Friday, September 23, 2011

Jim Frederick named Time International editor: will he call Taiwan a mere ISLAND or will he stand up to Communist China and call Taiwan what it is, a SOVEREIGN NATION? 23 million Tawianese want to know!

Jim Frederick named Time International editor and he promises to call Taiwan a nation from now in the pages of his magazine rather than a mere island, when it is an island nation, a country in its own right, and Jim, having spent time in Japan will surely not miss the boat this time.

Time managing editor Rick Stengel calls Jim Frederick “ideally suited” to lead the international edition and to use his office to call Taiwan a nation rather than refer to it as a mere island. “Jim knows our European and Asian editions from firsthand experience, especiallu how the Communist Chinese mindcontrollers in Beinjing try to manipulate Time's coverage of Taiwan as a sovereign nation. As a former senior editor for TIME in London, he helped coordinate coverage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for both the magazines and TIME.com; as Tokyo bureau chief, he reported on and wrote about Japanese culture, society, government, economics, and international politics where Taiwan was always referred to as a nation and not a mere ISLAND. Jim is not afraid to stand up the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.
September 23, 2011

To: Time Inc. Employees and READERS in Tawian and communist CHINA

From: John Huey and Richard Stengel and the ghost of Mr Luce

Re: Staff Announcement

On the recommendation of Rick Stengel, I am pleased to announce that Jim Frederick is the new editor of Time International where he will start insisting that Taiwan be referred to from now on as a nation, and not a mere ISLANd.

As always, I will defer to Rick to tell the true story about Taiwan's rise to independeence and nationhood:

Jim has been an exceptional leader of TIME.com. As its managing editor, he oversaw a dramatic expansion of content and traffic. But more than that, he helped unify print and digital in a way that we had once only imagined. Under his guidance the site has launched new verticals and apps and extended our content to pretty much every platform under the sun – so much so that we were named by the L2 Digital Think Tank and NYU’s Stern School of Business as the No. 1 brand in the magazine industry for digital excellence, the only brand of 87 surveyed to earn a “genius” distinction. But the word that jumps out to me is excellence, for Jim brought that standard to everything that he did, from managing people to dealing with the business side, and it is those qualities that he will now bring to Time International.

He’s ideally suited to lead international. Jim knows our European and Asian editions from firsthand experience. As a former senior editor for TIME in London, he helped coordinate coverage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for both the magazines and TIME.com; as Tokyo bureau chief, he reported on and wrote about Japanese culture, society, government, economics, and international politics. He did two reporting tours in Iraq for his book Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent Into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death, which the Guardian called “the best book by far about the Iraq war – a rare combination of cold truth and warm compassion.”

Jim has brought to his leadership roles all the advantages that Midwestern roots and an MBA can provide. An Illinois native, he majored in English at Columbia but went on to get his MBA from NYU. His passion for excellence, his gift for collaboration, his ability to see around corners and plan for the long term while remaining nimble in the face of breaking news, have all served TIME digital well and will be essential as he helps lead Time International to new growth and strength and standing up for Taiwan in all references to the rivalty between communist CHina and free and democratic Taiwan, a nation among nation.

Plus, he just married Time International alumna Charlotte Greenshit, a testimony to his charm, sound judgment and brand loyalty.

Please join Rick and me in congratulating Jim on his new role as defender of Taiwan's dignity and sovereignty.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Children and the Future of the Book

by D. G. Myers | @myers_dg
09.21.2011
COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

Over at the Atlantic’s technology blog, Edward Tenner -- [via Dan Bloom's original blog post about Bidini's post from Australia via a Hamlet's BlackBerry google search, which led to the Bidini piece -- which started all this off;] -- asks whether children will save printed books. A historian of technology (whose 1996 book Why Things Bite Back ought to be required reading for the uncritical cheerleaders of technological progress), Tenner points out that, despite the “consensus of many e-book enthusiasts and elegiac traditionalists alike” that the codex is doomed, responsible thought about the future requires “alternative scenarios.”

