My hometown is Wujin, Changzhou, the second city this post described. I lived there for almost 20 years. It has never been a ghost city as I known. It is always flourishing. If this place will be called ghost city, I don't know how you describe most United States cities.
Though most of time, I still use Chrome, yeah, most of time, because recently(about one or more years), Chrome crashes a lot and when it keep crashing in some pages, I have to use other, like Firefox, I plan to switch to Firefox as well. Chrome crashes everyday. That's really annoying. I am on Ubuntu 12.04.
As a Chinese, I agree with you. A lot of (let's say most of)Chinese people actually care more about making money than creating value for society. But, I think this is a short-term wave, especially starting from 1978. And in China, people need more money to establish safety of life since there are less social security and public welfare comparing to western countries. This could change when there are more social security program, more insurance, medical care. So, I don't think this is a "tremendous cultural problem".
I have my gall bladder removed half year ago. Feel very good now. I am glad to see this post. I don't think "gallbladder cleansing" is a good idea. One of reason is that the gall bladder keeps making stone, and the little stone in the gall bladder might drop into the bile duct, which cause more serious problem.
Agree. There is must be more abstract way to present ideas than text. In this way, programs are easier to understand and modification, and have less errors and bugs.
Agree. Texmacs is a good idea. Unfortunately it don't attract much attention, it is still not very mature as Vim or Emacs. I hope the community could pay attention to Texmacs.
Get paid a pretty decent stipend + health insurance?
Most Ph.D student got less than $2000/month before tax, even less than $1500/month and should pay for health insurance by themselves. OK, decent, how to define decent.