Beyond the North Wind

Autopsy of Abraham Lincoln

2007-06-08T11:16:00.001-07:00

This is an excerpt from Dr. Curtis' letter, the surgeon who performed autopsy on Abraham Lincoln on that fateful day in 1865. Very fascinating account!

"The room…contained but little furniture: a large, heavily curtained bed, a sofa or two, bureau, wardrobe, and chairs….Seated around the room were several general officers and some civilians, silent or conversing in whispers, and to one side, stretched upon a rough framework of boards and covered only with sheets and towels, lay—cold and immovable—what but a few hours before was the soul of a great nation. The Surgeon General was walking up and down the room when I arrived and detailed me the history of the case. He said that the President showed most wonderful tenacity of life, and, had not his wound been necessarily mortal, might have survived an injury to which most men would succumb….Dr. Woodward and I proceeded to open the head and remove the brain down to the track of the ball. The latter had entered a little to the left of the median line at the back of the head, had passed almost directly forwards through the center of the brain and lodged. Not finding it readily, we proceeded to remove the entire brain, when, as I was lifting the latter from the cavity of the skull, suddenly the bullet dropped out through my fingers and fell, breaking the solemn silence of the room with its clatter, into an empty basin that was standing beneath. There it lay upon the white china, a little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger—dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world's history as we may perhaps never realize.…[S]ilently, in one corner of the room, I prepared the brain for weighing. As I looked at the mass of soft gray and white substance that I was carefully washing, it was impossible to realize that it was that mere clay upon whose workings, but the day before, rested the hopes of the nation. I felt more profoundly impressed than ever with the mystery of that unknown something which may be named 'vital spark' as well as anything else, whose absence or presence makes all the immeasurable difference between an inert mass of matter owning obedience to no laws but those covering the physical and chemical forces of the universe, and on the other hand, a living brain by whose silent, subtle machinery a world may be ruled.
"The weighing of the brain…gave approximate results only, since there had been some loss of brain substance, in consequence of the wound, during the hours of life after the shooting. But the figures, as they were, seemed to show that the brain weight was not above the ordinary for a man of Lincoln's size."

The Art of Travel

2007-05-13T20:57:00.001-07:00

I really enjoyed reading The Art of Travel so much so that I just requested other books by

De Botton(what a strange name, does it mean something?). Thanks to Yomin for recommendi it! I think this will change the way I would enjoy my travels from now on.

Here are my favorite chapters, in the order I read them:

- On Anticipation

- On Habit

- On Eye-Opening Art

- On the Exotic

- On Possessing Beautiy

- On the Sublime

I think the title is sort of a mis-title. Travel surely is what the author took on; in such disguise, he brilliantly incorporated experiences of others’ travel, e.g. that of Flaubert, Van Gogh, Wordsworth, Xaxier. It is through the experiences of these, along with his sometimes witty, some piercing and always humble comments, we are shown a new way to travel through life. This new way is by appreciating Nature, Art and Life through discovering the light(spirit) that is within you. And that is the way to happiness. Many observations I agree with him, although sometimes I feel like he fell short. For example, I felt the message of what is experienced without is indeed unified with what is within in this book, but he never pointed it out. He merely suggests, he doesn’t exert, which is good also. The chapter on Flaubert truly amuses me(kind of understatement since I was laughing out loud – I didn’t know much about Flaubert’s life before). And the one on Van Gogh – quite an eye-opening one indeed.

He’s such a well-read person, and I felt like classics ought be to read this way – the way he does. This is reflected by the way he selected texts from various sources. He quoted Nietzsche a few times, all to my great delight.

The nature of what people desire

2007-04-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?

By DUNCAN J. WATTS
As anyone who follows the business of culture is aware, the profits of cultural industries depend disproportionately on the occasional outsize success — a blockbuster movie, a best-selling book or a superstar artist — to offset the many investments that fail dismally. What may be less clear to casual observers is why professional editors, studio executives and talent managers, many of whom have a lifetime of experience in their businesses, are so bad at predicting which of their many potential projects will make it big. How could it be that industry executives rejected, passed over or even disparaged smash hits like “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter” and the Beatles, even as many of their most confident bets turned out to be flops? It may be true, in other words, that “nobody knows anything,” as the screenwriter William Goldman once said about Hollywood. But why? Of course, the experts may simply not be as smart as they would like us to believe. Recent research, however, suggests that reliable hit prediction is impossible no matter how much you know — a result that has implications not only for our understanding of best-seller lists but for business and politics as well.

Conventional marketing wisdom holds that predicting success in cultural markets is mostly a matter of anticipating the preferences of the millions of individual people who participate in them. From this common-sense observation, it follows that if the experts could only figure out what it was about, say, the music, songwriting and packaging of Norah Jones that appealed to so many fans, they ought to be able to replicate it at will. And indeed that’s pretty much what they try to do. That they fail so frequently implies either that they aren’t studying their own successes carefully enough or that they are not paying sufficiently close attention to the changing preferences of their audience.

The common-sense view, however, makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make decisions independently — if even in part they like things because other people like them — then predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes.

The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,” or the “rich get richer” effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect” from chaos theory. Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, seemingly identical universes with the same set of competitors and the same overall market tastes would quickly generate different winners: Madonna would have been popular in this world, but in some other version of history, she would be a nobody, and someone we have never heard of would be in her place.

Because it’s not possible in the real world to test theories about events that never happened, most of what we know about cumulative advantage has been worked out using mathematical models and computer simulations — an approach that is often criticized for glossing over the richness of real human behavior. Fortunately, the explosive growth of the Internet has made it possible to study human activity in a controlled manner for thousands or even millions of people at the same time. Recently, my collaborators, Matthew Salganik and Peter Dodds, and I conducted just such a Web-based experiment. In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence” condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds” such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

So does a listener’s own independent reaction to a song count for anything? In fact, intrinsic “quality,” which we measured in terms of a song’s popularity in the independent condition, did help to explain success in the social-influence condition. When we added up downloads across all eight social-influence worlds, “good” songs had higher market share, on average, than “bad” ones. But the impact of a listener’s own reactions is easily overwhelmed by his or her reactions to others. The song “Lockdown,” by 52metro, for example, ranked 26th out of 48 in quality; yet it was the No. 1 song in one social-influence world, and 40th in another. Overall, a song in the Top 5 in terms of quality had only a 50 percent chance of finishing in the Top 5 of success.

In our artificial market, therefore, social influence played as large a role in determining the market share of successful songs as differences in quality. It’s a simple result to state, but it has a surprisingly deep consequence. Because the long-run success of a song depends so sensitively on the decisions of a few early-arriving individuals, whose choices are subsequently amplified and eventually locked in by the cumulative-advantage process, and because the particular individuals who play this important role are chosen randomly and may make different decisions from one moment to the next, the resulting unpredictably is inherent to the nature of the market. It cannot be eliminated either by accumulating more information — about people or songs — or by developing fancier prediction algorithms, any more than you can repeatedly roll sixes no matter how carefully you try to throw the die.

This, obviously, presents challenges for producers and publishers — but it also has a more general significance for our understanding of how cultural markets work. Even if you think most people are tasteless or ignorant, it’s natural to believe that successful songs, movies, books and artists are somehow “better,” at least in the democratic sense of a competitive market, than their unsuccessful counterparts, that Norah Jones and Madonna deserve to be as successful as they are if only because “that’s what the market wanted.” What our results suggest, however, is that because what people like depends on what they think other people like, what the market “wants” at any point in time can depend very sensitively on its own history: there is no sense in which it simply “reveals” what people wanted all along. In such a world, in fact, the question “Why did X succeed?” may not have any better answer than the one given by the publisher of Lynne Truss’s surprise best seller, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” who, when asked to explain its success, replied that “it sold well because lots of people bought it.”

This lesson is not limited to cultural products either. Economists like Brian Arthur and Paul David have long argued that similar mechanisms affect the competition between technologies (like operating systems or fax machines) that display what are called “network effects,” meaning that the attractiveness of a technology increases with the number of people using it. But even in markets that don’t exhibit obvious network effects (like markets for low-carb or organically produced food, fuel-efficient vehicles or alternative energy technologies), sudden shifts in consumer demand can still arise, persist and then shift again. These shifts often come as surprises but are soon explained away as mere reflections of changing public sentiments. Yet while in some sense these markets do reflect what people want, that is true only of what they want right now. If markets not only reveal our preferences but also modify them, then the relation between what we want now and what we wanted before — or what we will want in the future — becomes deeply ambiguous.

Our desire to believe in an orderly universe leads us to interpret the uncertainty we feel about the future as nothing but a consequence of our current state of ignorance, to be dispelled by greater knowledge or better analysis. But even a modest amount of randomness can play havoc with our intuitions. Because it is always possible, after the fact, to come up with a story about why things worked out the way they did — that the first “Harry Potter” really was a brilliant book, even if the eight publishers who rejected it didn’t know that at the time — our belief in determinism is rarely shaken, no matter how often we are surprised. But just because we now know that something happened doesn’t imply that we could have known it was going to happen at the time, even in principle, because at the time, it wasn’t necessarily going to happen at all.

That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to anticipate the future, any more than we should stop trying to make sense of the past. But it does mean that we should treat both the predictions and the explanations we are served — whether about the next hit single, the next great company or even the next war — with the skepticism they deserve.

Some thoughts on the movie "Into Great Silence"

2007-04-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

I saw this movie last Friday.

I think it must be my current mental state, but when the old blind monk in the documentary movie said(paraphrasing): “there is no need to fear death. No fear……I am happy to go, to rejoin Him. Life is happy, that is what it is meant to be. That is what God wants for us; so many times I thanked God that He made me blind, so many times”, I started to feel something inside me is opening up; it is dissolving.

I know not what is the God he is speaking of, and I am too reluctant to even use the word since I don’t know it, but I still, I feel something. This unspeakable joy springing up from the silence they dwell in which give them peace and perhaps something beyond makes life full and beautiful. Look at that aging of the body, the wrinkle skin, the old man lay dying on the wooden bed, then you see the spirit shining through his eyes. I felt not sorrow, but peace, at him being part of Nature. He came into this conscious existence, then he goes away. We came as well, and in some time, we shall go. But this ecstatic love, the irresistible seduction, only we could surrender to and rejoice while here, this moment on earth.

Mind Power

2007-04-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Here's the link to the original article.

note:

1) the word 'Master' means 'Pure Consciousness, Void, Nothingness, God, It, That', basically any name you would like to give to the un-nameable, formless, and yet all inclusive and pervasive existence.

2) sadhana = practice

3) sadhakas = practicer

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Master has said that "A powerful will made at the very first step and maintained all through shall never fail to achieve complete success." We also were told by our well wishers that 'where there is a will there is a way,' The only problem in this is that no one really ever told us how to make that ' will ' and we always found ourselves no wiser for the advise. Master also advised us to think or imagine that there is a Divine Light without luminosity and meditate. He advised that we should ignore all thoughts while meditating. He assured that the suggestion given at the beginning of meditation will continue to work at the sub-conscious level through the period of meditation.

He was here revealing the power of the Mind. He was saying that we can achieve our objective if we instruct our mind and subconscious mind properly. Unfortunately most of us don't know how to instruct the mind or subconscious mind. Therefore we end up getting the mind and subconscious mind creating things we really don't want. That is the problem of many aspirants which the Master himself has clarified in many of his articles. However I thought I can share some practical points in this regard.

