Last night's big gig at Zhongshan Soccer Stadium in Taipei was, conveniently, on a holiday to commemorate the 228 Incident. So, before everyone could get down to the serious business of enjoying British band Muse, there were a lot of speeches and films about whither-now Taiwan. The reward for staying to the end — after 11 hours of eight local and international acts — was a one-and-a-half hour performance from Matthew Bellamy and the lads. Ten thousand fans were inspired enough to do so, according to our sister paper The Liberty Times, which rated the show a big hit. It said Muse's set was a "special blend of baroque rock 'n' roll," citing Bellamy's background in classical music as inspirational.
Someone who didn't need a classical musical education is occasional singer, actress and model Lin Chi-ling (林志玲). Her 32-year-old 34D, 174cm assets and sweet smile were enough to get her where she is today. Last week Lin was named by Sina.com Web site as the hottest "middle-aged superwoman" on the planet. China and Hollywood's Gong Li (鞏俐) was second with 41 years and Hong Kong actress Athena Chu (朱茵), 34, was third.
Internet sites have been saying "Ice Cream" Lin was paid NT$1 million to hang from the arm of Terry Gou (郭台銘) at the Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman's recent year-end celebration (尾牙). TV personality Patty Hou (侯佩岑) fittingly ended up on Gou's other arm. Maybe Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) was piqued because he never managed to end up as the filling in a Hou-Lin sandwich, but the director savaged Gou in the Apple Daily. He lambasted Taiwan's richest man for spending so much on a year-end party rather than on projects for the disadvantaged. Perhaps Tsai was thinking of himself as his latest NT$30 million movie Black Eyes (黑眼圈) has not been that well received and Gou has been talking about financing films. Coincidence? We think not.
Speaking of movies, most of the local entertainment sections dropped local news in favor of Oscar stories the day after the ceremony. One of the biggest talking points was the announcer's gaffe that Best Director Martin Scorsese's The Departed was based on a Japanese movie, rather than the three-part masterpiece Infernal Affairs (無間道), from Hong Kong. Patriotic Taiwanese at the Apple Daily started frothing in ink saying how could the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confuse Chinese with Japanese? To be fair, the impeccable Scorsese did put the facts straight in his acceptance speech.
Pop Stop needs to keep an eye on TV star Sasa (斯容), aka Jennifer Sun, who has discovered a new activity called extreme cosmetic surgery. After getting a nose job at the end of 2006, Sasa is in South Korea recovering from a NT$700,000 operation that shaved off bone from cheek to chin. The shopping channel queen could not speak but this did not stop her from communicating with fans on her Web site: "Everything for me is OK now, and I think I will be better and better everyday." Pop Stop encourages readers to contact the Web site (blog.etmall.com.tw/blogs/jennifer_sun/default.aspx) and reassure Sasa she looks fine.
Google unveiled an artificial intelligence tool Wednesday that its scientists said would help unravel the mysteries of the human genome — and could one day lead to new treatments for diseases. The deep learning model AlphaGenome was hailed by outside researchers as a “breakthrough” that would let scientists study and even simulate the roots of difficult-to-treat genetic diseases. While the first complete map of the human genome in 2003 “gave us the book of life, reading it remained a challenge,” Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at Google DeepMind, told journalists. “We have the text,” he said, which is a sequence of
On a harsh winter afternoon last month, 2,000 protesters marched and chanted slogans such as “CCP out” and “Korea for Koreans” in Seoul’s popular Gangnam District. Participants — mostly students — wore caps printed with the Chinese characters for “exterminate communism” (滅共) and held banners reading “Heaven will destroy the Chinese Communist Party” (天滅中共). During the march, Park Jun-young, the leader of the protest organizer “Free University,” a conservative youth movement, who was on a hunger strike, collapsed after delivering a speech in sub-zero temperatures and was later hospitalized. Several protesters shaved their heads at the end of the demonstration. A
Every now and then, even hardcore hikers like to sleep in, leave the heavy gear at home and just enjoy a relaxed half-day stroll in the mountains: no cold, no steep uphills, no pressure to walk a certain distance in a day. In the winter, the mild climate and lower elevations of the forests in Taiwan’s far south offer a number of easy escapes like this. A prime example is the river above Mudan Reservoir (牡丹水庫): with shallow water, gentle current, abundant wildlife and a complete lack of tourists, this walk is accessible to nearly everyone but still feels quite remote.
In August of 1949 American journalist Darrell Berrigan toured occupied Formosa and on Aug. 13 published “Should We Grab Formosa?” in the Saturday Evening Post. Berrigan, cataloguing the numerous horrors of corruption and looting the occupying Republic of China (ROC) was inflicting on the locals, advocated outright annexation of Taiwan by the US. He contended the islanders would welcome that. Berrigan also observed that the islanders were planning another revolt, and wrote of their “island nationalism.” The US position on Taiwan was well known there, and islanders, he said, had told him of US official statements that Taiwan had not
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