Is western media biased?

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).

Nokia 5800 XM: video playback, game, bluetooth and podcast

I got to play more with my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (XM) phone in the weekend. The following are the things I tried.

1) Video playback: I found there are some Nokia sample videos and a .wmv video (transferred from my PC Windows media player). Both played without problem. However, when I copied some Apple Dev movie (mpeg-4 format?), it only plays the audio.

2) Game: the Bounce game comes with the phone is a bit challenging for me, as you may know I don’t play computer or smartphone game often.

DTV day, PBS and NPR

Today is DTV day, the analog TV will be turned off and the local TV stations will broadcast digital signals only. Go to DTV.gov for the government coupon Digital TV converter box and other information.

Local PBS station (KETC) is running short of funds recently, partly due to the recession, corporate underwriting and viewer donations declined quite a bit. Similar situation is facing KWMU, local NPR station. I am both a fan of PBS and NPR, the programs I paid attention to is Nightly Business News (NBR), and MarketPlace at NPR. The reasons I like them is: they are much better than those Mad Money, Fast Money and other programs on CNBC. I used to watch quite a bit Mad Money for entertainment, but unfortunately it influenced my thinking, from time to time. In the past year I still watch them, but with a much critical mind.

Response on Geithner Plan

Toxic asset plan, or Public Private Investment Partnership (PPIP).

Charile Rose
Hedge fund manager’s perspective: Daniel Alpert is a managing director of Westwood Captial and Thomas F Steyer is Co-Managing Partner of Farallon Capital Management (total about 22 mins)

Things more important than stocks

(Update May 13) I put two links about Sichuan earthquake on the top of middle side bar: one in Chinese; one in English.

Yesterday afternoon when I listened to NPR Melissa Block live report (click on listen: Melissa Block at a shattered school) from Chengdu/China, I was almost in tears. Melissa was in Chengdu for special report on what’s new in China, and was caught by the earquake.

Earthquake
By now you may have heard the 7.8 earthquake happened in China Si’chuan province. The Chinese goverment and its people are doing their best to rescue the people being buried under the rubbles. A few weeks ago we had a 5.2 earthquake happened near St. Louis (the epicenter is about 100 miles away from STL, news in English, in Chinese). But this 7.8 is at the famous Tangshan earthquake level (1976), in which 250,000 lives were lost.

When natural disaster like that happens, we human beings some times felt powerless. We also got opportunity take a deep breath, and ask ourselves, what is the most precious thing in life? I remember people asked this question after Sept. 11 world trader center incidents.

On the positive side, amid the recent China snow storm (before Chinese New Year), I read 13 Tangshan farmers volunteered to help restoring power in Hu’nan. Volunterism is still new in China, but very refreshing.

More later,