Re:The humans rights violations are irksome
on
China Enters Space
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· Score: 1
In the two nominally communist superpowers, we have countries which went from being relatively backwards little stumble-bums of history, to world-class superpowers, in the space of a few decade This doesn't exactly stand up to close scrutiny. The nations that kept on with Communism are back to bankrupt stumblebum status, and the one that is now shooting off rockets has adopted free market principles Another thing to bear in mind is that in the last 50 years the percentage of Chinese in severe poverty (ie $1/day or less at 1985 prices) has dropped from about 50% to about 20%. Thats a drop of several hundred million, and is probably the largest fall in poverty in history. Compare that with the capitalist governments in South America.
Well, English is widely spoken throughout Africa, in the former British Empire, and i think that eg. Shakespeare is of value anywhere. The site is perhaps too oriented towards Western literature - theres plenty of Islamic/Indian/Chinese literature is available out of copyright (as well as folt tales, mythology, etc). Actually, it would be very interesting to have a related project transcribing old textbooks, classics of science and the like. (I did notice that PG has the 1st million digits of 1/pi)
You could try the UK Open University. They have a sister branch in the US (http://www.open.edu) and many of their courses are highly rated by the UK govt. assessment agencies.
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In the two nominally communist superpowers, we have countries which went from being relatively backwards little stumble-bums of history, to world-class superpowers, in the space of a few decade This doesn't exactly stand up to close scrutiny. The nations that kept on with Communism are back to bankrupt stumblebum status, and the one that is now shooting off rockets has adopted free market principles Another thing to bear in mind is that in the last 50 years the percentage of Chinese in severe poverty (ie $1/day or less at 1985 prices) has dropped from about 50% to about 20%. Thats a drop of several hundred million, and is probably the largest fall in poverty in history. Compare that with the capitalist governments in South America.
Well, English is widely spoken throughout Africa, in the former British Empire, and i think that eg. Shakespeare is of value anywhere. The site is perhaps too oriented towards Western literature - theres plenty of Islamic/Indian/Chinese literature is available out of copyright (as well as folt tales, mythology, etc). Actually, it would be very interesting to have a related project transcribing old textbooks, classics of science and the like. (I did notice that PG has the 1st million digits of 1/pi)
You could try the UK Open University. They have a sister branch in the US (http://www.open.edu) and many of their courses are highly rated by the UK govt. assessment agencies.