brainstorming

Campus Demonstrations in Xi'an

Blogger Andres Gentry reports three Japanese students and a Japanese teacher at an evening party offended the Chinese students, leading to violence and demonstrations, (he provides more info in the comments.)

University students in Xi'an are currently in lock down: they have been quarantined in their dormitories and those students caught outside campus at the time of the lock down are being brought back to their dormitories. .... At a party at Northwest University to welcome this year's freshmen, four Japanese, one teacher and three students, insulted China. At the party they performed a blue dance and made the mistake of wearing shirts with "Zhongguoren" (Chinese people) on them. None of the Chinese in the audience took the insult kindly. ... All of this is single-source and as I no longer live in Xi'an I was not witness to these events. ... I've got more information on what happened and the as-of-now official response of the government. At the end of the day, no one looks good.

Apparently, one of the Japanese students was a female who was wearing the Chinese flag on her ass. The others were wearing shirts with big penises on the front and when they turned around there was "What are you looking at you Chinese?" written on their backs.
...
The four weren't allowed to finish their "dance performance" because sufficiently irate Chinese students jumped on the stage and had to be restrained from attacking them.
...
In the last two days there have been attempts by Northwest students to contact the other universities in Xi'an to get more students out on the streets, which is why all the schools have been locked down.

Sounds like an amazing display of bad taste that blew up into a city wide problem.

The story is now up on Xinhua here.

DC

Apple G5 aka The New Cray

I don't know about you, but I need some comfort news after that last revelation. Never fear. I have just the thing.

It's a shame that Apple no longer runs the "Switch" campaign on television. Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan would make an excellent spokesperson for moving to the Mac. Just as Ellen Feiss' switcher story was the hit at Macworld Expo, so has been Dr. Varadarajan's presentation at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference, where he received a standing ovation.

His ad might go something like this. "I was in the market for a new machine. I was hoping to get ten teraflops by the end of the year. I'd never used a Mac and had been looking at Dells and IBMs. Then Apple released the G5 on June 23. A week later I bought 1,100 duals online at the Apple Store. I'm Srinidhi Varadarajan and I build Supercomputers at Virginia Tech."

TEN TERAFLOPS! I actually have no idea what that means in real life, but it does leave the impression of speed like an Indy racer, No?

Varadarajan said that a lot of people get the math wrong when calculating the performance of the machines. Each G5 processor has two, double-precision, floating-point units. Each is capable of a fused, multiple-add operation per cycle, so you get 2 flops per cycle. This means that 2GHz corresponds to 8 GFlops, so each dual G5 can deliver a peak of 16 GFlops of double-precision performance. That is more than a modern Cray node.

I'd never attempt the math myself, but more than a Cray? You mean the same Cray whose computers we couldn't sell internationally without government blessing because we wanted to keep our technological edge, right?

Varadarajan reported that "our latest numbers are 9.555 tera and we still have more tricks left. We are hoping for another 10 percent boost to become the first academic machine to cross 10 tera. The last ratings put us at number three worldwide."

Number 3 in the world. With G5's he bought at the Apple store.

There's a ton of good techie details in the full article.

I feel so, so........validated.

DC

Gather 'Round the Campfire Boys and Girls

Here's our frightening mind bender appropriate for the holiday:

Google, the highflying Silicon Valley Web search company, recently began holding meetings with bankers in preparation for its highly anticipated initial public offering as it was still engaged in meetings of another kind: exploring a partnership or even a merger with Microsoft.

Please, God! Have Mercy! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

According to company executives and others briefed on the discussions, Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.

MUST. NOT. GIVE. GATES. MORE. POWER.

Now I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonght. If you just love that rush of adrenaline that comes with REAL TREPIDATION you can read the whole thing here.

I'm thinking I may need a sledgehammer for my Halloween costume.

