"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
- 北京：怕堵怕远出租缺位 黑车大行其道 – 高清在线观看 – 腾讯视频 –
- Murakami’s Tokyo – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com –
- ChinaStars: Students Hack The Night Away In Search of China’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates | TechRice – To that end, Trilogy VC, Sina, and New Oriental co-founder Xu Xiaoping, teamed up to launch ChinaStars this weekend, a 3-day hackathon for students seeking to change the world.
Over one-hundred of Chinese students, recruited from 7 elite Beijing universities, crowded into small classrooms and dorm rooms at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The teams, with little sleep but large dreams, were desperately hacking away when I visited on Sunday evening.
It’s crunch time, for the Demo Day–where a live product demo required–is the next morning at 11am. The five winning teams receive up to 24,000 RMB to continue working on their product over the next 3 months. Odds are low (there are over 30 teams), but the entrepreneurs are hungry.
- Blue Coat Systems – wonder who else buys their Internet suppression software, trades on nasdaq under bcsi
- Syria using American software to censor Internet, experts say – The Washington Post – Syria is using equipment and software developed by an American company to censor the Internet and conduct surveillance of its citizens, according to data analyzed by technology experts and advocates for Syrian dissidents.
The equipment, developed by California-based Blue Coat Systems, is allegedly being used by Syria’s autocratic government to block access to the Internet and crack down on dissidents who have been protesting against President Bashar al-Assad for nearly eight months, the experts and advocates say.
- China searches for the next Steve Jobs – FT.com – When Dave McClure, a venture capital investor from Silicon Valley, spoke at an internet entrepreneurs’ club in China last week, he had a lot of praise for his hosts.
“Chinese entrepreneurs are most likely smarter and more aggressive than [those] in the US,” he told the audience. “Beijing is one of the few places in the world where the pace of innovation is faster than in Silicon Valley.”
But in China, the recent mood has been more sober. The death of Apple founder Steve Jobs this month triggered rounds of soul-searching over why the country lacks technology entrepreneurs as successful as Mr Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who came up with products that changed the world.
- Clausewitz and Cyber War – The environment within which war is conducted has been permanently altered since Clausewitz' time. Sun Tzu would have been a better choice because he at least considers the superior option of winning a war without fighting. But even within the parameters that Professor Rid has established, here are three examples that fit the Clausewitz test of being lethal, instrumental and political:
Kyrgyz Intelligence assassinates Gennady Pavlyuk. Kyrgyz intelligence cracked Pavlyuk's email account and used the information they obtained to lure him out of the country under false pretenses resulting in his murder.
Mossad assassinates Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh. Israel's Mossad mounts an operation to assassinate Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh which includes infecting Al-Mabhouh's computer with a trojan horse virus.
Iran's IRGC arrests 30 dissidents after cracking U.S. hosted webservers. - Naomi Wolf: How I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk – Arresting a middle-aged writer in an evening gown for peaceable conduct is a far cry from when America was a free republic
• Naomi Wolf condemns 'Stalinist' erosion of protest rights
- Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence – NYTimes.com – Many of the professionals we encounter easily pass both tests, and their off-the-cuff judgments deserve to be taken seriously. In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.
Daniel Kahneman is emeritus professor of psychology and of public affairs at Princeton University and a winner of the 2002 Noble Prize in Economics. This article is adapted from his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” out this month from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
- Expats say condoms don’t fit — Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 — English Window to China New – Main condom suppliers including Durex, Jissbon and Okamoto confirmed that they supply condoms only with a common size suitable for Chinese men – their target consumer group.
Sizes of condoms differ in various countries and Chinese condoms, usually 180mm long and 52mm wide, are slightly smaller in length and girth than those being sold in Western countries, some suppliers said.
An official surnamed Zhao with Jissbon said his company has received complaints from some foreigners about Chinese condoms that are sometimes a little bit tight for them. But considering those people are a very tiny part of their consumer group, they haven't considered making bigger ones.