If we don't get our mind and subconscious mind to focus on what we want, we will surely end up getting what we do not want during meditation in particular and life in general. Most of us do not control our mind, nor do we instruct our subconscious mind because we do not control our thoughts; it would not be wrong if I say that most of us are not even aware of the thoughts we have everyday. One more important factor is we do not seem to choose our beliefs.

Everyone wants to be successful and happy but we do not have thoughts that reflect success and happiness. Very few of us choose our thoughts and majority of sadhakas, leave their mind on autopilot accepting whatever thoughts it conjures up and then they begin to worry about them. Master only advised us to ignore the thoughts. If we do that there is no problem. Instead we seem to believe in the reality of these thoughts and wail over such a situation. What we should believe is the Master whose presence is felt as awareness of nothing and many a time non awareness of anything. When we become aware we do not give importance to the presence of the Master by believing him, instead we give importance to the unwanted thoughts and believe in their reality. We thus do not choose our beliefs based on experience and instead we merely accept what our minds tell.

'Mind is its own enemy' and Lord Krishna was emphatic about this as we see in the Bhagavad Gita. Master also says this but adds the same mind has to be used to control the mind. When we hear sadhakas who are intent on being successful in their spiritual pursuit and try to analyse their thoughts we find them entertaining thoughts which are in their very nature exact opposite of what they seek. While they want to be successful they do not show any evidence of having thoughts and beliefs that promote their cause. Whatever we want to we can surely achieve if we have a belief system that corresponds to our goals.

Master has suggested that three faiths or beliefs are a must for successful completion of our spiritual journey. The first belief or faith that he listed relates to faith in one self that he can achieve the goal. If we have faith that we will get a proper and competent guide we will surely get one. This is what he said when he stated the guru will come to the doors of a sincere seeker. This faith is a must to succeed in sadhana. It would be erroneous to doubt ones deservancy for realisation not withstanding what the Sanyasins have said.

The main point for focus now is how to keep our belief system in alignment with the goals we want to accomplish.As Master has stressed we should be clear about the goal from the beginning. Master has emphasised the need fix up the goal first. "It is very essential for every one to fix his thought at the very outset, upon the goal which he has to attain so that his thought and will may pave his way into it." Having fixed the goal of attainment of the highest good, we should really believe that we can accomplish the task and reach the goal. If this clarity is not there from the beginning and we have belief systems that work for other goals we should change our belief systems accordingly and change to the desired belief systems. We cannot while pursuing one goal seek the rewards of another.

To change a belief system that is not in congruence with our goal we have to analyze our thoughts. We need to list all the thoughts and beliefs that we have about achieving that goal. For example: if we want to make speedy progress in spiritual life we should list first why we think we cannot make such a progress and what is the cause of this lack of faith in making speedy progress. We need to change our notions and thoughts to correspond with what we want. This can be done by persistent efforts and by regular monitoring of our thoughts and beliefs and making amendments whenever required.

If we want to achieve success in our endeavour then we have to create thoughts and beliefs that will allow us to achieve the goals. We can think of our mind as a station that sends out energy signals: these energy signals are our thoughts and beliefs. These energy patterns are picked up by our subconscious mind. It then works out and creates situations, circumstances, and events to help us achieve whatever our thoughts and beliefs seek. It also attracts the people to us and guides us to the people who can help us achieve our goals.

The subconscious does not distinguish between what is good and bad for us: it simply acts on our instructions. Those instructions are our energy signals which are as we mentioned earlier our thoughts and beliefs. So while we may want to achieve realisation, if we don't believe that we can and if we regularly maintain that notion either as a mark of humility or fear of incapacity that we can not achieve the same we should know we are instructing our subconscious to create situations for us that will not enable us to achieve our goals. This is why it is so important to eliminate negative thinking and create a positive thinking pattern in spirituality. It is in this context we should understand the value of being happy under all circumstances. Nitya santushti is a necessary attitude for spiritual progress.

It becomes clear that if we want to achieve our goal and live the life of natural cooperation that we want we have to send the right messages to our subconscious mind.

It is a matter that is not readily acceptable to us because this appears to be naive and simple. But that is the method suggested by our Master. Many persons changed their lives and achieved perfection in their life based on these principles. If we examine whether the entertaining patterns of negative thinking is helping us we find that it does not. That type of defeatist mentality enables only to get defeated. When we get calmness and peace during the meditation if our attention goes to these states of divinity we progress faster. If instead we complain about the thoughts of no consequence that visited us during meditation and feel discouraged, the result also would be disagreeable and many times disastrous. If such negative thinking pattern got reflected too often negative thinking pattern will start shaping our life.

The importance of having one method, one master and absolute faith in our own deservancy to reach the goal cannot be over emphasized in sadhana. These statements of the Master are based on very sound principles of the science of mind.

In Japan, a Historian Stands by Proof of Wartime Sex Slavery

2007-03-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

This is a good article on the subject.
----------------------------------------------
The New York Times
March 31, 2007
The Saturday Profile

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TOKYO

IT was about 15 years ago, recalled Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a mild-mannered historian, when he grew fed up with the Japanese government’s denials that the military had set up and run brothels throughout Asia during World War II.

Instead of firing off a letter to a newspaper, though, Mr. Yoshimi went to the Defense Agency’s library and combed through official documents from the 1930s. In just two days, he found a rare trove that uncovered the military’s direct role in managing the brothels, including documents that carried the personal seals of high-ranking Imperial Army officers.

Faced with this smoking gun, a red-faced Japanese government immediately dropped its long-standing claim that only private businessmen had operated the brothels. A year later, in 1993, it acknowledged in a statement that the Japanese state itself had been responsible. In time, all government-approved junior high school textbooks carried passages on the history of Japan’s military sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women.

“Back then, I was optimistic that this would effectively settle the issue,” Mr. Yoshimi said. “But there was a fierce backlash.”

The backlash came from young nationalist politicians led by Shinzo Abe, an obscure lawmaker at the time in the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who lobbied to rescind the 1993 admission of state responsibility. Their goal finally seemed close at hand after Mr. Abe became prime minister last September.

Mr. Abe said he would adhere to the 1993 statement, but he also undercut it by asserting that there was no evidence showing the military’s role in forcing women into sexual slavery. His comments incited outrage in Asia and the United States, where the House of Representatives is considering a nonbinding resolution that would call on Japan to admit unequivocally its history of sexual slavery and to apologize for it.

To Mr. Yoshimi, Mr. Abe’s denial sounded familiar. Until Mr. Yoshimi came along 15 years ago, the government had always maintained that there were no official documents to prove the military’s role in establishing the brothels. Mr. Abe was now saying there were no official documents to prove that the military forcibly procured the women — thereby discounting other evidence, including the testimony of former sex slaves.

“The fact is, if you can’t use anything except official documents, history itself is impossible to elucidate,” said Mr. Yoshimi, a history professor at Chuo University here.

The emphasis on official documents, according to Mr. Yoshimi and other historians, has long been part of the government’s strategy to control wartime history. In the two weeks between Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the arrival of American occupation forces, wartime leaders fearing postwar trials incinerated so many potentially incriminating documents that the Tokyo sky was said to be black with smoke. Even today, Japan refuses to release documents that historians believe have survived and would shed light on Japan’s wartime history.

Although Mr. Yoshimi found official documents showing the military’s role in establishing brothels, he is not optimistic about unearthing documents about the military’s abduction of women.

“There are things that are never written in official documents,” he said. “That they were forcibly recruited — that’s the kind of thing that would have never been written in the first place.”

John W. Dower, a historian of Japan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Mr. Yoshimi’s “extremely impressive” work has “clarified the historical record in ways that people like Prime Minister Abe and those who support him refuse to acknowledge.”

MR. YOSHIMI grew up in Yamaguchi Prefecture in western Japan, in a household with fresh memories of the war. He traces his interest in history to a junior high school lecture on the nation’s American-written, pacifist Constitution and its guarantee of human rights. He was impressed that the Constitution “even had something to say about a kid like me in the countryside.”

After completing his studies at the University of Tokyo, Mr. Yoshimi concentrated on Japan’s postwar democratization. It was while searching for documents related to Japan’s wartime use of poison gas in the Defense Agency’s library that he first stumbled upon proof of the military’s role in sexual slavery.

Mr. Yoshimi copied the document but did not publicize his finding. At the time, no former sex slave had gone public about her experiences, and awareness of wartime sex crimes against women was low.

But in late 1991, former sex slaves in South Korea became the first to break their silence. When the Japanese government responded with denials, Mr. Yoshimi went back to the Defense Agency.

Of the half-dozen documents he discovered, the most damning was a notice written on March 4, 1938, by the adjutant to the chiefs of staff of the North China Area Army and Central China Expeditionary Force. Titled “Concerning the Recruitment of Women for Military Comfort Stations,” the notice said that “armies in the field will control the recruiting of women,” and that “this task will be performed in close cooperation with the military police or local police force of the area.”

In another document from July 1938, Naosaburo Okabe, chief of staff of the North China Area Army, wrote that rapes of local women by Japanese soldiers had deepened anti-Japanese sentiments and that setting up “facilities for sexual comfort as quickly as possible is of great importance.” Yet another, an April 1939 report by the headquarters of the 21st Army in Guangzhou, China, noted that the 21st Army directly supervised 850 women.

Mr. Yoshimi went public by telling Asahi Shimbun, a national daily newspaper. The attention led to years of harassment from the right wing, he said, including nightly phone calls.

These documents had survived because they had been moved 25 miles west of central Tokyo before the end of the war, Mr. Yoshimi said. The postwar American occupation forces had then confiscated the documents, eventually returning them to Japan in the 1950s.

DESPITE the government’s efforts to hide the past, Mr. Yoshimi succeeded in painting a detailed picture of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery: a system of military-run brothels that emerged in 1932 after Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, then grew with full-scale war against China in 1937 and expanded into most of Asia in the 1940s.

Between 50,000 and 200,000 women from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were tricked or coerced into sexual slavery, Mr. Yoshimi said. Thousands from Korea and Taiwan, Japanese colonies at the time, were dispatched aboard naval vessels to serve Japanese soldiers in battlefields elsewhere in Asia. Unlike other militaries that have used wartime brothels, the Japanese military was the “main actor,” Mr. Yoshimi said.

“The Japanese military itself newly built this system, took the initiative to create this system, maintained it and expanded it, and violated human rights as a result,” he said. “That’s a critical difference.”

Mr. Yoshimi said he was unsurprised by the most recent moves to deny the wartime sex slavery. He said they were simply the culmination of a long campaign by nationalist politicians who have succeeded in casting doubt, in Japan, on what is accepted as historical fact elsewhere.

In 1997, all seven government-approved junior high school textbooks contained passages about the former sex slaves. Now, as a result of the nationalists’ campaign, only two out of eight do.

“Mr. Abe and his allies led that campaign,” Mr. Yoshimi said, “and now they occupy the center of political power.”

Statement of Jan Ruff O’Herne AO

2007-03-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Statement of

Jan Ruff O’Herne AO

Friends of “Comfort Women” in Australia

Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment

Committee on Foreign Affairs

U.S. House of Representatives

Hearing on

Protecting the Human Rights of “Comfort Women”

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Chairman Faleomavaega and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for this holding this congressional hearing on the plight of “Comfort Women”. I am pleased to join with survivors Ms. Yong-Soo Lee of Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Japanese Military Sexual Slavery and Ms. Koon-Ja Kim of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium to share our stories before you today.

I would also like to thank Representative Michael Honda for introducing House Resolution 121, which demands that the Japanese government “officially and unambiguously” apologize and to “take historical responsibility”. And I thank Chairman Eni F.H Faleomavaega for inviting the witnesses to speak, to tell our stories to the world in the hope that it will bring us justice.

