sillyness on China Daily

China Daily is China's top English language newspaper. I've been reading it regularly ever since I was in China two years ago, and generally find some of its content to be informative and interesting. But they also publish some rather silly, and tawdry, content, such as this "article": "Who has Hollywood's best breasts?"

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/showbiz/2008-07/03/content_6817511.htm

Kind of funny, because I don't think you'd find anything like this (at least, this blatant, and with such a tabloidesque title) in any respectable American newspaper.

The comments page for the "article" is full of ridicule, and a bit more searching led me to an interesting blog by an Australian woman who worked as an "English polisher" for China Daily for two months in 2005 and used her blog to report on what goes on behind the scenes at a state-owned media outlet like this:

http://leakingstatesecrets.blogspot.com/

It's a pretty interesting blog, but I have some complaints. She seems to think awfully highly of herself and her disdain for many aspects of China sits close to the surface of her commentary. Also, I think things have changes somewhat from 2005. The recent response to the Sichuan earthquake has been observed as a watershed moment in the freedom of the press in China, with far more open and honest coverage, and less attempts to "cover up" the negative sides of the story with "propaganda".

China reopens cross-Straits flights; Flight attendant fashion show

Flights between mainland China and Taiwan begin this weekend. This is truly historic.
China Daily is celebrating the occasion by featuring a fashion show of flight attendants' new all-silk outfits on cross-straits flights (demonstrating that they are marketing this new flight route to a pretty upscale crowd...and probably trying to impress the Taiwanese). China Daily really loves to show pictures in slide show format.






Text from caption:

Four flight attendants from China Eastern Airlines model new colorful uniforms, which were unveiled Tuesday. The uniform, made from a traditional southern Chinese silk called yunjin, cost about 10,000 yuan each. This traditional uniform will be worn for charter flights from the Chinese mainland toTaipei, which begin on July 4.[Xinhua]

Google earth at night

Google earth has tons of amazing new features.
One of them is located within a NASA layer. It shows Earth as seen at night, with urban areas illuminated by their night lights.
It's a neat way to observe urbanization and development across Earth's surface.
You can also trace a lot of interesting patterns and man-made infrastructure, such as roads. You can clearly see how development clusters along roads radiating out of major cities.

A few screenshots:

North America


Continental United States



Eastern Seaboard of the United States


South America


Europe


Africa


Arabian Peninsula


Arab Gulf states. Notice the bright lines across the United Arab Emirates. These must be highways that are highly illuminated, even moreso than highways in the United States. What a waste of energy!


Egypt and Israel


China


Eastern China


Indian Subcontinent


Pakistan and Northern India (see how concentrated Pakistan's developed areas are in the Indus River Valley)


Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh in the Indian Himalaya. This is where I did field research for my thesis. Even the remote Himalayan settlement of Leh, Ladakh shows up in this night satellite image.


I noticed a bright cluster of lights in Siberia, where there are no major cities.
Upon closer inspection I realized that what I was seeing was oil drilling sites (or natural gas?), not city lights.

We start off with a small-scale map of Siberia, where you can see the lights in the north center.


Zoom in on the lights


Then I turned off the night lights layer to see the area during regular light. A landscape of tundra and lakes dotted with oil wells.


Close-up of one of the oil wells