Eastern Standard Tribe Eastern Standard Tribe Eastern Standard Tribe is a 2004 novel by Cory Doctorow. Like Doctorow's first two books, the entire text was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without the publisher's permission. The novel takes place in a world where online "tribes" form, where all members set their circadian rhythms to the same time zone even though members may be physically located throughout the world. The protagonist, Art Berry, has been sent to an insane asylum as a result of a complex conspiracy.
Standard Chinese Standard Chinese in the official context and the governments are keen to promote its use as a national lingua franca. The PRC in particular has enacted a law (the "National Common Language and Writing Law") which states that the government must "promote" Standard Mandarin. There is no explicit official intent to have Standard Chinese replace the regional varieties, but local governments have enacted regulations (such as the "Guangdong National Language Regulations") which "implement" the national law by way of coercive measures to control the public use of regional spoken varieties and traditional characters in writing. In practice, some elderly or