My experience as a woman in war is one of utter degradation, humiliation and unbearable suffering. During World War II, I was forced to be a so-called “Comfort Woman” for the Japanese military, a euphemism for sex slave.

The Forgotten Ones

I was born in Java, in the former Dutch East Indies (now known as Indonesia) in 1923 of a fourth generation Dutch colonial family. I grew up on a sugar plantation and had the most wonderful childhood. I was educated in Catholic schools and graduated from Franciscan Teacher’s College in Semarang, Java.

When I was 19 years old in 1942, Japanese troops invaded Java. Together with thousands of women and children, I was interned in a Japanese prison camp for three and a half years. Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army.

I had been in the camp for two years, when in 1944 high ranking Japanese officers arrived at the camp. The order was given: all single girls from seventeen years up, had to line up in the compound. The officers walked towards us, and a selection process began. They paced up and down the line, eyeing us up and down, looking at our figures, at our legs, lifting our chins. They selected ten pretty girls. I was one of ten. We were told to come forward, and pack a small bag, as we were to be taken away. The whole camp protested, and our mothers tried to pull us back. I embraced my mother not knowing if I was ever going to see her again. We were hurled into an army truck. We were terrified and clung to our bags and to each other.

The truck stopped in the city of Semarang, in front of a large Dutch Colonial house. We were told to get out. Entering the house we soon realized what sort of a house it was. A Japanese military told us that we were here for the sexual pleasure of the Japanese. The house was a brothel.

We protested loudly. We said we were forced to come here, against our will. That they had no right to do this to us, and that it was against the Geneva Convention. But they just laughed at us and said that they could do with us as they liked. We were given Japanese names and these were put on our bedroom doors.

We were a very innocent generation. I knew nothing about sex. The horrific memories of “opening night” of the brothel have tortured my mind all my life. We were told to go to the dining room, and we huddled together in fear, as we saw the house filling up with military. I got out my prayer book, and led the girls in prayer, in the hope that this would help us. Then they started to drag us away, one by one. I could hear the screaming coming from the bedrooms. I hid under the table, but was soon found. I fought him. I kicked him with all my might. The Japanese officer became very angry because I would not give myself to him. He took his sword out of its scabbard and pointed it at me, threatening me with it, that he would kill me if I did not give into him. I curled myself into a corner, like a hunted animal that could not escape. I made him understand that I was not afraid to die. I pleaded with him to allow me to say some prayers. While I was praying he started to undress himself. He had no intention of killing me. I would have been no good to him dead.

He then threw me on the bed and ripped off all my clothes. He ran his sword all over my naked body, and played with me as a cat would with a mouse. I still tried to fight him, but he thrust himself on top of me, pinning me down under his heavy body. The tears were streaming down my face as he raped me in a most brutal way. I thought he would never stop.

When he eventually left the room, my whole body was shaking. I gathered up what was left of my clothing, and fled into the bathroom. There I found some of the other girls. We were all crying, and in total shock. In the bathroom I tried to wash away all the dirt and the shame off my body. Just wash it away. But the night was not over yet, there were more Japanese waiting, and this went on all night, it was only the beginning, week after week, month after month.

The house was completely guarded, there was no way to escape. At times I tried to hide, but was always found, and dragged back to my room. I tried everything, I even cut off all my hair, so I was totally bald. I thought if I made myself look ugly, nobody would want me. But it turned me into a curiosity object; they all wanted the girl that had cut off her hair. It had the opposite effect.

Never did any Japanese rape me without a fight. I fought each one of them. Therefore, I was repeatedly beaten. In the so-called “Comfort Station” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for veneral disease. And to humiliate us even more the doors and windows were left open, so the Japanese could watch us being examined.

During the time in the “Comfort Station”, the Japanese had abused me and humiliated me. I was left with a body that was torn and fragmented everywhere. The Japanese soldiers had ruined my young life. They had stripped me of everything. They had taken away my youth, my self-esteem, my dignity, my freedom, my possessions, and my family. But there was one thing that they could never take away from me. It was my religious faith and love for God. This was mine and nobody could take that away from me. It was my deep Faith that helped me survive all that the Japanese did to me.

I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget. For fifty years, the “Comfort Women” maintained silence; they lived with a terrible shame, of feeling soiled and dirty. It has taken 50 years for these women’s ruined lives to become a human rights issue.

The war never ended for the “Comfort Women”. We still have the nightmares. After the war I needed major surgery to restore my body.

In 1992 the Korean “Comfort Women” broke their silence. Ms. Kim Hak Sun was the first to speak out. I watched them on TV as they pleaded for justice, for an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. I decided to back them up. I broke my silence at the International Public Hearing on Japanese War Crimes in Tokyo in December 1992 and revealed one of the worst human rights abuses of World War II, the forgotten holocaust.

For the past 15 years, I have worked tirelessly for the plight of “Comfort Women” in Australia and overseas, and for the protection of women in war. Now the time is running out. After sixty years the “Comfort Women” deserve justice. They are worthy of a formal apology from the Japanese government, from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe himself. The Japanese government must take full responsibility for their war crimes.

In 1995 they established the Asian Women’s Fund, to compensate the victims. This Fund was an insult to the “Comfort Women” and they, including myself, refused to accept it. This fund was a private fund, the money came from private enterprise, and not from the government. Japan must come to terms with its history, and acknowledge their war time atrocities. They must teach the correct history of the mistakes made in the past.

It is important that the surviving “Comfort Women” tell their stories. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you for this opportunity to share my story. I hope that by speaking out, I have been able to make a contribution to world peace and reconciliation, and that human rights violation against women will never happen again.

Thank you.

A Fighter for Colleges That Have Everything but Status

2007-03-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

By ALAN FINDER
The New York Times
February 28, 2007

BAILEY’S CROSSROADS, Va.

LOREN POPE has been bucking convention nearly all of his life, which is to say for a long, long time.

Mr. Pope, who is 96, grew up in northern Virginia, a Democrat in a family he describes as “hard-core Republican.” He worked as an editor at Washington newspapers and a local radio station, but left the news business for a while in the late 1940s to farm and raise cattle, largely because he thought the press was failing to stand up firmly to anti-Communist bullying. A decade later, he left The New York Times after a year as its education editor, discouraged, he says, by factionalism and bureaucracy.

So naturally, when he opened shop as an independent college counselor in Washington in 1965, Mr. Pope quickly developed a maverick’s view of college admissions.

He helped some clients get into the country’s most selective colleges and universities, but that was not where his passions lay. Instead, he began vigorously promoting to high school students and their parents the virtues of small, little-known liberal arts colleges.

“I’ve got egalitarian instincts, and that’s why I’m opposed to the elite schools’ status and prestige,” Mr. Pope said.

He sees as false the assumption that the selectivity of Ivy League and other elite colleges translates into the best education. Instead, he advocates colleges that accept a broad range of students, not just the top academic performers. And he argues that colleges with fewer than 3,000 students offer the best educational experience because students will have more opportunities to get to know professors well, both inside and outside the classroom.

“The smaller the school, the more impact it can have on a kid,” he said. He added, “My mission in life is to change the way people think about colleges.”

He has largely succeeded, and far beyond his expectations. In books, magazine articles and countless lectures over the last three decades, Mr. Pope helped to redefine the admissions landscape.

His last two books — “Looking Beyond the Ivy League” (Penguin Books, 1990) and “Colleges That Change Lives” (Penguin Books, 1996) — are required reading in many high school guidance offices. “Colleges That Change Lives” has sold more than 100,000 copies, and a revised edition was published last summer. The book has spawned group tours by many of the 40 colleges Mr. Pope identified as less-than-well-known institutions that provide memorable educations.

At a time when ranking guides have fueled an obsession in many families on the top 10 or 20 colleges and universities, Mr. Pope was among the first to encourage students and parents to think more broadly about what they want from a college education and where best to get one.

“Loren Pope has been a wonderful breath of fresh air,” said Jon Reider, director of college counseling at San Francisco University High School. “What he does and what the book does — I use the book all the time — is to say, here are all these little schools, you’ve never heard of most of them, like Hiram College and Juniata College and Allegheny College, and these are really wonderful places. These are places that really can, as the book says, change your life.”

MR. REIDER and other college counselors say there is nothing wrong with Stanford or Swarthmore or the Ivy League universities. Mr. Pope takes a harder line, though. Unafraid of broad generalizations and uninterested in diplomacy, he dismisses elite universities as too big, too impersonal and too selective.

Asked if a student could get a good education at Harvard or Yale, he said, “I think you’d have to work harder for it” because the professors are more focused on their research and it is harder to get to know them.

He is skeptical about why students and parents pursue admission to brand-name colleges. “I think all they are thinking about is status,” he said.

He even argues that B students ask more probing questions than A students, who he thinks are too caught up in trying to curry favor.

“I’m preaching the virtues of the unselective small colleges, the ones that are inclusive rather than exclusive,” Mr. Pope said in an interview at his apartment in a retirement community here in the suburbs of northern Virginia.

“A good school is an extended family,” he said. “The learning is collaborative, not competitive. It’s a community of learning, and values are central — that’s important.”

On visits to scores of colleges over the decades, Mr. Pope developed his strong, if highly subjective and contrarian, sense of what he liked.

He found these institutions across the country, from Clark University and McDaniel College in the Northeast to Centre College and Rhodes College in the South to Reed College and Evergreen State in the Northwest.

When many of the 40 colleges singled out by Mr. Pope decided to go on tour together nine years ago, to market themselves under the banner of Colleges That Change Lives, they stopped at eight cities and drew crowds of as many as 150 students and parents. Now they tour together nationally four times a year, with a total of about 30 events. Some nights, 500 to 700 people show up.

“What a major, major impact it has had for most of these colleges,” Steve Syverson, dean of admissions and financial aid at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., said of the book. Lawrence is one of Mr. Pope’s 40 colleges.

“The real underlying message is that there are lots of very good and interesting places that can serve a lot of students in good ways,” Mr. Syverson said. “It’s not one size fits all, and we should be celebrating the diversity of opportunities.”

It was probably inevitable that the heightened attention Mr. Pope brought to his favorite colleges would eventually worry him. Some have become too popular, in his mind at least. Between editions of the book he eliminated several colleges, including Bard, Grinnell and Franklin & Marshall, because he thought they had become too selective and were not admitting a sufficiently broad range of students. They were replaced by Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., and New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla., among others.

Mr. Pope continues to enjoy remarkably good health, but he has made some concessions to age. He retired from his college consulting business when he was 93, under pressure from his wife, Viola, he said. He stopped touring with the colleges shortly afterward, and he has spent considerable time in recent years caring for his ailing wife. (DePauw University, his alma mater, did not make his group of 40 colleges; he thinks it has become too big, too prosperous and too selective.)

But he remains vigorously at work on several projects: preparing a new edition of “Looking Beyond the Ivy League” and writing a book about a small house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him in 1940, in response to a letter from Mr. Pope, then a newspaper copy editor. The house is now a museum near Mount Vernon in suburban Virginia.

These days, he is frequently lauded with awards and honorary degrees for his contributions to college admissions. He requires little prodding to tell funny and often self-deprecating tales of his varied careers as a newspaper editor, radio news editor, education columnist, farmer and college administrator.

Mr. Pope did not truly find his niche until he opened his college counseling business at the age of 55 (selling timber from his farm to finance the venture). He cemented his reputation with his last book, published when he was 86. Looking back, is he surprised that it took so long?

“No, I’m not surprised,” he said. “Given my personality, that’s the way it had to be. I’m an evangelist, and I was hunting for a cause.”

