Undead Astronauts

I came across this article on internet use in China. There are a lot of interesting points made by the article, but one that stood out to me was how and why Twitter – and the inevitable Twitter-like clones in China – is not allowed by the Chinese government. This might seem obvious, since China censors so much already on the internet… but Twitter is different from say Blogger or YouTube because it’s so akin to instant messaging, in my mind at least, which everyone and their mother uses in China. Anyways, the link to the article is here.

(sorry, link fixed now hopefully)

2009 SAT scores have been tabulated and the wsj summarized the results (hat tip to halfsigma).

Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.

Many observers Tuesday viewed the flat results of recent years as discouraging in light of a more than 25-year effort to improve U.S. education. “This is a nearly unrelenting tale of woe and disappointment,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “If there’s any good news here, I can’t find it.”

au contraire mr. finn, but there is good news…

Asian-American students showed the most dramatic gains. In math they scored an average of 587 — 72 points better than the general population. Since 2008, their average math score has climbed six points. (more…)

Yet another sad story about young people in China being addicted to games. This one is much more bizarre:

Deng Fei stood by his son while crying his heart out. He was very sorry: “We sent him over there to quit his addiction to the Internet. We never imagined that we were sending our son to the guillotine!”

Rest of the article here.

An insightful article on the demographics of twitter.

Apparently the Chinese have no qualms using IKEA’s resources for what they are:

Beijing loves IKEA — but not for shopping

This sounds like a potential premise for a zombie video game…

Government health officials are mobilizing to launch a massive swine flu vaccination campaign this fall that is unprecedented in its scope — and in the potential for complications…

More here.

Interesting story featured on ChinaSmack.com:

My little brother has left my home for four months already – because he is an Internet addict.

My brother was always an obedient kid, but started going on the Internet constantly in college because of video games: Journey to the West (a game in China developed by NetEase), Legend of the Swordsman 11, and World of Warcraft…

rest of article here.