ChinaDaily: "Democracy makes a difference"

Interesting article (2006-07-03) that in itself shows that it is gradually becoming easier to talk and write publicly about issues previously regarded as critisim of the etstablishment.

"During his visit to the United States in April, President Hu Jintao said there could be no modernization without democracy. People have noted that Chinese leaders, at each crucial stage of the country's development, show great concern with the progress of China's democratization."

"One of democracy's important institutional attributes is the public's supervision of the implementation of power. One of its most salient spiritual features is helping bring people's initiative into full play."

"Without democracy, there would be no respect for people. Wisdom and creativity are at the core of human dignity. In the absence of care for and encouragement of people's creativity and wisdom, creating a new type of country would remain a dream."

Source: China Daily; By Qin Xiaoying, a researcher with the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.

S. Korean scientists find cancer-spreading gene

"A human gene that causes the growth and spread of cancer was identified by a team of South Korean scientists, the Korean Times reported Monday." (July 3rd 2006)

"Im and his colleagues applied for a domestic patent on the new found cancer regulator and are looking to register an international patent immediately, the newspaper said."

Source: Xinhua / english.people.com.cn

Peru - Machu Picchu - 222 Megapixel | Andre Gunther Photography

Peru - Machu Picchu - 222 Megapixel | Andre Gunther Photography

This is as much a technology demo as a magnificent picture of Machu Picchu. Check the zoom functions. Amazing.

Photos from women's day 2006

Women's day around the world - photo series - Aftenposten.no
Click on the photos to see the next.

Christian-Muslim Relations, Inter-Religious Dialogue

"Welcome to Oddbjorn Leirvik's web site, which mostly deals with
Christian-Muslim Relations & Interreligious Dialogue"

USA: "Misstatement of the Union"

" The President burnishes the State of the Union through selective facts and strategic omissions. "

People's Daily Online -- Most global CEOs view China as market opportunity: survey

People's Daily Online -- Most global CEOs view China as market opportunity: survey: "More than 70 percent of the 1410 CEOs (chief executive officer) surveyed say their company plans to do business over the next three years in at least one of the BRIC countries, named Brazil, Russia, India and China."

Leaders at Davos appeal for eradicating poverty in Africa

"African nations should focus on boosting primary education and good governance while the western countries should remove agriculture tariffs, according to several leading world figures in the World Economic Forum. The panelists in the African development debate on Friday said that the world should shake off 'poverty fatigue' and follow through on the momentum and 'mountain of good will' generated from 2005 toward the goal of eradicating poverty in Africa."

Wired News: Spin Doctors Create Quantum Chip

Wired News: Spin Doctors Create Quantum Chip: "University of Michigan scientists have created the first quantum microchip, which could be a giant stride in the race to produce a new generation of brawny, super-fast computers.

Working with individual ions is key to building powerful computing machines that will exploit quantum physics -- instead of transistors -- and trump the power of today's most powerful supercomputers.

So, on a semiconductor chip roughly the size of a postage stamp, the Michigan scientists designed and built a device known as an ion trap, which allowed them to isolate individual charged atoms and manipulate their quantum states.

An ion expresses a positive or negative charge, depending on whether its parent atom has a missing or an extra electron. And ions are the preferred building blocks for a quantum system."

Ekstremisme kan ikke bekjempes med våpen

"Sikkerhetsberedskapen rundt Musharraf er like høy som når USAs president George Bush er på reise.

Gjør mest
- Ekstremisme er en sinnstilstand, og kan ikke bekjempes med militære handlinger. Vi må bekjempe ekstremisme med både politiske og sosiale virkemidler, sa han.

- Det trengs en muslimsk renessanse for å forstå den virkelige islam og korrigere bildene inni oss selv og inntrykket som resten av verden har, sa han."

Mujuru - Zimbabwe's female VP

People's Daily Online -- Zimbabwe's female VP unveils ambition to succeed Mugabe: "Mujuru, who was appointed to her position in 2004, however called on the women to uphold their cultural values which she described as a source of dignity.

Women, she said, made good leaders as they were generally peace loving and had softer hearts, characteristics which they should exploit in solving problems."

