Bear's Blog New Zealand (Beta)

Bear’s Blog China forced to close

My Chinese blog, Bear's Blog China, has been closed by the Blog Service Provider, Sohu.com, (NASDAQ: SOHU) for unknown reason early yesterday.

In the blog's short life of 6 month, it has received more than 10,000 clicks.

Initial contacts with its customer services have been proven useless. The customer representative claims that I have published "sensitive" information in my blog, but refused to specify what "sensitive" information I have published.

In fact, I cannot recall any "sensitive" information in my blog as well. Posts in my Chinese blog are very similar to the entries here, except they were written in Chinese. My last post before the closure is same as the one here, my photo of lunar eclipse.

I failed to see how those photos could become "sensitive". Actually I did post some possible sensitive information, i.e. materials blocked by the Great Firewall of China, but that was a long long time ago and those hard-working webmasters deleted them in a speedy manner.

I suspect this is the result of what I have done before. I was frequently translating some news reports relating to the "sensitive" side of Chinese government and add my comment in my blog. I was quite active and I understand that I was on BSP's special watch list for quite a long time.

I am still trying to talk the issue with the BSP involved. There is really not much I can do as one person: Sohu.com will just become another one in a list of websites banned on my computer.

Also, the reason why I put its nasdaq quote there, if you are an investor of some particular businesses, I beg you to consider: when you invested companies with horrible records in China such as yahoo and cisco, or chinese internet companies such as Baidu and Sohu, what kind of things you are actually investing?

And what changes you can make?

However, knowing that people were jailed because their blogs online, I am really really lucky.

Spectacular “red moon” total Lunar eclipse

It was quite lucky to see this lunar eclipse. Auckland was raining nearly all day, deceased thickness of clouds, and most people were able to see the eclipse between the gaps of clouds.

Sadly I did't have a tripod with me today. Below are just some of the "better" ones.

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Do’h! It is now officially a “word” and “quote”

Homer's Doh! entered Oxford English Dictionary in 2001, but this time they actually found some references as early as 1945.

Doh, or as my way of write this word, "Do'h!"    Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish. Also (usu. mildly derogatory): implying that another person has said or done something foolish (cf.DUH int.).

The word also entered Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations this time.

I think I may now try to use this word in everyday conversation.

This is very worrying.

Herald on Sunday today reported that a 15 year-old girl was sent to jail by court for 45 minutes because she was unwilling to testify against her father.

She was constantly verbally abused by other inmates inside the jail.

The judge was actually acting fully compliant to the law. According to University of Auckland senior law lecturer Scott Optican, the new Evidence Law, effective just from 1st August this year, requires that everyone must testify under the request of court, regardless any connection or relationship with the person(s) of the matter witness testifies for.

Otherwise the court has the power to put the witness into a jail for while under the name of contempt of court.

This sounds like a very stupid law. If my interpretation is right, technically speaking, a court can put a baby into jail, if that baby accidentally saw a crime while having sunbathing in her baby carriage, and ... she can’t say anything about it.

Don't tell me I'm trying to split hairs, I'm not sure but I think a baby and that 15 years old all qualify as the "minor" in law？

That Evidence Law has no regard to youth benefit and other extraordinary circumstances; at least, it should gives judges the right of discretion in individual cases.

This law has to be changed in some way otherwise this kind of cases will just keep happening.

The Simpsons Movie

I know it's bit too late, but I haven't had anytime to see it until yesterday, the semester break starts. It doesn't mean that all assignments will have a two weeks break as well.

However, I rewarded myself a field trip to theatre after Friday's fieldtrip to rubbish dump (I'm not joking).

The movie itself, frankly speaking, is not as good as I expected, but still exceptional. I particularly loved some of its references to politics. My favourate is President Schwarzenegger's saying "I was elected to lead, not to read" when 5 options to deal with environment disaster were presented to him.

And another good thing is, they finally revealed the "who voiced who" part. Wonder how a person can voice so many characters from Homer to Itchy.

Overall I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll definitely own it sometime in future.

Emmmmmmmm... This might be a good way to do it.

A universe to explore

Google Earth has just been updated early this week. Apart from new satillite images, Google added a new "sky view", like this:

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