|
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » News: World
Sorry, but there are no more tags available to filter with.
-
 You guys ready for yet another ranking of most expensive cities? ECA International has ranked Shanghai the 8th costliest city in Asia for expats, so if they're to be taken seriously, Shanghai is cheaper than Beijing which came in 7th but more costly than Singapore which came in 9th. Seoul was the most expensive Asian city, while Guangzhou came in 10th.
Also, Shanghai was named the 100th most expensive city in the world. That's 99 spots behind Luanda, Angola, which had the distinction of being the costliest city worldwide. Kinshasa in Congo came in 6th, Libreville in Gabon 8th, and Abidjan in Cote D'Ivoire 16th.This is curious, because the last time we checked, we were supposed to be the 22nd most expensive. Of course, this was another consulting company researching with a completely different basket of goods.
So one consulting company tells us we're the 22nd costliest and another tells us we're the 100th? Who are we supposed to believe? Feel free to make up your own mind, but personally we believe none of them. IMHO, all these "costliest" rankings and "quality of life" rankings are becoming increasingly irrevelant in the new world. Jaded expats like ourselves (and we aren't even strictly speaking an "expatriate", more like a "half-pat") now know better that it isn't going to get more or less costly for ourselves just because these guys tell us so. One man's meat is another man's poison, and we're all living different lifestyles, so really, one-size-fits-all rankings just don't cut it anymore. Do these consultants know it? Sure they do. But we doubt anything's going to stop them from spending more man-hours and money every few months coming up with a different ranking to make it to the news (and blogs like this one). Sigh.
|
-
 According to a blog essay we found, a recent poll by Harris Interactive showed that of 6,000 people from France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US, the overwhelming majority considered China the second most powerful nation in the world after the USA. We did some searching on the internet, and couldn't find mention of that report. We tried on Harris Interactive's site as well, but no dice. Perhaps we haven't looked hard enough? Or used the right search terms? The original Chinese news article is on people.com.cn. We really hope this isn't another hoax.
Slightly more believable is the fact that Australia ranks #1 for top country brand. Well, it's believable provided that you can make your mind somehow conceptualize the idea of a country as a brand. All of this was in the context of some huge travel and tourism industry conference/exhibition happening, uh, somewhere. China was called a "rising star" because it was one of the top finishers in categories such as " Best Country Brand Ideal to do Business In" and "Best Country Brand for History". However, there was one category that China fared well in that left us scratching our heads: "Best Country Brand for Authenticity".
Authenticity? That's just what we think of when we think of brand China ... Whoever is doing PR for Brand China, you're a fucking genius.
Picture from wushu-oase.de.
|
-
 Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices Online has offered a great summary of reactions from the international blogosphere to Friday's announcement that former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
The China section was a real gem and we thought we'd share it with you!
如果这个美国人当年赢了布什，世界会很不一样！
If this American had won at the time instead of Bush, the world would be a very different place!
谁评的，伊拉克和伊朗参与吧！！
Who were the judges? Iraq and Iran too, I hope!!
评委是怎么产生的?有没有公正和公平性,为什么诺贝尔奖总是没能中国人?
How is the judging committee set up? Is it just and fair? Why don't Chinese ever get Nobel prizes?
美国人在世界上到处杀人放火,它国家的副总统在拿诺贝尔奖?这个真真正正的国际大玩笑!
Americans are everywhere around the world killing and lighting fires, and a Vice President of this country has won a Nobel prize? This is real big international joke!
戈尔先生倡导环保，曾经被除数我看作当代美国人理性与良知的代表．但半年前曝出新闻，他夫妇俩每年私宅耗电达２２万度，是普通美国的１０倍，是普通中国人的三百倍．我开始以为是政客诽谤，但不久从他的发言人的辩解中获得证实．
Mr. Gore advocates environmental protection, and as I see it once represented the rationality and conscience of a modern but split America. But six months ago the news came out that he and his wife, the two of them each year in their home consume 220,000 kilowatts of power, ten times higher than the average American and three hundred times more than the average Chinese. At the beginning I thought this was some political smear, but soon after learned this was the truth from a spokesman of his.
你们看过纪录片《难以忽视的真相》。>没有,如果没有,你就不能妄下结论,如果当年戈尔胜了,那么世界现在将是另一个样子.他是一个绿色和平者,我很佩服他!是他把人类对地球的破坏用纪录片揭示给人们，使我们明白爱护地球，爱护我们的家园！他得奖无可厚非
Have any of you seen An Inconvenient Truth ? If you haven't, then you shouldn't be making any absurd conclusions. If Gore had won back in the day, then the world would be a completely different place. He's a ‘greenpeacer', I really admire him! It's him that made a documentary of human destruction of the environment for us to see, and showed us how to care for the earth, to care for our homes! There isn't much to criticism him for.
和平奖应该奖给我们杂交水稻专家袁荣平.如果没有袁荣平地球不知道多饥荒多乱,还和平奖?
The peace prize should have gone our hybrid rice expert Yuan Rongping. If it weren't for Yuan Rongping who knows how many people would be starving and how chaotic the world would be. So where's the peace prize?
Screenshot from the official website of the Nobel Prize.
|
-
It is now official: The Great Wall has been chosen as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World in an unprecedented global vote that drew nearly 100 million internet and telephone voters. In fact it received the most votes among the 21 finalist sites (not very surprising as China has one of the biggest internet populations?). Other sites that have been recognised as new wonders include:
- Petra, Jordan
- The statue of Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
- The Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, Peru
- The Mayan city of Chichen Itza, Mexico
- The Coliseum, Rome
- The Taj Mahal, India
The 14 sites that did not make it were:
- The Acropolis, Greece
- Alhambra, Spain
- Angkor, Cambodia
- Statues of Easter Island, Chile
- Eiffel Tower, France
- Hagia Sophia, Turkey
- Kiyomizu Temple, Japan
- Kremlin/St. Basil, Russia
- Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
- Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
- Statue of Liberty, USA
- Stonehenge, United Kingdom
- Sydney Opera House, Australia
- Timbuktu, Mali
Only one of the original seven wonders, the Pyramids of Egypt, can still be seen. The others were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Unfortunately, the Pyramids were not selected among the new Seven Wonders but they have been given honorary status after an Egyptian official complained that it was undignified that the pyramids had to compete in an online poll.
Backers of the competition believe that the selection of the wonders would be better put to a vote rather than by an arbitrary panel of experts. However, there was no foolproof way of preventing people from voting more than once for their favourite wonder. Already, UNESCO has slammed the new seven wonders list. Comments by various UNESCO spokespeople include the following: This campaign responds to other criteria and objectives than that of UNESCO in the field of heritage. We have a much broader vision.
[The New Seven Wonders sends out a]... negative message to countries whose sites have not been retained. All of these wonders obviously deserve a place on the list, but what disturbs us is that the list is limited to just seven. Seven were adequate in antiquity because the antique world was much smaller than today.
|
-
-
2200 years is a long time to get around renewing anything, but we say better late than never. Forget the seven wonders of the ancient world, it's time, in the 21st century, to let the people of the 42nd century know what we consider to be the seven wonders Read More...
|
|
|
|