WHEN he was first elected in 2008, Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, offered Taiwanese high hopes that the island’s economy would open a new chapter. He promised ground-breaking agreements with China to help end Taiwan’s growing economic marginalisation. At the time, Mr Ma’s image was of a clean technocrat able to rise above the cronyism and infighting of his party, the Kuomintang (KMT). He was a welcome contrast to his fiery and pro-independence predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, now in jail for corruption.
Five years on, and despite being handily re-elected ten months ago, much has changed. In particular, popular satisfaction with Mr Ma has plummeted, to a record low of 13%, according to the TVBS Poll Centre. The country appears to agree on one thing: Mr Ma is an ineffectual bumbler.
Ordinary people do not find their livelihoods improving. Salaries have stagnated for a decade. The most visible impact of more open ties with China, which include a free-trade agreement, has been property speculation in anticipation of a flood of mainland money. Housing in former working-class areas on the edge of Taipei, the capital, now costs up to 40 times the average annual wage of $15,400. The number of families below the poverty line has leapt. Labour activists have taken to pelting the presidential office with eggs.
Exports account for 70% of GDP. So some of Taiwan’s problems are down to the dismal state of rich-world economies. Yet Mr Ma’s leadership is also to blame. He has failed to paint a more hopeful future, with sometimes hard measures needed now. Worse, he frequently tweaks policies in response to opposition or media criticism. It suggests indecisiveness.
Public anger first arose in June, when Mr Ma raised the price of government-subsidised electricity. Few Taiwanese understood why, even though Taiwan’s state-owned power company loses billions. In the face of public outrage, Mr Ma postponed a second round of electricity price rises scheduled for December. They will now take place later next year.
People are also worried that a national pension scheme is on course for bankruptcy in less than two decades. Yet Mr Ma cannot bring himself to raise premiums sharply, because of the temporary unpopularity it risks. When Mr Ma does try to appeal to Taiwanese who make up the island’s broad political centre, it often backfires with his party’s core supporters. Following public grumbles that retired civil servants, teachers and ex-servicemen were a privileged group, the cabinet announced plans to cut more than $300m in year-end bonuses, affecting around 381,000. The trouble was, veterans are among the KMT’s most fervent backers. Now some threaten to take to the streets in protest and deprive the KMT of their votes until the plan is scrapped. Meanwhile, Mr Ma’s clean image has been sullied by the indictment of the cabinet secretary-general for graft.
Cracks are starting to grow in the KMT façade. Recently Sean Lien, a prominent politician, criticised Mr Ma’s economic policies, saying that any politician in office during this time of sluggish growth was at best a “master of a beggar clan”—implying a country of paupers.
But the next election is four years away, and presidential hopefuls will not try to oust or even outshine Mr Ma anytime soon. After all, they will not want to take responsibility for the country’s economic problems. Nothing suggests Mr Ma’s main policies will change (or that they should), but his credibility is draining by the day.
「52赫茲最寂寞鯨魚」的故事早在2006年起就在歐美媒體上流傳，不過到了2012年才在台灣媒體版面上場。根據觀測者美國Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution的Mary Ann Daher博士曾經接受的訪問指出，她們已經在北太平洋追蹤這條鯨魚長達12年之久，其鳴唱聲的頻率其實是51.75赫茲，而不是52赫茲。然而為什麼研究人員無法確認其身份的原因是，沒有人看過牠長什麼樣子，只仰賴水底記錄器收集到的聲音，確認有一條鯨魚的鳴唱聲與該地的其它鬚鯨，也就是藍鯨、大翅鯨與長鬚鯨都不一樣，因此研究人員還不確定牠的身份，但Mary Ann Daher博士認為「52赫茲鯨魚」不太可能是一個未被描述的新物種。
Another whale in the North Pacific has been tracked erery year since 1992. Its unique call, centred at 52 Hz, is unlike any known baleen whale vocalization. Perhaps it is a hybrid, or simple an individual blue or fin whale with some physiiology that gives it a higher voice. Either way, it conjures that image of a lonely animal calling and calling in a vast ocean without ever being acknowledged by another.
A selection of bigger beasts of all times. I compose 3d images with classic 2d drawing. You can see in ground, right to left, african elephant (actually, the bigger land beast) indricotherium (the bigger mammal of all times), TRex (one of biggest predators), Brachiosaurus (one of biggest dinosaurs) and human (the bigger stupid in earth). In top, blue whale (the bigger beast of all times) and quetzalcoatlus (the bigger flying)
然後, Jeremy Lin 就此展開 7 連勝傳奇, 並創下許多驚人的紀錄。其中, 最經典的是美國時間 2/14 情人節當天, 對多倫多暴龍一役, 最後致勝的三分球,
沒錯, 紐約尼克隊全場就只有領先最後的 0.5 秒, 卻贏得勝利!
