Tidbits of interesting news and thoughts

I stumbled across two interesting articles today. Let me start off with this one:

Olympic child singing star revealed as fake

Well, well, well. So much for being transparent and showing a positive image of China to the world. Oh, the young girl wasn't pretty enough, but her voice was okay, so we'll use her voice, but put a prettier girl on stage. One who's cuter, thinner, and has nicer teeth.

If I were the girl whose voice was used, but my face was not, I would be furious. The girl is seven years old, so she may not know how bad this is (it's like plagarism, I think). But, if I were the girl who just lip-synced, I would be ashamed. Once again, I have to say that I am just a bit ashamed of being Chinese. But hey, since Hong Kong, China was a separate entity from People's Republic of China in the opening ceremonies, I suppose that I could be less ashamed, right?

And now, for this one:

Spelling "truely atrosious," says academic

Just because teenagers are lazy and don't spell properly does not mean that we need to stoop to their level. In fact, if we do, then that would reverse the effects of Darwin. Darwin's a bit behind on his phasing out, I guess, so these idiot teens who are freaking lazy and don't learn how to spell, or click spell check, probably will be wiped off the face of the Earth.

I agree with the article. The rules are in place for a coherent system so that communication is easier. I think a language with fifteen (or more) alternate spellings of the same word would be very confusing. I remember hearing about this in my course at UQAM, but they were talking about this for French. I also don't agree with it, for the same reason as the coherent system.

This is similar to the fact that I am against simplified Chinese characters. It's not because I cannot read them, or the fact that they are not coherent (they are), it's just that Chinese characters stem from drawings in caves. By using simplified Chinese characters, we lose the history behind our characters, which is a rich part of our heritage.