nekojima

I've heard uncensored 50 Cent & Eminem in the toy section of Japanese department stores (as well as elsewhere in the stores, but hearing in the toy section was most memorable). Many of the locals don't understand most of the lyrics, but liked the tune or beat.

Another anecdotal story would be in my classroom in 1980-90s Canada, where not all the students wrote those international testing exams, and of those that did, only a select few had their tests submitted by the school for grading. This was confirmed to the school's PTA (Parent Teacher Association) after concerns were raised about taking time from teaching for an exam that was not felt to help the students' learning.

Having discussed the issue with a senior education ministry official in Singapore, they pre-select which schools and students write the exam. Even if all students in those schools write the exam, not all exam scores are submitted. She did a study in China recently (not yet published), and there only elite urban schools are tested, primarily in Shanghai and Beijing, with a similar selection process.

I would much prefer my children to be taught in a middle-ranked Canadian school, than any I have so-far visited in Singapore or China, no matter at what level the students supposedly score on international tests.

Only seems worthwhile using and relying on online storage, if you use two or three completely separate services, all sync'ed. So if one goes down or disappears without notice, you have backups, and can add another completely independent service.

Though with bandwidth limits and limited online storage capacity (I've over 200GB of business files, plus 450,000 photos, over 1TB), still appears more cost effective and efficient to backup to a portable hard drive every few months anything new and store at a secondary secure location, with online storage only being used for short periods until that backup is made and a local drive copy of that backup used on a daily basis.

'It didn't help that the OP is a student from Venezuela which is not one of America's trading partners.'

A common misconception among Americans. Though understandable considering the state of diplomatic relations.

"The United States is Venezuela's most important trading partner. U.S. exports to Venezuela include machinery, organic chemicals, agricultural products, optical and medical instruments, autos and auto parts. Oil dominates U.S. imports from Venezuela, which is one of the top four suppliers of foreign oil to the United States. About 500 U.S. companies are represented in Venezuela. U.S. foreign direct investment in Venezuela is concentrated largely in the petroleum, manufacturing, and finance sectors."

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35766.htm

This site is the maximum you should pay, as its what travel agents & aggragators pull data from. I've regular found cheaper flights from onetravel.com, but I use the Matrix site to find flights (for years now), as all available flights & code-shares are usually on there. Some rare exceptions. I normally flight to/from or in Asia and any airline I care to fly, except for a few that only sell on their own website, are listed on the Matrix site.

Additional coverage:

http://gawker.com/5977130/could-you-be-the-adventurous-woman...

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/genforscher-georg... (in German)

Is that why when I got my own place, I never had any xmas presents under the tree? :-(

A second article and more examples:

Tencent’s WeChat comes under fire for international censorship practices

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/01/11/tencents-wechat-comes-...

Same road in Beijing, Jan 9 vs 12, showing difference in visible air quality.

http://twitpic.com/buocrx

How are those electric vehicles powered, by coal? Coal is the only cheap and viable short & medium term energy resource solution for China, and a substantial problem (though only not the only source) for causing the pollution currently around Beijing.

This is almost as good as Japan's very controversial 99%+ conviction rate, which is widely seen as abusive, with a high rate of innocent people forced to confess, for varied reasons.

This is a decades old paper, but still quite relevant for the reasons why the conviction rate is so high in Japan.

http://www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-01.JLS.jpncon.pdf

Article 9, along with Japan's reduced military spending and lack of a local Military Industrial Complex, or one that was substantially reduced in scope after the Second World War with focus redirected to consumer goods, is a significant reason why Japan was able to recover quickly after the war and to develop into the modern nation it has become.

What's missing from that news article, is the announcement on Friday of the ten naval patrol boats Japan will supply or lend to the Philippines to help protect against Chinese naval and fishing fleet incursions in local waters.

Even seemingly modern, developed countries didn't have indoor plumbing in the 1930s.

My parents grew up in houses on modern (for the time) housing estates in England in the 1950s/1960s without indoor plumbing. Though it was indoor in the sense that the shed was attached to the house out back, but the plumbing was not inside the house until the late 1960s.

The number of dwellings in Japan with flush toilets increased from 45.9% in 1978 to 83.0% in 1998.

* Statistics Bureau, Japan.

A much better series was the original BBC 'Survivors' from the mid-70s, then re-made a few years ago. Though it was a plague not power outage, the basis of society then does look at using mills and other early-industrial revolution technologies to help survival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(2008_TV_series)

Some of those countries in the bottom ten have quite large populations and land areas too. They are also desperately poor, with inadequate infrastructure, corrupt ineffectual governments, and lack a substantial civil society willing & able to put pressure on the government to implement the necessary developmental changes & reforms necessary for their country to develop and to bring up the necessary living standards.

Currency pledges to the IMF are not foreign aid.

Some ministers may have asked Britain to stop providing development assistance, but programs are still being coordinated with Indian ministries and assistance being delivered. At least according to the first link, the 280m pounds is hardly 'peanuts', considering it is targeted development aid that may well have a far greater impact on those it helps, for particular issues they are addressing, than the current government spending.

