Quebec - The most corrupt province (in Canada) - Macleans

Article from the Macleans magazine: Quebec: The most corrupt province (in Canada)

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Well, Quebec's politics is obviously pedestrian. Posses of politicians slink and siphon off sums and sums of public money. Look at what truthful services some public servants have rendered.

Is it a fantastic project to get Quebec politics clean? Or more cynically, is politics clean from money always just a phantom, in the human world?

Updated - Netflix has finally arrived in Canada!

(Image from http://bit.ly/axERTe)

Here's a piece of new news from NYT: Netflix Faces New Competition in Streaming.

For one thing, most U.S. companies have been fantastically sluggish coming to Canada. Is the Canadian market too small for them? You bet!

In addition, Google TV is noteworthy, for my money.

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My old post just few days ago:

Netflix has finally arrived in Canada! Here it comes: Netflix Canada - Unlimited TV Shows Online & Movies Online

Well. Netflix, an American giant business and a Johnny-come-lately into Canada, are sweepingly blasting the hitherto remaining phantasms of relatively inefficient video rental stores. Somewhat poignant, eh? I'm wondering if the phantom limbs of the Blockbuster video rental stores will sheerly rent games, in lieu of movies, in the forthcoming years, if not months.

博客來書籍館>IBM老總教你1500字溜英語(上)：跨國主管的英語反而最簡單(附mp3)

Introduction from the web: 博客來書籍館>IBM老總教你1500字溜英語(上)：跨國主管的英語反而最簡單(附mp3)

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Perhaps the Globish language that the French author preaches is sheerly a new watered-down and valueless version of the elegant English tongue, or perhaps it is surrogate English which

Books of The Times - The Human Behind the Heroic Pose - NYT

Article from NYT: Books of The Times; The Human Behind the Heroic Pose

Simon Bolivar used to have a fantastic dream of assembling the then largest country in the world by uniting the South America. He for sure failed and lamented, "America is ungovernable". How can a person distinguish realistic dreams from fantastic dreams? It's one of the hardest questions every human being ever faces.

The Greenroom » History Written By The Losers

An article from the web: The Greenroom » History Written By The Losers

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It's interesting to look at Obama, who's used to churning out cunning speeches, from the side of his enemies. Speaking of his management of the slippery U.S. economy, people're never going to know whether the assumed economic catastrophe without mammoth fiscal stimulus packages will be phantasmal or not. Or are they?

On a different note, I've been wondering if the whole world will regain their confidence in the economic U.S. It's probably just a fantastic project, if the United States of America can't get their loathed Wall Street straight.

In the end, for the majority of the American population, let's hope all's well that ends well.

Stratford-upon-Avon

(Image from http://bit.ly/ajMHZo)

Stratford-upon-Avon is Shakespearean all the way! It's marvelous that the matchless Shakespeare had been born in this seemingly pedestrian town.

Like someone once put it, "Shakespeare... familiarizes the wonderful". But not too many people nowadays read Shakespeare, to my knowledge. Is it fantastic to peruse Shakespeare in this modern era?

Switching from iPhone to Android

Here's an excerpt from Switching from iPhone to Android - Computerworld Blogs:

The iPad was a game-changer for me in my relationship to the iPhone, and not in a good way. Most of the things I used to do on the iPhone are now things I do in the iPad: Reading, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Web browser. The iPad has made the iPhone a lot less important in my life.

And it got me thinking. The fact that the iPhone with iOS is a pretty closed platform is just unmeet for the majority of the consumers population. That kind of systems means potential deep lock-in. I doubt that iPhone will ever grab a fantastic amount of market share, even sheerly in the developed world.

Curiously, I'm waiting to see the next moves of Nokia, which has become largely phantom in the U.S. and Canada. And, ah, there's Samsung, whose products I personally regard to be a little shoddy but have been extremely popular among consumers nevertheless.

Music video - New Slang - The Shins

Its lyrics is here.


Oh, I love The Shins. For your information, the song's been quite popular and received just well by a great many discerning music fans.

It's a blast from the past for me, isn't it? I for one hold it dear. Its lyrics are a little labyrinthine. Just the same, those're excellent English, for my money.

Music video - Cara Dillon - Bonny Bonny

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The song's lyrics

Beautiful English is showcased in Cara's lyrics.

Ah, what bliss! Just an exalting piece of music, lyrics, and singing, by Cara and her husband! I simply can't keep myself from being fond of it.

However, the video illustration uploaded by someone to YouTube isn't terribly tasteful, for my money.

On a different note, Ireland, the once poor country, has spawned so many poignantly wonderful creative singers such as U2, The Corrs, and Cara Dillon.

It's sad to see the particular nation's economic prospect, which had been rosy in the not so distant past, got blasted by its own folly and the current global recession.

Last but not least, sorry for my wordiness. :-)

Profoundly significant - Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers

Article from NYT: Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers

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Mark this, ladies and gentlemen, mark this heavy and taxing article.

Ah, this unfeeling world of business decision-making, this apathetic world of business cost-aversion. American and Canadian employees have been carrying the overbearing brunt of off-shoring

Well, pictures depicting colicky babies

These pictures are just vivid: http://bit.ly/dD5mWH

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Our daughter just had a colic and cry session, I suspect, this evening. And that sent us scrambling. Sigh...