DC

North Korea Focus

Novelist and blogger Roger L. Simon posts today:

Like a Woody Allen character, I'm one of those guys who obsesses on the Holocaust a lot (maybe too much) and sometimes I dwell on why the Allies didn't do anything about it... how come they didn't bomb the railroad tracks to Auschwitz, etc... you know the drill. Mulling that one over never fails to steam me up. So I felt a twinge of guilt just now when I read Glenn Reynolds' MSNBC.com column about North Korea. It's not as if I had no idea what was going on over there............

But with all that have I done anything to protest the genocide that is obviously going on in North Korea? Big no! Not even on this blog. Well, I'm changing that now. And miniscule as blog posts may be, we all know by now that they can... sometimes... precipitate action.

Kudos to Roger! North Korea is a tough issue, but I'm convinced the more exposure we can give to the issue the better. I'm excited to see blogs working for positive changes. Maybe we can form a blog alliance to focus on N. Korea issues?

I'm also writing this post because I've reconsidered a position I took previously on N. Korea in a post here, where I said, "I still advocate assasination, possibly followed by occupation by China." One of the crimes of Kim's regime is the severe oppression of Christians. In the Hidden Gulag, North Korean's repatriated after escaping to China consistently report being interrogated to determine if they've had contact with Christians in China. As I'm sure you know, China also persecutes Christains. For that reason, I can't endorse China occupation of North Korea, trading one persecutor for another. This has been nagging at me the last few days and Roger's post was the catalyst for me to set the record straight. I thank him for that.

On another note, check out this post from Seeing Eye Blog with links to articles on N. Korean defector Hwang Jang-yop, former secretary of the North's ruling Worker's Party, visit to Washington this week. He also reports here that N. Korea is sending a message to Hwang that a son he left behind is being tortured in a N. Korean concentration camp because he dares to go to the U.S. and reveal the truth about the evil Kim regime.

DC

Scrambling for that Last Minute Costume?

How about Bill Gates as Frankenstein? Or maybe Donald Trump as the Werewolf?

Get your own scary millionaire halloween mask here.

If celebrity is more your style you can go here.

And for that office party you can't miss, pick a CEO. You can be Ken Lay of Enron, Martha Stewart, or others here.

DC

Bloggers Be Warned - Our Own Halloween Tale

Michael at eclecticism has a tale that should serve as a warning to bloggers.

While employed at Microsoft as a long term temp in their print shop, he noticed a couple skids of Apple G5's on the dock. Finding it somewhat ironic, he snapped a picture and blogged about it.

As a result, he is now unemployed.

He doesn't blame the company, and realizes he probably violated some part of his employment agreement by posting a picture taken on the Microsoft campus and describing it's location. He offered to take the picture down, but no dice.

Even more interesting than this story is a review of the results.

Michael says he only expected his story to reach family and a few friends. So, if MS had asked him to take down the post and reprimanded him the damage would have been contained most likely with little impact on MS.

In contrast, as a result of firing him, his story is on fire in the blogosphere and beyond. It's been on Slashdot, MetaFilter, and The Register. He's also been interviewed by The Seattle Post Intelligencer and ironically MSNBC. Excerpts:

Microsoft would not comment on Hanscom’s dismissal. Spokeswoman Stacy Drake McCredy said the company did not discuss personnel or security matters. ... “We do recognize that Web blogging is a legitimate form of communication,” McCredy said. “A number of Microsoft employees have Web logs and we respect and support their addition to do so, as long as they abide by our confidentiality agreements.”

Ask him to take it down and contain the situation or fire him and let the bad press fly? Which one would have best served Microsoft's interests?

An interesting sidenote. Eclecticism is a Typepad site, and Michael reports it held up to the traffic deluge just fine. Nice to know in case of the (admittedly) remote possibility I might ever get an Instalanche.

DC

P.S. I've seen this story a couple places. Let's throw the linkage to Eat Your Vegetables.

It's the Economy Stupid

Disappointing Democratic presidential hopefuls everywhere, the U.S. economy appears to be rebounding nicely according to the Washington Post.

The economy grew at a blistering 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter in the strongest pace in nearly two decades. Consumers spent with abandon and businesses ramped up investment, compelling new evidence of an economic resurgence.