FUNNY article

2007-03-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

From the ever reliable Onion.

LOS ANGELES—This year's Academy Awards pre-ceremony red carpet display has analysts worried that the divide between the nation's best and worst dressed is only growing, forcing thousands to live well below the taste line while a lucky few see their glamour levels skyrocket.

"Every year it's the same story, with the flashy getting flashier and the trashy getting trashier," said red carpet fashion expert Melissa Rivers, who brought attention to the issue Sunday night in a special post-Oscars report broadcast on the TV Guide channel. "If nothing is done to level the playing field, we may never see members of the fashion underprivileged, like Lindsay Lohan and Pamela Anderson, make the transition from sham to glam."

Oscar night fashion, which many experts use as a bellwether for the state of celebrity gorgeousness nationwide, has shown in recent years a high concentration of couture in the hands of a few, with Halle Berry alone commanding over 57 percent of the nation's supply of sexy yet exquisitely tasteful gowns.

"We can't just assume that because Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, and Kate Winslet look amazing, everything is okay," said Rivers, as celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch and In Touch magazine fashion commentator Goumba Johnny nodded in solemn agreement. "For every Sarah Jessica Parker, there's an overdressed underclass of Mary-Kate Olsens and Paula Abduls."

While fashion moguls have long predicted that investing in designer dresses would have an impact throughout Hollywood, little style has actually trickled down to those most in need. Fixtures of the fashion elite like Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lopez, and George Clooney, and younger taste mavens Reese Witherspoon and Anne Hathaway continue to occupy the highest strata, while Helena Bonham Carter, Mariah Carey, and Diane Keaton perennially personify the depressing lack of upward mobility, Rivers said.

"The best-dressed, worst-dressed divide is also a generational problem, as the children of worst-dressed celebrities are less likely to encounter the same glamour opportunities as children of best-dressed celebs," Rivers continued. "Just look at the Osbourne children. It's tragic. It's tragic."

Some celebrities, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt and Heather Graham, are accused of pursuing fashion beyond their fame. Moreover, a growing number of style analysts, including Rivers' counterpart and TV personality Jay Manuel, place blame for the current state of elegance squarely on the shoulders of the devastated celebrities themselves.

"It's all about personal responsibility: pull yourself up by your own Choo straps," Manuel said. "Courtney Love has her choice of any Versace gown she wants, but she chooses to look like she just stumbled out the back door of a methadone clinic. You just have to want to work hard and apply yourself."

Others insist that celebrities do not choose their worst-dressed fate, but are victims of recent fashion disasters from which they have not yet recovered.

"I don't believe for a minute that any of this is [the celebrities'] fault," said longtime red-carpet presence Joan Rivers, Melissa's mother. "Who in the world chooses to present themselves like Sharon Stone? Who goes out and dresses like Tori Spelling on purpose? No one, that's who! Gawd! It makes me sick!"

Rivers then simulated the act of forcing herself to vomit to emphasize her disgust over the accelerating fashion disparity.

No Apology Needed

2007-02-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

This is by far the strongest defense for Hilary's war support vote in 2002. And it came from a moderate Republican. Does it surprise anyone?

~ ~ ~
No Apology Needed

By DAVID BROOKS
February 15, 2007

Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?

I mean, have the people calling for her apology actually read the speeches she delivered before the war? Have they read her remarks during the war resolution debate, when she specifically rejected a pre-emptive, unilateral attack on Saddam? Did they read the passages in which she called for a longer U.N. inspections regime and declared, “I believe international support and legitimacy are crucial”?

If they went back and read what Senator Clinton was saying before the war, they’d be surprised, as I was, by her approach. And they’d learn something, as I did, about what kind of president she would make.

The Iraq war debate began in earnest in September 2002. At that point Clinton was saying in public what Colin Powell was saying in private: emphasizing the need to work through the U.N. and build a broad coalition to enforce inspections.

She delivered her Senate resolution speech on Oct. 10. It was Clintonian in character. On the one hand, she rejected the Bush policy of pre-emptive war. On the other hand, she also rejected the view that the international community “should only resort to force if and when the United Nations Security Council approves it.” Drawing on the lessons of Bosnia, she said sometimes the world had to act, even if the big powers couldn’t agree.

She sought a third way: more U.N. resolutions, more inspections, more diplomacy, with the threat of force reserved as a last resort. She was triangulating, but the Senate resolution offered her a binary choice. She voted yes in order to give Powell bipartisan leverage at the U.N.

This is how she’s always explained that vote, and I confess that until now, I’ve regarded her explanation as a transparent political dodge. Didn’t everyone know this was a war resolution? But now, having investigated her public comments, I think diplomatic leverage really was on her mind. I also know, from a third person, that she was spending a lot of time with Powell and wanted to help.

On Nov. 8, 2002, the Security Council passed a unanimous resolution threatening Saddam with “serious consequences” if he didn’t disarm.

The next crucial period came in March 2003, as the U.S. battled France over the second Security Council resolution. Clinton’s argument at this point was that inspections were working and should be given more time. “It is preferable that we do this in a peaceful manner through coercive inspection,” she said on March 3, but went on, “At some point we have to be willing to uphold the United Nations resolutions.” Then she added, “This is a very delicate balancing act.”

On March 17, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to disarm or face attack. Clinton tried to be critical of the Bush policy while being deferential to the office of the presidency. She clearly had doubts about Bush’s timing, but she kept emphasizing that from her time in the White House, she knew how unhelpful it was for senators to be popping off in public on foreign policy.

At one press event in New York, she nodded when Charles Rangel said Bush had failed at the U.N. But when reporters asked Clinton to repeat what Rangel had just said, she bit her tongue. On March 17, as U.S. troops mobilized, she issued her strongest statement in support of the effort.

Clinton’s biggest breach with the liberal wing actually opened up later, in the fall of 2003. Most liberals went into full opposition, wanting to see Bush disgraced. Clinton — while an early critic of the troop levels, the postwar plans and all the rest — tried to stay constructive. She wanted to see America and Iraq succeed, even if Bush was not disgraced.

When you look back at Clinton’s thinking, you don’t see a classic war supporter. You see a person who was trying to seek balance between opposing arguments. You also see a person who deferred to the office of the presidency. You see a person who, as president, would be fox to Bush’s hedgehog: who would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.

Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself.

This blog is dying...

2007-02-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

To slap some spirit into this sagging blog, I decided to repost an article by Maureen Dowd. This is a very true trend that I've mused over too, as I "cruised through Borders."

Heels over Hemingway, by Maureen Dowd

I was cruising through Borders, looking for a copy of “Nostromo.”

Suddenly I was swimming in pink. I turned frantically from display table to display table, but I couldn’t find a novel without a pink cover. I was accosted by a sisterhood of cartoon women, sexy string beans in minis and stilettos, fashionably dashing about book covers with the requisite urban props — lattes, books, purses, shopping bags, guns and, most critically, a diamond ring.

Was it a Valentine’s Day special?

No, I realized with growing alarm, chick lit was no longer a niche. It had staged a coup of the literature shelves. Hot babes had shimmied into the grizzled old boys’ club, the land of Conrad, Faulkner and Maugham. The store was possessed with the devil spawn of “The Devil Wears Prada.” The blood-red high heel ending in a devil’s pitchfork on the cover of the Lauren Weisberger best seller might as well be driving a stake through the heart of the classics.

I even found Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” with chick-lit pretty-in-pink lettering.

“Penis lit versus Venus lit,” said my friend Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, who was with me. “An unacceptable choice.”

“Looking for Mr. Goodbunny” by Kathleen O’Reilly sits atop George Orwell’s “1984.” “Mine Are Spectacular!” by Janice Kaplan and Lynn Schnurnberger hovers over “Ulysses.” Sophie Kinsella’s “Shopaholic” series cuddles up to Rudyard Kipling.

Even Will Shakespeare is buffeted by rampaging 30-year-old heroines, each one frantically trying to get their guy or figure out if he’s the right guy, or if he meant what he said, or if he should be with them instead of their BFF or cousin, or if he’ll come back, or if she’ll end up stuck home alone eating Häagen-Dazs and watching “CSI” and “Sex and the City” reruns.

Trying to keep up with soap-opera modernity, “Romeo and Juliet” has been reissued with a perky pink cover.

There are subsections of chick lit: black chick lit (“Diva Diaries”), Bollywood chick lit (“Salaam, Paris”), Jewish chick lit (“The J.A.P. Chronicles” and “The Matzo Ball Heiress”) and assistant lit, which has its own subsection of Hollywood-assistant lit (“The Second Assistant”), mystery lit (“Sex, Murder and a Double Latte”), shopping lit (“Retail Therapy”), the self-loathing genre (“This Is Not Chick Lit”) and Brit chick lit (“Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging”).

The narrator of that last, Georgia, begins with a note to her readers: “Hello, American-type chums! (Perhaps you say ‘Howdy’ in America — I don’t know — but then I’m not really sure where Tibet is either, or my lipstick.) ... I hope you like my diary and don’t hold it against me that my great-great-great-grandparents colonized you. (Not just the two of them. ...).”

Giving the books an even more interchangeable feeling is the bachelorette party of log-rolling blurbs by chick-lit authors. Jennifer “Good in Bed” Weiner blurbs Sarah Mlynowski’s “Me vs. Me” and Karen McCullah Lutz’s “The Bachelorette Party.” Lauren Weisberger blurbs Emily “Something Borrowed” Giffin.

I took home three dozen of the working women romances. They can lull you into a hypnotic state with their simple life lessons — one heroine emulated Doris Day, another Audrey Hepburn, one was the spitting image of Carolyn Bessette, another Charlize Theron — but they’re a long way from Becky Sharp and Elizabeth Bennet. They’re all chick and no lit.

Please do not confuse these books with the love-and-marriage of Jane Austen. These are more like multicultural Harlequin romances. They’re Cinderella bodice rippers — Manolo trippers — girls with long legs, long shiny hair and sparkling eyes stumbling through life, eating potato skins loaded with bacon bits and melted swiss, drinking cocktails, looking for the right man and dispensing nuggets of hard-won wisdom, like, “Any guy who can watch you hurl Cheez Doodles is a keeper,” and, “You can’t puke in wicker. It leaks.”

In the 19th century in America, people often linked the reading of novels with women. Women were creatures of sensibility, and men were creatures of action. But now, Leon suggested, American fiction seems to be undergoing a certain re-feminization.

“These books do not seem particularly demanding in the manner of real novels,” Leon said. “And when we’re at war and the country is under threat, they seem a little insular. America’s reading women could do a lot worse than to put down ‘Will Francine Get Her Guy?’ and pick up ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’ ”

The novel was once said to be a mirror of its times. In my local bookstore, it’s more like a makeup mirror.

Tapping Solar Power

2006-11-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

I think this is an amazing trivia fact. Not to get all scientific and nerdy on you, but think of all the energy that is readily available from our favorite star, the Sun.

Photosynthetic microorganisms can capture solar energy, a free, abundant and under-used energy source. The amount of solar energy that strikes the Earth every hour (4.3 x10^20 Joules) is approximately equal to the total amount of energy that is consumed on the planet every year (4.1 x10^20 Joules). Therefore, capturing even a small fraction of the available solar energy could make a significant contribution to global energy needs. Despite its availability, however, a study carried out in 2001 found that sunlight provided less than 0.1% of the world's electricity.

- Nature Review, Vol 11, Editorial.

The New 7 Wonders

2006-11-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

www.new7wonders.com/

Go Vote!

