What's in the News

There's a Disney English about 5 minutes from my new house.  It looks very swish.

Internet addiction in South Korea

I was in Korea in 2000-2001 and even then the 'Internet Bangs' were everywhere and you could get food and drink (including booze) delivered right to your big comfy leather chair.

I lived a year without a computer here in China and also became au-fait with your average WangBa too - generally filthy, keyboard melted with stubbed out fags, rubbish everywhere, no MSN only QQ, practically elbow to elbow with the guy next to you, but with a  certain laid back we-don't-give-a-monkeys charm.

Haven't been to one in a while though - they are probably all poshed-up now.

Nope, most of them are still filthy.

Speak English, China decrees
From: The Times, July 14, 2010 12:00AM

The Chinese capital is starting a campaign demanding that its residents learn to speak at least a few sentences of English.

The drive demonstrates the dramatic changes that China has undergone in the past few decades and how its focus in world affairs has shifted.

In the 1950s, schoolchildren had to learn Russian to get ahead, while in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, it was safer to speak no foreign language at all rather than risk retribution under Chairman Mao's rule.

Now the authorities in Beijing want to transform the capital into a "world city" - one with the international prestige of London, Paris, New York or Tokyo.

An ability to communicate with foreign visitors is regarded as a crucial step on the path to gaining such status.

All kindergartens will start English courses for their toddlers. That is expected to give them a head start for the English language classes encouraged, and often enforced, at almost every primary and middle school in China. Every Beijing public servant under the age of 40 who has a university degree will have to master a minimum of 1000 English sentences.

Every government employee, whatever their level of education, will have to be able to speak 100 sentences of English by 2015.

A minimum of 60 per cent of shop assistants, waiters, receptionists, beauticians and hairdressers under 40 will have to pass an English test in their field of expertise.

Within five years, five guides in every museum at central-government level and three in each municipal museum must pass an English proficiency test.

Before the Olympics, taxi drivers had to sit a test in basic English to renew their licences.

The Times


Tell your students to head for Beijing.  If it isn't already, exam sitting is about to boom as a part-time job.

http://www.coldbee.com/2010/07/top-5-worlds-happiest-countries/

Yes, it's true, we Danes are very, very happy...but Forbes is a little wrong...see, we dump lots of LSD in the ocean and then we eat lots of fish...honestly, why else would anyone be happy about paying 60% in income tax and live on an island the size of a stamp where the sun is but a mere legend and there are 745 different categories for rain?

. . . honestly, why else would anyone be happy about . . .

Because

Danish women are hot!

I will get no more meaningful work done today.

This is a sensitive subject for me, especially since I'm currently coping with the Gulf Oil Disaster thing in Florida.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10708375
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10673250

Who is in Dalian? What's going on? How bad is it?

Now for something completely different...competing currencies are being used as payment for goods and services in Michigan.

http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=481793

Here is a good link on the Dalian oil spill.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100721/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_pipeline_explosion

Dragonsaver- How bad is it really?

Yikes, I was thinking Dalian might be a nice place to end up, but now I'm not so sure being anywhere around large bodies of water in China is a good idea. (Pollution!)

We are going to live SUCH a long time!

Regrowing body parts closer to reality
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 | 10:01 PM ET Comments85Recommend92CBC News
Scientists in Toronto are trying to crack the secrets of regeneration to trigger the human body to grow tissues and organs damaged by disease.

In his lab at Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. Ian Rogers is working on a replacement pancreas that would be grown in a lab and then placed in those with Type 1 diabetes to restore their insulin production. Dr. Rita Kandel aims to re-grow hip and knee joints. (CBC)
"When I talk to parents of kids with Type 1 diabetes, I always apologize: 'Right now our goal is to treat for a year or two,'" Rogers says. "And they're very happy, because they say, 'I nag my child three times a day to take their insulin, check their glucose,' and they're saying if they get a reprieve for a year they'll be very happy."

At this stage, Rogers's team is building a pancreas out of a surgical sponge, a three-dimensional structure seeded with insulin-producing islet cells. The pancreas would be grown in the lab and then placed under the skin of those with Type 1 diabetes to restore their insulin production.

