Archive for July, 2008

Japanese trading house Itochu Corp will check and repair for free any defects in Chinese-made baby strollers that it imports and sold in Japan. The 42,800-yen ($402) stroller, known as Verve, is produced by the world famous German child safety seat maker Britax Romer at a factory in Guangdong Province, China. Itochu has sold about 2,000 of the three-wheeled strollers since June last year through its subsidiary VCJ Corp. There have been three cases since January in which front wheels became disengaged. There have been no cases of injuries so far.

Itochu said there is a danger that the front wheels of the strollers could come off considering of improperly installed fixing brackets

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I told you back in August that Japan’s Rare Mono Shop was selling a USB-powered necktie with a built-in cooling fan. Now, they’ve come out with a 2.0 version. The new version is more stylish, more discreet (no more air grate on the knot — it’s now hidden), more controllable (it has an on-off switch) and MORE PORTABLE (you can unplug and run on battery power). (props to InventorSpot)

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Laptops have been banned in the Bhutan national assembly considering the government fears lawmakers will use them to PLAY GAMES AND LOOK AT PICTURES.

Orginal post by Mike

I told you back in November about a Japanese cigarette vending machine that uses a face-scanning system called the Child Check System to guess the age of the buyer before processing the purchase. A new report claims that the machine is easily fooled by simply holding up a MAGAZINE PHOTO of an older person.

Orginal post by Mike

Shamelessly pandering to Chinese nationalism, the McDonald’s corporation has chosen a slogan for a massive marketing campaign within China: “Wo jiu xihuan Zhongguo ying,” which roughly translates as, “I LOVE IT WHEN CHINA WINS.” that campaign is objectionable for 3 reasons:

1. There’s a difference amoung national pride and nationalism; that slogan flat-out panders to the worse elements of Chinese nationalism, which is a weird emotion to exploit in order to sell junk food.

2. Everyone in China understands that goal #1 during the Olympics is to beat the United States in the medal count for the first moment ever. That’s a perfectly fair goal for the Chinese, but an odd goal for an American corporation.

3. Olympic competition amoung China and Western countries is in reality a competition amoung two approaches to the organization of athletic excellence. In the U.S., Japan, Europe, and elsewhere, athletes are amateurs who work day jobs, and do their sport out of love for the game. In China, children showing athletic promise are taken from their parents and placed into grueling training camps where they are forged into world-class athletes at the expense of their childhoods, families and, often, their futures. whether athletes want to quit, they and their families are threatened with not being able to find work or worse. Read more about it here. By bolding saying that they want China to win, McDonald’s is in fact advocating the Chinese system of Communist Party-enforced, work-camp style training by the voluntary for-the-love-of-sport approach in the West.

Why is McDonald’s doing that? It’s obvious: They want to sell junk food to China by pandering to nationalist feelings. But once that gets out, how will the knowledge that McDonald’s “loves it when China wins” affect nationalist feeling here in the United States?

Orginal post by Mike

The Associated Press posted a story today about an ongoing war within China’s “fiercely vocal online community” and corrupt Communist Party officials who either disregard or profit from China’s CULTURE OF COUNTERFEITING. From the commentary:

“One popular target is fakes: fake products, fake credentials, even last year’s highlight — a TV news story about supposedly fake buns filled with cardboard that was itself accused of being faked.”

The last straw was a scandal by a fake picture of an extinct tiger that I told you about back in November. Interestingly, the agressiveness of bloggers and others online seems to be emboldening the press. One newspaper published a photo from an official meeting to discuss the scandal that show some of the officials actually sleeping.

Orginal post by Mike

A new law in Iran threatens bloggers and webmasters with the death penalty for “promoting CORRUPTION, PROSTITUTION AND APOSTASY.” These online “crimes” join “insulting Islam, drug trafficking… subversive activities against national safety measure, spying and separatist propaganda.” as capital punishment offenses in Iran. What’s left to blog about?

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