- The “Occupy” Series: Sina Weibo’s New List of Banned Search Terms | China Digital Times (CDT) – Banned Search Terms
As the Occupy Wall Street movement goes global, China’s call for calm observation and reflection may have been followed by another round of censorship in cyberspace. A long list of banned keywords on Sina Weibo’s search function has been uncovered and tested by the CDT team yesterday. All the listed phrases stick to one simple rule: a combination of “occupy” (占领) and a place name–provincial capitals, economically developed regions, and few symbolic local areas. - 迷失重庆 巴斯夫 [BASF] MDI项目面临违规风险 – 产经 – 21世纪网 – 号称“责任关怀行动的发起者、践行者和倡导者”巴斯夫，正在遭遇一场前所未有的危机。
10月20日，国家安监总局某人士告诉本报记者：“巴斯夫重庆MDI项目存在违规建设的嫌疑。”
“按照正常程序，类似于巴斯夫这样的大型化工项目在通过发改委立项，以及环评、安评三道环节后还必须上报国务院，待国务院通过后才能建设，但目前，国务院并没有对此作出批示。”上述国家安监总局人士对本报记者说
- The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami – NYTimes.com – And so I was baptized by Tokyo’s underground. I had always assumed — naively, Americanly — that Murakami was a faithful representative of modern Japanese culture, at least in his more realist moods. It became clear to me down there, however, that he is different from the writer I thought he was, and Japan is a different place — and the relationship between the two is far more complicated than I ever could have guessed from the safe distance of translation.
- Burmese Artists Look to New Horizons – NYTimes.com – Kyee Myintt Saw, a Burmese artist, was joking as we chatted in his sweltering studio on the ground floor of a laundry-festooned apartment building in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. But for many in this traditional Buddhist society, his plea would not be funny. Although Mr. Saw’s impressionistic oils of market scenes sell like hotcakes in a local gallery, his passion is painting the human body. Nude.
“Our Buddhist culture cannot accept nudes,” said Mr. Saw, a 72-year-old former math teacher, perched on an armchair under his lushly layered oil of a naked beauty. “In your country, students study the human form in art school. I believe in this wider artistic knowledge.”
- Tibetan’s failed suicide captured in amateur video (AP) – grim
- China’s Wen says jobs a priority despite headwinds (Reuters) – China will make job creation a more urgent priority in the face of slowed economic growth and weakened exports, Premier Wen Jibao said in comments published Sunday, also warning that efforts to tame housing prices were at a critical point.
- Huawei Continues to Fight Perception Battle – China Real Time Report – WSJ – hopeless/
John Roese, senior vice president and general manager of Huawei’s North American operations, said he believes Huawei’s troubles in the U.S. may be over sooner rather than later.
- Qaddafi Was Worth More Than $200 Billion — By Far The Richest Person In The World – which US taxpayer backed banks enabled him?
- 腾讯投资回顾：十几个月内四十多次交易 –
- 央视聚焦都市裸婚族：年轻人为房子丧失青春_新闻_腾讯网 – cctv looks at "naked marriage" (no home owned) phenomenon among urban chinese, how people are "losing their youths" to buy homes
- App Store – Beijing Air Quality (Data from US Embassy) – The data of this App comes from the live feed of US Embassy in Beijing.
- 王石川：厨子施工的后台是何方神圣_新闻中心_新浪网 – 根据以往案例，领导插手工程建设，往往难脱以权谋私、权钱交易的干系。因此，相关部门应该按图索骥，严查沈阳铁路局背后的这个高层领导。中铁九局和沈阳铁路局虽已就此分别成立专门调查组，然而这种既当裁判员又当运动员的调查，恐怕难以服众。
优质、安全和廉洁的铁路工程，是对公众负责，对国家负责。只有迅速拔掉长在铁路上的毒瘤，铲除腐败滋生的土壤，乘客的安全才有保证。
- A quarter of Chinese women suffer domestic abuse – Yahoo! News – A quarter of Chinese women have suffered domestic abuse, the government said in a survey issued Friday, showing the ongoing struggle of women in a society in which Chairman Mao Zedong once famously said women hold up half the sky.
