Pictures of Legislatures around the world. You will know what HARMONY means.

Turkey

Mexico

South Korea

Ukraine

Russia

Italy

Taiwan

India

Japan

 

OK, let me show you the congress in the harmonious society: China.

 

Link: http://www.chinaelections.org/newsinfo.asp?newsid=169282

Smart Brazilian thieves

Brazilian thieves have shown the quality of thieves in a superpower. They used the football celebration and Christmas trees to make their robbery seem legitimate.

Thieves in Brazil have stolen more than £5m ($6m) from a cash delivery firm, taking advantage of the nation's passion for football, police say.

Police believe the thieves - who had dug a tunnel into the firm's building - struck when season-ending matches were played in Sao Paulo on Sunday.

A security guard later told local media he had heard a loud noise but thought it was fireworks lit by fans.

The theft was only discovered on Sunday evening - after the matches had ended.

They also have to predict the right result. If the home team had lost, probably they wouldn't have had the chance to cover up the explosion.

Iron Curtain is still there

I read a fascinating report about deer on the Germany-Czech border. 20 years after the fall of Iron Curtain, although the barbed wires are no longer there, the deer are still unwilling to cross that line. It shows how powerful the politics can even influence the nature. (Wall Street Journal)

Also, it has been snowing heavily in China. I want to share pictures of some funny snowman. Chinese can also be creative.

Pictures

Obama in China

Obama wasn't as popular as Hillary at first, but now he certainly is. Now he's on his way there, I would like to share some interesting pictures.

an unofficial poll on “US President will soon visit China, what do you most want to chat with him about?”

1. Winning the Nobel Peace Prize after just taking office, how did you get it?
   1487 votes (10.19%)
2. Discuss the Chinese human rights problem that Obama cares most about, how about it?
   620 votes (4.25%)
3. About the issue of whether Taiwan is a province of China.
   3322 votes (22.76%)
4. What will America use to secure China’s investment of American government bonds?
   2903 votes (19.89%)
5. How to promote denuclearizing of the world?
   614 votes (4.21%)
6. How does America plan to promote its relations with China?
   1670 votes (11.44%)
7. How can China and America cooperate in denuclearizing the North Korean peninsula?
   439 votes (3.01%)
8. What role does American want to play in the future East Asian Community?
   545 votes (3.73%)
9. When will America lift its embargo of high-tech products and weapons on China?
   2490 votes (17.06%)
10. How can China and America cooperate on anti-terrorism?
    503 votes (3.45%)

Being blessed 24/7

It is so nice when I hear somebody says "bless you" to me when I sneeze. This is a culture which doesn't exist in China. Trivial as it is, I feel the warmth of the society, even though many believe people are getting more indifferent to others.

But can you believe somebody who is surrounded by "bless you" everyday and all day long? A 12-year-old girl has this fortune, or more accurately, misfortune, of sneezing 12,000 times a day. (FOX News)

In fact, she has become a sneezing machine gun. Understanding this, she no longer goes to school. Poor little girl. Bless you!

Taylor Swift should get Nobel Peace Prize

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, surprising everyone in the world, especially for himself. People around the world desribed this from an achievement, a controversy to a joke. Does Obama deserve this award? I don't know. But I think Taylor Swift deserves it as much as Obama does. Here's why.

Both Taylor Swift and Barack Obama are successful. Young (relative to their field) and cute, they both inspried many people by using their mouth and voice. They bring hope and a fresh image to people by cleaning up the previously tainted one by George Bush and Britney Spears relatively.

Just see the albums Fearless released by Taylor Swift in November 2008, you will hear a song called "Change". Who was shouting this word at that time? Another song was called "White Horse". I believe this was just a typo. Don't you think there is some connection?

Many said Obama won it because the Nobel Committee wanted to console him for the humiliation by Copenhagen's International Olympic Committee's decision. But if the Nordic people really want to make up for their mistake, the one who needs consolation is definitely Taylor, who was hurt by Kanye West on the MTV Award, as everybody knows. And her kindness for accepting apologies from him shows the character of a Nobel Peace Laureate as President Obama showed when he accepted the apology from Congressman Joe Wilson.

p.s.: I hope my friend Nick can recover from the illness soon!

Happy birthday~

Attached is the birthday gift! The ugliest fish I've even seen. Please enjoy~ Happy birthday~~~~~~~~~~ to Jaivir~ haha

History of long speeches

I still got the readings to do, so haven't got the chance to watch today's UN session. It's said Chavez's performance today was not bad. He even broached the Kennedy assassination, as His Excellency King of Kings Colonel Qaddafi did yesterday. But he ended with singing. That would be pretty cool! I will try to update as soon as I view the clips.

