1. Good short essay on how much China can change, or not.
2. The highest paid athlete of all time?
3. Via Michelle Dawson, "who will speak next?"
4. Chinese buy washers but not dryers.
5. The boom in the Colombian stock market.
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The Chinese don’t like dryers? Well, neither do the Germans around here in my experience – and for many of the same reasons. Cost, shorter life for the clothes, and a certain awareness that clothes will actually dry on their own.
But as is generally the case, the Washington Post is quite confident that marketing will allow Konsumterror to keep marching ever onward.
The Washington Post really just wrote a 20-paragraph article about dryers in China? Are they going to write an entire series with companion articles about dryers in Japan and Australia as well?
I think people are just still fascinated by China as it becomes wealthier – they want to know all the ways in which it is similar and different from us. We were probably this fascinated by Japan a few decades ago, but also China is so much larger.
DesiAvenger,
What other ingeneous ideas can you come up with to make the world a better place?
2. So Rome was full of rednecks. I hate to imagine the stand-up comics in those days.
2. If you drink your water from an aqueduct you built yourself, you might be a chariot race fan.
2. If you think Steve Sailer once had a valid idea, you might be a chariot race fan.
I think the Washington Post article is based on deeply-held American assumptions about China and the Orient broadly speaking, about technology, and about progress.
The article goes to some pains to make this a case of the exotic nature-loving beliefs of the Orient: “Sunlight, … leaves clothes cleaner and healthier to wear” It’s well and fine that some Chinese cast their use of line-drying as a health issue. However, I am sure that the real story is boring and not this ‘exotic’: I am confident that many people do what is best for them and choose the practical cheaper option. prior_approval has it right by cutting through the new-age mumbo jumbo the artice retreated to with the “certain awareness that clothes will actually dry on their own”.
As referenced by other commenters, usage of driers is the exception worldwide, so it’s not news that some (especially relatively poorer) country doesn’t use many of them. So why did the Washington Post make up a fake news article? Well, I think it tells us a lot more about Americans’ ideas of progress and technology than about the Chinese, full stop. Cliff’s post reflects the common (esp. American) view that technology use = progress = good “how much more quaint and wonderful the world would be without clothes dryers”. How about “how much more disposable income you’d have if you didn’t spend it on some appliance of questionable utility”
This idea also comes up in the article itself, where Shanghai seems to have banned hanging clothes to dry ever, calling it “uncivilized”. With this line, we can clearly see the progressist agenda spreading.
Well, someone signing with that same name has already offered other pearls of CCFCCP wisdom, if that answers your question.
I’m sorry, I just looked up Dreyfuss’ background. I apologize for even bothering to respond to his uneducated pablum.
Dryers are rare in the UK? Where did they all go? Everyone had them when I was growing up in the 80s.
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