空中英語教室的課程內容是用 Chinese-American 來形容 Jeremy Lin,
Among professional basketball players, Jeremy Lin's background is not typical. He graduated from Harvard University, which sends few players to the NBA, and is the only Chinese-American NBA player. But when you watch him on the court, there is no doubt that he belongs there.
不過在 2010 的美國人口普查中, 下面這個影片是宣導台裔美國人不要再填 Chinese 了, 鼓勵來自台灣的美國人, 勾選 Other-Asian, 然後填寫 Taiwanese, 用以和 Chinese 區別。
By ANNIE HUANG | Associated Press – Thu, Feb 16, 2012
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — With only a handful of foreign embassies, and a political leadership forced into international invisibility, it's not surprising that the 23 million people of Taiwan feel their island home doesn't always get the respect it deserves.
Perhaps that's why they're now embracing emerging New York Knicks star Jeremy Lin as one of their own, reveling in his basketball exploits with a passion rare for a place better known for its flat screen TVs and computer chips.
Lin was born and raised in the United States, and his maternal grandmother comes from China, but his parents spent their formative years in Taiwan, and that's enough for people here to see him as a true-blue son of the island.
The Harvard graduate's remarkably rapid rise from NBA obscurity to stardom appeals to the Taiwanese as embodying the virtues they say propelled their island from agricultural backwater to high-tech powerhouse: hard work, devotion to family and modesty.
"Jeremy Lin may not consider himself a Taiwanese, and his success has had nothing to do with Taiwan, but Taiwanese regard him as one of their own," said political scientist Liu Bi-rong of Taipei's Soochow University. "Now he has taken the world by storm, and they are proud and enthralled by what he has done."
Across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait, China too is claiming Lin as a native son, pointing to his grandmother's roots in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang as proof of his Chinese-ness.
He is being touted as the next big Chinese sports star after Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, whose retirement last year has tested the NBA's deep-seated popularity on the mainland.
China's pride of ownership is all too familiar to most Taiwanese, who are constantly bombarded by Beijing's assertions that they live in a political never-never land, lacking all the elementary accouterments of statehood.
The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and China claims the democratic island as its own, to be brought back into the fold by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary.
Watching Lin's latest performance against the Sacramento Kings at a Taipei sports bar Thursday morning, 22-year-old saleswoman Tsai Shu-fan dismissed China's Lin identification with a barely disguised sneer.
"He is a native of Changhua, where his parents came from," she said. "He is not a Chinese."
Adjusting to China's domineering posture has become something of a cottage industry on Taiwan, particularly since it lost its seat in the United Nations to Beijing in 1971, and virtually all of its diplomatic allies — including the United States — abandoned it for China 30 or 40 years ago.
Its political leaders now have nowhere to travel on official international visits, except to countries like Paraguay and Burkina Faso, two of the 23 nations around the world that still recognize it.
That kind of isolation has helped engender outsized reactions when local people make it big on the world stage. Director Ang Lee became a favorite son for the wall-to-wall acclaim he received when "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain" hit the silver screen. Former New York Yankees and current Washington Nationals pitcher Chien-ming Wang was commonly referred to on local television broadcasts as "Taiwan's Glory," and Yani Tseng, the No. 1 golfer on the LPGA Tour for the past year, has given her sport a huge boost on the island.
But only a month into helping transform the New York Knicks from underachieving losers into the NBA's hottest team, Lin looks set to leave the other Taiwanese icons trailing in the dust.
His Knicks games are broadcast not only on sports stations, but also on news channels, which devote talk shows to his exploits once the games are over.
Newspapers have totally forgotten about last month's presidential elections, apparently mindful that filling their pages with Linsanity is a far better bet for attracting readers.
And a English tutoring school is airing TV ads to teach viewers newly coined words like "Lincredible" and "Linternational," noting Lin's cascading global impact.
None of that surprises Tsai, the young saleswoman, who came to the sports bar Thursday wearing a dark blue hat emblazoned with the Chinese character for her new hero's name.
"Lin is the young Michael Jordan, and he has Taiwanese blood," she said. "I am so proud of him."
