Archive for the ‘fun’ Category
Guns 'n' Roses
Unlike most people of my age, I do not have any interest in any kind of rock music. I'm more of a fan of classic, country and pop music.
But if the is named "Chinese democracy" ... well, the word "democracy" itself is enough to draw attention from the most sensitive government in the world, the Chinese government.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang was asked by BBC China correspondent, James Reynolds about the music, he replied:
"According to my knowledge, a lot of people don't like this kind of music - because it's too noisy, and too loud. James, I think you are a mature adult, aren't you?"
Actually I would agree the first bit, Classic and country music are far more gentle than rock, that's why I liked them rather than rock. But I just find it hard to believe that a foreign ministry spokesman, who frequently attacks others "hurt the feelings of Chinese people", to label rock lovers as "immature".
I don't think this smug, ignorant spokesman would never realise how many "immature" people out there who loved the band for more than two decades.
This sure adds to my collection of jokes from Chinese Foreign ministry. I have chinese blog entry on their laughable comments on human rights, if my collection accumulates to a reasonable level, I'll translate them to English or maybe create a hall of fame for them.
Politician and politician ...
If we are here to talking about the format, I liked the "two johns" ad, it's like a variation of National's 2005 red and blue billboards, simple, clear and precise.
But I just keep feeling creepy every time this ad appears on TV. Last line of the ad reads something like "...you know you can trust Helen Clark and Labour." I don't know whether it's just me feeling this way, is this some kind of brainwashing ad with a hidden subliminal message "you should trust Helen Clark"?
I mean the wording of the last line is bit strange. How come they know that I know Helen Clark is more trustworthy? It made me quite scared that they may possess some kind of mind reading secret technique.
But if not, then don't tell me what I suppose to or not to know. I know (well, everybody knows) Auntie Clarkie signed paintings which were done by someone else.
"trust" and "politician" are just two very incompatible words and I think Clark is quite stupid to set the tone of the election in this way. The ad itself also played a very stupid logic game: any fully minded person should know that an "untrustworthy John" does not logically equal to the statement "Labour is trustworthy".
BTW ... here's a story about two Helens ...
A NZ political quiz
Pundit have published a nice online NZ political quiz that tells you which party shares most of your beliefs earlier today. It's quite short so should not take you long to do it, I just tried itself, and the result is quite similar to what I expected:
- The Green Party - 73%
- The Progressive Party - 73%
- The Labour Party - 72%
- The United Future Party - 70%
- New Zealand First Party - 62%
- The National Party - 55%
- The Act Party - 35%
Except Rodney Hide's far right Act Party, I was quite amazed that the difference between National and Labour is just about 20% - I guess that's the down side of a short quiz - there's not enough questions to fully separate the beliefs held by each party.
But despite of that, the quiz also got an amazing level of details. It is capable to tell you the similarity between you and each political party for each issue, like this:
NZ political quiz
It's a nice quiz, recommended to everyone.
This blog does not contain melamine.
Just something fun from chinese blogsphere.
The stamp is a parody of the tainted milk scandal in China. Chinese characters in the picture means "this blog does not contain melamine. Approved by General Administration Responsible to Grant Quality Supervision Exemption(a parody of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision).
Related news(Chinese): To restore consumer confidence, a "no melamine was found in this product" sticker is added to the cover of all dairy products produced before September 18th.
An unpleasant reminder
Today is exactly four month after the 8.0Ms earthquake which killed more than 80,000 people in Sichuan Province, China.
Aftershocks were seem to be finally dying out in just few weeks ago. But If a demon like creature really exist, it sure knows when to come out - there were at least 3 M 4.0+ aftershocks recorded since yesterday, the largest one happened early this morning, measured Mb 5.4 in northern part of Sichuan Province.
And my friends and family members in the province also reported countless number of small shocks - none of them were destructive, but sure reminded people what was happened four month ago.
Those aftershocks really worried me. The epicentre of one aftershock yesterday was only about 50km from the provincial capital, Chengdu(pop ~11m. , 4m. metropolitan), being the closest so far(it was first reported of being only 30km from Chengdu).
If a strong aftershock happens in the area the consequences would be catastrophic ... given that most people are tired of aftershocks and no one bothers to walk out of buildings when an aftershock happens.
The biggest one, Mb 5.4 this morning, depth of that earthquake was only 6 km below the surface - it's an extremely shallow yet relatively strong quake, and I'm glad that the magnitude wasn't anything higher than 5.5. The region just cannot bear that kind of shallow quake again.
Doomsday is family time
About why I haven't update anything here for quite a long time ... will I was just being lazy.
About the title ... according to many, tomorrow, 10th September, is the end of this world. Yeah you hear that right, end of our world. A black hole, or strange matter, will appear on Earth tommrow, and destroy the whole planet, possibly the whole universe.
All the fuss is about Large Hadron Collider(LHC). It is a particle accelerator located somewhere near Geneva, Switzerland. It is aimed to study many ultimate questions of physics such as the mechanism of the big bang and dark matters - but critics say that this machine may also be the ultimate suicide machine of the man kind ... there is a risk of a black hole or strange matter being created, and can effectly make the whole earth disappear.
That machine will operate for the first time tomorrow.
I like observational astronomy but has very little knowledge on cosmology - so I cannot tell you how the accelerator works ... just read wikipedia, please.
As many physicists, I personally think that there is a very, very remote chance that a micro blackhole created by the accelerator may swallow the whole earth. I don't know anything about stranglets.
That "remote" chance largely due to out lack of knowledge on the machanism of how the universe works. Although based on our current knowledge, because of the relatively low energy generated by the accelerator(compare with the bing bang), it is not very likely to create a balck hole.
Even if a micro black hole is created, the consensus of science community is that black hole will soon vaporise because of its size. Well unless there is a mechanism we have absolutely no understanding kicks in and did something very bad.
No good scientists will guarantee you the outcome of something nobody has ever done before. All we do is make the best assumption base on our current knowledge - it usually matches the outcome, but no professionals will rule out that 0.0000...% possibility of other outcome.
But sadly, that "slight chance" sometimes got exaggerated by some people and media. That remote risk of total destruction is worth to take for us to understand how the big bang happened.
BTW ... just for fun, if the worst happens, the black hole would still take few hours, a day or longer to suck every matter from earth. So you will have enough time to actually see how the black hole looks like before it tears you down into particles:)
Oh actually I wish that really happens tomorrow, so I don't have to hand in my assignment next week - that would be a good relief.
PS. the title is name of one of soundtracks from The Simpson Movie. Always good to spend more time to with your family ... you never know when the disaster might happen - it usually comes at the time no one expeceted it.
