Category: Fun

(Source: Yahoo Tech-ticker)

or may I add Chinese kids, for that matter. One reason the New Oriental (NYSE:EDU), the China based private education company which specialized in TOEFL, GRE, SAT, ACT, College and Graduate entrance exams, has been so successful.

Normally I don’t talk about politics or religion in my blog. But I was indeed excited by the John McCain interesting VP pick (last Friday) shortly following Barack Obama’s historical nomination last week. I am not talking just from gender or race point of view. I am talking about the excitment this election generates from the ordinary people. This noon when I was at lunch at “Jack in the Box”, I heard people talking about election.

I also noticed the intense emotional discussion on some of the Chinese bbs board. But I was not happy when I saw words like “McSame”, or more insulting ones like “Hussain”, “Osama” (to label Barack). Although I could not vote, I do have my own point of view, but I would not try to disparage someone just because I don’t agree with him/her. Also, I felt either president McCain or Obama will do better than president Bush, because they are centrist in heart, and they have a low bar for comparison.

There are lots of mis-information on the web, to smear the candidates from people with an agenda. I found this factcheck is a refreshing one because it lists the fact, and let voters to decide.

Yesterday I rided the DC-9 (Northwest Air) from MSP to STL. My seat is near the wing, and it was very noisy. So I did some search, and here is the wiki entry of DC-9. As I guessed, DC-9 is an old aircraft (30+ years old). Quote Wiki:

“The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 (initially known as the Douglas DC-9) is a twin-engine, single-aisle jet airliner. It was first manufactured in 1965 with its first flight later that year. The DC-9 was designed for frequent, short flights. The final DC-9 was delivered in October 1982.
……
Northwest Airlines operates a fleet of DC-9 aircraft, most of which are over 30 years old. With severe increases in fuel prices in the summer of 2008, Northwest Airlines finally began retiring its DC-9s, switching to Airbus A319s that are 27% more fuel efficient…”

The flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to St. Louis was only half full. I guess NWA could use a smaller plane to save some fuel, and noise.