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cvanderloo

Why 1.2 billion people in China share the same 100 surnames - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

China surnames dialects knowledge science language

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • five most common surnames in China -- shared by more than 433 million people, or 30% of the population
  • With 1.37 billion citizens, China has the world's largest population, but has one of the smallest surname pools. Only about 6,000 surnames are in use, according to the Ministry of Public Security. And the vast majority of the population -- almost 86% -- share just 100 of those surnames.
  • To put that in perspective, the United States -- with less than a quarter of China's population -- reported 6.3 million surnames in its 2010 census
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • It also has to do with language; you can't just add a random stroke to a Chinese character and create a new surname, the way you can add a letter to an English name.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 17 Jan 21
       
      Language!
  • people with rare characters in their names, which aren't compatible with existing computer systems, can get left behind -- pushing many to change their names for the sake of convenience, even if it means abandoning centuries of heritage and language.
  • China's history, full of migration, political turmoil and warfare, meant people's names were often in flux -- which is partly why many have since vanished.
  • People sometimes changed their names for convenience, too -- for instance, simplifying complex characters by adopting similar-sounding ones with fewer strokes. Other times they did it out of superstition, abandoning a name believed to bring ill fortune, said Chen, the associate professor.
  • surnames are lost or die out over time with each new generation as women take on their husbands' surnames.
  • With China roaring into the digital age, nearly everything -- from making appointments to buying train tickets -- has moved online. That meant a world of trouble if you happened to have a rare character in your name, that might not be in the database.
  • China's digitized ID cards made the problem even more pressing. The first generation of these cards allowed people to hand-write their names on -- but the second-generation cards, launched in 2004 and dubbed "smart cards" for their digital features, exclusively used computer-printed text.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 17 Jan 21
       
      Reminds me of requiring people in Guatemala to fill out a form in Spanish even though half of the population doesn't speak spanish.
  • Another factor exacerbating the increasing commonness of Chinese names is the government's efforts to standardize and regulate the language.
  • Various dialects of Mandarin are spoken between the provinces, with some so different that speakers are unintelligible to each other.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 17 Jan 21
       
      Dialects vs languages and the bariors they form
  • To try to address this, experts have increased the database from 32,000 characters to 70,000 characters, according to the government. They're still working to expand it to include more than 90,000 character
  • This struggle, and the cost of adapting to the modern age, was exemplified in a village in the eastern Shandong province in the late 2000s. Many villagers shared the ancestral name "Shan" -- but when they began applying for the digitized ID cards, local officials advised them to change their surnames to "Xian," a similar-sounding but more common character, according to state-owned news service CNTV.
  • In the end, more than 200 villagers were forced to change their surnames, a source of sorrow for many.
tongoscar

Chinese economy clobbered by coronavirus but set to recover soon: Reuters poll - 0 views

finance.yahoo.com/...coronavirus-set-001922711.html

shared by tongoscar on 14 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • The coronavirus-hit Chinese economy will grow at its slowest rate since the financial crisis in the current quarter, according to a Reuters poll of economists who said the downturn will be short-lived if the outbreak is contained.
  • However, economists were optimistic the economy would bounce back as soon as the second quarter, with growth then forecast to recover to a median 5.7%, according to the poll.
  • That figure was pushed higher by several optimistic forecasts from economists based in mainland China. The range was 2.9%-6.5%.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "I think the virus will be under control by April. However, in the worst-case scenario, growth may fall to 2-3% in the first quarter and to 5% in (full-year) 2020," said Bingnan Ye, senior macroeconomic analyst at Bank of China International in Beijing.
  • China's share of the global economy has quadrupled to 16% since the SARS outbreak, so any major disruption to economic activity is likely to have a bigger impact on the world economy now.
  • "Every day is a deadline in February as Wuhan coronavirus data roll in," noted Lee Hardman, currency strategist at MUFG, the most accurate forecaster for Asian currencies in 2019. "For the yuan, the overall depreciation story continues."
tongoscar