I understand your point. Change can come from the top down (government) or from bottom up (citizens). But if the middle ground (often the government/civil service in India) is stopping change or reform, pressure must be put on it. Usually this is from the top, as from the bottom, its usually only possible via a revolution, and that may not bring the changes the people who lead the revolution want (see Egypt as an example). To change mass opinion in India, not those demonstrating already, but billion plus unable or unwilling to, will be very tough. Many of them do not want or are unwilling to accept change of any kind.

Are these r/ references to Reddit? I had thought it was yet another new quirky unneeded programming language I had intentionally avoided to learn.

India still receives foreign aid, around 60m pounds from the UK alone this year. Though the UK's development aid will be phased out by 2015, when technical aid & assistance will replace development aid.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20265583

China has much higher levels of corruption than India, in terms of pure cash stolen and likely as a percentage of the economy too. Its just that in China the infrastructure is built (even if poorly & massively overpriced, with much hidden) and the pie from which to be stolen from is enlarged by state owned and controlled enterprises. While in India, the infrastructure is not built and the pie mostly stays the same size because no one wants to give up control, even if it means they could steal even more if the pie was bigger.

Police are civil servants under the direction and policies of ministries within the framework of government. The government is not just the political elite, rather its the civil service as well and that is who the majority of people deal with on a daily basis. If there isn't sufficient ministerial direction or aren't adequate agency policies in place and very importantly those policies are enforced, then the lower ranks of police (and other civil servants) will largely do as they please. This is why corruption, collusion and incompetence are so very tough to remove from much of India's civil service and society.

"It's not the government that rapes women, or shelters the rapists."

Police regularly try to pressure rape victims into marrying their rapists, or accepting a cash settlement. See below link to another case a few days ago. The problem in India is society's treatment of women and India is among the very worst places in the world for a girl or woman to live. Somalia and Afghanistan are often considered safer places for females to live than India. The level of unreported violence is staggering and shameful. Until this is widely accepted and acknowledged, by more than a small minority cross-section of Indian society, little will change in India.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9768614...

They might be old examples, but 'East Great Falls' was headed straight to video, until it was "accidentally" uploaded and a few months later, after much internet buzz, was released as 'American Pie'. Similarly, 'The Blair Witch Project' was successful at the box office because it too was uploaded "accidentally". Coincidentally, both of these movies' box office release were within weeks of each other and did far better than they perhaps normally would have, if it hadn't been for piracy. Piracy can create a buzz or social network effect when friends talk about movies, that is far more substantial than simply seeing a trailer. A limited amount of piracy does help movie studios and record labels, its just they don't really know how much is helpful, before it eats into their potential revenue or profits.

You're welcome. I saw the original post more for entertainment value, with perhaps some good criticism of it from HN'ers. I hadn't seen this posting, rather nutty & unhinged.

The list is rather short for Germany's allies, with Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

Aside from Finland already mentioned, there is Thailand, Iraq and San Marino, who allied with Germany, but did not sign the Tripartite Pact. San Marino declared war on the Allies in 1940, but the Allies didn't declare back. These four were generally not considered that bad in terms of atrocities.

There were other countries aligned with Germany, though that was the result of being puppet-states.

A number of professional footballers in the UK had their houses broken into during matches they were playing in, in the last two or three years. In some cases repeatedly, after new items were purchased to replace those stolen, the house was broken into again, during another match.

I'd guess home matches are best, because their wife/gf/partner will be more likely to go to the stadium, rather than for an away match, when their wife may not travel.

Wouldn't those sources of gasoline from atmospheric carbon dioxide still produce carbon emissions? While hydrogen used as a transportation fuel produces water.

Hydrogen can be produced from nuclear, as well as hydro power. If produced in off-peak times (at late night) in bulk it can be efficiently produced and then distributed to filling stations. With at-home production units the distribution system can be largely removed at the expense of slightly higher per unit cost and less efficiency than bulk.

Synthetic petroleum is produced from coal, oil and natural gas, carbon energy sources that don't help reduce environmental footprint.

"Eco-wise" the infrastructure to build and deploy solar and wind, including batteries & storage, is substantially far more un-environmentally friendly than the other main options that are environmentally friendly, which are nuclear and hydrogen. On almost any measure, nuclear power and hydrogen (which can be produced cheaply at off-peak times for vehicles) are the two key power sources we should be investing far more in, rather than the current damaging technologies being deployed on increasingly vast scales with little thought to the real environmental damage being created.

Simple things like renting a house/apartment in another town to live in for a week or a month before collecting, registering a new telephone number, perhaps now even signing up for new dummy email address, for folks to contact you, and never living there or using those after you win, will help to stay anonymous.

Not sure why people claim the money so quickly. I rarely check tickets I've bought within a month or two of the purchase date. I guess the thought of possibly winning is better than knowing that I wasted those few dollars on it, but also that nothing much would really change (other than a new laptop and camera).

Having read too many stories like this, if I do win a lottery, I will spend no more than 0.1-1% per year for the first five or ten years, with the remainder locked in a trust account with my financial adviser, with additional safe-guards so he or his staff can't redeem or abuse the funds. In large part I could do this and feel happy doing it, because I wouldn't feel the necessity to spend my way to happiness and $100k would be more than enough for my own & my family's expenses, including foreign travel, and for "scholarships" for my closest friends' children (most not going to uni for another ten years anyway).