Chapter 328 Economy is far more important than facts
Christmas, in fact, is not easy.
It's not because there are more and more atheists, and young people who insist on themselves are not interested in this kind of religious festival, but because the interval between Christmas and Thanksgiving is so small that when people close their eyes and open them, they find themselves It's time for a family reunion.
For example, on Thursday of the fourth week of November this year, according to the traditional American education, you rush home from your study or work, enjoy a rare relaxation, share the most important meal of the year with your family, and Thank you for God's protection, thank you for the hard-won good life, when the time comes, you will go to the battlefield with high spirits when you recover, and then...
On December 24th of this year, you followed the instructions of your parents, returned home from other places, and spent the most important meal of the year with your family to commemorate the birth of Jesus, thank God for the gift, and be grateful for the present. The good life that is not easy is full of gratitude.
Meow meow meow? ? ?
In just thirty days, there were two most important meals of the year?
It’s like when you and your girlfriend celebrate Chinese Valentine’s Day, after giving out one, three, one, four red envelopes, your girlfriend happily drinks two more glasses with you,
In addition, Thanksgiving is only four days away, and Christmas is only one and a half days away, so many American people are too lazy to bother. They will make an agreement with their families to choose a holiday every year, and the rest of the time will naturally be spent. Distance creates beauty.
In this way, eating, drinking and drinking are actually the norm for each family.
Set up two ovens in the yard to cook BBQ, and you can grill whatever you want—fat and thin pork ribs, chicken wings with wings, large sausages mixed with cheese, boned fish fillets, The pissy prawns and meat with explosive heat are the most eye-catching; besides, mushrooms, eggplants, sweet potatoes, onions, potatoes, corn on the cob and other vegetables that symbolize health are also arranged around.
To be honest, although I have been here for ten years and watched it for ten years, Roland still feels the lack of ingredients in America when eating, such as roasted chicken hearts, roasted large intestines, roasted duck liver... these Americans seldom eat.
And without these offal ingredients, the New Year’s Eve dinner would be boring!
Just when Roland's eyes were blurred, recalling how chewy the roasted duck liver was, a rough arm suddenly rested on his shoulder, "Roland, what's on your mind? Why don't you eat it! "
Hearing these words, Roland knew instantly that the person who asked the question was Fa Xiao who had just rushed home for the New Year.
Although it’s been a long time since I saw him and I miss him very much, Roland would not talk to this smelly brother, “I don’t think these foods are special.”
"I'm used to it, I don't feel it."
Roland explained it this way, just to miss the food that was far away from him.
But to James' ears, it was just faking beeping again.
‘The food on the table has no characteristics? '
'Unaccustomed to eating? '
‘Then how did you grow up so big? '
While complaining wildly in his heart, James was not idle. He swallowed Faxiao's grilled lamb chops, and then got up on his own initiative, and personally cooked a strange delicacy for Faxiao that he had only eaten in school.
When a piece of black and red food appeared in front of Roland, the sweet and sour smell made him frowned.
"What is this?" Roland asked suspiciously.
"Grilled watermelon!" James replied seriously, "I often eat it at school."
'Hold the grass! Dark cuisine! ’ Roland turned pale.
But just when he wanted to refuse, the red and black appearance still aroused his curiosity.
He has eaten grilled watermelon, a special delicacy in New Province, and the version of grilled watermelon in the cafeteria, but he has never eaten the grilled watermelon in America.
Roland took it.
Take a sip.
Then, there is no more.
...
After Christmas, Roland hugged and bid farewell to everyone except James. The Olsen couple took their four children to New York, while Roland and Kate flew to London. The purpose, of course, was New Year's Eve.
The 20th century is about to pass away, and the 21st century is coming. At this time of saying goodbye to the old and ushering in the new, all countries should celebrate.
Like America, they held a millennium celebration in Times Square in New York;
Like South Korea, they had a millennium chorus in the capital Seoul;
Like France, the twenty-four great iron wheels in Paris will turn simultaneously;
Like Egypt, they are ready to meet the light under the Pharaoh's pyramid;
Kiribati, which straddles the equator and straddles the eastern and western hemispheres, has even fought with Tonga, which is located at the international date line. The fundamental dispute is because they all feel that they are the first country to bathe in the sunshine of the new millennium.
The core of the focus is to make a wave of tourism income through the once-in-a-thousand-year event.
Under such circumstances, the concept of New Year's Eve celebrations was so popular that when Roland came to London, the banks of the Thames River were filled with temporary settlement tents, and all British people were looking forward to their country's queen. Light the beacon fire of the century at zero o'clock on January 1, 2000, and then take a boat down the river to unveil the mystery that marks the millennium.
Standing by the hotel window, looking down at the world condescendingly, the night that should have been controlled by darkness is now as bright as day.
Looking at the dense crowd, Roland felt a toothache after changing his clothes, because he really hated this kind of large gathering.
It's not that I find it troublesome, but the scene full of heads at a glance is painful.
New Year's Eve?
How can anyone look at the back of a person’s head for New Year’s Eve?
