blog survey

More than 30 people in the Calgary region have been named as neo-Nazis by a group posting pictures and personal information on an internet blog.
Jason Devine said he's been exposing the identities of Calgary's neo-Nazis for almost six years.
The 26-year-old student used to put up pictures of suspected white supremacists on the streets. Now, he and other members of Anti-Racist Action Calgary use an internet blog.
"If you think that Adolf Hitler is some cool guy, I think people deserve to hear about that," says Devine. The group combs through various websites to find the people they consider Nazis and posts their information to a blog. It shows pictures, e-mail addresses and links to their profiles on sites like Nexopia.
Whiteboy, German Pride and Pitbull are some of the aliases named on the list.
One 17-year-old, who did not reveal his name for fear of retaliation, calls it discrimination against skinheads.
"There's Nazi skinheads and there's SHARP skinheads. SHARP stands for Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. I associate with both sides," he said.
There may also be legal issues.
Martin Kratz, who teaches internet law at York University, said freedom of speech rights are balanced by other laws.
"The law of defamation is quite easy. One should not promote false, injurious statements about other people to the public."
Members of Anti-Racist Action say they've been threatened many times before, both legally and physically, and they're not about to take down their website.

....W..T.....F

Ring Ring"I picked up the phone and said our greeting as usual,the guy on the line asked:"David,is your name spelt D-A-V-I-D?"I said:"Yes""But it supposed to be a boy's name."he said,"Coz my Chinese name is also a boy's name."I replied.Then he continued to ask"what's your Chinese name?""I don't need to tell you,right."I answered him without thinking anything,coz i thought he's a weird guy who wanted to flirt somebody else and I really wanted to hang up the phone."Hold on,pls"coz i need to serve the clinets and answered student's question.When i turned to him again,he said"that's really not polite when you're talking to people like that...blar blar blar"Come on, who the hell you think you are,idiot.I should've hung up the phone,how dare you are to teach me a lesson?I'm a professional CSA and I'm the best of the team.I don't care what you're gonna do even you'll report to my boss.After he finished his speech,I calmed myself down and said"thank you for your advice."then transfered the line to the person who he really wanted to speak to.Gee,he spoiled my good mood.

Barbarians at the Gates moive

There is nothing wrong, in principle, with the sensitive adaptation of a historic building for fresh purposes, but the news that parts of Beijing’s Summer Palace are to be turned into a luxury hotel and club is rather distressing. There can be no doubt that Aman Resorts, the company behind the redevelopment, will handle the refurbishment with great style, but that is hardly the point. The project itself is in questionable taste.The Summer Palace was sacked by foreign troops in 1860, and again in 1900. With its partial conversion into extravagantly priced facilities for international tourists and executives, foreigners will once again be putting their feet up in its historically resonant surrounds. Chinese people—the vast majority of whom will be financially excluded—will once again be looking on forlornly. I wonder if the British authorities would give permission for a wing of Windsor Palace, or a part of the Tower of London, to be turned into a Ritz-Carlton.China’s most globally recognized monument, the Great Wall, has already lost its mystique because multinational companies are allowed to use it for any lame stunt their marketing teams care to come up with. Should Fendi, to take one recent example, really be allowed to commit the vulgarity of staging a fashion show on the Great Wall’s ramparts? Why must we endure the dreadful sight of the elderly Karl Lagerfeld tottering along China’s heritage showpiece, air-kissing Eurofops and B-list celebrities? The commercialization of the Great Wall has already raised issues that anyone interested in China’s monuments should be thinking about. But in the meantime, the Summer Palace has been invaded. Again.

Final round

I always feel nervous after hearing " Final round" when I play fighting games because it can judge me whether win the game or not. Similarly, final exams just the final round in our program. If I fail in the final, I will lose half of the course. We just finished the writing exam, which is the most difficult one. I mean, for me. However, I think I did not so bad as I thought. The topic I chose was to describe advantages of one kind of energy and I wrote nuclear power because basically I knew how it works. After the exam, I found nuclear energy is not only a kind of useful power nowadays, but also a good friend of many EAP 3 students cuz I noticed that most of students who chose this topic wrote about nuclear energy. In addition, none of them feel bad about writing but they thought they did a pretty good job. Yeah, glad to hear that.Well, I think because of approaching the final, everybody's skills, which include both physical and mental, have been suddenly improved. Not far before the final, we had a wonderful party. We had food, fruit and all kinds of stuff. We kept talking and eating for hours. At.T first, I thought the food were too much to eat; on contrary, the food almost gone after the party because some people ate really fast and too much. Scott was a good example. When I was extremely full, he was still looking for something good to eat. LOL!Anyways, exams haven't been finished and we shouldn't be relaxed. More challenge are still waiting for us.