Norwegian government launches onlind forum to combat trafficking

"http://www.Sexhandel.no is financed by the Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Women and Children, made by the Government of Norway.

This website is made by Reform –Resource Center for Men on behalf of the Ministry of Children and Equality.

The measure of the website is to curtail the demand that creates a market for human trafficking. The website is meant to encourage a debate and to draw attention to the link between prostitution and trafficking.

Sexhandel.no contains information and facts about prostitution and trafficking, and offers the opportunity to participate in discussions on the web as well as counselling by phone. "

Wired: Biggest Discoveries of 2005

"Paleontologists in March accidentally stumbled upon the first soft tissue from a dinosaur -- some cells and blood vessels from a 68 million-year-old female Tyrannosaurus rex. They had to split a thigh bone to remove it from a remote dig, and it's expected to be a goldmine of dino physiology. Previously, it had been assumed tissue couldn't survive longer than 100,000 years."

Booming nations 'threaten Earth'

"Earth lacks the water, energy and agricultural land to allow China and India to attain Western living standards, a US think-tank has warned."

Energising the quest for 'big theory'

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Energising the quest for 'big theory': "About 100m below us, in a tunnel that runs in a ring for 27km (17 miles), the LHC is being assembled from its constituent parts like a vast, impossibly complex Meccano set.

When it is switched on for a pilot run in summer 2007, this huge physics experiment will collide two beams of particles head-on at super-fast speeds, recreating the conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

The beam collisions should create showers of new particles, revealing new physics beyond the Standard Model. In order for that to happen, the LHC needs to reach much higher energies than previous colliders."

SDS - Same-Language Subtitling

Official Google Blog: Same-Language Subtitling:

"I hit upon this idea in 1996 through a most ordinary personal experience. While taking a break from dissertation writing at Cornell University, I was watching a Spanish film with friends to improve my Spanish. The Spanish movie had English subtitles, and I remember commenting that I wished it came with Spanish subtitles, if only to help us grasp the Spanish dialogue better. I then thought, ‘And if they just put Hindi subtitles on Bollywood songs in Hindi, India would become literate.’ That idea became an obsession. It was so simple, intuitively obvious, and scalable in its potential to help hundreds of millions of people read -- not just in India, but globally. So you can see how it works, we’ve uploaded some folk songs using SLS into Google Video. And we've uploaded other examples there as well. "

Scientific quests: Better bananas, nicer mosquitoes | CNET News.com

"Addressing 275 of the world's most brilliant scientists, Bill Gates cracked a joke:

'I've been applying my imagination to the synergies of this,' he said. 'We could have sorghum that cures latent tuberculosis. We could have mosquitoes that spread vitamin A. And most important, we could have bananas that never need to be kept cold.'

They laughed. Perhaps that was to be expected when the world's richest man, who had just promised them $450 million, was delivering a punchline. But it was also germane, because they were gathered to celebrate some of the oddest-sounding projects in the history of science.


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Their deadly serious proposals--answers to the Grand Challenges in Global Health that Gates posed in a 2003 speech in Davos, Switzerland--sounded much like his spoofs: laboratories around the world, some of them led by Nobel Prize winners, proposing to invent bananas and sorghum that make their own vitamin A; chemicals that render mosquitoes unable to smell humans; drugs that hunt down tuberculosis germs in people who do not even know they are infected; and vaccines that are mixed into spores or plastics or sugars and can be delivered in glasses of orange juice or modified goose calls.

What Gates had outlined at Davos were the greatest obstacles facing doctors in the tropics: Laboratories are few and far between. Vaccines spoil without refrigeration and require syringes, which can transmit AIDS. Mosquitoes develop resistance to all insecticides. Crops that survive in the jungle or desert often have little nutritive value. Infections outwit powerful drugs by lying dormant.

His offer--originally $200 million, raised to $450 million after 1,600 proposals came in--'was to make sure that innovation wasn't reserved just for big-ticket items like cancer and heart disease,' said Carol A. Dahl, the foundation's director of global health technologies, who ran the conference.

