better is this solution than a simple phone call? Sure, the doctor can look at you […]

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Priorities

May 25th, 2009 · Comments Off on Priorities

[allears-widget maxwidth=16rem HEIGHT=”3rem” style=”left-margin: 0″] This statement caught my eye… The rapid rise of China and Vietnam, accounting between them for some 20 percent of humanity, has ushered hundreds of millions of people from poverty since totalitarian Communism fell. The West is in no position to say it knows better. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/opinion/25iht-edcohen.html The debate on “Is […]

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Some interesting reads

February 8th, 2009 · Comments Off on Some interesting reads

The Bank of America deal with Merrill Lynch: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/business/08split.html How Lenovo missed the opportunity to take advantage of the IBM brand after buying the Thinkpad product line: http://siliconhutong.typepad.com/silicon_hutong/2009/02/the-lenovo-retreat.html

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What globalization?

February 1st, 2009 · Comments Off on What globalization?

Someone theorizes the 20th century never happened [I wish I had pointers, suggestions?]. A century of immense international instability, with global balances of power shifting, and yet, one century later, the subjects of our discourses don’t seem to have changed a whole lot: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01irwin.html

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Internet addiction

January 31st, 2009 · Comments Off on Internet addiction

Back in november 2008, Xinhua reported of the newly introduced official diagnostic definition of “internet addiction”. I was first made aware of this by Imagethief’s post on his blog, and didn’t think much of it at the time. Then came the latest issue of News China (volume 6, january 5th, 2009) with the article “Internet […]

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Angel Island

January 31st, 2009 · Comments Off on Angel Island

Just to show off my ignorance a bit, the other day I was wondering where did new immigrants step off their ships when they reached the United States from the west coast. On the east coast, immigrants at sea would be welcomed by the sight of the Statue of Liberty, shortly followed by the arrival […]

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Changes in China

January 25th, 2009 · 4 Comments

As a layman who spent a significant number of days in Beijing between 2004 and 2007 (large enough to delay my US naturalization application, anyway), I remember the macroscopic changes every time I was moving back there. Of course there was the turnover of foreigners that periodically made my circle of friends shrink back to […]

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Happy niu year!

January 25th, 2009 · 3 Comments

Today is the first day of the year of the ox! [aetag p 1 “This is a short pause”/] Happy chinese new year to everyone! [aetag fga href=”https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com/https://soundbible.com/grab.php?id=1143&type=mp3″ pb=0.5 pa=1 t=”Cow And Bell” at=”Source: http://soundbible.com/1143-Cow-And-Bell.html, License: Public Domain”][A cow mooing][/aetag] The spelling in the subject of this post seems to be very popular this year. [aetag […]

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A new view of the third tone in spoken mandarin

January 24th, 2009 · Comments Off on A new view of the third tone in spoken mandarin

A while ago, John Pasden posted on his Sinosplice blog an article about an alternative representation of tones for chinese in connected speech. I’ve been re-thinking about that post, and I find the reversal between “third tone” and “half-third tone” to be very intriguing. We all start learning mandarin with a third tone represented as […]

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Back online!

January 24th, 2009 · Comments Off on Back online!

On january 22nd I woke up and went to check my blog, after the 3 post I had left the night before. It was gone. The web server was not responding. I assumed there could be some problem with the network connection, so I waited. By the evening, the server was still down. My service […]

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