But when she turned her head and found that her daughter-in-law was putting on lipstick in front of the makeup mirror, the complaints in her heart were suppressed.
"What kind of makeup do you wear at night? Let's take a look from the side, and don't go to the front."
Roland leaned behind his wife, and naturally put his hands into the pockets of her windbreaker, rubbing against his lower abdomen.
The familiar movements made Kate roll her eyes, throw her elbows back, and said in a charming voice, "Don't make trouble."
"Aren't I still worried about being photographed by reporters?"
"It used to be possible to suppress the news, but now...the queen is on the scene, you can't suppress it even if you want to."
The painless elbow made Roland stop with a smile, his head drooped, and the tip of his nose passed Kate's neck.
After taking a few sips, he complained: "That group of capital is really shameless, trying to make money in different ways."
"If it weren't for their vigorous promotion of the New Year's Eve of the Century, there would not be so many people rushing to grab the position now."
The childish ghost-like words amused Kate. While putting down her lipstick, she also picked up the scarf next to the table and tied it around her neck, "Isn't making money the meaning of capital? Don't talk about stepping on various hot spots to make money , Even if they know that they are stepping on the wrong hot spot, they will pretend not to know, and then continue to make money."
"Even if we know that tomorrow is not the 21st century, so what?"
"Aren't you celebrating with the crowd?"
"So, don't complain about the crowds, if that happened to us, we'd do it too."
Speaking of this, Kate patted Roland's hand and motioned him to take one out. After Roland pulled out her right hand, she turned around again, put her right hand into her pocket, and interlocked her fingers naturally, wrapping her arms around her man's left arm.
After finishing all this, she stepped on Roland's cheek and pecked lightly, and then took Roland out of the hotel room with happy steps, "We will see more and more ridiculous things like this in the future! "
When does the 21st century start counting? Actually, there have been fierce collisions since the 1990s.
The faction that advocates that the 21st century originated in 2001 and the zero faction that claims that the 21st century originated in 2000 are about to knock out the other party's dog brains.
The arguments of both sides are also very sufficient.
One school of thought thinks that, from ancient times to the present, the years are counted from the beginning. The beginning of the first century is the year of AD, and the first year of the beginning of the twentieth century is 1901. Therefore, the beginning year of the 21st century is It was 2001.
Not only that, Christianity also agrees with this point of view, because the AD is calculated from the year of Christ's birth, and the beginning of their calendar is the first year of the AD. In the absence of the zero year of the AD, 2000 is the last one year.
The Zero School believes that the century starts from zero, which is in line with the measurement habits, because in the theory of the origin of measurement, the origin of the general measurement of length and weight is zero, so time should also be zero.
Similarly, the theory of chronological unity means that if the two thousand years belong to the 1990s, then there will be eleven years in the entire 1990s, and this completely violates the traditional algorithm that a year only has ten years.
In this way, the scolding war was born.
Of course, Mr. Shuren once said that compromise and harmony are the instincts of human nature.
When the brains of the two factions were fighting, the Hesi Mud Party, which advocated that the 366 days should be celebrated in the 2000s, appeared.
As soon as such a waste of time and money was launched, it was opposed by countries all over the world. In order not to let this absurd thing continue, the heads of governments of various countries asked the calendar institutions to end this matter as soon as possible. They all issued their own reports, indicating that the 21st century is indeed counted from 2001.
Because if we count from two thousand years, the first century AD is only ninety-nine years.
According to normal habits, the calendar agency has issued a real hammer, so naturally there will be no more objections.
But the problem is that before they issued the report, the celebration teams of various countries and countless business capitals have already started to promote and prepare according to the fact that two thousand years is the beginning of the 21st century, so...
Nobody listened.
Such a situation makes the calendar institutions of various countries extremely painful, but for the sake of rigor, they can only make the results public again and again. Then, the Royal Greenwich Observatory was revoked by the Queen in 1998, and Zipperton even publicly violated the national legal time The Naval Observatory, the legislature, 'We don't need to pay attention to the fact that most of the world chooses to celebrate when the calendar flips from December 31st to the year 2000. '
Hot things like hot spots have always been speculated on the new rather than the old.
When the whole world knew that the Queen of England would light the tinder in the wee hours of January 1, 2000...
The Royal Greenwich Observatory, what is it?
Compared with the Queen's credibility, does it really matter which year is the 21st century?
When the capital of America produced countless products related to the New Year of the Millennium...
What is the U.S. Naval Observatory in the eyes of Zipper, who focuses on the economy?
In the last year of my last term, if the economy didn’t soar, should I still leave this cake for the next term?
When a large amount of capital can benefit from something, the truth of the matter is no longer important.
Whoever dares to stop will die.
Because of this, celebrating the 2000th anniversary and awakening in the 2001st year has become the first choice of countries all over the world.
Really think those guys can't even count on their fingers?
People just think that selling falsehoods is more profitable than explaining the truth.
In this way, when Kate asked Roland not to care about the absurdity, Roland just smiled slightly.
Because there will be more ridiculous things than this in the future.