The winning teams, which were named in June, came from as far away as Australia and China, with research partners all over Africa and Southeast Asia. Over three days in a Seattle hotel, the 43 team leaders delivered 10-minute summaries of their plans, quizzed foundation officials about details of the grants and discussed possible ethical quandaries with bioethicists from the University of Toronto.

(The most common questions were about the one ironclad rule: Grantees may patent anything they discover, but must make it available cheaply to poor countries. An ethical concern common to many projects is that they will eventually require clinical trials on impoverished Africans or Asians with little understanding of informed consent.)

In the hallways and over cocktails and dinners--all paid for by the foundation--virologists and neurologists talked with plant biologists and nanoparticle physicists, sometimes finding ways to help one another. For example, a scientist with plans to improve vitamin-fortified 'golden rice' asked the designer of a hand-held laboratory to test blood for pathogens whether it could be modified to test blood for iron and vitamins."

Scientific quests: Better bananas, nicer mosquitoes | CNET News.com

media girl - about men...

"A new ICM opinion poll commissioned by Amnesty International indicates that a third (34%) of people in the UK believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner."

See mediagirl.org

China:- applying the Internet to politics

"On July 25, a live online broadcast in East China's Zhejiang Province attracted the attention of 100,000-plus netizens, which allowed them for the first time to watch online a session of the standing committee of the provincial people's congress, the local legislature, which is traditionally met behind closed doors.

'By watching live online broadcasting, Chinese citizens are endowed with a chance to participate in the democracy-building process,' comments Xia Xueluan, a professor of sociology with Beijing University.

In fact, Zhejiang is not alone to apply the Internet to politics. The Beijing municipal government already launched an online opinion poll in 2003. Logging into www.beijing.gov.cn, local netizens can cast votes on 64 governmental organs under the municipality. In two years' time, more than 140,000 netizens have aired their views on the administrations' effectiveness, transparency and legal awareness. And their votes on issues ranging from whether the city should lift the ban on firecrackers to the area of buffer zone of the Forbidden City as a World Heritage Site has been taken into consideration in policy making.

'Online appraisal has effectively improved the public organs' service standard,' observes Prof. Xia.

The Internet helps the administrators to get first-hand opinions from the grassroots, thus making the policy making process more scientific, says Prof. Cheng Weimin of Beijing University.

Even the country's leaders would go online for people's opinions on government work. Before he gave a press conference during a session of the National People's Congress (NPC) in late March, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao accessed to the xinhuanet.com to search for ordinary people's questions for him.

'The development of the Internet in China will not only lead to a transfer of economic activities, but also change people's ideas about the public affairs,' says Prof. Min Dahong, an expert on Internet communication with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Meanwhile, the Internet has partially given rise to Chinese people's individuality. A vivid example is the prevalence of web-blog writing since 2002.

'The essence of web-blog is to share both information and thoughts,' says Fang Xingdong, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bokee, the largest blog website in China, which has more than 2 million registered users.

By writing web-blogs, Fang says, netizens have shifted from 'passive receptors' to 'active producers.'

Li Shanyou, vice president of Sohu, one of the three largest portal sites in China, agrees that the Internet has impelled a 'grassroots' spirit.

Although there exists the digital divide, Prof. Xia Xueluan says the Internet 'is no longer a privilege enjoyed by a few in China, but a common area everyone can contributes to.'

'The Internet has expanded my horizon and deepened my communication with others. In the realm of the Internet, I dream to fly higher,' smiles the young Lu Li."

Source: Xinhua / People's Daily Online:
Internet being part of Chinese people's life

WEF - 2005 competitiveness rankings

World Economic Forum 2005 competitiveness rankings:

"Finland remains the most competitive economy in the world and tops the rankings for the third consecutive year in The Global Competitiveness Report 2005-2006, released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The United States is in second position, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Taiwan of China and Singapore, respectively.

Altogether 117 countries and areas are included in the rankings. Researchers place particular attention on elements of the macroeconomic environment, the quality of public institutions which underpin the development process, and the level of technological readiness and innovation.

