December posts
One of the headlines on the front page of today's SCMP is Kevin Sinclair dies after long battle with cancer. John Diamond, another journalist who was killed by cancer, had something to say about the way that the disease is presented in this clichéd way by lazy journalists
Astonishing advice in Friday's SCMP - if you get junk mail, make an "unsubscribe" request to the message sender. That's the very last thing you want to do!
I like to think of myself as rational and logical. Sadly, the world is full of people who believe that all sorts of stupid things are true, and usually these untruths are not only repeated but they are reinforced by doctors, and other people we tend to believe. The Guardian reports on this (Heard the one about reading in dim light being bad for your eyes? It's just a myth).
There's a bizarre story on the front-page of the SCMP today about Lee Shau-kee's market predictions, complete with a lovely graph - that shows that all of Mr Lee's predictions have turned out to be, er, rubbish.
If you ask for a "doggy bag" at the end of your delicious Cantonese meal, the chances are that the waiter (or maybe one of the diners) will pick up a pair of chopsticks, turn them around, and use them to put the food into the take-away container.
OK, so you've probably avoided getting someone else's saliva on the food, but let's think about where the hands (that were holding the chopsticks) might have been.
No, on second thoughts, let's not.
Another few words of wisdom from my desk calendar, this time for the Rooster.
I see that my esteemed colleague Ulaca is recommending Jasmine (a Chinese restaurant in Festival Walk) to unsuspecting readers. I don't agree.
Slow news day?
I found this in the 'In Brief' section of today's SCMP:
Wasps sting six hikers
Six hikers from two separate groups were attacked by wasps in Tai Lam Country Park yesterday. They were stung on their heads and hands. Police said a group of three men and two women were hiking near Ho Pui Reservoir at about noon when the wasps suddenly appeared and stung them. At the same time, a group of nine hikers were also attacked by wasps.
Neither of the above
Business Week report that Blu-Ray may have the upper hand in its battle with HD-DVD. I hope this is all irrelevant. I don't want to pay HK$250 for a DVD, even if it's high-definition. Rather than wasting money on a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player you can buy a device that could be linked directly to a home network so that you can play DVDs, music and downloaded films on your TV, as well as recording TV to watch later. It seems like a no-brainer to me.
I see that Fumier is back, back, back. Same old nonsense, but this time the old cheapskate is on Blogger.
My worst fears about Graeme Souness, Joe Royle and Peter Reid turning up in the Premier League seem not to have been realized. On the contrary, we even had Derby seriously considering Paul Ince, which would have been an encouraging development - but they finally settled on Paul Jewell.
The spin cycle
Before Sunday's by-election, Lau Nai-keung wrote that Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee - backed by the pro-Beijing camp - can count on 140,000 vote "and a turnout of below 280,000 - or 47 per cent - would mean defeat for Anson Chan Fang On-sang, who has the backing of the pro-democracy camp. The logic is so simple that it almost defies further analysis". In fact, Regina Ip, somehow contrived to get only 137,550 votes. If we accept the figure of 140,000 "cast iron" votes for pro-Beijing candidates, she somehow managed to misplace 2,500 of them. Hardly a success story.
Honey and Lemon really does work
As a child, I was always taught that lemon and honey was a good remedy for coughs, sore throats and colds (or URTI as they know seem to be known). Big drug companies spend fortunes trying to persuade us to buy their various concoctions, and yet it seems that honey is as good, if not better, than the stuff they want to sell us
It's always interesting when 'science fiction' turns into reality ('Aggressive but safe' SUV wins robotic street race).
A high-profile by-election in which the two main candidates are former civil servants (Democracy woman wins HK poll as the BBC rather strangely puts it). How exciting is that? In other places it might be a TV or film star, or at least a big-name politician, but not in Hong Kong. No, we get two former civil servants, though admittedly both are very well-known.
Two for the price of one
Today is Rail Merger Day. The government has engineered a deal whereby the MTR (which used to be government-owned but is now a public company, albeit still controlled by the government), will operate the railway services and manage the property of the KCR (which is still government-owned). That means that all the rail services in Hong Kong are run by the MTR. Well, apart from the train that goes round the outside of Disneyland, I suppose.
posted by Chris @ Wednesday, December 26, 2007
