Associated Press Wu Qidi, vice minister, China’s Ministry of Education, spoke at the 2006 opening of a Confucius Institute at the University of Kansas Edwards Campus in Overland Park, Kan., as then Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, left, looked on. Is the U.S. government taking on one of the Chinese government’s best known efforts to promote China’s image abroad? That was the question ricocheting around the Chinese Internet this week after the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a new U.S. State Department directive that could complicate things for the Beijing-sponsored network of language-teaching outposts known as the Confucius Institutes. From the Chronicle’s report: The memorandum, dated May 17, states that any academics at university-based institutes who are teaching at the elementary- and secondary-school levels are ... Continue reading →
Associated Press Wu Qidi, vice minister, China’s Ministry of Education, spoke at the 2006 opening of a Confucius Institute at the University of Kansas Edwards Campus in Overland Park, Kan., as then Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, left, looked on. Is the U.S. government taking on one of the Chinese government’s best known efforts to promote China’s image abroad? That was the question ricocheting around the Chinese Internet this week after the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on a new U.S. State Department directive that could complicate things for the Beijing-sponsored network of language-teaching outposts known as the Confucius Institutes. From the Chronicle’s report: The memorandum, dated May 17, states that any academics at university-based institutes who are teaching at the elementary- and secondary-school levels are ... Continue reading →
Using retweets to assess content virality Recently I’ve been running an experiment: Tweet an insight, idea, or quote See how many people retweet it If it catches, then write a blog post elaborating on the topic My recent Growth Hacker post was the result of one such tweet, which you can see above in my Crowdbooster dashboard. I wrote it on a whim, but after the retweets, I developed it into a longer and more comprehensive blog post. (Note that sometimes a tweet is not suitable to developed into a blog post, but most of the time this technique works) Why this worksThis works because the headline is key. It spreads the content behind it. This is especially true on Twitter, but it’s also true ... Continue reading →
Photo by Leon Lee Research in Motion has a problem. For years they promoted themselves as a top-notch mobile security company. During those initial years most of their products were pitched at enterprise users. Then RIM got into the consumer market. Most consumers equate RIM’s products with security, email, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), and a tepid suite of other smartphone features. Most of the people who report on the company tend to agonize over the fact that RIM complies with government surveillance laws. Such reports inevitably emerge each time that the public realizes that RIM meets its lawful access requirements for consumer-line products. In this post, I want to briefly address some of the BBM-related security concerns and try to (again) correct the record surrounding the ... Continue reading →
People have wondered how China suddenly exploded with scandals—former political heavyweight Bo Xilai removed in disgrace, his wife accused of murder, and the powerful Zhou Yongkang stripped of authority and placed under investigation. In fact, these recent events are only the continuation of a drama that started 23 years ago. The drama’s climax is yet to come, but is not far off. Paranoid Leader In 1989, demands by Chinese students and ordinary people for democracy and freedom scared Deng Xiaoping, who was experimenting in moving China gradually in that direction on his own terms. In the context of the student movement, the leaders he had picked to accomplish political reform then became a threat to his ultimate control of power. He had to remove them ... Continue reading →
More than 300 families of Fuzhenzhou village, Botou City, have signed a petition requesting the release of Wang Xiaodon, a Falun Gong practitioner. This is the first page of the petition. (Web Image) It was an unusually brave and selfless act for modern China: around 300 villagers signed their names to a petition, and stamped them with red wax, calling for the release of a fellow resident who had been persecuted for his beliefs by communist China’s security forces. The villagers were then themselves targeted, in what appeared to be an order coming down from Party Central to retaliate fiercely against anyone who dared to defend Falun Gong. Wang Xiaodong, a teacher and practitioner of Falun Gong who resides in Zhoutun Village, Hebei Province, was ... Continue reading →
Earlier this month, the local Hangzhou Yuhang's website wanted to post an image to show local government officials inspecting "Nanhu beach park’s landscape optimization project", according to China Hush. A worthy aim perhaps, but inexplicably, the government workers chose to feature a crude Photoshop to illustrate its point. Worse still, the incident is the second time a local government has used a poorly edited photo on its website — last year officails in Sichuan province became a laughing stock (and a meme) when they used a photo of them "floating" over a path. This new photo, shown above, is even worse than the Sichuan incident — and may be perhaps the most ridiculous we've ever seen: Zhejiang Hangzhou Yuhang The forgery was not lost on ... Continue reading →
19-year-old Egyptian physics student Aisha Mustafa is someone we may see again in the media in the future because though young she's patented a new type of propulsion system for spacecraft that makes use of an obscure, and only recently experimentally proven, quantum physics effect.First, a little background: Quantum physics is hard to grasp using just common sense, which is why quantum scientist Erwin Schrodinger invented the story of his famous cat experiment. One of the non-common-sense quantum ideas that applies to this story is the notion that there's no such thing as a vaccum, a perfectly and completely empty bit of space that has nothing--no particles, no waves, no energy--in it. Instead the empty spaces of the universe are filled with a boiling, roiling ... Continue reading →
The share price of Facebook stock is displayed on a screen at the Nasdaq stock market after it went public on May 18, in New York. The share price of the social network site tumbled 11 percent on Monday, delivering a black eye for those involved in the initial public offering. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) NEW YORK—Newly minted shares of Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) tumbled out of the gate on Monday, delivering another black eye for those involved in the initial public offering (IPO). Facebook shares fell as much as 13.7 percent on Monday, before rebounding slightly to close at $34.03, or a 11 percent decline, for the day. The closing price was a far cry from the $38 per share IPO prices from the previous ... Continue reading →