...

The 7.2 percent pace marked the best showing since the first quarter of 1984. It exceeded analysts' forecasts for a 6 percent growth rate for third-quarter GDP, which measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States.

Hmmmm. 1984. Wouldn't that be the end of the Reagan economy? You know, Reagan that pushed through the biggest tax cuts? Do you think it might be tax cuts?

Near rock-bottom short-term interest rates, along with President Bush's third round of tax cuts, have helped the economy shift into a higher gear during the summer, economists said. The next challenge is making sure the rebound is self-sustaining, they said.

Democrats, however, argue that the tax cuts contributed to a record budget deficit in the recently ended 2003 fiscal year and have done little to spur significant job growth.

Waaaaah! We want our issue back! Bush = Bad!

Although the nation's payrolls grew by 57,000 in September - the first increase in eight months - the economy needs to add a lot more jobs than that each month to drive down the 6.1 percent unemployment rate, analysts have said.

...

In other encouraging economic news from the Labor Department, new claims for unemployment benefits last week dropped by 5,000 to 386,000, a sign that layoffs are slowing. U.S. workers' wages and benefits went up by 1 percent in the third quarter, up slightly from a 0.9 percent increase in the previous quarter.

Maybe businesses don't start hiring again until they're confident the economy has turned around? Keep reading.....

Especially encouraging was the 15.4 percent growth rate in spending by businesses on equipment and software in the third quarter. That marked the largest increase since the first quarter of 2000 and was up from an 8.3 percent growth rate in the second quarter.

Sustained turnarounds in capital spending and in hiring are crucial to the economy's return to full throttle. Economists said business wants profits to improve and wants to be sure of the recovery's vigor before it goes on a spending and hiring spree.

Read the whole thing here.

It gives me warm fuzzies to see those who were hoping for America's economy to continue to stall so they could exploit it have their plans spoiled by good news for the people of America.

DC

We Have A Winner! - Mystery Solved!

In this post, (first posted on Thursday, Oct. 23 - I guess you need to mention the date somewhere when you republish a post), I challenged readers to guess why I was marking the day for posterity.

Today we have a winner!

Ant correctly guessed that I quit smoking last Thursday. As promised, he will be receiving the prize of dinner for two, (and not at McDonalds, somewhere nice.)

I've smoked since I was a kid. A couple packs a day since adulthood. I've never successfully quit. Never.

I think this time is different, but then again, it's hard to be confident of that when you've never succeeded at quitting before. If it sticks, I'll give you some more details at a later date.

Congrats to Ant!

DC

Step Right Up, Folks! Carnival of the Vanities!

It's that time again. Who Censored Blogger Rabbit is hosting the Carnival of the Vanities this week. I love what he did with the introduction.

Don't miss Useful Fools' entry exposing the deception of "environmental racism" being employed to prevent a badly needed refinery. (Did you know a new refinery hasn't been built in the U.S. in 30 years? When are we going to fight back against these groups that are the cause of the blackouts and shortages?) Nice piece of investigative blogging!

In response to this post from Serenity in defense of conservatives, Bad Money tells us in his Carnival entry that he is evil & greedy.

On the other hand, if you're that glass half empty kind of person, the alternative to the Carnival is hosted by WizBang. His weekly Bonfire of the Vanities showcases posts bloggers submit themselves as their worst of the week.

You can now call me Fair and Balanced.

DC

Everyone Loves a Mystery

.....well at least I hope they don't tick you off.

I'm using this post to mark this day, because I want it recorded for posterity.

Unfortunately for you, I'm not ready to tell you why just yet.

It might be a while.

Sorry if this is rude, but I do have good reason.

If anyone guesses correctly out of thin air, I'll send a gift certificate for dinner for two.

But, I still might not tell the rest of you if I'm not ready. Heh.

DC

Update Oct. 28: Dinner for two on the line and this is the best you guys can come up with? I know you can do better than this.