For example, the Berlin Film Festival couldn’t bear the pressure and canceled the Silver Bear for Best Actor and Actress, and set up new Silver Bears for Best Leading Actor and Best Supporting Actor—this kind of compromise that doesn’t differentiate performance awards by gender is really true. Is it progress?
If the next few Silver Bear Awards for Best Leading Role are won by male actors, wouldn’t that be even more blatant sexism?
If in order to avoid gender discrimination, women account for more points in the selection, then the award will be even more unfair.
When a show that requires fairness cannot even be fair...
This show completely lost its meaning of existence.
...
Accompanies Kate to watch the New Year’s Eve fireworks in London. Because they are fully armed, the three floors around them are all tourists disguised as bodyguards, so the two people who joined the crowd were not recognized by the public.
And after entering two thousand years, various major events have also happened one after another.
First of all, on January 10, AOL and Time Warner announced their merger.
When the merger case with a market value of over 350 billion, equivalent to the gross domestic product of Mexico and Pakistan, occurred, the global media were stunned by this huge handwriting.
As the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online has 22 million users, and Time Warner's TV network has even occupied 20% of the user market in America.
The emergence of media giants has made everyone feel the crisis. Many experts pointed out that the merger of AOL and Time Warner, which "restricted competition, reduced choices, and caused damage to consumers", was the result of various mergers in the early 1920s. Big capital controls a replica of the railroads, and more importantly, it's about controlling the central nervous system of people's democratic institutions.
Not only that, these experts also believe that once the merger of the two powerhouses occurs, other giants that want to become bigger will definitely follow suit. Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T are all likely to make huge mergers and acquisitions.
When these judgments are made, the experts who rely on it for a living are like eight immortals crossing the sea, each showing their special abilities, analyzing the goals of each company thoroughly, what it looks like—Microsoft and Yahoo can try to ask the price of NBC , while AT&T has the capital to swallow all media companies except AOL-Time Warner.
But shortly after these experts made their analysis, on January 13th, Bill Gates suddenly announced to the world that he would step down as the CEO of Microsoft, and his new successor was his classmate Steve Bowman. Elmer.
And Steve Ballmer's primary goal after taking office is to solve the antitrust investigation.
As soon as the news came out, experts who were still analyzing who Microsoft would acquire fell into a sluggish state.
Three days before the analysis was made, you slapped me in the face?
This, this, this...
Almost everyone believed the rhetoric given by Microsoft, and felt that their change of coaches was because they encountered difficult problems in the antitrust investigation. In this way, if Microsoft wants to keep up with America Online and Time Warner, became a luxury.
No way, who made them expect the world's first trillion-dollar company to appear?
At present, only Microsoft is the most likely to achieve this goal.
But while these experts were regretting, Yahoo followed suit and announced on the 14th that the board of directors was about to be reorganized. He officially resigned from the board of directors, and at the same time, two independent directors recommended by the original Sequoia Capital and two directors sent by investment institutions also resigned with him.
Because of business needs, Yahoo decided to add two independent directors after the meeting of the board of directors. After the addition, the company's board of directors will consist of thirteen directors, including five independent directors.
This major reorganization has excited experts, because many people think that Yahoo is a direct response to the merger of AOL and Time Warner, but only those who have experienced it know that Yahoo is close to the end.
Because in the list of newly recommended independent directors, there are Alan Weber, former chairman of the board of directors of American Trust Company, Doug Bergerson, director of VeriFone, Pete Kleiman, former director of TIAA-CREF, and Dali, former CEO of Calpers Fund Company. - Hanson and veteran entertainment executive Frank Biondi.
And these five people are all solid allies of Carl Icahn.
Of course, after the last cash-out transaction, these things about Microsoft and Yahoo have nothing to do with Roland. When the world felt that the storm was about to come, Roland was also in London and saw it. The person I want to see.
Note: ① The farce of 2,000 years and 2,001 years is true. The Naval Observatory, the calendar institution that Zipperton directly confronted in the White House, and the Greenwich Observatory in the United Kingdom were also found to be closed by excuses. It’s not that they don’t know, but that the capital let them There's no stopping it, and no one can afford to be held accountable for an economic downturn, so the facts are sometimes less important than the economy. ②After the merger of AOL and Time Warner, various American media confirmed that Microsoft would be the next one to make large-scale mergers and acquisitions. Although antitrust investigations were raging, no one really thought that Microsoft would be split up. Microsoft has become the world's first trillion company. To be honest, it's scary, just like acting with a bright card. ③The five independent directors mentioned in the article are all real people, and Carl Icahn has been able to escape for so many years because of these "friends". Among them, TIAA-CREF is the American Teachers' Retirement Foundation , the world's largest retirement insurance company, and CalPERS is the California public employee retirement fund, which manages the largest public pension fund in the United States. Carl Icahn's friends were all caught, but he was the only one who kept jumping around, relying on these funds. In 2006, Warner gave money and conceded before the game started, because Carl Icahn and the others directly showed their cards. Well, once these people are sent to Warner's board of directors, Warner himself knows that he can't win. And this was reported by the Wall Street Journal itself. (Some people really can't complain, because they don't make money for themselves at all)
(end of this chapter)
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om