There is a pretty cool article of long political speeches. The historic long speech in General Assembly belongs to Comrade Fidel Castro in 1960 (considering the speed of Spanish language, that would be even longer), but the longest one in UN is Indian's speech in Security Council about Kashmir in 1957 (dunno about Hindi, but its transcript in UN website is 160 pages long).

It also talked about how a guy was arrested because he stopped first after 11 minutes' applause when they are toasting Comrade Stalin. That's a cool example for game theory, isn't it? How to stop together so nobody gets arrested? haha....

Also, Brezhnev was so old that he would read the same page twice but nobody would notice because it was so long even without it.... or even they did, they couldn't say anything without being executed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8272473.stm

Fairy tale = One night stand?

Still have 200 more pages to read for tomorrow's class, but I really wanna leave something here for today. I didn't have the time to read through today's headlines, but yesterday, a video shocked me. I really wanna share it with you guys.

Remember, this "mother" actually is an actress, making an ad in a desperate attempt to boost tourism in Denmark during difficult time. Of course, one night stand is always attractive to men, and women. I believe it will definitely work. Besides lifting the tourist avenue, it can also help resolve the problem of low fertility rate. Wow, it sounds more intriguing than Anderson's fairy tales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-SSHxGGpjM

For the sake of our country, stop making love!

We've all seen different ways of protest. Some climbed up skyscrapers, others burned flags, effigies, and even themselves. But nothing like this has occurred to me when Kenyan women stopped making love to their husbands as part of the protest against President Kibaki. (BBC)

It's definitely a cool way to stop violence and political impasse. But its effectiveness is another question. This proposal only shows how desperate the people are after experiencing the post-election violence last year. 

If all the Kenyan can be so united as those advocates wished, especially if Mrs. Kibaki could join, nothing can't be solved. But since sex is such a private matter, you may never know whether it works or not.

Lie to Me

Fox won't air Obama's 100-day primetime press conference. This is quite amazing, in that the "balanced and fair" news channel now flagrantly shows its contempt for Obama. But what is more amazing is what it airs instead -- the TV show "Lie to Me". (Daily Kos)

They don't even try to pretend anymore:

The AP reports that Fox has decided to stick with its regular line-up on Wednesday, meaning it won't air President Obama's prime-time news conference marking his 100th day in office. Instead, viewers will see an episode of "Lie to Me." ABC, CBS, and NBC will be airing the press conference.

It's unclear why Fox is going with "Lie to Me," given that a viewer can get that 24/7 on Fox News.

Anyway, this TV show is pretty good.

Oranges from "Israel"

Israeli agriculture is known for its high efficiency considering the lack of water resources. Its irritation system is one of the best in the world. As a result, oranges from Israel should be welcome in countries all around the world, with the exception of its nemeses. Iran is the most outspoken of them, with its president repeatedly calling for Israel's being wiped off the map and denying of the Holocaust. The trade with Israel is strictly banned in the Islamic Republic. That's the reason why they reacted so strongly when they found some "Israeli" oranges in their market. But later, it turned out that they were just fooled: (BBC report)

A twist has emerged in the story of Israeli citrus fruit reportedly sold in Iran in defiance of a ban on commercial dealings between the two enemy states.

It has now been revealed the fruit, a type of orange-grapefruit hybrid marketed as Jaffa Sweetie, were not Israeli in the first place.

The Sweeties were brought to Iran from China, where faking the origin of goods is a common practice.

The discovery of apparent Israeli origin caused a stir in Iran.

The wisdom of Chinese people once again embarrassed others. But clearly, many intriguing problems lays behind this laughable farce.

Chinese economy is really booming and its enormous amount of export has led to a "Made in China" phenomenon. But together with the boom of exported goods is the notoriety of hardly satisfying quality. Besides the lead-contaminated toys, faking brands is another Chinese innovation. The faking of Jaffa is just another example. But this one doesn't bring any benefit, but a chaos to its destination.

As we often say, though jokingly, we Chinese are really wise that we can always find a way to circumvent the law. As As'ad said, Chinese even export products printed with local dialects to Yemen, which the Western companies fail to do. It seems that we really know how to sell as much as possible. But that's not always the case. Misunderstandings do happen due to lack of understanding of local culture and law. The use of "negro" to describe the color of food even resulted in a legal suit in the United States.

Probably we should hire better managers in order to find better ways to fake and fool others. But is it really the right and sustainable way to develop? While the government is declaring the intention of "peaceful rise", the illegal of foreign brands is just an economic "invasion", finally hurting Chinese reputation around the world. It would be too late to realize that when the word "Chinese" is synonymous with "fake" and "poor quality".

On the other hand, is Israeli orange so poisonous that it is dealt with as bird-flu-infected chicken. For their information, the oranges would have been much sweeter and healthier for them if they were truly from Israel.