Coronavirus Live Updates: China Is Tracking Travelers From Hubei - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-coronavirus.html

shared by tongoscar on 14 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • To combat the spread of the coronavirus, Chinese officials are using a combination of technology and policing to track movements of citizens who may have visited Hubei Province.
  • Mobile phone owners in China get their service from one of three state-run telecommunications firms, which this week introduced a feature for subscribers to send text messages to a hotline that generates a list of provinces they have recently visited. That has created a new way for the authorities to see where citizens have traveled.At a high-speed rail station in the eastern city of Yiwu on Tuesday, officials in hazmat suits demanded that passengers send the text messages and then show their location information to the authorities before being permitted to leave the station. Those who had passed through Hubei were unlikely to be allowed entry.
  • Top officials in Beijing on Thursday expanded their mass roundup of sick or possibly infected people beyond Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak, to include other cities in Hubei Province that have been hit hard by the crisis, according to the state-run CCTV broadcaster.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Chinese officials reported Friday that a surge in new infections was continuing, though not as markedly as the day before, when the number of people confirmed to have the virus in Hubei Province skyrocketed by 14,840 cases.
  • Japan has confirmed its first death from the virus.
  • For a moment on Thursday, it seemed as if there might be some good news from the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship being held in the port of Yokohama in Japan, when the authorities said they would release some passengers to shore to finish their quarantine.Instead, Japanese health officials announced the first death from the virus in the country, of a woman in her 80s. It was third death from the virus outside mainland China. The woman had no record of travel there.
  • The Centers for Disease Control said Thursday that a person under quarantine at a military base in San Antonio had tested positive for the virus, bringing the number of confirmed coronavirus patients in the United States to 15.
  • For the first time in a decade, global oil demand is expected to fall.
  • The arts world, too, is feeling the squeeze.Image
  • Movie releases have been canceled in China and symphony tours suspended. A major art fair in Hong Kong was called off. And spring art auctions half a world away in New York have been postponed because well-heeled Chinese buyers may find it difficult to travel to them.
  • The U.S. reported its 15th case after a person under quarantine tested positive.
  • The travel industry in Asia has been upended.Image
  • China ousted a provincial leader at the center of the outbreak.
  • China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday summarily fired two top Communist Party officials from Hubei Province, exacting political punishment for the regional government’s handling of the crisis.
  • A second citizen-journalist in Wuhan has disappeared.
  • A video blogger in the city of Wuhan who had been documenting conditions at overcrowded hospitals at the heart of the outbreak has disappeared, raising concerns among his supporters that he may have been detained by the authorities.The blogger, Fang Bin, is the second citizen journalist in the city to have gone missing in a week after criticizing the government’s response to the coronavirus epidemic.Mr. Fang began posting videos from hospitals in Wuhan on YouTube last month, including one that showed a pile of body bags in a minibus. In early February, Mr. Fang said he had been briefly detained and questioned. A few days later, he filmed an exchange he had with strangers who showed up at his apartment claiming to bring him food.Mr. Fang’s last video, posted on Sunday, was a message written on a piece of paper: “All citizens resist, hand power back to the people.”Last week, Chen Qiushi, a citizen-journalist and lawyer in Wuhan who recorded the plight of patients and the shortage of hospital supplies, vanished, according to his friends.
  • South Korea quarantined hundreds of soldiers who visited China.
johnsonel7

