Thursday, December 11, 2008

Daily Links, Dec 11, 2008

Stories from the blogs...
  • Strawberries: J Michael asks Did Ma Lie?

  • Attack of the African Snails

  • Thoth on the coming Depression and WWIII -- with trip photos!

  • New Taiwan blog aggregator, Taiwan Eggs. They haven't contacted me, so I don't know who or what they are.

  • David on the Tibet Freedom Concert.

  • Photos from a WSJ article on BenQ's investment in a hospital in China.

  • Stop Hushan Dam! with a couple of photos of the white-lipped tree frog.

  • Laowiseass talks about greasy food and small houses in Taipei.

  • Missology in Taiwan asks whether missionaries are still needed, with some statistics.

  • Bushman to Sanshientai

  • The Foreigner absolutely rips the China Post for a shameful attack on the Presbyterian Church for its support of the democracy movement in Taiwan

  • A-gu on the cross strait investment and shipping agreements.

  • MEDIA: Ma Interview in WaPo. It's the usual tiresome Ma doubletalk, but at least the WaPo interviewer appears to actually know quite a bit about Taiwan, and the questions hit on all the important topics, even referring to the detentions. No need to read it unless you're on blood pressure medication. There is a summary article on it at WaPo as well. The Min. of Economic Affairs announces it has a plan to rescue the DRAM industry. Meanwhile Moody's lowers its outlook for Taiwan banks to 'negative'. Their econ forecast says: "The third quarter saw a contraction in real private consumption of 2% year on year. Since GDP records began in 1961 this has occurred only once before, during the 2003 SARS epidemic." KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung has called for a "peaceful resolution" to the Senkaku Island controversy, leading to much speculation on why? and why now? Taiwan groups plan to invite the Dalai Lama. John Tkacik on missile defense. Taiwan's coral reefs in serious trouble. Once again, Taiwan scores well on international tests. Taiwanese delegation to Oz to buy wheat. If the world's credit and farming systems don't recover, grain will be precious in the next couple of years. Japanese and Chinese ships butt heads in the Senkakus (Diaoyutais).

    BLOG CHANGES: I'd appreciate some feedback on the Post Summary system I have going. I really don't like it, but if you do or don't, please say so.

    11 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    "BLOG CHANGES: I'd appreciate some feedback on the Post Summary system I have going. I really don't like it, but if you do or don't, please say so."

    Your blog used to load really slowly, and not just that, when there were a lot of photos, it could even slow down the browser. It's great now. I don't know, I think it's a big usability improvement, and I appreciate your work on the mechanics of your blog.

    If you want to try a new layout or some other blogging system, I have heard the new Wordpress is really nice.

    Anonymous said...

    Wow, Ma said "Republic of Taiwan", somebody call the peoples daily.

    Dezhong said...

    I think it's not too bad, but I liked it better without.

    Maybe you can restrict it to posts that have a lot of pictures in them.

    Anonymous said...

    I don't like it.
    Youre a great blogger and invariably want to read (or at least see) all of every post you make.
    I really don't think loading speed is a problem. Perhaps you could do a summary on the photo heavy posts only to appease those not interested in your photos.

    Anonymous said...

    I don't like the summary thing either.

    That Taiwan Egg aggregator bothers me in that there are no links going to the blogs and it seems to be their content instead of bloggers'. I'd say it's almost a spam site.

    Anonymous said...

    I miss the background colors. The plain white background is kind of boring and makes the page lose distinctiveness.

    I'm not sure I like Dezhong's idea on the photos. The photos are what first brought me to the blog, I like to see them and they're probably important for getting new readers. Although I understand the concern. I have a very fast connection but I still have to wait a while when there are photo-heavy posts on the page.

    It may be a lot of work (or may not be possible), but a solution might be to make the pictures that show up in main page smaller, then if the user clicks on the particular post to see it they get the normal size, and of course they would still be able to click on individual pictures to see the full size in flickr.

    Anonymous said...

    Love the blog changes except for the summaries. I'm lazy and don't like the extra clicking.

    Anonymous said...

    From the Washington Post article:For its part, Ma said, China has made compromises that allowed his administration to save face, from quietly permitting official state media to use Taiwan's preferred name

    I guess I missed reading about that. So Taiwan was referred to as "The Republic of China" during the Olympics, or was it simply "Taiwan"? I thought the best they had been able to get from China a preferred translation of "Chinese Taipei".

    Anonymous said...

    For its part, Ma said, China has made compromises that allowed his administration to save face, ... letting Taiwan send a former vice president to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Peru last month.

    "When you see all these people taking pictures together, this was something we haven't seen for maybe two or three decades, and that certainly gives people in Taiwan a sense of dignity," Ma said of the summit, adding that he hopes China will also allow Taiwan to participate in a meeting next May of the World Health Assembly, an agency of the World Health Organization.



    So the Washington Post is reporting that China allows Taiwan to do this and allows Taiwan to do that. So much for Taiwan's dignity (and apparantly they can't even have that unless China "gives" it to them).

    Anonymous said...

    Ma said in the Washington Post Inteview On the other hand, last August when we send our team to the Olympic Games, the mainland side decided to call us Zhongguo Taibei, instead of Zhonghua Taibei. The differences attach different meanings in mainland China and Taiwan.

    Is his interpretation correct? My understanding, both from media reports at the time and from my limited knowledge of Chinese, is that "Zhongguo" is "China" (the country) while "Zhonghua" is "Chinese" (the ethnicity) so "Zhongguo Taipei" is best translated "Taipei, China" while "Zhonghua Taipei" is better translated "Chinese Taipei".

    Anonymous said...

    Ma from the Washington Post interview. A second misunderstanding is why in the last couple of months, people investigated or indicted were all DPP members. This was not the case. Just yesterday, a KMT legislator was indicted and was sentenced to 15 years for corruption. In the last eight years, not including yesterday's case, there were altogether 57 cases. Twenty-three are KMT, 19 DPP, 10 independent and five PFP, People First Party. So for the 23 KMT, either cabinet ministers, legislators or county or city magistrates or mayors -- so there are actually more KMT than DPP. But the DPP members who are indicted or investigated, most of them fall in the last year or so. Why, because they were in power for eight years. When you investigate a corruption case, certainly they will concentrate on people in power.

    This is BS. He's taking credit for more KMT than DPP being indicted/investigated during 8 years when he wasn't President.

    Then he claims that the DPP were "people in power". In fact there were more KMT people in power during those 8 years as the KMT controlled the legislature.

    Finally, while the DPP was investigating during those 8 years, they investigated/indicted a fairly even split despite the KMT having controlled both the legislature and the presidency during the prior time period. So Ma's excuse that the DPP were "in power" before doesn't justify him investigating/indicting so many DPP.