China maps of of "TAIWAN ISLAND" accepted in USA by editors of New York Times and Washington Post as propaganda from Beijing

MAP for reference and CLICK TO ENLARGE MAP to see small print
http://nuclearrisk.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/imgp3749s.jpg





A small insert map said it all. When the "tussle" -- as one Western

news agency put it -- between

China, Japan and Taiwan over ownership of islands in the East China

Sea spilled over into the prime display advertising real estate of the

New York Times and the Washington Post on September 28 when the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP) took out expensive double-page ads in both

papers, there was an important detail that almost

every news outlet in Taiwan, Japan and the U.S. missed.



On the small inset map accompanying both ads, the CCP cartographers

put China and Taiwan in the same color code, implying that Taiwan was

part of the People's Republic of China -- and worse, the CCP map

accepted as legitimate by the New York Times advertising department had

the words "Taiwan Island" printed over the sovereign nation of Taiwan.

And in small print below the map, an attentive reader could see the

following text which was credited as being sourced from the PRC's

State Oceanic Administration: "[The] Diaoyu Islands [釣魚台] ... are

located to the northeast of China's Taiwan Island ...and are

affiliated to the Taiwan Island."



Say that again? China administers an island called "Taiwan Island?

,And these Diaoyu islands are "affiliated" to the "Taiwan Island"? And

both the Times and the Post accepted this map text as a paid ad in

their pages? The directors of the advertising departments of both

papers should be ashamed of themselves for allowing a bully ad like

that to appear in their pages without any fact checking or editing.



In fact, the map and its caption was accepted by both the New York

Times and the Washington Post without as much as a peep from either of

the papers' reporters or editors. While the centerfold display ad in

theTimes -- ''among the most expensive real estate in all of

journalism," as one reporter put it was reported to have been

'''purchased by the China Daily newspaper." in fact, since the China

Daily is a state-run arm of the CCP, the funds for the media buys in

the U.S. came directly from the Chinese government.



Hiroshi Ito, a Japanese reporter for the Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, put

it this way: "China Daily, a China-based English-language newspaper,

sponsored the ads, which both show a photo and a map of the Senkaku

Islands to bolster China's position on the territorial dispute. The

ads argue that the name Diaoyu Island, the largest of the group --

called Uotsurishima in Japanese -- is found in a book published in

1403, which shows that China had discovered and named it by the 14th

and 15th centuries."



Ito noted that after the ads appeared in the Times and the Post, the

Japanese Embassy in Washington and the Japanese Consulate General in

New York filed protests with both newspapers, citing factual errors.

But did the ROC file any protest with the papers, citing factual

errors in the insert map's caption that referred to the ROC as "Taiwan

Island"?



Ito further reported that both New York Times and Washington Post

editors denied that their newspapers supported the content of the CCP

advertisements, saying they would also take notice of the fact that the

Japanese government had filed a protest, But did anyone in the ROC

government think to file a protest over the name for Taiwan that China used in

the ads that appeared in the New York Times?



The insert map is so small t hardly matters. But in a world where

China matters so much,

Taiwan matters even more. Because Taiwan practices democracy and

trumpets freedom, and China does not.

Sure, China has every right to take out full page ads in Western

newspapers saying whatever it wants to say, but should those ads be

allowed to present falsehoods to readers?



Despite the small size of the insert map in the ad, the mislabeling of Taiwan

is a big thing. Because every time China gets away with a lie, it

paves the way for more CCP lies in the future.

Germany practiced this kind of deception in the 1930s and 1940s, and

look what happened. The former Soviet Union

practiced those kinds of deceptions on a daily basis, too. When will

the world wake up to China's devious deceptions as well,

even when they appear in very fine print in very small maps printed in

the New York Times?



==========


This guest blogger is a freelance writer in Taiwan.

US$1 million 'reward' offered here for spell checker app that can correct 'atomic typos'

by Leinad Moolb
Webposted October 15, 2012

Back in 2010, TechEye ran a piece headlined "Un-spell-check-able 'atomic typos' in digital age hard to find," and what was true then is still true today. And recently, an inadvertent headline in an English-language expat newspaper in Taiwan asked the $64,000 question: Is there a spell checker application that can spot and correct "atomic typos" and if so, where is this digital tool?



Actually, the headline in the China Post the other day read: "Spell checkers developing 'atomic typo' capabilities". But this was an inadvertently inaccurate headline. In fact, spell checkers still cannot spot or autocorrect atomic typos. Someone must be working on this idea, but as far as this reporter can tell, this kind of spell check app is still far away from being put into place in newsrooms -- both print and digital -- around the world.



Spell checker applications cannot "see" atomic typos, because, of course, the words that are "atomic typos" are actually spelled correctly. It's just that they are out of context for what the writer meant to type into his or her computer screen.



The problem in the digital age is that we rely too much on spell checkers to flag words that may not be spelled correctly. As you know, spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor.



While the first spell checkers were widely available on mainframe computers in the late 1970s, the first spell checkers for personal computers did not appear until 1980.



Spell checkers have one major flaw: they cannot "see" words that are spelled correctly but are wrong for the intended context. Call them atomic typos -- "c*nt" for "count" is another one that has slipped through the cracks in the machine, according to one mischievous punter in Scotland.



Even in our high-tech digital world, most context-challenged spell-check systems are unable to detect an atomic typo because, well, it just can't. And why are they specifically called “atomic” typos? Apparently because the mistakes are so small or minute, like an atomic particle.



The term “atomic typo” is a new term and has been in use in computerized newsrooms for just over 10 years or so, although its use as a printing term in common conversation and news articles is very rare. In fact, you might be hearing it for the first time here.



In plain English, an atomic typo is a very small, one-letter typographic mistake that ends up making a big difference in the meaning of a specific sentence. It could even impact an entire news article, too. Machines cannot detect the error. Only the human eye, in connection with the human brain, can do it. So much for spell check.



More examples of atomic typos that appear in English-language newspapers worldwide every day: county for country, peace for piece, game for name, sox for box, and so on. Spell check just cannot see these mistakes, and with fewer and fewer copy editors and proofreaders working in newsrooms these days, atomic typos are just par for the coarse now. Oops: I meant to type “course,” of course. See?



Given all of the above, we would like to make a modest offer: the first person to come up with a workable spell check app that can spot and correct "atomic typos" will receive a reward of US$1 million, although I will not be the person handing out the cash. It will come, if the app passes all its tests with flying colors, in the form of a big fat royalty check from the venture capitalist who purchases the app from you.

Interested? Let the race begin.











Read more: http://news.techeye.net/internet/un-spell-check-able-atomic-typos-in-digital-age-hard-to-find#ixzz286wAnHQR