The New 7 Wonders of the World

2006-11-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

New 7 Wonders of the World

I just voted for the new 7 wonders of the World, which are to be revealed on 07/07/07 in Lisbon. Needless to say, there are the usual suspects, i.e. the Great Wall, Pyramid of Giza, Taj Mahal etc. But I was somewhat surprised to find that some are among the finalists, for example, the Sidney Opera House, a temple from Japan, and the Statue of Liberty. While I can certainly appreciate the symbolic importance of Lady Liberty, but I wouldn't go so far as to list it among the others which have stood the test of time and still convey a sense of grandeur and majesticity. In order for something to be a "wonder," to me at least, it has to represent a significant human endeavor, something that inspires awe to whomever sets their eyes upon it for generations to come.

Rereading Persuasion

2006-11-22T09:35:00.001-08:00

I have been re-reading Jane Austen's PERSUASION over the last few days. It's a book I have read several times before, but I keep finding newly delightful passages. The main character, Anne Elliott, is so thoroughly sympathetic. I absolutely adore this book!

And there is something so familiar about taking up a favorite book. Oddly comforting, like seeing an old friend.

Not too much insight here, just wanted to gush a bit about the joys of reading!

Master of Time: Wong Kar-Wai in America

2006-11-20T08:14:00.000-08:00

Posted here from the New York Times, written by Dennis Lim.

On a SoHo film set last August, Jude Law and Norah Jones were getting intimate. Repeatedly intimate. To be precise, they had kissed upwards of 150 times in the past three days.

The occasion for this outbreak of passion was “My Blueberry Nights,” the first English-language film by Wong Kar-wai, the maverick Hong Kong director turned avatar of cosmopolitan cool. This particular night was stifling as the crew spilled out of Palacinka, a small cafe on Grand Street that was the principal New York location, preparing for yet another take of the scene known as “the Kiss.”

It’s closing time, and Ms. Jones, the only remaining customer, is slumped on the counter, her eyes shut. A smudge of cream rests on her upper lip, the telltale sign of a dessert binge. Mr. Law, cleaning up behind the bar, gazes at her, slowly leans in and steals a lingering kiss. When he surfaces, the cream on her lip is gone.

The shot lasted less than a minute, but the number of permutations that Mr. Wong and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, devised — 15 set-ups, by the count of the script supervisor — suggested it would play a central role in the finished film. The Kiss was being shot at different film speeds and from a multitude of angles: a wide shot, his point of view, hers, through windows, with objects in the foreground.

“I’ve never worked with someone who’s put so much emphasis on a single moment,” Mr. Law said between takes one night. “It’s extraordinary how he’ll take a moment and replay it and slice it up.”

The consecration of a fleeting, fugitive moment is one of Mr. Wong’s specialties. Perhaps more than any filmmaker since Alain Resnais, his great subject is time — or more specifically lost time. His rhapsodic movies, haunted by voice-over ruminations and swathed in lush regret, seem to transpire in the realm of memory. People and places are mourned even as they are captured on camera.

Mr. Wong, 48, is keen to describe “My Blueberry Nights,” a road movie shot in New York, Memphis, Las Vegas and Ely, Nev., with a cast that also includes Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn, as a new beginning. His last film, “2046,” was planned as science fiction but demonstrated the gravitational pull of the past as well, succumbing to the hothouse delirium of 1960s Hong Kong. A kaleidoscopic head rush, “2046” quoted so extensively from Mr. Wong’s earlier work that it felt like a midcareer retrospective unto itself.

To a notorious degree Mr. Wong finds his way as he goes, often plunging into production with little more than an outline. His exploratory method gives his films a unique shape and intensity; the result is inseparable from the process.

In the mid-1990s, with Hong Kong’s reversion to Chinese sovereignty looming, Mr. Wong directed three films — “Chungking Express,” “Fallen Angels” and “Happy Together” — in quick succession. Made as if on deadline, they have a brash Polaroid-like immediacy. The films that followed, “In the Mood for Love” and “2046,” are period reveries rooted in the melancholy of transience. It’s only fitting that he had a hard time letting go; each took a seeming eternity to complete. “In five years you can make five films, but I spent five years making one,” he said in his Manhattan hotel room soon after the shoot, referring to “2046.”

“My Blueberry Nights” — repeat kisses notwithstanding — is a conscious attempt to pick up the pace. For one thing, Mr. Wong shot it in just seven weeks. “We thought of this as a vacation film, spontaneous and contemporary,” he said. “Making a film under the best conditions, it’s like a rock band on tour,” he added, ever the rock-star director: his trademark sunglasses stayed on through the New York night shoots.

For another, Mr. Wong said that the project “happened overnight.” He was in New York last year researching another movie, “The Lady From Shanghai,” a period drama (no relation to the Orson Welles film noir) that would star Nicole Kidman and shoot in Russia, Shanghai and New York. When that was postponed, he decided to make a smaller, off-the-cuff film, which he conceived as a vehicle for Ms. Jones, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, who had never acted before.

“She’s a natural,” he said, adding that he had instructed her not to take acting lessons.

As he sees it, “My Blueberry Nights” is in a sense about Ms. Jones’s face as it reacts to different environments. “In Memphis there’s something very classic about her presence,” he said. “In New York it’s very contemporary.”

Ms. Jones seemed less confident than her director. “I have no idea what he saw in me or where he saw it,” she said on a coffee break one night. “When I got the call, I thought he wanted some music for his movies. It’s weird because I feel like I’ve looked uncomfortable in every music video I’ve been in.”

William Chang, who has been Mr. Wong’s editor, production designer and costume designer from the start, is with him on “My Blueberry Nights,” but for the first time in 15 years Christopher Doyle, the iconoclastic Australian cinematographer, is not. Together Mr. Wong and Mr. Doyle invented a much copied visual shorthand for romantic alienation, a mix of neon-smudged kinesis and slow-motion contemplation. But their relationship has been strained of late, with Mr. Doyle’s Hollywood workload and Mr. Wong’s erratic schedules becoming incompatible. In Mr. Doyle’s place is Mr. Khondji, the French cinematographer best known for the dank atmospherics of David Fincher’s “Seven.”

Just as striking as Mr. Doyle’s absence from the project is the presence of Hollywood actors. Over the years Mr. Wong has built up a repertory of Hong Kong luminaries who learned to thrive under his impulsive demands. “My Blueberry Nights” subjects its starry ensemble to an open-ended process that would be inconceivable on a studio movie. (The film was acquired for American distribution by the Weinstein Company earlier this month.)

Mr. Wong was also working for the first time with a screenwriting partner, the crime novelist Lawrence Block, who had written some scenes based on an outline. While shooting, Mr. Wong constantly revised and added new scenes, often at the last minute. He said he was surprised to find that the actors were not only ready for the challenge — his reputation preceded him — but even excited.

“I wish we had endless time and endless money,” Mr. Law said. “It’s not often you get to be part of something like this — a living story that’s still being decided.”

There is a pragmatic side to Mr. Wong’s seemingly reckless method. Entire subplots are planned, cast and even shot, only to evaporate. But he recycles ideas as often as he abandons them. A stray segment from “Chungking Express” became “Fallen Angels,” while “2046” bloomed from a kernel first planted in “Days of Being Wild,” his 1991 breakthrough film.

Similarly “My Blueberry Nights” grew out of a planned omnibus called “Three Stories About Food.” One chapter became “In the Mood for Love” (2000). Another, the basis for “Blueberry,” was filmed as a short with Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, and has only been screened once, at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

That short, called “In the Mood for Love 2001,” contained the blueprint for the Kiss. As Mr. Wong expanded the scenario, it turned into a road movie partly because it would cost too much to shoot entirely in New York. So he contrived a romantic predicament to send Ms. Jones’s character on a trip. “She needs time to think so she takes the longest road across America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” he said.

The next step was to map her route and find at least two pit stops. Crew members went on three cross-country location scouting trips, accompanied twice by Mr. Khondji and once by Mr. Wong. Both took copious photos of highways, diners, motels: slices of Americana in the style of Robert Frank and William Eggleston.

Mr. Wong considered post-Katrina New Orleans, but the logistics were daunting. He opted instead for Memphis, where Ms. Jones would encounter Mr. Strathairn and Ms. Weisz’s unhappy couple. (Mr. Wong called the Memphis segment a tribute to Tennessee Williams.) He discovered Ely while driving along Highway 50, often called the loneliest road in America, and decided to place Ms. Portman’s story line there.

Mr. Wong asks for complete trust from his actors, but he’s also willing to customize their roles to suit them. This was especially so with Mr. Law’s character, the cafe proprietor, who started out as a quiet type but grew more boisterous when the actor’s charisma and energy became evident. “I kept telling him to get louder,” Mr. Wong said.

More than a month into the shoot, despite the breakneck pace and permanent uncertainty, the atmosphere on set was relatively serene. “There’s an incredible calmness to him,” Mr. Law said of Mr. Wong.

Even so, there are some basic aspects of production in this country that run counter to his prized spontaneity. Permit applications must be filed well in advance. Union regulations stipulate penalties for long days, precluding the marathon sessions that he has been known to hold.

In Hong Kong “we make films like a family business,” he said. “Here everything has to be quite specific. I have to explain to the crew that even though I respect the rules, there’s certain things I want to keep my way.”

As Ms. Jones put it, “He’s open to everything, but he knows what he wants.”

BETWEEN takes of the Kiss, Mr. Chang, the production designer, was fussing over Ms. Jones. He rearranged her hair, fanning her curls out on the countertop, and reapplied the spot of cream on her lip. Compared with the exertions of “2046,” which called for period re-creations, futuristic sets and a heaving wardrobe of traditional and android couture, this was a breeze.

“I really needed a break from period,” Mr. Chang said, smiling.

The cafe location had only been minimally altered. There were hand-painted inscriptions on the glass windows and a new sign outside with Cyrillic lettering. Mr. Chang had also installed a pair of columns to break up the tiny space and mounted mirrors to maximize the angles.

That night Mr. Khondji was working out a complex shot that required him to pan, track and shoot the Kiss through a vase, a cake dish and some beer bottles on the countertop.

After a few takes Mr. Wong asked if the shot would work better if Mr. Law, before swooping in for the smooch, extended his hand to touch Ms. Jones’s face. Or, as he put it, “Foreplay or no foreplay?” A vote was taken among those present; the former prevailed. Mr. Law incorporated the maneuver into the remaining takes.

Later Mr. Wong jokingly explained: “I had to ask because in America, sometimes they prefer things macho. I wasn’t sure if it should be too tender. In Hong Kong I don’t have to ask. I know what a guy would do.”

Most nights the mood music was “The Greatest,” the latest album of dreamy downer ballads by Cat Power. For Mr. Wong the on-set soundtrack was mostly for the benefit of the cinematographer. “The best way for the camera to pick up the rhythm is music,” he said.

Mr. Khondji said that he and Mr. Wong had intended to adopt a casually alert, near-documentary style, using a small crew and natural light. But once they got under way, perhaps through force of habit, the shots became more stylized. Still, Mr. Khondji added: “It’s not as perfect as his last two movies. There’s no time for perfection.”

Mr. Wong left for Hong Kong in September with almost all of “Blueberry,” his ninth feature, under his belt and — it would not be a Wong Kar-wai film otherwise — questions surrounding the ending. He said he would likely return in the winter to shoot the concluding scenes.

Reached by e-mail recently, he said he was editing with Mr. Chang and would not make any decisions about additional shooting until he had a first cut. The plan had been to balance the completion of “Blueberry” with preproduction on “The Lady From Shanghai,” but Ms. Kidman announced last month that she was pulling out of that film. “None of those reports have been confirmed by anyone involved with the project,” Mr. Wong wrote. Without Ms. Kidman, though, he added, “There is no reason to do it.”