But making a pancreas is complicated, Rogers said. The most advanced research at his lab is simpler: regenerating blood vessels so people with Type 2 — or adult onset — diabetes who have damaged fingers and toes can avoid amputation.

In theory, any condition where cells are damaged — from insulin-producing cells in diabetes to brain cells in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, to retina cells in blindness, to damaged areas in the heart — could one day be repaired, said Dr. Andras Nagy. The key is stem cells from blood, skin or embryos.
"If we can find a way to replace these cells back in to where it's missing, we can envision a cure for these diseases which are currently devastating," Nagy said.

So far this year, two U.S. companies gained regulatory approval to test stem cell-based therapies on 18 spinal cord patients, he noted.

Down the hall at the hospital's Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Dr. Rita Kandel is working on re-growing hip and knee joints using white pieces of cartilage grown on a bone substitute that acts like a scaffold for the cells.

"The goal is to develop a biological joint replacement so that people can be fully mobile and pain free," Kandel said.

Ultimately, Kandel's vision is what she calls a fountain of youth that could cure aging, though she acknowledged that is a long way off.

For now, most of the work is still in the test tube and petri dish stage in Toronto and other laboratories around the world.

Rhinos are ready to fight back.   

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/South-Africa-Rhino-Horn-Poison-Plan-To-Put-Off-Poachers-Who-Have-Killed-More-Than-150-This-Year/Article/201007415673716?lpos=World_News_News_Your_Way_Region_1&lid=NewsYourWay_ARTICLE_15673716_South_Africa%3A_Rhino_Horn_Poison_Plan_To_Put_Off_Poachers_Who_Have_Killed_More_Than_150_This_Year

Rhino Horn Poison Plan To Stop Poachers
4:18pm UK, Friday July 30, 2010

Emma Hurd, Africa correspondent
The owner of a South African game reserve is planning to inject the horns of his rhinos with poison.

Ed Hern, owner of the Rhino and Lion Reserve near Johannesburg, hopes the drastic measure will deter poachers who have killed more than 150 of the animals since the start of the year.

Making the horns deadly to humans is the only way to halt the booming black market trade, he says.

"The aim would be to kill, or make seriously ill anyone who consumes the horn," he said.

"If someone in China eats it and gets violently sick, they are not going to buy it again," Mr Hern said.*

Demand from China for powdered rhino horn - erroneously believed to be an aphrodisiac - is blamed for a wave of rhino poaching across South Africa's private and public game reserves.

Game reserve Ed Hern wants to deter poachers

The animals, including rare black rhino, are being slaughtered at the rate of two or three a week for their horns which can fetch up to £45,000 on the black market.

The poaching gangs are well funded, using helicopters and night vision equipment to target their prey.

Mr Hern's plan to poison the horns of his herd of white rhino has caused consternation among some conservationists but, he says, the animals will not be harmed.

"We are experimenting by injecting a little of the substance every day into one of the rhino, and monitoring him carefully for any effects," he said.

"It may seem outrageous, but what's really outrageous is the sight of a dead rhino with its horn sawn off," he added.

That fate befell the last adult rhino in the nearby Krugersdorp reserve, whose orphaned calf was found hungry and bewildered on July 16th.

The horns are believed in China to have aphrodisiac qualities

The nine-month-old, named Vuma, is now being hand reared at Ed Hern's park, along with two other calves who were also orphaned by poachers.

The calves only survived the attacks because their horns were too small to interest the poachers.

Small game reserves are increasingly being targeted by the criminal gangs after the Kruger park stepped up its security following a spate of rhino poaching.

So far this year, 152 animals have been killed so far this year, a significant increase on previous years.

Scientific research has proved that the keratin in rhino horns, the same substance as human hair and nails, has no medicinal value. But the myth of its properties continues to drive the trade.

*I personally suspect that people who die from the poison will be even less likely to be repeat customers.

the last rhinos will be gone long before the marketers in china care enough about the odd dead customer to stop buying.

the last rhinos will be gone long before the marketers in china care enough about the odd dead customer to stop buying.

Yeah, the poachers and marketers don't care.  The only way this will work is if some dead customers are well connected enough that it gets plastered all over the news here.  That might reduce demand at least a little.

So, how do we start a web rumor that over 80% of powdered rhino horn is already poisoned?