Womp womp, despite the "internationalism" of the Expo, Shanghai didn't manage to break the top ten of Foreign Policy Magazine's Global Cities Index, which ranks cities on several criteria - their influence, culture, innovation and so on. In fact, we were even beat out by Beijing, who at No. 15, was five spots ahead of our No. 20! Our "economic rival/sister," Hong Kong, was way ahead at No. 5. Oh the shame! That having been said, judging from the comments on the site, all of this is contestable - Sure we can admit that New York, London and Sydney are all more "global" than we, but Boston? Really? more ›

• Top 10 Billionaire Cities [Forbes.com] "Hong Kong retains its title as the most popular city for Asian billionaires, with 21 living in the former British colony. … There are two new locales in our list of the top 10 billionaire cities: Chicago and Sao Paulo, which tied for ninth place with Mumbai and Tokyo."
• Thousands of Chinese athletes faking ages in Guangdong [Reuters] Thousands! "The sports ministry in Guangdong Province says it has undertaken X-Ray bone analysis on 15,000 youth athletes and found a fifth of them had misrepresented their age, local media reported. … The result showed 3,000 were older than they claimed, 2,000 of whom were no longer eligible for any youth sport and 1,000 who should have competed in different age categories. Ye said 16 athletes in one event had faked their age and the worst offenders were up to seven years older than they were allowed to be."
• Will China’s Food Safety Law Prevent THIS? [Cleaner Greener China] "Until a couple weeks ago when I picked up this pomelo near my house, cracked it open, and saw the injection mark. As you can clearly see from the pictures below, there is an injection mark and there was an absorption. I must admit that I got lucky when cutting the flesh of the fruit as it came out so clearly, and what is striking about it is the fact that whatever was injected… it did not bleed through to the fruit."

Shanghai made it to 4th place in Forbes' list of the world's tallest cities with a total of 21 towers climbing over 700 feet. The current tallest is the Shanghai World Financial Center, at 1,614 feet, but it'll be surpassed by the Shanghai Tower, which is expected to be completed in 2014 and reach heights of 2,000 feet. It was beat out by Dubai, Hong Kong and, at number one, New York City. more ›

Randy Cohen, New York Times "The Ethicist" columnist, might be inclined to think so. Granted, Cohen's anti-auto podcast from last week is about Manhattan, but several of his arguments already seem applicable to Shanghai (and, in 2020, when our city's subway system looks like this, there will be few ethical excuses for owning personal cars in most of Shanghai). Cohen lays out five reasons why cars and Manhattanites shouldn't mix. Here's No. 1: "Cars kill. If you introduced a transportation system by announcing, 'It'll only kill 40,000 people a year,' it's hard to believe it would gain widespread popularity." (The number of "traffic deaths" in China was down to 73,484 in 2008, but up 100 percent over the last 20 years.) Listen to all New York Times podcasts here or subscribe via iTunes. They're all free. more ›

Jonah Lehrer's piece in the Boston Globe got us thinking (or, at least, trying to think — our brain has been subject to Shanghai for six years now): more ›