Sunday, May 29, 2016

...and now for a lighter moment from the Economist: Taipei less safe than -- Wait? Wut?

....from the Economist Safe Cities Index White Paper 2015. That's right, Taipei is less safe that Sydney, Amsterdam, New York, and San Francisco. Talk about overthinking...
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9 comments:

Matt Stone said...

"Overthinking" is the word. That report is hard work.

Sydney and Melbourne safer than Taipei? I don't think so.

Anonymous said...

Maybe they are factoring in danger from traffic and air pollution!

Matt Stone said...

I would also point out that Singapore has achieved its No. 2 status with the help of exotic punishments – such as caning with a rattan soaked in horse urine.



Anonymous said...

Less safe than cities where people openly smoke pot, or where dissidents vanish, or even New York!?

Well, in terms of personal safety, they gave Taipei #5; personal safety is probably the first and only thing the general reader thinks of when asked to rank safe cities. Amid endless news reports of random tantrums that push situations in EU, Thailand, or even public policy issues in other parts of Taiwan off the agenda, one might think it would rank lower.
Singapore ranked #1. Dissidents are after all criminals. The safety of criminals doesn't count. Even the philosopher king outlawed art and music because they might incite people.

However, Economist also ranked the cities with health security index, cyber security index, and infrastructure safety index. Taipei did poorly in the last two index, unsurprisingly. Cyber security is really lacking, among other things, in the online scene, which feels backwater in many ways including website designs. Case in point, the post office just recently found that their website has been leaking data for half an year.

The real question is of course the selection of these four indexes to generate the overall safety rank. Why didn't they include stuff like natural disaster, nuclear meltdown, pollution, stress level indexes. Had they included a giant monster attack index, Tokyo and New York would be pulled way off the chart.

Anonymous said...

This index is ridiculous. Frankfurt to be less safe than Chicago, absurd...

Anonymous said...

Five words for you people to consider: ran dom knife a ttacks.

Matt Stone said...

Hmm, yes, the last time we had one of those here in Sydney was in December 2015:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/man-dies-after-being-stabbed-in-camperdown-20151210-glkvkz.html

Matt Stone said...

...Although the one we had was only three words.

Matt Stone said...

We had another random knife attack yesterday... Our cops are specially trained to start randomly shooting bystanders:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/graphic-footage-police-shooting-of-armed-man-at-westfield-hornsby-caught-on-smartphone-20160609-gpfq4e.html