Some amusing...some not so amusing...
My quick daily read of the blogs started me off at Blog the Talk...the first line I saw of their latest post was...
it sounds like an interesting talk about the world's best paid rodent and what he's had to do to get there
..and honestly as I read it, the following crossed my mind...."I don't think he's paid that much since March - speaking of which he isn't actually there any more and how odd; to the best of my knowledge Stefan and Dave have never been that blunt about critising Tung Chee-hwa". As I moved up the post to read it properly the error of my thoughts dawned on me....but I did smile!!!
And for the not so amusing...my newspaper of choice today was the IHT
Reading Nicholas Kristof's article entitled "The larger shame behind New Orleans"..the following clips left me open mouthed...
"The Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After falling sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Bush.
If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.
....
One dispiriting element of Katrina was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing more than 6,000, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.
"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."
I do realise that with regards to the Beijing figures it is highly possible that the Chinese reporting of the figures could be a little "skewed"...However....
If you would like you can read the entire article here
the other article from the IHT that I found interesting was about this blog and in particular this post.
"At the risk of being alarmist, we could be three-four days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans," Brendan Loy, who is 23 and has no formal meteorological training, wrote on Aug. 26 in his blog, irishtrojan.com.
"If I were in New Orleans, I would seriously consider getting the hell out of Dodge right now, just in case."
Loy's posting that Friday afternoon came three days before the hurricane struck and two days before the mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, issued an evacuation order"
...hurricane Katrina pages (up to August 30th) from Irishtrojan here
...complete article here
And finally...also from the IHT...two books that look like they could be worth reading...if anyone has read them and agrees or disagrees, please let me know....
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford
and
Love My Rifle, More Than You by Kayla Williams and Michael E. Staub
complete reviews here
it sounds like an interesting talk about the world's best paid rodent and what he's had to do to get there
..and honestly as I read it, the following crossed my mind...."I don't think he's paid that much since March - speaking of which he isn't actually there any more and how odd; to the best of my knowledge Stefan and Dave have never been that blunt about critising Tung Chee-hwa". As I moved up the post to read it properly the error of my thoughts dawned on me....but I did smile!!!
And for the not so amusing...my newspaper of choice today was the IHT
Reading Nicholas Kristof's article entitled "The larger shame behind New Orleans"..the following clips left me open mouthed...
"The Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After falling sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Bush.
If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.
....
One dispiriting element of Katrina was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing more than 6,000, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.
"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."
I do realise that with regards to the Beijing figures it is highly possible that the Chinese reporting of the figures could be a little "skewed"...However....
If you would like you can read the entire article here
the other article from the IHT that I found interesting was about this blog and in particular this post.
"At the risk of being alarmist, we could be three-four days away from an unprecedented cataclysm that could kill as many as 100,000 people in New Orleans," Brendan Loy, who is 23 and has no formal meteorological training, wrote on Aug. 26 in his blog, irishtrojan.com.
"If I were in New Orleans, I would seriously consider getting the hell out of Dodge right now, just in case."
Loy's posting that Friday afternoon came three days before the hurricane struck and two days before the mayor of New Orleans, C. Ray Nagin, issued an evacuation order"
...hurricane Katrina pages (up to August 30th) from Irishtrojan here
...complete article here
And finally...also from the IHT...two books that look like they could be worth reading...if anyone has read them and agrees or disagrees, please let me know....
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford
and
Love My Rifle, More Than You by Kayla Williams and Michael E. Staub
complete reviews here
posted by Madame Chiang at 8:41 pm
1 Comments:
Dear Madame Chiang, very funny! I always preferred thinking of he of whom you speak as the Gold-Plated Toiletbrush. A bit unfair, but then again the man really had to do a lot of dirty work. Nice man, really, but obviously was not up to the job.
I enjoyed your reflections on the lack of theft after the Kobe earthquake. I think in multicultural societies, the trust factor and the community factor is much lower than in homogenous ones at the same level of economic development; which is why countries like Denmark that have been so tolerant in the past have become xenophobic. On the other hand, can one argue that difference is a bad thing?
Of course there were other important factors involved, and you alluded to perhaps the most important with the excellent Kristof article about the poverty and huge differences in mortality rates.
Thanks for your post!
Post a Comment
<< Home