Over tea shortly before he left New York, Mr. Wong said he was exhausted from the grueling shoot. But far from being fazed by the sense of incompletion, he seemed invigorated: the door remained open, no alternatives had been lost, the story was still alive.

And how might “My Blueberry Nights” end? “I think there will be a second kiss,” he said. “But I don’t know where.”

Amazing Caves

2006-11-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is a story of the Ajanta Caves, located at 300 miles inland from Bombay, India. These caves, inside which have statues of animals, ornate pillars, Buddha figures, soaring roofs, are purely man-made by digging into huge piece of stone on a cliff. They were carved for the worship of Buddha 2000 years ago. Then the local Indians totally abandoned the Law of Buddha for the rule of Hindu. For 1600 years Mr. Buddha sat inside the cave in serenity and solitude, ignoring all the outside world with its wars and battles. And then this dude, captain John Smith stumbled upon the cave in 1819.

ALERT: Don't be a slave to TECHNOLOGY

2006-11-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

T Friedman of NYT has a column up titled The Taxi Driver and it got on the top 10 mail email list. It is about how technology (e.g. cell phone, iPod, laptop etc) constantly interupt our lives and ceaselessly divide our attention that they are dividing humans as much as they bridge them.

I do agree with him to a large extend. There is one thing however he didn't mention in the article and is worth mentioning: all these gadgets that fill up our surrounding space with one type of sound or another, one thought or another; then there is no more silence left! Where is the quiet time when you can sink back and with yourself, just you and yourself? And not attend to emails, music, etc?

Then I think it's really not technology's problem. It's really up to those who use it. You can't be a slave to a piece of laptop if you don't want to give them your attention. But then again, whenever my computer is open, I usually end up wasting time on it. Can't help it!

An Unwelcome Discovery

2006-10-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

I just read an interesting article about a scientist sentenced to a year in federal prison for his fraudulence and scientific misconduct. It was particularly interesting to me now that I've worked in a research lab for 10 months. I can understand why it's tempting to make up data to support your own hypothesis. However, this scientist's conduct seemed to be egregious. Over a span of 10 years, he managed to make up false evidence, become a superstar scientist, and secure millions of dollars in grants for his "research."

Read the article in the New York Times Magazine, titled, An Unwelcome Discovery.

It's a tragic story, but it's also a very interesting and fascinating character study. It also highlights the universal truth that weaving a life or career based on a web of lies will eventually lead you only to self-destruction.

I want to be an archeologist!

2006-10-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

I was just reading articles in the Times on the IAEA and archeology and new tombs discovered in Syria. They kept making me think how cool it would be to be an archeologist. I like my present job - where else would I get paid to look at photos of cute baby seals and google "monster trucks" - but sometimes I wish I did something else. What random alternate careers would the rest of you opt for?

Journalism vs. Writing...

2006-10-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

From a review of Adam Gopnik's book Through the Children's Gate in the NY Times:
"He distinguishes writing from journalism, which, he says, examines its subjects from the outside in; writing is from the inside out. “Applicable metaphors, not all-over views, are what writers and readers trade in.” His intent, he writes, “is not to strip experience bare but to use experience for some other purpose: to draw a moral or construct an argument, make a case or just tell a joke.”

People watching and fashion gazing

2006-10-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

I think if I still lived in NYC, a fun thing to do would be to go around the city with my digital to take pictures of people in fashions that catch my eye. Here's an article from Slate talking about the various blogs that capture the fashion on the streets. Good sites to check out if you're bored.

Click here for article

Carmen Consoli

2006-09-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

I like this Italian singer. Here are some songs on Google Video:

Blunotte

Quello che sento

Beyond the North Wind

2006-09-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

I found this except from Washington Post on the People's Daily website, the news channel for the Chinese government.

The new prime minister of Japan must be honest about Japan's history in the Second World War, The Washington Post said in an editorial on Monday.

"In its long march from military catastrophe to heavyweight status, postwar Japan has oscillated between two kinds of errors," the editorial said.

"Japan's left wing has been honest about the past but irresponsible about the present. It has shown remorse for atrocities committed by Japanese troops in East Asia in the 1930s but has been reluctant to see Japan's emergence from its pacifist shell and making contributions to international security," the editorial said.

As for the right wing, the editorial added that "the right has made the opposite mistake: it has pushed for Japan to take more responsibility for defense but has glossed over Japan's war guilt. Since taking office in 2001, Junichiro Koizumi has tended to make the right-wing mistake."

"Koizumi insisted on visiting the Yashukuni Shrine commemorating Japan's war dead, including its war criminals, and during his term, some government-approved textbooks whitewashed Japan's war record. This unnecessarily inflamed anti-Japanese sentiments among its neighboring countries," the editorial said.

"If Japan admits past errors, it will gain acceptance as a responsible democracy, and its muscular foreign policy will be treated as legitimate. But if it professes to see nothing wrong in its past record, its efforts to assert itself on security and diplomatic question will raise tensions with neighbors, undermining regional security rather than contributing to it," the editorial concluded.

Last Wednesday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe was elected the 21st president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and will naturally succeed Junichiro Koizumi as Japan's next prime minister.

Satirical Fun

2006-09-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

This is one of the best articles I've read in a while. Check it out - too long to post here.

My Satirical Self

Mountains Beyond Mountains

2006-09-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

A friend just recommended the book Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Has anyone read it?

A Lecture on Creativity and Spirituality

2006-09-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

I found out about this author James Cowan through a random book titled "Rumi's Divan of Shems of Tabriz" I got from Strand after breakfast with Amelie on Wednesday. Here's a lecture he delivered in 2000 at Michigan State U. He's Australian. Hm....I'm very intrigued and want to write to this guy.