Coronavirus: China to boost mass surveillance machine, experts say - 0 views

www.cnbc.com/...lance-machine-experts-say.html

china surveillance psychology

shared by johnsonel7 on 25 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • China could use the coronavirus outbreak to boost its mass surveillance capabilities as it looks to technology to help contain the epidemic in the world’s second-largest economy.The Communist Party has built a vast surveillance state through different methods with technology at its core.As artificial intelligence and the use of data becomes more advanced, Beijing has found increasingly effective ways to track the Chinese population, including facial recognition.
  • With over 77,000 coronavirus cases confirmed in China alone, the government has mobilized its surveillance machine, a move experts said could continue even after the virus has been contained.
  • The Chinese government has also enlisted the help of tech giants like Tencent, owner of popular messaging app WeChat and Alibaba subsidiary, Ant Financial, which runs payments app Alipay. On both WeChat and Alipay, users can put in their Chinese ID numbers and where they have travelled. Users will then be assigned a QR code based on a traffic light color system which instructs them about how long they need to be in quarantine, or whether they are free to travel. A QR code is a type of barcode which is widely used on digital platforms in China.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “The Party has increasingly treated ‘stability maintenance’ — a euphemism for social control — as an overarching priority, and devoted enormous resources to security agencies for monitoring dissidents, breaking up protests, censoring the internet, and developing and implementing mass surveillance systems,” she wrote in a recent paper.
  • “Once these systems are in place, those involved in its developments — particularly companies with money to be made — argue for their expansion or their wider use, a phenomenon known as ‘mission creep.’ What initially started as a system to crack down on crime — which is already a dubious and vague enough justification to encompass political crimes in China — is now used for other purposes including for fighting the coronavirus outbreak.”
tongoscar

Coronavirus: Russia to ban Chinese citizens from entry - as it happened | Financial Times - 0 views

www.ft.com/...28-043c-36e7-a1b9-a90359655dbb

shared by tongoscar on 19 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Hubei reports 93 new coronavirus deaths Hubei, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak in China, reported 93 new deaths to the end of Monday, down from the previous day’s tally of 100. The province’s health commission also reported 1,807 new cases, lower than that recorded for Sunday.
  • Apple has warned that disruption in China from the coronavirus will cause its revenues to fall short in the current quarter, marking the second time in little over a year that weakness in China has forced the world’s most valuable technology company to issue a financial alert.
  • The California-based company said its factories were “ramping up more slowly than we anticipated had anticipated” after the Chinese government extended the lunar new year break and restricted the movement of people and when businesses could reopen.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • China says coronavirus death toll reaches almost 1,900
  • Japanese stocks slide almost 1% after Apple sales warning
  • Gauging the weakness in China's economy
  • Economists broadly expect China's growth rate to cool sharply in the first quarter of this year — although the extent of the slowdown is the subject of debate.
  • Traffic congestion Congestion in 100 major Chinese cities typically picks up in the days following the lunar new year holiday. That has not been the case this year.
  • Coal consumption Major electricity producers consumed 35 per cent less coal during the first 16 days of February than "normal seasonality would suggest", Goldman said.
  • Asia Apple suppliers slip after warning from iPhone maker Share prices for Apple suppliers in Asia fell after the Californian company warned that disruptions in China from the coronavirus will cause revenues to fall short in the current quarter.
krystalxu

Introduction: Chinese Sociology & Anthropology: Vol 12, No 3 - 0 views

www.tandfonline.com/...CSA0009-462512033

China Sociology Anthropology

shared by krystalxu on 09 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • n the early years of this century, Chinese scholars had already studied the then newly emerging discipline of psychology in the United States, England, Germany and Japan, and John Dewey himself went to China several times to introduce his pragmatic philosophy and educational reform, which were of the greatest importance to Chinese psychology.
tongoscar