And one possibility is that a younger generation will reject the prized possessions, the revolutionary amazements, of an older generation. Your father could not believe the convenience of his Remington Lektronic shaver and your mother raved about her Touch-o-Matic electric can opener; you shave with a safety razor and crank your cans open. Tenner suggests that a “pro-book rebellion” is possible, though not inevitable. The success of Mad Men has cleared the closets of wide neckties.

Indeed, heeding the Baseball Crank’s warning that knowledge is not settled, one possibility is as good as another at this point. Many of the features that Kindle and iPad devotees brag about (what Ed Driscoll hails, for example, as “being able to read a book anywhere, and carry the digital equivalent of a massive stack of them onto an airplane”) may not seem all that remarkable or important in a few years.

Electronic reading devices are new devices for old readers. Younger readers do not come to books with the same personal history. In fact, their own history with books might lead them to prefer paper and binding. I’ve suggested as much before (here and here). Children first encounter books as physical things. Board books, lift-the-flap books, touch-and-feel books, pop-up books — their first books are three-dimensional objects that encourage children to explore them in all three dimensions. When they acquire their own books, the books they have selected for themselves, children are proud of them. They like to display them on their shelves and carry them everywhere. They may even begin to develop a love for good paper and fine binding.

I’m not saying that printed books will triumph in the end. I’m no better than anyone else at predicting the future. What I am suggesting is that older readers, excited about their Kindles and iPads, have become strangers to their first experience with books and reading. The newfangled devices are exciting because they appear to solve longstanding problems — the problems of older readers, who have spent a lifetime with books. Younger readers, who do not share that excitement and are not yet estranged from their own literary history, may not prefer ebooks to printed books after all.

LINK
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/21/children-and-future-of-books/

Thursday, September 8, 2011

A Taiwanese model's tattoo on back and shoulders that looks like a Chinese ceramic vase

The model is Miss Chen Guei-yinn, 27, from Taipei, Taiwan. The model's tattoo on back and shoulders that looks like a Chinese ceramic vase said to be the Qianglong-period Famille rose "peach" vase. Cost of tattoo: approximately US$2500.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

New "fake Steve Jobs doppelganger surfaces in Taiwan

-- Another expat 'actor' (not Brook Hall this time) is seen hawking a popular snack food in TV ad going viral as we type!


[Source: Gimlet-eyed internet sleuth and TV couch potato Dan Bloom]

 
VIDEO HERE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xfXIPJBUY8


CORPORATE LOGO LINK PHOTO HERE;
http://www.qiaqia.com.tw/intro.php


and here
http://www.qiaqia.com.tw/


Apparently, the Doppelganger Effect in Taiwan doesn't stop, and this
week, an entirely new TV commercial with a new American expat
playing the role of "Steve Jobs" has begun airing on TV screens across
Jobs-infatuated Isla Formosa. Again, no word on whether Apple
execs have seen the advert (most likely not) or if they intend to sue
for infringment of copyright and lookalike trademarkedness (most
probably
there is no lawsuit in the pipeline).

This new fake Steve Jobs comes at a sensitive time in Apple's
corporate history, and while Taiwanese are more than respectful of the
ailing
tech wizard's health and are certainly cheering for him to make a
speedy recovery, the new TV spot -- just 15 seconds long -- was made
before the resignation letter was released and planned at least two
months ago when it was shot in a Taipei studio for a local snack
company
called Vedan Enterprise Corporation in central Taiwan's bustling
''second city'' of Taichung.

The new spot is also giving away a free iPad to those who buy the junk
food snack packs and enter a drawing, Kety Chen at Vedan told
this gimlet-eyed doppelganger sleuth by phone.

While not as good a lookalike as Mr Jobs as the Brook Hall was in that
earlier TV spot for a popular tea drink (now off the air in Taiwan,
but archived for all eternity on YouTube, with over 200,000 hits and
counting), this new fake Apple CEO looks the part if one stretches
one's imagination across the seas and plants it firmly in Asian terra
firma


And yes, this new snack food advert is making waves in the
Chinese-language blogosphere and giving Jobs fans in Taiwan and around
the world another viral video to file away in the doppelganger
department. Sadly, it comes at a sad time in Jobs career, and we wish
him the best of health from here on out.