Ms. Tsai faces the delicate task of registering discontent with Beijing while also sending a message that Taiwan will exercise restraint.
The union resolutions and the never-ending petitions calling for Duncan's firing or resignation are not completely pointless -- they at least register discontent with the administration's policies.
Such votes are usually symbolic, but they are a way for shareholders to register discontent.
According to research by Phillip Leslie and Larry Chavis at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, boycotts can register discontent and, when aimed at a particular industry, have a real impact.
In June, many stockholders of this country's largest public corporation, Wal-Mart Stores publicly registered strong discontent with its policies.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has registered its discontent with that movie, in a creative protest that involves covering up Shakespeare's name on signs and pubs in Warwickshire County, where the so-called Shakespeare was supposedly born.
"While we all applaud the valor and courage of Humayun Khan, and admire his sense of duty in enlisting in the army, I do not believe that those Americans, Muslims and otherwise, who vocally registered their discontent with the illegal invasion of Iraq, and the monumental loss of life that followed, as somehow being any less patriotic than those who enlisted to fight in it," Qadhi said.
The company's restive shareholders, who have repeatedly registered their discontent with the Murdoch family's running of the company in recent years, would likely rejoice at the chance to funnel all of their money into the relatively scandal-free and financially stable parts of the business.
As many as 15,000 people marched through Budapest on Sunday, ignoring subzero temperatures to register their discontent with the government.
How were we to know that the Corps of Engineers had anchored our floodwalls in the geological equivalent of whipped cream?" New Orleanians won't be able to register their discontent with the federal government until November 2006 or even 2008.
