International notes

* A good essay about how American films have given up portraying realistic heroes. (The writer doesn't count superheroes, which is fair enough.) Much of what he says makes sense. It's a reflection of the Western Zeitgeist, I suppose, but you also have to worry a bit about whether Hollywood leads as much as it reflects.

* Everyone knows it is coming, and the early signs are already there. It's the question of what to do with the huge number of Chinese males who are going to be left single with a lot of aggression left to burn. Some extracts:

In the 2020s, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zheng Zhenzhen, estimates in a People's Daily interview that 10 percent of Chinese men will be unable to find wives, which could have a huge impact on Chinese society....

Over the past decade, as the boys hit adolescence, the country's youth crime rate more than doubled. In December, Chinese Society of Juvenile Delinquency Research Deputy Secretary General Liu Guiming told a Beijing seminar that today's teens were committing crimes "without specific motives, often without forethought."...

Chinese authorities did not show much subtlety in its posters for the one child policy, apparently:

....the government is adopting a softer tone in its propaganda. The red characters painted on village walls throughout the countryside have evolved from the 1980s slogan YOU BEAT IT OUT! YOU CAN MAKE IT FALL OUT! YOU CAN ABORT IT! BUT YOU CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO IT! Now they read: IMPLEMENT FAMILY PLANNING FOR THE GOOD OF ALL CITIZENS. And, recently, the government added BOYS AND GIRLS ARE BOTH TREASURES. In 2003, it unveiled the Care For Girls program, which gives stipends to parents of girls in some provinces.

* Over in India, skin whitening products for women are big business, but a recent soap-opera style advertisement is annoying people. You can watch and read about it at The Independent.

* Still at The Independent, this article makes beavers sound so endearing I think we should try introducing them to Australia. (I guess they don't like the taste of eucalyptus trees, though.)

* Israeli schools are trying out the Bible in comic version, to encourage students who find the old Hebrew a bit of a problem. The example in the article looks a little in the style of Tintin to me.

* And finally, in Las Vegas, Michael Jackson looks even more pathetic on a shopping trip, if that's possible.