Stock Car Racing and Speedway News of Ontario

had a tendency to nip me when

Susie, my mare, had a tendency to nip me when I tightened her girth.

“Slap her hard on the nose,” Rennie ordered, “and next time hold your left arm stiff up on her neck and she won’t turn her head.”

Tom Brown, her stallion, liked to rear high two or three times just out of the stable. Once when he did this I was horrified to see Rennie lean as far back as she could on the reins, until Tom was actually overbalanced and came toppling over backwards, whinnying and flailing. Rennie sprang dextrously out of the saddle and out of the way a second before eleven hundred pounds of horse hit the ground: she caught Tom’s reins before he was up, and in a few seconds, by soft talking, had him quiet.

“That’ll fix him,” she grinned.

But “It’s your own fault,” she told me when Susie once tried the same trick. “She knows you’re just learning. No need to flip her over; she’ll behave when you’ve learned to ride her a little more strongly.” Thank heaven for that, because if Rennie had told me to flip Susie over, my pride would have made me attempt it. I scared easily; in fact, I was extremely timid as a rule, but my vanity usually made this fact beside the point.

characteristics

From all this, one might innocently suppose that such a creature as postmodernism, with defined characteristics, is truly at large in our land. So I myself imagined when, in preparation for the Tübingen conference, and in response to being frequently labeled a postmodernist writer, I set about to learn what postmodernism is. I had a sense of déjà vu: About my very first published fiction, a 1950 undergraduate effort published in my university’s quarterly magazine, a graduate-student critic wrote: “Mr. Barth alters that modernist dictum, ‘the plain reader be damned’: He removes the adjective.” Could that, I wondered now, be postmodernism?

What I quickly discovered is that while some of the writers labeled as postmodernists, myself included, may happen to take the label with some seriousness, a principal activity of postmodernist critics (also called “metacritics” and “paracritics”), writing in postmodernist journals or speaking at postmodernist symposia, consists in disagreeing about what postmodernism is or ought to be, and thus about who should be admitted to the club — or clubbed into admission, depending upon the critic’s view of the phenomenon and of particular writers.

Spring Is Here

　　Today, look at the blue sky, hear the grass growing beneath your feet, inhale the scent of spring, let the fruits of the earth linger on your tongue, reach out and embrace those you love. Ask Spirit to awaken your awareness to the sacredness of your sensory perceptions.

　　What a miracle it is. No matter how long the winter, how hard the frost or how deep the snow, Nature triumphs. No season is awaited so eagerly or welcomed so warmly as spring…Each year I am astonished by the wealth of flowers the season gives us: the subtlety of the wild primroses and violets, the rich palette of crocus in the parks, tall soldier tulips and proud trumpeting daffodils and narcissi.

　　Picture this: The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of blue sky in it.

　　Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.
　　In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant,
　　it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out
　　and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.

Students excited about Expo, technology

The Expo exhibition in Shanghai yesterday welcomed more than 400 students from Shanghai Haihua Primary School.

Zhu Qin, president of the school, said the students are mainly in second to fifth grade. Before the tour, teachers asked them to search for some information on the Internet and made a brief introduction sheet for them.

ree e-file

The best thing in free e-file federal tax return is that you get confirmation from IRS about receiving your tax return. Also if your return is rejected you immediately receive a rejection notice within 24 hours of forwarding your return. The rejection notice will also guide you to fix the problems in your return so that it is acceptable.

Burger King steps up pace with six more outlets in Beijing

Fast food chain Burger King is planning to open six more restaurants in Beijing by June next year, as part of a major expansion in China.

The company, which has 25 outlets in the country, officially opened its first restaurant in downtown Beijing this week in Joy City in the Xidan area.

John Chidsey, chairman and chief executive of Burger King Holdings (BKC), who was in Beijing for the opening of what was the company’s 12,000th restaurant worldwide, said the group was aiming for fast growth.

“We intend to be on a similar scale to our competitors. Certainly a heck of a lot bigger than we are today, ” he said.

Burger King was a relative late entrant to China, not opening its first store until 2005.

KFC, owned by Yum!, which first came to China in 1987, has 2,000 outlets and McDonald’s, having made its debut here in 1992, recently celebrated its 1,000th store opening.

There was speculation earlier this year that McDonald’s had slowed down its expansion in China as a result of the economic downturn.