Sugar Mummies

2006-08-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

We're businessmen,' says Leroy proudly. 'We sell ganja, coke and good lovin'.' His grin spreads to his eyes as he touches fists with his friend Sean. It's a traditional male Jamaican greeting expressing good wishes, friendship and respect. Sean responds, bumping his closed fist atop Leroy's. 'Respect man, to the businessmen.'
It's 10am on Jamaica's breathtaking Negril beach. Bleached white sand, swaying palms and crystalline Caribbean waters stretch into the distance for seven miles. It looks endless and, on a first impression, this could be paradise. But Negril is not as dreamlike as it looks. It is no longer visited primarily for sun, sea and sand. Instead it is the destination of choice for an increasing number of British female sex tourists. An estimated 80,000 single women, from teenagers to grandmothers, flock to the island every year and use the services of around 200 men known as 'rent a dreads', 'rastitutes' or 'the Foreign Service' who make this resort their headquarters.
Female sex tourism is nothing new. It was reported in the late 1840s, when an Englishwoman went to Rome to take a lover. But in recent years it has grown in popularity. These days the women who participate are more likely to be single professionals than bored Shirley Valentine housewives. With females staying single longer and rising divorce rates, these holidays are expected to explode in popularity in the years ahead. Consequently they are the subject of a sudden flurry of books, films and plays examining the motivations of women who travel for sex, love and affection.
Earlier this month Heading South, a thought-provoking French film about a single 55-year-old sex tourist in Seventies Haiti, opened to rave reviews. Starring Charlotte Rampling, it tells the story of a disenchanted English professor who finds a new, more rewarding passion in the bodies of young black men which, she discovers, can be bought for sums trifling to the affluent. In the film Rampling's character Ellen observes: 'If you're over 40 and not as dumb as a fashion model, the only guys who are interested are natural-born losers or husbands whose wives are cheating on them.'
At the beginning of next month the Royal Court theatre in London, never afraid of controversy, will go nearer the knuckle than ever when it stages Sugar Mummies. Lynda Bellingham, the Oxo Mum who became the wholesome face of family values in TV commercials, plays one of four middle-aged women who visit Jamaica to sample male prostitutes. There is lots and lots of sex.
Before it has even opened, the play has ignited a heated debate about the rights and wrongs of female sex tourism: is it harmless fun, a mutually beneficial business transaction? Or is it exploitation and, if so, who is the victim and who is the perpetrator - the women who fall for declarations of true love or the mostly poor, underemployed men who make them? What makes it different from male sex tourism, which is normally seen as sleazy and abhorrent? And is it, as many critics argue, perpetuating the racist myth of the hyper-sexual black man?
The gigolos working on Negril beach offer a simple explanation for their role in what is commonly, though euphemistically, called 'romance tourism'.
'For us it's a fun and easy way to make money,' says Leroy. 'For her, she gets some real good lovin'. All the English ladies who come here complain about the men back home. They say they are cold and selfish, mechanical and uncomplimentary. We know how to make a lady feel good.'
His friend explains that there is no welfare state in Jamaica. Staff who work in the hotels, which charge guests from about £120 a night, earn between £40 and £50 a week. The hard-working and high-earning but lonely western women who come to the island seem like millionaires. 'We are all poor in Jamaica. What we do is more fun and more money than working in a hotel.'
It can be extremely lucrative, but the idea that the men charge a certain price for a set service simply doesn't happen. There seems to be a mutual but tacitly agreed deception at the heart of the gigolo-client relationship. Payment is rarely mentioned because this would shatter the illusion that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and he has fallen desperately in love with her. Instead, after charming the women and offering to be their guide, the gigolos set about, sometimes in subtle ways, extracting as much money as possible.
Leroy and Sean, who are both 22, spot two large white women who look around fortyish. They saunter towards them, taking in any obvious weaknesses.
'Good morning, beautiful ladies. Welcome to Jamaica,' says Leroy, offering his fist to one of the women. 'Respect,' adds Sean, as he gazes deep into the pale blue eyes of her friend.
In the distance you can hear other beach boys advertising some of their more conventional wares: 'Coconut, pineapple, mangoes, bananas, Marlboros.' Hand-painted signs, invariably in the bright green, red and yellow colours of the country's flag, invite tourists to stop for breakfast of ackee fruit and salt fish. Other stalls sell aloe vera massages, hair braiding, handmade jewellery and carvings. Even in the morning, it is possible to detect the unmistakable smell of marijuana wafting in the faint breeze.
The women awkwardly offer their fists in response and introduce themselves. They arrived the previous evening from Miami. It is their first morning on the beach.
'You are gorgeous,' Leroy tells one of them, whose attractiveness isn't immediately apparent. 'What part of heaven did you fall from?'
A policeman wanders past, observing but not intervening. Later he tells me it is usually the women who complain on the rare occasions that the force does apprehend hustlers.
She grins at her friend, clearly flattered but not completely fooled. 'Beautiful ladies, some of the men here will hassle you and rip you off,' he warns, appearing genuinely concerned for their wellbeing. 'You need someone to look after you. To show you around. Take you to the waterfalls, the Blue Mountains and the caves and the best parties.' He smiles coquettishly.
The two women look at each other like nervous schoolgirls and giggle. They say they think they are a bit too old for the men.
'No, you ageless,' Leroy continues, shaking his head. 'We are real men. In Jamaica, real men like the cat, not the kitten. And real men like real women. Mature and intelligent and beautiful women like you.'
To some people, their well-rehearsed chat-up lines might sound corny, a bit nauseating, somewhat transparent. But for plenty of women the words are just what they have been longing to hear. They agree to meet later that night at the reggae party on the beach.
When I ask Leroy what he does if he's not attracted to a woman, he responds matter of factly: 'Close my eyes and pretend it's Beyoncé.'
Not far from them, strolling along the water's edge are Jackie, a 38-year-old single woman who works in London as an advertising manager, and Andrew, 24. Jackie is short with dark hair and a plain but attractive face. She met Andrew, tall and slender but solidly built, during a holiday to the island with two girlfriends last December. She has returned to spend a week with him. Only one close friend knows she is here.
'I'd heard about these guys who trawl the beach and I wondered what kind of stupid woman would fall for that kind of thing,' Jackie says. 'At first when Andrew approached me, I dismissed him. I hadn't come here looking for any kind of relationship. I came to get over one.
'But he persisted. He wooed and charmed me. He was funny and very complimentary. I was with my friends and I was a bit worried that they would disapprove. But I thought, "what the hell, you only live once". And I suppose there was a bit of me that wanted to do something slightly adventurous.'
Like many of the women here, Jackie is offended by any suggestion that she is merely a sex tourist and that Andrew is, in effect, a prostitute.
'I see nothing immoral about it. I regard it more as a temporary love affair. He tells me all the things I want to hear, and I guess in return I pay for everything - meals, accommodation, transport, tours - and buy him gifts. But that is because I have much more money than he does. It is mutually beneficial,' she insists.
'When he tells me I'm the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and that he loves my body, I know it might not be absolutely true, but it's nice to hear. The affection, attention, intimacy and compliments are equally, if not more, important to me than the sexual aspect of the relationship.'
Jackie said Andrew raised the money issue the morning after they had first slept together. He told her he could not afford to pay his rent and needed to get his car repaired. She has been sending cash to him every month ever since.
Set on Negril beach, Sugar Mummies explores the pleasures and perils of female sex tourism. Playwright Tanika Gupta, who spent two weeks in Jamaica researching the subject, has focused on a group of British and American women seeking sun, sea, sand and uninhibited sex with good-looking strangers.
During her visit, she identified four types of female sex tourist. The 'Ibiza-type' are young, frisky and just looking for a good time. 'Many of them were sexy, beautiful, young and slim,' says Gupta. 'But because they didn't have that much money, the guys weren't interested.' The second group are in their mid- to late-30s and desperate for a baby, perhaps a cute brown one. She saw many simply looking for love, and finally what she called the 'grandmother-type': white-haired, sixty-something women walking along the beach hand in hand with fit, handsome young men.
'After about five minutes on the beach, I felt like Naomi Campbell,' Gupta says. 'No matter what you look like or what size you are, they have the patter to make you feel as if you are a supermodel. You see women melting in front of these guys and I can completely understand why.'
Although the playwright is not critical of the women who engage in sex tourism, ultimately she found herself increasingly disheartened by what she saw.
'A lot of the women talked about how big the men are and how they can go all night. I was shocked at the way they objectified the black male body. But what I found most depressing was that the whole thing is not real. So many of the women think they have found real love. It's all very delusional. At first I thought it was all about white women exploiting black men. But it's not. It's very mutual. The guys are just as exploitative and you come away thinking this is such a sad, sick world that we live in.'
Steamy, raunchy and often very funny, Sugar Mummies is the first play to explore the issue since Shirley Valentine, which was made into a film. Bellingham plays Maggie, a habitual sex tourist in her 50s. Ultimately she is a broken, tragic woman who says: 'Marriage is a compromise... you have kids, you nurture them, teach them, love them. They grow up and leave you. And then your man leaves you too.' In a disturbing scene, she ties up her 17-year-old would-be lover, Antonio, after he fails to perform for her physically.
The play is tough on the sex tourists, says Gupta. 'But what I hoped to achieve was an exploration of why these women feel so invisible in the West that they feel they have to go and pay for affirmation. It uses humour because there is something highly amusing about the fact that there are fifty-something women who believe these beautiful 18-year-old men have fallen in love with them at first sight.'
Others see such deals as an inevitable function of the global distribution of wealth and even a sign of growing equality between the sexes. Jeannette Belliveau, 51, a former sex tourist who is now happily remarried, has just written a book, Romance on the Road, about the steady stream of lonely women heading from the West to developing countries.
Belliveau became an 'accidental sex pilgrim' after the break-up of her first marriage to a 'difficult, complex Englishman'. In the book she recounts a decade of flings, some lasting one night, others several years long, with men from the Caribbean, Brazil and Greece. She said that she wrote her book partly to counter the negative views put forward by the small number of academics who have studied the subject.
She also wanted to 'normalise' the experience, which she says for many British and American women creates unnecessary feelings of shame, anxiety and secrecy.
'There is the view that these women are guilty of hypocrisy and that they are exploiting poor men. This is nonsense. Sex between two adults that doesn't harm either partner is without question a good thing. I learnt so much from it. It healed me after a painful divorce.
'When I was younger I was so idealistic about sex, thinking it was best allied to love. But I learnt that this is not always the case and I began to realise that the notion of a perfect kindred spirit was for starry-eyed youth.'
She believes female sex tourism is increasing because of shortages of suitable men, the hassles of the dating game back home and due to many professional women living in sexual exile, with fragmented social connections.
'Back home in the West, many strong-minded, feisty women tend to intimidate guys - they focus on their careers and neglect their personal lives - but many black men seem to like and loudly express an appreciation for headstrong, independent, bantering and financially sound women. It does not take a great sex siren in these places to draw men like a magnet.'
She is critical of those who regard it as prostitution or a hangover from slavery. 'It seems to me that these critics are implicitly saying, oddly like members of the National Front, that women shouldn't date or fall in love outside their race, nationality or economic group. Casual travel sex by women, whether they are 20 or 60, is in everybody's best interests. I don't see it as exploitation. I see it as adults having fun.'
It is Friday night and the party is at Alfred's Ocean Palace, a grandly named beach bar in Negril. The sky is black and clear with just a light scattering of stars. In the unlit bar area people sip rum or Red Stripe beer and share joints. A live reggae band is on stage and the sandy dance floor is bustling with dreadlocks and dope smokers. Pale, plump, clumsy women do their best not to look ridiculous next to the raw, natural and explicit moves of the Jamaicans.
Two English women, both in their late 30s, have been coming here two to three times a year since 2002. They have each had several Jamaican lovers. For them, it is harmless fun, but they have seen another side to it.
'Our friend came with us last year and fell head over heels,' says Anna, a nurse from Essex, who is standing arm in arm with Rodney, a good-looking 19-year-old. 'We warned her that the guy was a hustler, but she didn't believe us and said we were just jealous. They slept together, and then he started asking for money. For nearly a year, she sent him cash for rent, for a passport, for everything. When she missed a month, he phoned asking where his money was. When she said she couldn't afford it, he told her she'd have to find herself another beach boy. She was heartbroken.'
Anna goes to the bar and I ask Rodney if he loves her. He smiles. 'I have a lot of special friends,' he says. He pulls out his wallet and shows me photographs of five women. His 'special friends' are from Britain, America and Germany, with two from Canada. I ask who his favourite is and why.
'Connie,' he says with a dreamy-eyed grin, pointing to a white-haired but attractive American woman in her early 50s. 'She's got a lot of money. She pays for me to go to college, and when I'm finished she's going to take me to live in America with her. That is what we all want. To live in America or Britain.'

Dismissing ‘Sexist Opinions’ About Women’s Place in Science

2006-07-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

July 18, 2006
NY Times
A Conversation with Ben A. Barres
By CORNELIA DEAN

Perhaps it is inevitable that Ben A. Barres would have strong opinions on the debate over the place of women in science. Dr. Barres has a degree in biology from M.I.T., a medical degree from Dartmouth and a doctorate in neurobiology from Harvard. He is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford. And until his surgery a decade ago, his name was Barbara, and he was a woman.

Now he has taken his unusual perspective to the current issue of the journal Nature, in a commentary titled “Does Gender Matter?”

Dr. Barres (pronounced BARE-ess), 51, who grew up in West Orange, N.J., said he had been thinking about the gender issue for over a year, since Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, gave a talk in which he suggested that one explanation for women’s relative absence at the upper ranks of science might be innate intellectual deficiencies. Assertions of innate differences by other researchers — “sexist opinions,” Dr. Barres calls them — fueled his anger, especially because they came from scientists.

Dr. Barres discussed his commentary, his career and sexism in science in a telephone interview from his home in Stanford, Calif.

Q. What’s your response to people who say you rely too much on your own experience and should take scientific hypotheses less personally?

A. They should learn that scientific hypotheses require evidence. The bulk of my commentary discusses the actual peer-reviewed data.

Q. Why do some people attribute differences in professional achievement to innate ability?

A. One of the reasons is the belief by highly successful people that they are successful because of their own innate abilities. I think as a professor at Stanford I am lucky to be here. But I think Larry Summers thinks he is successful because of his innate inner stuff.

Q. What about the idea that men and women differ in ways that give men an advantage in science?

A. People are still arguing over whether there are cognitive differences between men and women. If they exist, it’s not clear they are innate, and if they are innate, it’s not clear they are relevant. They are subtle, and they may even benefit women.

But when you tell people about the studies documenting bias, if they are prejudiced, they just discount the evidence.

Q. How does this bias manifest itself?

A. It is very much harder for women to be successful, to get jobs, to get grants, especially big grants. And then, and this is a huge part of the problem, they don’t get the resources they need to be successful. Right now, what’s fundamentally missing and absolutely vital is that women get better child care support. This is such an obvious no-brainer. If you just do this with a small amount of resources, you could explode the number of women scientists.

Q. Why isn’t there more support for scientists who have children?

A. The male leadership is not doing it, but women are not demanding it. I think if women would just start demanding fairness, they might get it. But they might buy in a little bit to all this brainwashing. They are less self-confident. And when women speak out, men just see them as asking for undeserved benefits.

Q. Why are you a scientist?

A. I knew from a very young age — 5 or 6 — that I wanted to be a scientist, that there was something fun about it and I would enjoy doing it. I decided I would go to M.I.T. when I was 12 or 13.

Q. As a girl, were you pressured not to try for M.I.T.?

A. Of course. I was a very good math and science student, maybe the best in my high school. And despite all that, when it came time to talk to my guidance counselor, he did not encourage me. But I said, I want to go to M.I.T.; I don’t want to go anywhere else. So I just ignored him. Fortunately, my parents did not try to dissuade me.

Q. Were there girls at M.I.T. then?

A. Very few, but M.I.T. from its very start took women. I loved it. I am not saying it is perfect, but it was a great place to go to school.

Q. Why did you decide to specialize in neuroscience? Did the fact that you were a transgendered person spark your interest in the brain?

A. I think all transgendered people and gay people are aware from childhood that something is going on. But I thought I would be a chemist or an engineer. It was when I took a course from a fabulous neuroscientist that I just got interested in understanding the brain and how disease affected the brain.

Q. When you were a woman did you experience bias?

A. An M.I.T. professor accused me of cheating on this test. I was the only one in the class who solved a particular problem, and he said my boyfriend must have solved it for me. One, I did not have a boyfriend. And two, I solved it myself, goddamn it! But it did not occur to me to think of sexism. I was just indignant that I would be accused of cheating.

Then later I was in a prestigious competition. I was doing my Ph.D. at Harvard, which would nominate one person. It came down to me and one other graduate student, and a dean pulled me aside and said, “I have read both applications, and it’s going to be you; your application is so much better.” Not only did I not win, the guy got it, but he dropped out of science a year later.

But even then I did not think of sexism.

Q. Why didn’t you see these episodes as sexism?

A. Women who are really highly successful, they are just as bad as the men. They think if they can do it, anyone can do it. They don’t see that for every woman who makes it to the top there are 10 more who are passed over. And I am not making this up, that’s what the data show.