Trump trade war, tariffs giving China political, defense opportunity - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/al-defense-opportunity-2019-11

shared by tongoscar on 25 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • "We're the ones that are deciding whether or not we want to make a deal," Trump said in a speech at the Economic Club of New York this month. "We're close."
  • The reality of what Beijing wants is far more complicated than an end to the recent economic hostilities. Instead, it is balancing a variety of interests, some more important than the trade war.
  • Beijing's ideal scenario includes a free hand to violate human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong; it includes continuing to press for reunification with Taiwan; and it includes achieving the aims of China 2025, the Chinese Communist Party's plan to transition the country's economy to one based on technology.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Trump's laser focus on trade has given Beijing the latitude to deal with those and other critical issues without fear interference from the White House.
  • Trump is correct to say that the Chinese economy is slowing down, but there is little evidence to support his assertion that Beijing is "dying" to make a deal anytime soon.
  • For months, Chinese economic data has been trending down, but it's only in the past few week that policymakers have slightly lowered key interest rates to keep money flowing through the economy.
  • China has also ignored US ire over its "Made in China 2025," a plan to build up China's tech sector using methods US officials have said violate the aims of the trade war — methods that allow more state control of China's economy and encourage more intellectual-property theft.
sissij

Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think? | Linguistic Society of America - 1 views

www.linguisticsociety.org/...-i-speak-influence-way-i-think

psychology language

shared by sissij on 25 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • What we have learned is that the answer to this question is complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do you lack words for them because you don't think about them?
  • Whorf believed that because of this difference, Hopi speakers and English speakers think about events differently, with Hopi speakers focusing more on the source of the information and English speakers focusing more on the time of the event.
  • There's a language called Guugu Yimithirr (spoken in North Queensland, Australia) that doesn't have words like left and right or front and back. Its speakers always describe locations and directions using the Guugu Yimithirr words for north, south, east, and west. So, they would never say that a boy is standing in front of a house; instead, they'd say he is standing (for example) east of the house. They would also, no doubt, think of the boy as standing east of the house, while a speaker of English would think of him as standing in front of the house.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But not always. You can easily conjure up mental images and sensations that would be hard to describe in words.
  • Not really, but if the new language is very different from your own, it may give you some insight into another culture and another way of life.
  • sissij on 25 Oct 16
     
    I found it very interesting that how we speak can have some influence on how we think. It may even have a slice of the logic and ideology of our culture. As my second language, English is very different from Chinese. We may have different description for the same event because we value things differently. --Sissi (10/24/2016)
sissij

How to become a polyglot - Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips - 0 views

www.fluentin3months.com/how-to-become-a-polyglot

knowledge language

shared by sissij on 23 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • In my attempt to expand my horizons and try my best to get to know a country’s culture, learning its language it’s just a natural step to take, which I’ve repeated several times.
  • The priority is to learn how to think in a foreign language.
  • You should be passionate about each language.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • There is obviously no point in working so hard to learn a language if you will just forget it as you learn the next one. As much practise as possible is needed!
  • sissij on 23 Nov 16
     
    I found this article very interesting because it provides some thoughts that polyglots have on language. Language is a very crucial step to know a country's culture so he learn many languages as he traveled around the world. One point he mentioned in this article is that the priority is to learn how to think in a foreign language. As a English speaker whose mother tone is Chinese, I know the feeling of thinking in a foreign language and how important it is in the efficiency of my learning. As you think in that language, you will speak more naturally and have less awkward phrasing. Language is all about communication, so the more you use it, the more easily you will get a feel of it and handle it. Languages are like shoes, the more you have, the farther you can go. The longer you wear them, the more comfortable you will be. --Sissi (11/23/2016)
sissij

Watch How Casually False Claims are Published: New York Times and Nicholas Lemann Edition - 1 views

theintercept.com/...yt-and-nicholas-lemann-edition

new york times social media bias

shared by sissij on 13 Jan 17 - No Cached
  •  wrote my favorite sentence about this whole affair, one which I often quoted in my speeches to great audience laughter: “there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation; or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.”
  • demanding that they only publish those which expose information necessary to inform the public debate: precisely because he did not want to destroy NSA programs he believes are justifiable.
  • As is true of most leaks – from the routine to the spectacular – those publishing decisions rested solely in the hands of the media outlets and their teams of reporters, editors and lawyers.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • There have of course been some stories where my calculation of what is not public interest differs from that of reporters, but it is for this precise reason that publication decisions were entrusted to journalists and their editors.
  • it is so often the case that the most influential media outlets publish factually false statements using the most authoritative tones.
  • Ironically, the most controversial Snowden stories – the type his critics cite as the ones that should not have been published because they exposed sensitive national security secrets – were often the ones the NYT itself decided to publish, such as its very controversial exposé on how NSA spied on China’s Huawei.
  • Snowden didn’t decide what stayed secret. The press did.
  • journalist-driven process that determined which documents got published
  • But Snowden never said anything like that.
  • sissij on 13 Jan 17
     