^^

It is almost the end of the semester. Yesterday, I talked with my roommates Becky and Sandra in my home for an hour about the knowledge we have learned from EAP program. All of us agreed that what we have learned is useful in our future in university. However, there were some problems. Although we heard fluent English from other students and native speakers, it was difficult to recognize which words are academic vocabularies and which word is slang. As a result, we had to pay more attention to avoid using informal words when doing writing assignments. Also, we still met another serious problem in the process of learning grammar, which was some definition and information in the textbook were too general. For example, when we need to tell about the structures and the usages of phrases, the simple introduction caused puzzles to us because sometimes we could not distinguish which part of a complex sentence should be a phrase. Therefore, I had to point out the subjects and objects and find how they were used. While discussing the varied sentence structures in the book, I found that it was a process of recombining my knowledge about this part of grammar. After this speaking experience, I believe that all of us benefited from exchanging learning experiences. For me, I have learned how to express my opinions in English much better than before. I know I need this kind of activity to get more practice and build more confidence.

mahjong

Do you know mahjong? Do you like playing mahjong? Mahjong is a famous Chinese traditional game, which every Chinese knew it when they were young, and it needs two to four people to play. Also, different province has different manner to play, but they all very interesting for me. In fact, I like playing mahjong. Therefore, after I moved to my new home, I bought a set of mahjong. Mahjong is like card, but the way to win is totally different. It needs you more attention in the game. It not only has fun, but it practices my brain. When I was free,I would call my friends to come to my home to play mahjong. They all like playing it. Most of time, we forgot the time and played until midnight. In apart of it, we did not feel tired and even want to continue. I though every people who likes playing mahjong would be like me, especially Chinese. In China, there are several kinds of movies that are about mahjong. they described that the person who won a mahjong game was very lucky and intelligent. Therefore, you can know the influence of mahjong is quiet big and why many people like mahjong. In the end, if you do not know majong, but you want to play it. You can ask me to teach you. I will be happy to do it.

Art Market Vultures Descend

The ability of an art dealer to profit from the sale of an artist’s work is a privilege, not a right, yet many dealers seem to conduct their business on the assumption that an artist should be grateful that they are getting any money for their work at all. Unfortunately, the exploitation of artists by art market professionals is not uncommon and seems to have become an almost inevitable and accepted result of the art market boom.
Although I am used to hearing stories of the underhand and questionable tactics used by dealers to make a profit I was particularly saddened by one particular case that I was made privy to the other day by a very influential art market personality. The case involves a 93 year old painter from the UK (who shall remain anonymous) who had moderate commercial success as an artist but did not quite reach the dizzying heights of fame that most artists aim for. What ever the reason this 93 year old lady did not make it to the big league, it was seemingly not due to a lack of talent or skill because dealers are starting to take an interest in her work. Why are dealers starting to take an interest in this artist’s work I hear you ask, well, it is because the art market is predicting that she will not have long to live.
It is not uncommon for artists to become famous or at least more famous upon their death primarily because the creation of work by the artist stops rendering the work that they did produce more rare and desirable. The sad truth is that many people don’t realise or appreciate the value of an artists work until the artist is gone. What makes the case of this 93 year old artist so disturbing is that dealers are actually preparing to profit from the artist’s death before it has even happened. Dealers and art market professionals are predicting that the value of this ladies paintings will increase significantly in value and desirability upon her death and are buying up all her works in preparation. The worst thing about this case is that because the works are being bought from the secondary market the artist is really not benefiting from the increased interest in her work, and by the looks of it, won’t ever benefit. It makes me sad to think that people would exploit an elderly artist in this way but it also doesn’t surprise me that things like this are going on.