News That Stays News

Catching Ashley Madison January 5, 2011

From the AP and the New York Times (the whole article is reprinted below):

BEIJING (AP) — China’s exploding wealth has created a culture of secret mistresses and second wives. Now officials are putting marriage records online so lovers and spouses can check for cheaters.

State media on Wednesday said Beijing and Shanghai are among the first places to put marriage databases online this year. The plan is to have records for all of China online by 2015, though past efforts to do so were delayed.

Bigamy is illegal in China, and corruption inspectors with the ruling Communist Party have said several officials have been guilty. That includes the former head of the National Bureau of Statistics, Qiu Xiaohua. He was called a “vile social and political influence” and expelled from the party in 2007.

Video Dump January 4, 2011

Credits: The Daily Beast

Logic Puzzle January 3, 2011

There is an island upon which a tribe resides. The tribe consists of 1000 people, with various eye colours. Yet, their religion forbids them to know their own eye color, or even to discuss the topic; thus, each resident can (and does) see the eye colors of all other residents, but has no way of discovering his or her own (there are no reflective surfaces). If a tribesperson does discover his or her own eye color, then their religion compels them to commit ritual suicide at noon the following day in the village square for all to witness. All the tribespeople are highly logical and devout, and they all know that each other is also highly logical and devout (and they all know that they all know that each other is highly logical and devout, and so forth).

For the purposes of this logic puzzle, “highly logical” means that any conclusion that can logically deduced from the information and observations available to an islander, will automatically be known to that islander.

Of the 1000 islanders, it turns out that 100 of them have blue eyes and 900 of them have brown eyes, although the islanders are not initially aware of these statistics (each of them can of course only see 999 of the 1000 tribespeople).

One day, a blue-eyed foreigner visits to the island and wins the complete trust of the tribe.

One evening, he addresses the entire tribe to thank them for their hospitality.

However, not knowing the customs, the foreigner makes the mistake of mentioning eye color in his address, remarking “how unusual it is to see another blue-eyed person like myself in this region of the world”.

What effect, if anything, does this faux pas have on the tribe?

There are some hints and a heady discussion about this at Terence Tao’s blog.

Linked December 30, 2010

Two stories about American cars.

1. A Wire-inspired story of one murder in Detroit.

2. A profile of the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt.

Credits: David Brooks, The Browser

Chinese tourists December 29, 2010

The Economist has a story about what drives the Chinese to visit Europe. There is a fair deal of sneering at new money. One of the best observations is something that I’ve found true in my personal experience (ask my parents about it sometime):

Tourism is certainly not about discovering new food. A 2006 survey of Chinese coach travellers found that 46% had eaten “European” food only once, and 10% not at all, during holidays on the continent. Clients at Ansel Travel are typically offered foreign food once in each country: seafood in Paris, ham knuckle in Germany, pasta in Italy and so on. After that, “it’s Chinese all the way.” Many stay in suburban hotels and eat noodles.

Command and Conquer December 29, 2010

Glimpses of the remnants of China’s command economy in this NYT article about the business environment the car industry deals with there.

Key paragraphs:

Automakers have been struggling for years to keep up with demand in China, as sales have climbed at a pace never seen in a major auto market. The number of cars and light trucks sold in China was one-tenth of that in the United States in 2000. This year, sales in China have been more than 50 percent higher than in the depressed American market.

The result has been traffic jams in the largest Chinese cities, particularly Beijing. And that has elicited an unexpectedly strong response from policy makers.

The Beijing municipal authorities announced last week that they would cap the number of new car registrations at 240,000 a year, just a third of the sales pace this year.

The finance ministry announced separately this week that on Saturday it would restore the sales tax on cars with small-displacement engines to 10 percent, its level before the global downturn. (The tax had been at 5 percent in 2009 and 7.5 percent this year; through the downturn, the tax has remained as high as 40 percent for sport utility vehicles and sports cars with the most powerful engines.)

Ed Rendell: American Tough December 27, 2010

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell got pretty mad that the NFL moved a football game, on account of the snow. He threw in some racial stuff for good measure:

Rendell was rankled by the league’s decision to move the Philadelphia Eagles’ home game against the Minnesota Vikings from Sunday night to Tuesday evening.

The NFL cited the winter storm that wound up slamming most of the East Coast as the reason for the change, but elected to postpone the game before any snow had even accumulated. About a foot of snow fell on Philadelphia, though less than 5 inches was on the ground before the scheduled kickoff at 8:20 p.m. EST Sunday night.

Rendell viewed the NFL’s decision as a referendum on the toughness, or lack thereof, of the United States.

“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said. “I think we’ve become wussies.”

“We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

Sarah Palin Quiz December 27, 2010

The New Yorker has compiled a fun quiz about Ms. Palin, which you should take here. The Browser says you should be proud if you get more than 50%; I got 13 out of 19 and am duly proud. Let’s see if anyone can top it.

LINKED December 27, 2010

1. San Francisco engages in a bit of protectionism on the county level; at least 20% of contractors working on city projects will have to be from San Francisco county. 50% have to be local by 2017. Neighbors are unhappy but powerless.

2. Some owners of Border Collies have started to rent sheep so their bored dogs can fulfill their ancestral functions.

3. Civic Hybrids are starting to fail after three or four years of service. This occasions a detailed report on the state of hybrid and plug-in batteries.

4. A profile of Ford, and its turnaround.

Mistakes Were Made December 26, 2010

An inmate studied law in prison and managed to get himself out of prison after 15 years behind bars. The prosecutor and D.A.’s office don’t come off too well.