Gaki N Me If you love to talk about the world, love Asian idols, this is the place.

Ha, retaliation from the Chinese! They have just rejected certain shipments of raisins, health capsules including bee pollen and bacteria-figihting supplements due to contaminants from the US, and last month they rejected France's Evian water because of concern about high bacteria levels.

China Rejects Health Supplements And Raisins From Two U.S. Companies

China Rejects Food Imports From the U.S.

Posted May 31, 2007:

Today, China has sentenced a former head of Chian's State Food and Drug Administration for taking bribes and gifts to death.  This is probably a response to the recent food contamination cases in China. In 2003, they executed a vice provincial governor of Anhui for the same thing. But that would not do anything to alleviate the poor regulation of the food industry.  Recently 19 government officals were punished because they allowed a smeltery to continue to pollute the environment. 34% of the kids in Xinsi have lead levels above 700 micrograms per liter of blood.  According to the World Health Organization, anything above 100 micrograms in children could cause permanent neurological damage, reduced IQ. About 34%!!! of children across China have levels exceeding WHO limit!!! Man, what is China trying to do? Kill its own people?

China Confronts Crisis Over Food Safety

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According to a United Nations study of disasters, this year, urban population will surpass rural population in the world and cities are becoming megacities.  Should disaster strike, it could be 100 times more deadly than the tsunami's in Indonesia that killed more than 200,000 people.  Megacities are cities that have more than 10 million people. Of the 10 megacities in the world, 8 are prone to earthquakes including Mumbai, Mexico City, Bogota, Shanghai, Manila and Jakarta.

According to a 2005 Earthquake and Megacities Initiative report, the top five disaster cities are  Tokyo, Mexico City, Bombay, Sao Paolo and Dehli. In this report, the UN listed the five most populated cities in the world :  the greater Tokyo area with 35.3 million people, Mexico City with 19 million, New York-Newark with 18.5 million and Bombay and Sao Paulo both with a population of 18.3 million.

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Today's article shows that China now has 97 million broadband users accounting for 17.5% of the world's broadband users, second to the US.  China now has 144 million netizens.

China's Broadband Users Approach 100 Mln Mark
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This is another good article that I could draw figures on - Most Foreign Students in China are Korean. Out of the 184 foreign countries sending students to Chna, the majority are Koreans!!! There were 162,695 foreigners studying at 519 colleges and schools nationwide. (Thank goodness for these data. From the Western media, it almost sounds as though half of the US has gone to China to study Chinese....ROFL...)

Koreans  57,504

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In this thread, I will post article links to strange stories of how Asian students try to meet with their parents' expectation short of suicide. The first one is a Korean-American girl who told her parents she goes to Stanford and she went on to stay at Stanford dorm lying to two girls that she didn't like her roommate. Then she moved into a Chinese student's room but since she didn't have the key, she climbed in and out of the window. This reminds me of a recent Korean movie where a guy would go around living in other people's home...hahaha...

Korean-American Impostor Caught at Top U.S. College

Alright this is news. If you look at my links sidebar, I have already put in YOUR GALLERY link for art lovers. This art site get over 20 million hits daily and now they have a Chinese interface to showcase Chinese artists. 

Saatchi causes a new online sensation in China

Not only is Googling my major search engine for English news, I could even look up business telephone numbers calling (800) GOOG-411. All you need to do is to speak to the automated voice and it could even recognize my non-American accented English and connect the call to me for free. Well some others tested it and didn't like it. But I do.

Other free 411 services are 1-800-Free-411 , and AT&T's 1-800-YellowPages.

These two commercials of Jonnie Walker are really cute. One is an android talking about life and the other is a painting coming alive. Very cute. But above all, check out this one about flying man. I've seen flying fish before but flying man? hahaha... And what about a whole city of invisible people. My kids would love this when they come home. They have just read Invisible Man by H.G. Wells.

When I read the title of this article 'Cyborg' Soldiers to Be Kitted Out by 2020 from Korea, I thought they might have some walking robots to fight but actually it is just outfitting the human soldiers with pc capablities and clothes that could detect biological weapons, land mines, radioactivity. In the US, M.I.T. has an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies that is prepping for a chameleon like battle fatigue that is totally intelligent, including changing the temperature, stabilizing body pressure, injecting antidotes but there are of course concerns. Nano uniforms have properties that are so small, as small as spliting a hair 50,000 times that it could migrate into the human body and interfere with organ functions. That's why now there is also a Nano-Ethics Group.

Nanotechnology Makes Way for Cyborg Soldiers
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Here you go. An article about how Chinese students in New York are taking up all the space of a Korean crammer school to prepare for college and take up 70% of the slots as compared to 5 years ago. Crammer schools were a key to Korean student's high scores. The Chinese got wind of it and overwhelm the system.  Last week the first alumni of this crammer school got to Harvard University. At the moment, Chinese parents are said to be pressuring their kids to cram (the article mentioned about beating????) and one took 12 Advanced Placement courses and aced them all. Would I go to such extent? hahaha....No...thank goodness I still have some sanity. Besides, my kids are studious anyway.

Korean Students in U.S. Under Threat From ‘Chindians’

I happen on this short 18 mins documentary that won 15 awards in film festivals in 2005 telling how Chinese laborers work for miniscule amount making beads for Mardi Gras, a festival celebrated in New Orleans, US, that throw them away the next day. Here is the synopsis and at the bottom you could see the quicktime trailer of 2 mins. Be warned there are bare topped and bottom female Americans in the clip. The excesses of Americans!!!

It's heartening to learn that Japan leads the world in innovation, followed by Switzerland, the US, and Sweden in that order. Cisco sponsored Innovation: Transforming the way business creates, a study by the Economic Intelligence Unit of 82 economies . The study for the period 2002-2006 which could be downloaded for free here says that the top 4 innovators in the world will continue to maintain its position while China will increase 5 positions to no. 54 for the period 2007-2011. Of interest to this blog should be Germany at no. 6, Taiwan 8, South Korea 15, Singapore 17, Hong Kong 23. Yay for Japan, Yay for the US!!!!

OMG, this got to be another funny piece. A Korean politician refers to women as more developed creatures because they have one more hole....hahahahaha....

Senior Officials Struck by Foot-in-Mouth Disease

This is nothing new. We all know China filters the internet. But I didn't realize out of 41 countries surveyed, 26 filters. South Korea filter any mention of North Korea, France and Germany filter sites that denies the Holocaust and promotes Nazism. Myanmar, China, Iran, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam.filters political content heavily. Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen filters social subjects the most. What is surprising is that these countries do not have any filters of any sort: Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, Nepal, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe 

Internet censorship grows worldwide: study

This week, Japan has reported a whole bunch of violent crimes. Apart from the preschooler being dumped at the hospital hatch, a couple went pachiko playing and stuffed their one year old in the storage compartment of a motobike and of course the kid died. The parents were arrested.  Then today, there's news of a teenage son decapitating the mother's head after watching a horror movie and then went on to an internet cafe and then carried the head in a bag to the police station.  You could read more horrors in this artilce.

Outbreak of violent crime unnerves Japan