Chidsey said because Burger King was starting from a low base it had major scope for expansion regardless of economic conditions.

“When you are ahead in the market, any downturn in sales is going to hurt you very bad. If we were offered 10 suitable sites we would take them,” he said.

BKC’s global store development program has accelerated since the company, founded in 1954, was bought by a private equity concern in 2003 and then floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006.

Seventeen of the company’s current 25 China stores are company-owned so as to establish a Burger King business model for China but it intends to grow in future by finding franchise partners.

Its franchise partner in Beijing is Shenzhen-listed Beijing Mainstreets Investment Group Corporation (BMIG), whose major activity is land development.

Brian Li, chairman of BMIG, said his company was actively looking for upscale mall sites like the 200 sq m Joy City mall location, which can seat 110.

“We believe that high quality locations like this encourage people who come here to spread the word about the brand, ” he said.

“It is also difficult for our competitors to move into new developments like this since they have a number of stores in the area already and would just be cannibalizing their own customers.”

Chidsey said there is room for growth in the fast food market in China since eating at foreign branded outlets was no longer a luxury but part of an everyday life of an ever more affluent country.

“It might have been seen as a luxury 15 or 20 years ago but it is now the office club, where people from the office have their lunch,” he said.

Peter Tan, president of BKC Asia-Pacific, who previously held a similar position with McDonald’s, said the target market was people from their late-teens to 30.

“This group wants choice, freedom and the sense of being in control. The good thing about targeting this group is that younger people aspire to be in this age group as do older people who want to be young again,” he said.

Burger King has slightly tweaked its product range to Chinese tastes by introducing the Mala Whopper, a spicier version of its famous hamburger.

China, India register strong growth in online shopping: survey

Online shopping continues to be popular among internet users in Asia-Pacific with 89 percent of people who participated in a survey saying they had shopped online in the past 12 months, Visa said on Thursday.

According to the Visa eCommerce Consumer Monitor survey, in terms of quarter-on-quarter growth, when compared with other respondents, those from China and India registered the strongest increase in online shopping over the last six months.

Respondents from South Korea (97 percent), China and Japan (94 percent respectively) and Australia (89 percent) reported the largest number of online shoppers of the six key countries surveyed in the Visa eCommerce Consumer Monitor, with 2,380 online interviews made on behalf of Visa with internet users, namely those who access the internet at least once a week.

The most popular items to buy online in the past 12 months were clothes and shoes (55 percent), books (50 percent) and music downloads (49 percent).

The Monitor found that top reasons for online shopping are to be able to shop anytime (80 percent), compare prices and save money (79 percent), find and compare products easily (78 percent) and search for bargains (75 percent).

The Visa eCommerce Consumer Monitor survey was conducted from January to March 2009. Internet users aged 18 to 49 years from six territories (China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia and India) were interviewed to measure their online usage behavior.

Services trade marked as next big thing after crisis

China is aiming to cut its reliance on manufacturing and boost its services trade to facilitate domestic economic restructuring going into the post-crisis world market.

Trade in goods, which mainly generates from labor-intensive manufacturing industries and accounts for about 90 percent of the country’s total trade, has caused an imbalance in trade structure and hurt the country’s exports amid the economic slowdown, analysts said ahead of the Central Economic Work Conference.

Chen Mingqi, a director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said even though officials predict China’s exports of goods will rise 10 percent in 2010, he has his reservations.

“I agree China’s exports of goods will increase positively next year, partly due to the tiny base this year and China’s long-term competitive advantage. But in consideration of trade protectionism, shrinking expenses and consumer psychology, I hold a conservative viewpoint for the growth rate,” Chen said.

In the first 10 months of 2009, China’s exports slumped 20.5 percent year-on-year to $957 billion.

Imports decreased to $798 billion, down 19 percent compared to a year earlier, according to official data.

Meanwhile, exports of goods are facing escalating trade frictions.

A total of 19 nations and regions have initiated 88 trade-remedy probes against China in the first nine months, the Ministry of Commerce said.

“Exports generated from services sectors, especially capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive, won’t trigger trade conflicts,” Ni Yueju, a trade researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

To offset the declining exports and adjust its trade structure, Commerce Minister Chen Deming last week urged to promote the services trade and predicted China’s service imports would reach $1 trillion in the next five years.