    The reporting on Snowden shows that how bad our new system can be. Although it is arguable that this article can be false as well because we can never know the exact truth except the Snowden himself. Our flaws in logic and perception makes us very vulnerable to bad news. There was time in social media called the "Yellow News". During that time, the news publications weren't taking their responsibility as a guide to the general population. We surely need better news and prevent the era that we publish our news based on its "hotness" instead of accuracy. --Sissi (1/12/2017)
sissij

Apple removed the New York Times app in China. Why now? - LA Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...pple-china-20170105-story.html

new york times language social media bias

shared by sissij on 06 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • California’s Internet companies may have once dreamed of liberating China through technology, but these days they seem more willing than ever to play the Communist Party's game
  • "This is a restoration of the Cultural Revolution or another historical retrogression," said another.
  • The Washington Post is one of many Western newspapers that carries a regular paid supplement by China Daily, another Communist Party mouthpiece.
  • sissij on 06 Jan 17
     
    The censorship in China has long been a controversial issue that's widely discussed. I think it's very natural that those internet companies play the government the rules to enter the Chinese market because most companies are profit-driven rather than being all idealistic. However, I found the tone of this article very uncomfortable. He used the word "liberating" as if China is in bad condition or great suffer that need American freedom to save. Also, looking back to American history, American heroism plays a big part in what the American government did. They "liberated" Canada, "liberated" Vietnam, "liberated" Pakistan, and now America tries to "liberate" China. However, they never fully understand the pros and cons of censorship and how China is a totally different country to America. One's medicine can toxic for another. --Sissi (1/6/2017)
dicindioha

Chinese Scientist Blasts Trump's Climate-Change Talk - China Real Time Report - WSJ - 1 views

blogs.wsj.com/...0127cpollute

shared by dicindioha on 09 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • A global-warming skeptic, Mr. Trump has vowed to cancel the accord, which the Obama administration helped broker, in his first 100 days as president.
  • “I think he is cute, saying whatever comes to his mind. I think the U.S. is a cute country too, because a person like him became the president,” said Prof. Ding.
  • The president said in a 2012 tweet that the Chinese created “the concept of global warming.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • His argument: that a per capita count of emissions would be more equitable and treat all people the same.
  • One cannot both enjoy the benefits of industrialization and completely avoid the damages of it, he said.
  • “Steel made in China is sold to the U.S. The emission is done in China but the consumption happens in the U.S. It’s unfair to attribute that emission to China,” he said.
  • Unlike in the U.S., climate-change skeptics in China are an extremely rare breed—something that Mr. Ding posited was the result of better science education.
  • urged other nations to stick to the Paris agreement, calling it a “responsibility we must assume for future generations.”
  • dicindioha on 09 Feb 17
     
    I previously bookmarked an article about Australia's role in the Paris accords, and then I did not realize the world is in jeopardy of losing the U.S.'s involvement in it. We are one of the leading producers of gas emissions in the world, so that is scary to think about. It is interesting to see that people in such power as the leader of a forefront country do not trust the science that supports global warming, and it is kind of scary. I think it was also interesting that Prof. Ding said steel made in China is sold to the US, where people use it, so it's unfair to attribute the emission to China. That is an interesting argument considering they are making it in order to sell it, but yes we are using it, so it seems both are at fault here, possibly not just to the US. This climate change argument is all over and after our discussions about trusting science it is amazing to see the different sides up for debate that should be difficult to debate unless people debating are expert scientists in global warming/climate change.
Javier E

