This recently published ranking is supposedly measures overall globalization, taken as some kind of composite of business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong were the top 5. Beijing made it at #12, and Shanghai at #20.

Shanghai’s highest ranked aspect was business activity, at #8， while in the other aspects it didn’t too well, which, at least by their standards, makes sense: Shanghai has attracted a certain creative class to it, both local and foreign, but it’s not like they really wield that much influence. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good creatives here, meaning painters and poets, ad industry people, filmmakers, musicians, etc. etc. but maybe in terms of GDP they aren’t amounting to much yet at least compared to New York, London, Chicago, LA, etc. Cultural experience has improved, with more festivals and biennales and international galleries opening up branches here. Rock stars don’t think it’s altogether that strange to insert a Shanghai or Beijing dates into their concert tours. But as far as cultural experience and political engagement, Shanghai is not going to do that well, for one, Beijing is going to wield more political clout for obvious reasons.

The next few pages present some different groupings. Open cities have a free press, open markets, easy access to info and tech, cultural opportunities: and of course you get NY, London, and Paris at the top there.

Lifestyle centers: where you enjoy life: Toronto and LA. As mentioned before, in terms of best cities to do business, Shanghai ranks 8th and Beijing 9th. A shout out to my bruthas in Taipei–you made it in the top 20 (#19). You guys could learn a thing or two from the communists about how to do business. Technorati Tags: london, beijing, politics, lifestyle, culture, business

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Technorati Tags: taiwan, china, ROC, politics, law, court, Ma Yingjiu, 馬英九， 趙小康

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Of course, you have to pay — from the China Post:

Taipei is now the world’s first large-scale wireless city, with wireless Internet access reaching up to 90 percent of its public spaces.WIFLY, a wireless service offered by Q-Ware Corp. under the commission of the Taipei City government, uses about 4,000 access points (APs) — by far the most comprehensive wireless service on the island. With the completion of the third phase of WIFLY’s setup, APs are now in place in many of the city’s suburban areas.

To ensure wide availability and high quality of the service, the city government has had the necessary equipment installed on all public facilities, such as street lamps, traffic signals, and public buildings.

As of this month, WIFLY is available in all MRT stations, city hospitals and public libraries, 826 7-11 convenience stores, 71 Starbucks coffee shops and major business districts like south of Minchuan East Road and Roosevelt Road, and west of Keelung Road and Tayiu Road, among others.

To access WIFLY, users may either sign up with the service or buy minutes, which are available for purchase at Starbucks, IS Coffee and the Taipei Arena. After subscribing to WIFLY, users will have a unique ID and password that allows them to access their service.

Here’s hoping that Google will make San Francisco into the first free wireless accessible city in the entire world.

[tags]Taiwan, wireless, technology, internet, Taipei, WIFLY[/tags]

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I finally got aroudn to watching this film. It was pretty funny, also enlightening in that we see a side of comedy and comics that we don’t often see– the kind that is willing to put things on the line for a highly improvisational, and highly dirty joke involving all manner of taboos and debauchery. It’s a bit of an inside joke for comics, something that they tell to each other, there’s a bit of competition and one upmanship involved, it’s a place where they can tell their own joke, “holding a mirror” up to themselves, putting together all the weird shit floating in their subconscious minds, slapping it haphazardly into this joke which some people call an anti-joke because the punchline is so anticlimactic.

Anyway, i found this ,site which has the South Park version plus a version told by Trey Parker alone.

There’s also this link where you can read other people’s version as well as submit your own!

[tags] humor, comedy, comics, aristocrats, joke, dirty, sex, movies, film [/tags]

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