Author: stlplace

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Life

Is western media biased?

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Well, yes or no. As with many things in life, there are honest (at least try to be honest) western media outlets, such as NPR and PBS; and there are some biased ones, mostly for profit media, such as CNN, and even WSJ which is a business newspaper. Why is that? The simple reason is the media has to please its audience (in the case of CNN, it’s US and western audience), to get viewership and the advertising dollar (which is not an easy thing esp. in this economy).

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video

Remembering July 5

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(Update July 9) A personal story written by NY Times reporter Edward Wong.

(Original) This is Sept. 11 for China. July 5, Urumqi (Capital city of Xinjiang, China), 9-11 style attack happened to innocent people walking on the street, students/workers on the way to home, shop owners attending their customers,… were beaten and some are even killed by some well organized terrorists. I don’t have all the details yet, but the following video from Youtube offers a glimpse of the situation. Warning: some scene are bloody, exercise caution/judgement when watching.

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Travel

Visit Chicago: III

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I would like to list some of the Chinese restaurants I visited in this trip (and in the past). I will also list some web sites which I think will be helpful to plan Chicago trip.

Chinese restaurant
Lao Sze Chuan (web site here): this is the first Chinese restaurant I visisted in Chicago (2001?). I waited for more than 30 minutes in a hot summer afternoon. The waiting line is much shorter nowadays because there are more authentic Chinese restaurants. It is located at China town. Some of the food (e.g., rabbit meat) are very spicy in my opinion. Get a map here.

Laoszechuan pic

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Travel

Visit Chicago: II

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We are back from Chicago. Visited the Premium mall (near Aurora) yesterday, and was quite impressed. This was my first trip to the Aurora mall, and I was surprised to see so many premium brands and shoppers (esp. the crowds at Coach store). Judging by the size of crowds in the mall, it seems the economy is doing fine. But yesterday, the unemployed number announced by the gov (470,000) exceeded the expectation again. The market tanked again, although I think it has more to do with the July 4th US holiday, people want to play safe in this long weekend.

PT Cruiser
I rent the car from Enterprise near my home, this is a small rental office to serve the Lou Fuze car dealership. I booked an “intermediate”, and they offered the PT Cruiser to me. This is one small mistake I made, I should have booked “midsize” or “standard”. Usually Enterprise has a free upgrade in airport locations, but not this small office, as matter of fact they have to get the PT Cruiser from another office. Initially I was a little uncomfortable about taking this little car to Chicago, but the PT Cruiser turns out to be very good, except one minor problem: there is no guard/screen for the trunk.

GPS

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Travel

Visit Chicago: I

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We came to the windy city yesterday, and today we visited quite a few places: Michigan Ave. (magnificent mile), Millennium Park, Art Institute (outside, no inside tour yet), Navy Pier, China Town. All with the 3 day CTA pass and CTA train/bus.

I did not totally forget about stock market yet. This noon when I was in Chicago Culture Center, I hooked up my Nokia 5800 with the Wifi network. Interestingly I saw Exelon (the utility company serves Chicago, also the company is trying to acquire NRG Energy) signs in couple places: the skybridge connects Millennium Park and Art Institute is sponsored by Exelon. Because I own NRG stock, and Exelon is in a proxy fight against current NRG board, I received both letters from NRG and Exelon. Not surprising I voted according to NRG board recommendation, and did nothing on Exelon letter. One thing I noticed is the proposed Exelon board candidate is not really qualified to run utilities companies, they could be the “friends of Exelon” board.

Network
Back to travel, we are staying at La Quinta Inn Schaumburg, most things are ok except this silly network (managed by LodgeNet, a Nasdaq listed company, ticker symbol LNET). One problem I encountered is Google map and Google finance don’t work all the time. It thinks I was doing something fishy and says “in next 10 minutes you will only have 56k speed”. It’s like punish a kid for doing something wrong. Pretty much the much publicized Green Dam project. One thing I am aware of is I am using Mac. But the behavior of network is annoying, to say the least.

GPS

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Travel

Visited Detroit this week

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I was in Detroit last Wed and Thur. When I was leaving the client site, I heard famous actress Fawcett died from cancer. Shortly after I came back, I heard from NPR that Michael Jackson passed away. That was a shocker. I remember watching a lot Michael Jackson’s MTV back in early 1990s, when I just graduated from college, and when the MTV was relatively new to China. I am not a music freek, but I liked the design of MTV and his sound. Not to mention his move.

Anyway, back to Detroit. Interestingly I think the first record company Michael Jackson signed was Motown, which was found in Detroit (Yahoo Answer). I visited Detroit in 1999 and 2000, to do presentation before car companies (big 3) for automobile related research project. It was in early March, and I remember it was very cold. But I had very nice dinners at Fish Bone (downtown?) and another Italian restaurant.

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Life video

Remembering Michael

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This Is It, the offiical Ad/Promo video of the scheduled London concert (YouTube link)

Beat it (YouTube).

More videos (powered by YouTube, complied by Trader1688).

Pictures: Michael Jackson Life and Times by Life Magazine.

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Shanghai Composite

Mr. Market turned face

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Some signs of the stock market is cracking:

1) The leaders such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) are retreating.

2) CIC is thinking about buying equities again, Renaissance Technologies is one option (last time CIC pulled trigger, it bought Blackstone pre-IPO at top).

3) Goldman Sach is selling. It sold a stake in ICBC recently.

4) Last but not least: US CEOs still pessimistic about economy.

Two leaders in this globe

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video

Ivan Seidenberg with Charlie Rose

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Ivan is the Chairman and CEO of Verizon. Verizon (with VodaFone) owns Verizon Wireless (VZ), the No. 2 wireless carrier in the US. VZ operates the nation’s most reliable network. Ian shared his thoughts on communication, wireless industry evolution, and healthcare (a topic in heated debate in the US capital these days).

The link to Charlie Rose interview here.

Categories
Investing

Eaton Corporation

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Eaton Corporation (Wiki entry; NYSE: ETN)

Secondary offering April 2008 (24x7wallst). They offered 17.5 millions of shares at $84, and the proceedings is about $1.43 billion.

Business Overview (diversified manufacturing)
Electricity power equipment; truck powertrain & fuel systems; aerospace fuel and hydraulics systems

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