The Dangers of Pseudoscience - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...the-dangers-of-pseudoscience

pseudoscience science demarcation

shared by Javier E on 11 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • the “demarcation problem,” the issue of what separates good science from bad science and pseudoscience (and everything in between). The problem is relevant for at least three reasons.
  • The first is philosophical: Demarcation is crucial to our pursuit of knowledge; its issues go to the core of debates on epistemology and of the nature of truth and discovery.
  • The second reason is civic: our society spends billions of tax dollars on scientific research, so it is important that we also have a good grasp of what constitutes money well spent in this regard.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Third, as an ethical matter, pseudoscience is not — contrary to popular belief — merely a harmless pastime of the gullible; it often threatens people’s welfare,
  • It is precisely in the area of medical treatments that the science-pseudoscience divide is most critical, and where the role of philosophers in clarifying things may be most relevant.
  • some traditional Chinese remedies (like drinking fresh turtle blood to alleviate cold symptoms) may in fact work
  • There is no question that some folk remedies do work. The active ingredient of aspirin, for example, is derived from willow bark, which had been known to have beneficial effects since the time of Hippocrates. There is also no mystery about how this happens: people have more or less randomly tried solutions to their health problems for millennia, sometimes stumbling upon something useful
  • What makes the use of aspirin “scientific,” however, is that we have validated its effectiveness through properly controlled trials, isolated the active ingredient, and understood the biochemical pathways through which it has its effects
  • In terms of empirical results, there are strong indications that acupuncture is effective for reducing chronic pain and nausea, but sham therapy, where needles are applied at random places, or are not even pierced through the skin, turn out to be equally effective (see for instance this recent study on the effect of acupuncture on post-chemotherapy chronic fatigue), thus seriously undermining talk of meridians and Qi lines
  • Asma at one point compares the current inaccessibility of Qi energy to the previous (until this year) inaccessibility of the famous Higgs boson,
  • But the analogy does not hold. The existence of the Higgs had been predicted on the basis of a very successful physical theory known as the Standard Model. This theory is not only exceedingly mathematically sophisticated, but it has been verified experimentally over and over again. The notion of Qi, again, is not really a theory in any meaningful sense of the word. It is just an evocative word to label a mysterious force
  • Philosophers of science have long recognized that there is nothing wrong with positing unobservable entities per se, it’s a question of what work such entities actually do within a given theoretical-empirical framework. Qi and meridians don’t seem to do any, and that doesn’t seem to bother supporters and practitioners of Chinese medicine. But it ought to.
  • what’s the harm in believing in Qi and related notions, if in fact the proposed remedies seem to help?
  • we can incorporate whatever serendipitous discoveries from folk medicine into modern scientific practice, as in the case of the willow bark turned aspirin. In this sense, there is no such thing as “alternative” medicine, there’s only stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t.
  • Second, if we are positing Qi and similar concepts, we are attempting to provide explanations for why some things work and others don’t. If these explanations are wrong, or unfounded as in the case of vacuous concepts like Qi, then we ought to correct or abandon them.
  • pseudo-medical treatments often do not work, or are even positively harmful. If you take folk herbal “remedies,” for instance, while your body is fighting a serious infection, you may suffer severe, even fatal, consequences.
  • Indulging in a bit of pseudoscience in some instances may be relatively innocuous, but the problem is that doing so lowers your defenses against more dangerous delusions that are based on similar confusions and fallacies. For instance, you may expose yourself and your loved ones to harm because your pseudoscientific proclivities lead you to accept notions that have been scientifically disproved, like the increasingly (and worryingly) popular idea that vaccines cause autism.
  • Philosophers nowadays recognize that there is no sharp line dividing sense from nonsense, and moreover that doctrines starting out in one camp may over time evolve into the other. For example, alchemy was a (somewhat) legitimate science in the times of Newton and Boyle, but it is now firmly pseudoscientific (movements in the opposite direction, from full-blown pseudoscience to genuine science, are notably rare).
  • The verdict by philosopher Larry Laudan, echoed by Asma, that the demarcation problem is dead and buried, is not shared by most contemporary philosophers who have studied the subject.
  • the criterion of falsifiability, for example, is still a useful benchmark for distinguishing science and pseudoscience, as a first approximation. Asma’s own counterexample inadvertently shows this: the “cleverness” of astrologers in cherry-picking what counts as a confirmation of their theory, is hardly a problem for the criterion of falsifiability, but rather a nice illustration of Popper’s basic insight: the bad habit of creative fudging and finagling with empirical data ultimately makes a theory impervious to refutation. And all pseudoscientists do it, from parapsychologists to creationists and 9/11 Truthers.
  • The borderlines between genuine science and pseudoscience may be fuzzy, but this should be even more of a call for careful distinctions, based on systematic facts and sound reasoning. To try a modicum of turtle blood here and a little aspirin there is not the hallmark of wisdom and even-mindedness. It is a dangerous gateway to superstition and irrationality.
Javier E