Though China enjoys a trade surplus in goods, it suffers large trade deficit in services. In the first half of the year, China’s trade deficit in services increased fourfold to $16.7 billion, official figures show.

A low starting point also means vast room for development, said Xing Houyuan, a director with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation affiliated with the Ministry of Commerce.

Traditional service sectors, such as shipping, tourism and construction, make up the majority of China’s services trade, and the government vowed to foster emerging hi-tech service sectors, including telecommunications, software, and financial services.

Exports of some of the emerging sectors, like IT outsourcing, maintained a positive growth in the first half of this year despite the economic downturn.

Protectionism, yuan pressure unfair: Wen

Premier Wen Jiabao Monday rejected “unfair” calls from European countries for faster reform of China’s currency policies, despite lobbying from EU financial chiefs at the weekend.

“Some countries demand the yuan’s appreciation while practicing various trade protectionism against China. It’s unfair and actually limits China’s development,” Wen told reporters in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, were also at the press conference.

Wen’s unusually direct response followed a one-and -a-half hour summit between China and the EU, which has 27 member-nations. The summit ended with five agreements mainly on energy and environmental cooperation.

But it also ended without a breakthrough on issues that have brought stalemate between the sides, such as trade disputes and arms embargoes.

Wen said China will keep the yuan basically stable and carry out currency reform at its own, gradual pace.

A stable yuan is not only good for the Chinese economy but the world, Wen said.

The meeting took place against the backdrop of concern about the rising euro and the possibility it might derail the recovery in Europe, which imports heavily from China.

The yuan began gaining against major currencies after a set of exchange rate reforms were introduced in July 2005. After rising nearly 20 percent against the US dollar, it hovered around 6.83 to the US dollar for about a year. In the past month or so, the euro has risen to a 15-month high.

Euro Group President and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker joined other European leaders in lobbying China’s senior officials.

The Chinese officials explained that it was difficult to make a case for “immediate renminbi appreciation” in a country where 40 million people live on less than 1 U.S. dollar a day.

The failure of the EU appeal was expected because Europe was only thinking about itself, claimed Wu Baiyi, a European studies expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Zhao Junjie, Wu’s colleague, said that while China is not able to quickly change its currency policy, Beijing had made efforts in the past year to fill the EU trade gap.

“Actually, some of the goods bought by the dozen purchasing groups that China sent to the EU during the past year were bought only for the sake of the EU,” he said. “But the EU still wants more.”

Glenn Maguire, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg: “China will only adjust on its own terms and in its own time. It’s decided that now is not the time to do that.”

Despite lingering disputes, including trade protectionism and the EU’s ban on the transfer of technology to China, Wen Monday raised expectations for improved relations with Beijing’s largest trading partner.

“China and Europe walking together hand-in-hand will make the steps of humankind more steady, and that best illustrates the strategic significance of our ties,” said Wen.

Barroso and other EU leaders Monday also applauded fresh Chinese commitments on countering climate change.

Stanley Crossick, founding chairman of the European Policy Centre, said Europe will need to commit to lifting its arms embargo against China.

China: IAEA resolution aims at early resumption of dialogue, negotiation

China said a recent resolution on the Iran nuclear issue was aimed at early resumption of dialogue and negotiation, and urged the international community to work for this aim.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang made the remarks as commenting on the resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Nov. 27, which called for the “full cooperation” of Iran to clarify all outstanding issues involving its nuclear program in Vienna. China cast a “yes” vote on the resolution.

Stressing China’s position on the issue was consistent, Qin said China upheld to maintain the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, while standing for solutions through dialogue and negotiation. The solution should proceed for purpose of the peace and stability in the Middle East.

“Under the current situation, all sides should step up diplomatic efforts for a comprehensive, long-term and appropriate solution to Iran’s nuclear issue,” the spokesman said.

“Sanction is not the purpose in itself,” Qin said, expecting consensus reached in the talks on Iran in Geneva to be comprehensively implemented by relevant parties to maintain the trend for dialogue and negotiation.

On Oct. 1, in the talks between Iran and a UN-backed group of six nations, the United States, Britain, Russia, France, Germany and China in Geneva, Iran agreed in principle to ship most of its existing low-grade enriched uranium to Russia and France, where it would be processed into fuel rods with a purity of 20 percent.