World’s tallest man saves plastic eating dolphins – CNN.com
BEIJING, China (AP) — The long arms of the world’s tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs, state media and an aquarium official said Thursday.
The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province.
Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins’ stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.
Veterinarians then decided to ask for help from Bao Xishun, a 7-feet-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia with 41.7-inch arms, state media said.
Right on.
I saw Obama on Larry King Live last night and for the first time I noticed Obama’s subtle resemblance to Richard Nixon.
- Large toothy smile.
- Faint hint of five o’clock shadow.
- Baritone.
- Lawyerly love of equivocation.
- Early national prominence not fully matched by a corresponding record of achievements.
In a sense, this comes back to the most fundamental Q about O: is he at bottom a garden-variety pol?
To be sure, although Richard Nixon is still widely despised, there’s an argument to make that he was among the two or three most effective post-war Presidents. Detente with Russia and the normalization of relations with China still stand as major accomplishments whose impact few Presidents have matched. If the bottom line is that Obama is simply a smoother, politically correct version of Tricky Dick, well, that might not be a bad thing.
3 views of the globe centered on China — Van der Grinten, Robinson, and orthographic projections.
Nodong-2 with nuclear warhead based in Pyongyang holds at risk 1.58 bn people, mostly in China and Japan. Coming next: the converse image of risk from a nuclear attack on Pyongyang.
Asia Times Online :: the best of Pepe Escobar
An extreme traveler, Pepe’s nose for news has taken him to all parts of the Pepe Escobar globe. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination (Masoud: From warrior to statesman , Sep 11, 2001). Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, ATol published his prophetic piece, Get Osama! Now! Or else … (Aug 30, 2001). Pepe was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China.
Pepe Escobar will be writing GLOBALISTAN: A GAZETTEER TO THE REMIXED WORLD OF THE 21ST CENTURY for Nimble Books. We’re shooting for publication in November 2006.
Technorati Tags: Escobar, globalistan, global, politics
Chalmers Johnson used to be a pretty impressive name in foreign relations. This interview makes me wonder.
Interview with Chalmers Johnson: Cold Warrior in a Strange Land
As he and his wife Sheila drive me through downtown San Diego in the glare of mid-day, he suddenly exclaims, “Look at that structure!” I glance over and just across the blue expanse of the harbor is an enormous aircraft carrier. “It’s the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan,” he says, “the newest carrier in the fleet. It’s a floating Chernobyl and it sits a proverbial six inches off the bottom with two huge atomic reactors. You make a wrong move and there goes the country’s seventh largest city.”
Soon, we’re heading toward their home just up the coast in one of those fabled highway traffic jams that every description of Southern California must include. “We feel we’re far enough north,” he adds in the kind of amused tone that makes his company both alarming and thoroughly entertaining, “so we could see the glow, get the cat, pack up, and head for Quartzsite, Arizona.”
Chalmers Johnson, who served in the U.S. Navy and now is a historian of American militarism, lives cheek by jowl with his former service. San Diego is the headquarters of the 11th Naval District. “It’s wall to wall military bases right up the coast,” he comments. “By the way, this summer the Pentagon’s planning the largest naval concentration in the Pacific in the post-World War II period! Four aircraft-carrier task forces — two from the Atlantic and that’s almost unprecedented — doing military exercises off the coast of China.”
Some troubling misstatements in the first few paragraphs here. First, Navy nuclear reactors have an incredible safety record. Second, the Navy has operated five or more carriers at the same time in both the Persian Gulf and the Viet Nam war.
Living books are the wave of the future:
Flat-Footed: Friedman Shows FSG How to Think Fast – 3/28/2006 – Publishers Weekly
Thomas L. Friedman, author of the bestselling The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (FSG), practices what he preaches. Just one year after the initial publication of his book, which examines the rapid technological innovation and constant change that contribute to the “flattening” of the world, the text is getting an update and expansion, to the tune of 100 new pages and a new introduction. “We have version 2.0 now,” said FSG publisher Jonathan Galassi. “In a way, the revision of the book is in keeping with the spirit of the book.”