In New Textbook, the Story of Singapore Begins 500 Years Earlier - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-begins-500-years-earlier.html

history archaology Singapore ethnic bias culture textbook

shared by Javier E on 13 May 14 - Cached
  • Why did it take 30 years to change the story? “It takes overwhelming evidence to shift the mind-set of a people from one image of its past to another,”
  • Professor Miksic gives credit for the new history lesson to former students who have reached positions of authority in academia and in the Ministry of Education.
  • Professor Heng surmised that one reason it had taken so long to change the narrative may have been the government’s fears of communal conflict in the 1960s and ’70s.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “If Singapore before 1800 was a sleepy backwater, the Chinese majority could say, ‘We built Singapore; before it was a blank slate,”’ he said.
  • Other factors also may help explain the timing of the rewrite. “Now is a good time,” Professor Heng said. “There’s a need to develop a collective social memory. It’s become a political issue.”
  • “Every generation has to rewrite its history,” he said. While it used to suit Singapore to see itself as a city-state with a British heritage, modern Singapore needs a different interpretation of history to reinforce a more global perspective, he suggested.
  • Professor Miksic goes a step further. “A short history puts a nation on shaky ground; a shallowly rooted place could be overturned quickly,” he said. “If you can show a long cohabitation between the Malays and the Chinese, it proves you have a pretty stable arrangement.”
dpittenger

Why do so many Chinese students choose US universities? - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...business-32969291

chinese students universities education

shared by dpittenger on 02 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The most recent figures, from the 2013-14 academic year, show that 274,000 international students in the US hailed from China - far more than from any other country.
  • "I want to go where I can learn whatever I want"
  • China has seen a rapid development of international schools in recent years, showing the country's growing demand for a Western-style education.
maddieireland334

Chinese nationals accused of taking SATs for others - BBC News - 0 views

diigo.com/07o298

testing research education

shared by maddieireland334 on 28 May 15 - No Cached
  • maddieireland334 on 28 May 15
     
    The US Department of Justice has charged 15 Chinese nationals with developing a scheme to have imposters take university entrance exams. Prosecutors said suspects used fake passports to trick administrators into allowing people other than legitimate test takers to sit the exams. The scheme took place between 2011 and 2015 mostly in western Pennsylvania, authorities said.
qkirkpatrick