- 史玉柱被叫去“喝咖啡” 称以后不再当大嘴巴-搜狐IT – 8月份在微博上炮轰中国人寿增持民生银行的史玉柱近期就因此被北京证监局约谈。据《新京报》报道，在10月20日的上市公司董事培训会上，北京证监局上市公司监管一处处长余辉提到将以史玉柱为例告诫市场。
今年8月24日，史玉柱在微博上炮轰中国人寿意欲增持民生银行。他说，“拜托中国人寿，别虎视眈眈想控股民生银行。中国唯一的民营的重要银行 (总资产2万亿以上)，不应倒退成为国有银行。给民营一块小小的天空吧。失去民营机制的民生银行，将失去核心竞争力，告别高速成长。” - China’s military in diplomatic charm offensive – Yahoo! News – China may make its neighbors nervous with its robust military build-up, but it's also increasingly using the army as part of its charm offensive abroad.
The People's Liberation Army, in a cultural shift for an institution known for strident nationalism and unbending loyalty to the Communist Party, is expanding overseas aid missions and military exchanges in a major way. It sent 50 medics to flood-hit Pakistan this week and dispatched a hospital ship last month on a 105-day trip to poor nations in the Caribbean — right in America's backyard. - Experts Discuss "Social Management Innovation" with Chinese Characteristics – Since the beginning of 2011, "social management innovation" or "innovative social management" has become a hot topic for reform in China's political circle.
Since the beginning of 2011, "social management innovation" or "innovative social management" has become a hot topic for reform in China's political circle. What exactly is "social management innovation," and can it actually bring about real change? - Migrant Workers Still Excluded from Beijing Public Housing_From Caixin’s Blog__Blog_English_Caixin – Beijing has unveiled a new policy extending public housing to applicants without a Beijing hukou. Migrant workers in the city, however, still probably won't meet the policy's requirements.
- Information Dissemination: US Launches a WTO Nuke Towards China’s Great Firewall – While foreign policy experts in the United States are busy proclaiming the death of the Gaddafi family lineage as some big foreign policy moment, Wired News was quietly reporting what is – in my humble opinion – the single biggest foreign policy uppercut in quite some time by the US Government. With all do respect to the Arab world, the death of another jackass dictator ranks slightly higher than a can of beans in the big picture of United States foreign policy compared to this Texas sized sirloin.
In the emerging 21st century competition between China and the US, this political move represents President Obama ordering the Great Firewall of China nuked from orbit with a brilliant free speech, free economy WTO lawfare chess move.
- Beijing’s neighbor supplies water to ease capital’s thirst – someone can do a "Chinatown" remake for China//
A small county in north Hebei province has begun supplying water to its neighbor Beijing to ease the capital city's thirst.
Chicheng county, about 180 kilometers northwest of Beijing, will provide 15 million cubic meters of water to Beijing from now to the end of November, said Li Min, a top county official.
A major water source for the capital city, Chicheng provides for 53 percent of the water in Miyun Reservoir, the largest storage facility in north China.
- xinhua-Glaciers on China’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau melting fast due to global warming – Glaciers in southwest China's Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the major source of the country's largest rivers, are melting faster than ever under the influence of global warming, researchers said.
Experts have been conducting research on the waters, geology, glaciers, and wetlands in the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers in northwest China's Qinghai Province since 2005. Results from the study show that a large area of the glaciers has melted in the 2,400-square-kilometer region.
Glaciers are the largest source of fresh water on the planet. They are also a reliable indicator of climate change, and easy for scientists to observe.
- In Memoir, Condoleezza Rice Tells of Clashes With Cheney – NYTimes.com – The vice president’s staff was “very much of one ultra-hawkish mind,” she writes, adding that the most intense confrontation between her and Mr. Cheney came when she argued that terrorism suspects could not be “disappeared” as in some authoritarian states.
In November 2001, she writes, she went to President George W. Bush upon learning that he had issued an order prepared by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, authorizing military commissions without telling her. “If this happens again,” she told the president, “either Al Gonzales or I will have to resign.”
- Murakami’s Tokyo – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com –