'The Nordic countries share a number of characteristics that make them extremely competitive, such as very healthy macroeconomic environments and public institutions that are highly transparent and efficient, with general agreement within society on the spending priorities to be met in the government budget,' said Augusto Lopez-Claros, chief economist and director of the WEF's Global Competitiveness Program.

According to the report, the United States demonstrates overall technological supremacy, with a very powerful culture of innovation. However, technological prowess is partly offset by a weaker performance in other areas measured by the index. The country's greatest weakness concerns the health of its macroeconomic environment, where it ranks a low 47th overall."

Read the full article at People's Daily

Increasing global interest in Confucius

"After being criticized for nearly 100 years in the 20th century, why has Confucianism become popular again? Why have Western wise men call for absorbing Confucius' intelligence to safeguard the survival of mankind? The world today is not in peace, this is mainly because of hegemony and terrorism. World peace requires treatment and cure of such modern world maladies. 'Harmony without uniformity' proposed by Confucius can be taken as a good medicine for treating the illness.

Confucius said, 'A gentleman gets along with others, but does not necessarily agree with them; a base man agrees with others, but does not coexist with them harmoniously'."

Click to read the full article in People's Daily Online

China: Gray-haired population hits 130 million

"The number of senior citizens above the age of 60 has reached 130 million in China, or more than one tenth of the country's total population.

And China's gray-haired population has kept an annual growth rate of three percent, according to information from a recent forum on the country's old-age care trends and countermeasures held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The birth rate has kept falling, while the average life span has continued to rise in China, thanks to social, economic and scientific progress and improvement in medical and health conditions.

It is estimated that by the year of 2015, the population of senior citizens above the age of 60 will exceed 200 million yuan in the country and the figure will rise to 280 million by 2025."

Source: People's Daily/Xinhua

"The 100-minute bible" - and 3-minute version :-)

"A new version of the Bible which its author says can be read in less than two hours has been launched.
The 100-Minute Bible, written as a page-turner for those who do not have the time to read the full version, was unveiled at Canterbury Cathedral. "

Source: BBC, Sep. 21st, 2005

- And for those in an even bigger hurry...:

"God created heaven and earth in six days. He then made Adam, quickly followed by Eve when he saw that Adam was bored. Their descendants proved a real disappointment, so he flooded the world and started again.

But God continued to have a lot of problems. Abraham was OK, but Jacob cheated on his brother and Joseph was such a prima donna that his brothers sold him into slavery. Moses tried to lay down the law but it took an almighty strop for anyone to notice. Joshua killed a lot of people; so did Gideon; in fact most of the judges and kings were lying psychopaths. Understandably the Jewish people needed to relax, so they sang psalms to the tune of Kumbaya.

Back in the action and it was still looking grim. A few grumpy prophets apart, it was bloodletting on a grand scale all the way. Things improved when an angel got Mary pregnant in 1BC. Joseph was very understanding about this and nine months later Jesus was born. Various shepherds and wise men paid their respects before Jesus was whisked out of town to escape Herod. He spent the next 30 years chilling out before beginning his ministry when John the Baptist was arrested. Jesus tried to avoid publicity but it was hard to keep a low profile when he was pulling off stunts like raising the dead. So it wasn't long before he collected some disciples, and from these he chose his main crew, the apostles.

Much of Jesus's teaching was captured when he spoke about the meaning of humility during the Sermon on the Mount. Apart from forgiving sins, he also said that anyone who divorces and remarries commits adultery. These views made him extremely unpopular, but calling himself the Messiah was the last straw. When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he knew his days were numbered. On the Thursday night he was betrayed by Judas and taken before Pontius Pilate, who offered the Jews a chance to reprieve him. They refused and he was crucified and buried.

He rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Jesus reassured his followers he was for real and over the next 40 days he made a number of other appearances before going up to heaven."

Source: The blue room

Meet Mr. Neandertal

Perhaps a bit smelly, extinct in Europe around 25-30.000 years ago, but said to be a family guy, and possibly among the first to make clothes

:-)

The Indian ocean tsunami explained

Downloadable illustrations, animations, presentation:
The International Center for GeoHazards