The new edition features new reporting, insights and commentary, drawn both from Friedman’s 2005 travels (to India, China and the Middle East) and from his encounters with readers around the country who have shared their accounts of the flattening of the world as they have felt it. FSG senior editor Paul Elie, who worked closely with Friedman on both editions of the book, said, “Because of Tom’s work at the Times, his understanding of how stories change is acute. He publishes 100 columns a year. He has to call it as he sees it at the time, and then refine it as he goes. That’s his temperament, and why shouldn’t we make it happen with the book, if we can?”
Friedman’s new introduction boasts that “it is now possible to revamp a whole book relatively easily.” Elie puts that statement into perspective: “Relatively easily compared to the past, yes. But it’s not easy, it doesn’t do itself.”
How true.
The World Is Flat was first published in April 2005, and the new edition of the book, which will have a 330,000-copy first printing, will go on sale April 18.
So let’s do a little back-of-the-envelope math. Assume for convenience sake that Friedman gets 8% of 24.95, or roughly $2.00 per book. That’s $660,000 for 100 pages, or $6600/page. I can see Friedman at his desk now:
Damn! that was a good page!
The First English Children’s Book from China Enters Denmark Palace:
This year is the 200 year celebration of Denmark’s great children’s book writer H.C.Anderson’s birth. Denmark has arranged many events to let people all over the world memorialize this writer. Recently, Chinese writer Wang Jian received an autographed letter from the private secretary of Denmark Queen Margrethe II stating that “When Your Heart Seeks the Sky,” his English children’s book, has entered Denmark Palace and is collected by Denmark Queen Margrethe II.
Mission Possible for the New Kind of Hero from China: Chinese Girl Brings Tom Cruise to a Whole New Level in Her Latest Book:
Tom Cruise made a Chinese girl’s mission possible by inviting Niki Yan, the Chinese girl who just wrote “My Love for You, Tom Cruise — A Desperate Chinese Girl’s Confession” to the Mission Impossible III set. Niki says Cruise is the metaphor of love and power, the most positive force, the light from the darkness, “he is beyond what he is (as an actor).”
And this amazing guy talks about humanity, Easter culture and civilization during their first meeting in Los Angeles. “The invincible and the beautiful,” as Niki calls Tom.
Niki’s new book is a mixture of humor, fantasy and genuine emotion. She has such titles like “Ten reasons why Tom has to love Niki Yan”, ” I fall in love with a Super Star,” “My big Fat Chinese wedding,” “How Tom and Niki met on another planet,” ” The feast of a Virgin heart,” ” My Apollo ( The Modern fairytale)”,” Happily ever after,” ” Cinderella’s daydreaming” , The odyssey with Cruise” ” From Lemon Chicken to Spaghetti”, ” Destiny with Tom Cruise”, ” How Apollo saved me”, “Like a virgin — Climbing Mount Everest,” “Mission Possible for Niki Cruise.” She is brilliant on blending the humor and genuine emotion on a deep level which will stir your soul. You laugh it, you tear it, and eventually you will have to think for your own.
Good grief.
This is pretty cool:
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China finds ancient observatory:
Archaeologists in northern China have reportedly found one of the world’s oldest observatories.
The remains, discovered near the city of Linfen in Shanxi province, are thought to be about 4,100 years old.
Wang Shouguan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told state media that the discovery would help the study of ancient astronomy.
Chinese astronomers are thought to have made some of the earliest recorded observations of the stars.
The observatory consists of a semicircular platform 40 metres (130 feet) in diameter, surrounded by 13 pillars which were are believed to have been used to mark the movement of the sun through the seasons.
It “was not only used for observing astronomical phenomena but also for sacrificial rites,” He Nu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua news agency.
“The ancient people observed the direction of sunrise through the gaps, and distinguished the different seasons of the year,” he said.
In order to test this theory, archaeologists reportedly spent 18 months simulating ancient uses of the site.
They found that the seasons they calculated were only one or two days different from the traditional Chinese calendar, which is still widely used today.
|
|
Recent Comments