我们从一个实际的例子来看英文有多重要 - Re - Leon Chua

Memristor 是 HP Lab 的革命性新产品。而 memristor 的理论奠基人则是 UC Berkeley 的蔡少棠教授。

让我们来对关于蔡少棠教授的 Wikipedia 的中文版和英文版来做一个比较：

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%94%A1%E5%B0%91%E5%A0%82

vs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_O._Chua


以信息的丰富程度和含金量来讲，中文版较之英文版相差何止以道里计！你我当知用心用功之所在。

An excerpt and my two cents - "But Old Man Stark looked at the Boss"

"But Old Man Stark looked at the Boss, and said, "I sorta reckined--I reckined you was gonna stay out here tonight." There was any trouble figuring out what he said, though. The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn't got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It's not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometimes goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium. Anyway, that is what I would have said back then, that evening."

--p.35, the novel "All the King's Men"

In the author's perception, this yearning for possession of one's children's life, as described in the paragraph, is distinct from love. And it is interesting to note that this distinction made by the author has never been stated in any Chinese film or article that I have encountered.

Pictures - Three sorts of bats

Sometimes I smart from the phenomenon that mastering short English words can be harder than long words.

I've taken notice that there're three sorts of bats. And each of them is popular.

I googled the pictures of "bat" for my benefit and found them somewhat interesting.




A bat in the night






Baseball bats






Cricket bats

Eureka! I have discovered a top-notch novel which I like to read through - "All the King's Men"

In this world, who doesn't like reading groovy novels and having a good old time? And luckily, one nice way to advance a person's English language skills is to peruse fine novels. So in this holiday season, I set out to look for some worthwhile fictions to pour down into my brain. The famous 'David Copperfield' or 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'? I tried but soon concluded they were too dull for me. Perhaps that's because the lives of the protagonists were not immediately relevant to my own life and so the two books couldn't rouse my interest.

Hmm... Then what could I do? I turned to the All-Time 100 Best Novels list, which was compiled by the Time magazine, in order to dig out a fiction that I'd like to invest time to read. Finally I seemed to have observed one--'All the King's Men', by Robert Penn Warren. Then I borrowed a copy of it from a library and started to read through it. My typical and favorite location for the reading has been the various coffee shops, which are actually not so various from each other sometimes, in Montreal.

You can take a peek at the gist of this novel and some customer reviews on it here:
http://www.amazon.com/All-Kings-Robert-Penn-Warren/dp/0156004801

第一次到我的博客看哪里？

英语专家如是说 -- 学英语就得查词典



double_take recommends: 两本权威的在线英英字典



交美国朋友?



感悟时事英语 ——美英报刊导读读后



英语专家如是说--英语学习的误区
http://alexincloud.blogspot.com/200...og-post_28.html



转: 我混吃等死的加拿大生活和割舍不断的中国情结
http://alexincloud.blogspot.com/2008/06/article.html



香港起码有一半人口,为学英文而痛苦了二十年
http://alexincloud.blogspot.com/200...og-post_18.html



(My own notes): Re: 与时俱进 & 張忠謀先生對學習的看法
http://alexincloud.blogspot.com/200...y-notes-re.html



所謂「國際觀」，就是在這種不斷的漣漪「波及」中逐漸累積見識



double_take recommends: FAQ: What are (free) podcasts?


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Shout-out: 我要无限期停止这个博客

I've decided to discontinue this blog indefinitely, because it seemed to me that there are not enough persons that care about having these kinds of information available while on the other hand, blogging takes me time after all.

If you, I mean you, one of the visitors, like this blog and would like me to resume it in a similar way or in some other more user-friendly fashion, please kindly let me know by leaving your thoughts or comments below, preferably in Chinese if you can. Thank you for your attention.


--Alex Wang

News stories: Electric cars now allowed on some Quebec roads; etc.

Electric cars now allowed on some Quebec roads
Low-speed electric cars are now allowed on some Quebec roads, thanks to a provincial pilot project testing the silent, fuel-efficient vehicles.
The Quebec government pilot project makes room on some roads for electric cars as of Thursday, as long as the plug-in vehicles follow certain rules.
Vehicles produced by two Canadian companies – Nemo, based in Quebec, and Zenn, headquartered in Toronto – can now operate on Quebec roads with posted speed limits less than 50 km/h.



Media host, software developer Les Crane dies at 74
Radio host and one-time Johnny Carson talk show rival Les Crane, who found later success as a software developer and publisher, has died at the age of 74.



New RIM market pitch: BlackBerry's not just for business

Pictures - Capsules

Medicine capsules






The stuff in some capsules






Well, an angry eye candy in his Capsule Corp. shirt

News story: Mamma Mia!

News about Britain

Mamma Mia!

Stars of the film meet members of the band ABBA

The ever so-beloved West End musical Mamma Mia! has finally been taken from the stage to the silver screen.

The film is based on the songs of legendary Swedish pop band ABBA and is an adaptation of the musical of the same name.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/britain/080715_mamma_mia.shtml