Data Breach Linked to China Exposes Millions of U.S. Workers - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...em-exposes-personnel-data.html

data science technology knowledge social media

shared by qkirkpatrick on 05 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration on Thursday announced what appeared to be one of the largest breaches of federal employees’ data, involving at least four million current and former government workers in an intrusion that officials said apparently originated in China.
  • The compromised data was held by the Office of Personnel Management, which handles government security clearances and federal employee records. The breach was first detected in April, the office said, but it appears to have begun at least late last year.
  • There seems to be little doubt among federal officials that the attack was launched from China, but it was unclear whether the attack might have been state sponsore
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  • But because the breadth of the new attack was so much greater, the objective seems less clear.
  • The F.B.I. is “conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” S. Y. Lee, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement.
  • An annual “Strategic and Economic Dialogue” with Chinese officials is scheduled to take place this month, and cyberissues will again be in the forefront. But the administration on Thursday did not publicly identify Chinese hackers as the culprit in the latest case, just as it has not publicly identified Russians as responsible for the intrusions on the White House and State Department systems.
  • qkirkpatrick on 05 Jun 15
     
    Technology and how it is changing privacy.
catbclark

Marriage: Wedding wows | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...-chinese-nuptials-wedding-wows

culture marriage

shared by catbclark on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • An emphasis on love is a new addition to Chinese weddings—and shines a pink-filtered spotlight on social change.
  • the bride’s family exchanged money or goods.
  • . An average wedding cost $12,000 in 2011 (the latest year for which such data exist)—the equivalent of more than two years’ income for the average urban household.
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  • . Parents have more to spend if they only have to fork out for one wedding (they usually share costs with the spouse-to-be’s family).
  • The result is evident in weddings, which now focus on the couple. Both sets of parents are represented, but their position is peripheral. Weddings often feature a day of wedding photos, shot before the event, with the couple in a range of outfits against romantic backgrounds, but with no family members.
Javier E

Opinion | The Only Answer Is Less Internet - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-internet-privacy.html

privacy politics culture tech internet

shared by Javier E on 15 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • In our age of digital connection and constantly online life, you might say that two political regimes are evolving, one Chinese and one Western
  • The first regime is one in which your every transaction can be fed into a system of ratings and rankings
  • in which what seem like merely personal mistakes can cost you your livelihood and reputation, even your ability to hail a car or book a reservation
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  • It’s one in which notionally private companies cooperate with the government to track dissidents and radicals and censor speech
  • ne in which your fellow citizens act as enforcers of the ideological consensus, making an example of you for comments you intended only for your friends
  • one in which even the wealth and power of your overlords can't buy privacy.
  • The second regime is the one they’re building in the People’s Republic of China.
  • Beijing has treated the darkest episodes of “Black Mirror” as a how-to guide for social control and subjugation
  • Unlike China’s system, our emerging post-privacy order is not (for now) totalitarian; its impositions are more decentralized and haphazard, more circumscribed and civilized, less designed and more evolved, more random in the punishments inflicted and the rules enforced.
  • our system cannot help recreating features of the Chinese order, because the way that we live on the internet leaves us naked before power in a radical new way.
  • the Western order in the internet age might be usefully described as a “liberalism with some police-state characteristics.” Those characteristics are shaped and limited by our political heritage of rights and individualism. But there is still plainly an authoritarian edge, a gentle “pink police state” aspect, to the new world that online life creates.
  • apart from the high-minded and the paranoid, privacy per se is not a major issue in our politics
  • for those who object inherently to our new nakedness, regard the earthquakes as too high a price for Amazon’s low prices, or fear what an Augustus or a Robespierre might someday do with all this architecture, the best hope for a partial restoration of privacy has to involve more than just an anxiety about privacy alone.
  • It requires a more general turn against the virtual, in which fears of digital nakedness are just one motivator among many — the political piece of a cause that’s also psychological, intellectual, aesthetic and religious.
  • This is the hard truth suggested by our online experience so far: That a movement to restore privacy must be, at some level, a movement against the internet
  • Not a pure Luddism, but a movement for limits, for internet-free spaces, for zones of enforced pre-virtual reality (childhood and education above all), for social conventions that discourage career-destroying tweets and crotch shots by encouraging us to put away our iPhones.
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