And it may be that some women — and African-Americans, too — identify less strongly with their particular group. From the time I was a child, from the littlest, littlest age, I did not identify as a girl. It never occurred to me that I could not be a scientist because I was a woman. It just rolled off my back.

Now I wonder, maybe I just didn’t take these stereotypes so seriously because I did not identify myself as a woman.

Q. As a transgendered person, are you viewed as having an unusually valuable perspective?

A. I think because I am transgendered some people view anything I say with suspicion. I am very different from the average person. But I have experienced life both as a woman and as a man. I have some experience of how both sexes are treated.

Q. What about the idea that male scientists are more competitive?

A. I think that’s just utter nonsense. Men just make this stuff up. But when women are made to feel less confident, they are less likely to enter the competition. I think a lot of this is just the way men and women are treated from the time they are very young.

Take my experience with M.I.T. If I had been a guy who had been the only one in the class to solve that problem, I am sure I would have been pointed out and given a pat on the back. I was not only not given positive feedback, I was given negative feedback. This is the kind of thing that undermines women’s self-confidence.

Q. What about the idea that women are too emotional to be hard-headed scientists?

A. It is just patently absurd to say women are more emotional than men. Men commit 25 times the murders; it’s shocking what the numbers are. And if anyone ever sees a woman with road rage, they should write it up and send it to a medical journal.

Q. Are men more careerist?

A. I think people do what they are rewarded for doing, and I think women realize, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, they are not going to get the rewards. So they put the hours into their families or whatever. That’s just a guess.

Science is like art, it’s just something you have to do. It’s a passion. When I go into a lab, I’ll go without sleep, I’ll go hours and hours, day after day. And I think women would do that if they weren’t given so much negative feedback.

Q. You write that as a man, you can complete a sentence without being interrupted. Are you treated differently in other ways?

A. It’s when people don’t know that I was a woman that I can really see the difference. Even in just stupid things. You go into a department store and people are more likely to wait on you.

Q. As a woman and then as a man, you have been a scientist for about three decades. Do you see things improving for women in science?

A. Slowly, but not nearly at the rate one would expect. In biology, something like 50 percent of the best postdocs are women. It’s still very bad in physics and engineering and chemistry, but even in biology you don’t see women making the leap to tenure. And this disturbs me greatly. These women have worked very hard. They have fulfilled their side of the social contract. I think what we’ve got is just a lot more highly trained, frustrated women.

Scene from Funny Face (1957)

2006-07-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

Fred Astaire: What’s empathicalism?

Audrey Hepburn: It’s the most sensible approach to true understanding and peace of mind.

Fred Astaire: But what is it?

Audrey Hepburn: It’s based on empathy. Do you know what empathy is?

Fred Astaire: No, I’ll have to have a beginner’s course on that one. Empathy…is it something like sympathy?

Audrey Hepburn: Oh, it goes beyond sympathy. Sympathy is to understand what someone feels. Empathy is to project your imagination so that you actually feel what the other person is feeling. You put yourself in the other person’s place. Do I make myself clear?

[Astaire kisses Hepburn and she, outraged, demands to know why]

Fred Astaire: Empathy. I put myself in your place and felt you wanted to be kissed.

Audrey Hepburn: You were in the wrong place.

The Little Prince

2006-06-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

Previously I had the impression that Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the book author, died in a plane crash when he was very young, in his early 30’s. When I finally I read the book over the weekend, I then realized it would be quite curious, or should I say unlikely, for a young man to write a book of such sorrow, contemplation and wisdom. And a bit of mockery as well. The “sweet quietness” between two is not something easily understood by one who is very young and brash, let alone articulating it. And of course, there is the sunsets, the invisible and the baobabs……

I read the book because a friend told me parts of it several weekends ago and it stirred something inside me. Then one day when I tried re-telling the same story to another friend, I realized memory did not have enough detail to give rise to that inking of feeling, a bit sad, a bit happy and a bit sweet – so I started making it up. That’s what I do generally when I don’t know the whole story. But it is hard to cheat yourself, you see, when you know the original is far better.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s plane crashed in the Bay of Carqueiranne near Toulon in 1944. He was 44 year old. The Little Prince was published when he was 43. I remember one of my best friends from college had this book on her bookshelf.

A Lion in the House

2006-06-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

This is a documentary that will be aired on PBS on Wed June 21 and Thurs June 22. The documentary follows the lives of five children diagnosed with cancer over the course of six years. From over 550 hours of footage, they made a film about 4 hours long.

Click here for review of the film

Re: Will Fuck for Validation Postings

2006-06-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make some comments about the book “Sex Secrets of Escorts” by Veronica Monet (yes I recommend it) and have told more than three of my friends that already; but being a procrastinator that I am who is overly serious and romanticized about the “idea” of writing – it’s a bad habit by the way, it really should be just like eating or drinking, or sex for that matter, effortless and without pretension – I can’t even come up with an intro. So I found something in place of that, after reading Emily’s posting which references Will Fuck for Validation posting.

Although I thought contrasting between the images of a defenseless baby and a sexualized woman indeed quite a brilliant one, it is also very destructive and devastating: using a baby – a defenseless pure innocence - to comment on a body, erotic and desirable as it may be by itself but completely shattered next to it[by accident!]. She could could take her own body apart piece by piece, but the baby, this piece of meat that’s nothing but Nature untouched by the evil, is denying the whole. This is taking invalidation and denigration to the next level. =(

Listmania - Movies Too!

2006-06-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

What about your top 10 movies?

Lists, lists, lists!

2006-06-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of you have been following the NY Times top fiction books of the last 25 years list and the debates it has spawned, but it has been intermitently fascinating me...

So, inspired by that, (and a discussion I was having with Jean that sprung from that), what is your list of your personal top 10 books?

They don't need to be published in the last 25 years or be American (these were qualifications of the NY times list). To make life easier, let's do different lists for fiction, non-fiction and kids books.

The White Album - Joan Didion

2006-06-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

I actually read this a few weeks ago now - but I really recommend it. Essays about the 60s would not normally be my cup of tea (too much baby-boomer egotism and exceptionalism), but she is a brilliant writer.

I also must say I do like reading essays. I couldn't get along with just essays - they aren't all that filling and I need my fiction fix from time to time - but I do think that the essay is a very underestimatted genre...

Oh Columbia My Columbia

2006-06-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

Chance encounter with my old professor's words today brought back memories of college with a tremendous nostalgic force. As I was reading the article below, I thought affectionately how only Carlos Rojas, and indeed, other scholars of literary theory and critique could analyze seemingly trivial images to such a degree. I am still amazed by my old teacher's frolicking ease in the world of ideas, super long vocab words and the juxtaposition of mundane things and complex analytical thought.

Read this superb article entitled, Will Fuck for Validation to get an idea of what my primary education in college was like.

Here's to you, Professor Rojas!

Ideas for summer trips

2006-06-06T14:29:00.000-07:00

This page has been dormant for a while, and since my CFA exam is done, it's time to get back to life!!! Here are some of my ideas for a summer getaway:

- tour of the wine country en route to SF/LA
- National parks - Yeosemite and others
- Tibet?

Anyone interested in the above destinations?

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except for...

2006-05-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

Click here for article

Blogging the Bible

2006-05-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

A fresh look at some of our favorite Old Testament stories. This is a blog by David Plotz, a "faithful if lazy" Jewish author who re-reads the Bible in his adulthood and offers up his insights, questions and more often than not, humorous and snide remarks on the soap-opera like lives of Biblical characters.

Blogging the Bible

Written 14 Years ago

2006-05-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

and of course it is still going on today.

Rosenthal died today.

-------------------------------------

On My Mind; Female Genital Torture
By A. M. ROSENTHAL (NYT) 702 words
Published: December 29, 1992

"They are by far the most emancipated of Muslim women. They wear no veils, often don sleeveless dresses and behave directly toward men, rather than submissively.

"Still, almost all women undergo genital mutilation at a young age to discourage sexual intercourse outside marriage. This ritual clitoridectomy, the removal of the clitoris, greatly reduces a woman's sexual pleasure and is sometimes combined with infibulation, stitching up the vulva until marriage to prevent penetration.

"This often results in pain, infection and repeated stitching and restitching during childbearing years."

Donatella Lorch of The New York Times wrote that in a dispatch from Mogadishu about Somali women.

Those paragraphs jolted me -- not because I did not know that genital mutilation was committed on women and girls in Africa and the Middle East but because I did know.

For almost a year I had been planning to write a column about it but kept putting it aside in favor of something that struck my fancy as more "newsworthy" or "important" than the genital mutilation of tens of millions of people in dozens of countries.

That is exactly what most of the world has been doing about the most widespread abuse of human rights and the human body in the world. Governments, most journalists, international bodies, civil rights organizations, women's groups, all of them know and of course care -- but just not enough to actually do anything.

Female genital mutilation has scores of millions of living victims, perhaps 80 million. It ranges from common to universal in about 20 African countries, in several Middle Eastern nations and in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and the India-Pakistan Subcontinent.

Most of its victims are Muslims. But it is also committed by Christians and animists and there are reports that it was known among some Ethiopian Jews.

In a few countries the number of mutilations may be slowly decreasing. But because Africa's population is increasing, so is the total number of female mutilations.

Why cut out a woman's clitoris, cut off her labia and then sew her vulva? Why, to make her marriageable -- meaning virgin and without pleasure in sex, thus non-threatening.

The Minority Rights Group International, based in London, lists some other effects of mutilations.

Short-term: tetanus, septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls and anal sphincter.

Long-term: chronic uteral and vaginal infection, massive scar formation that can obstruct walking for life, creation of large cysts, fistula formation, incontinence, extremely painful intercourse and menstruation, vulval abscesses, sterility, susceptibility to AIDS, deaths under the knife.

The knife. Mutilations are carried out by female operators working with unsterilized knives, and without anesthetic. Victims are tied or held down by relatives. Modern science: Last year, a U.N. seminar reported that some doctors were making themselves and their clinics available, for the right price.

Yes, there have been seminars and recommendations and some African countries have passed laws -- rarely enforced -- against genital mutilation. But national and international work against female mutilation has been late, sporadic and mingily funded. The crime is only glancingly acknowledged by government information machineries, and journalism.

It is the responsibility of the people and governments of the African, Mideastern and Asian countries to end the torture, to revolt against the sexual and social insanities that allow the mutilation of half their populations.

But the world can help. Western countries can use economic aid -- expand or contract it depending on whether governments truly fight female mutilation. And they can make it a permanent priority matter in the main bodies of the U.N.

Individuals can search out and support groups that do not forget the women in agony. For publications or information, contact the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch, 485 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017, or the Minority Rights Group, 237 Brixton Road, London. Get on the back of your own church, synagogue, mosque -- or any group for which you have any hope, any respect.

The Ice Storm

2006-05-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

The Ice Storm reminded me in some ways of American Beauty. Bored, jaded and dissatified adults. Disaffected, subdued, and angst-ridden children. Welcome to the "real" world as opposed to the Norman Rockwellian version of American life.

Some things are just chuckle-worthy. Both mother and daughter have the little urge to shoplift, must be in the genes. This little 10 yr old kid blows up his model planes. A couple jostles each other on their posh luxurious waterbed and complains that they just need to get a regular bed.

Some are far out. The adults attend a "Key party" where the objective of the game is spousal swapping at the end of the night. A 14 yr old girl thought it would be fun to corrupt (if corrupt is the right word here) a 10 yr old boy by inducing him to strip and get in bed with her naked and drink vodka.

Some things are trite and familiar. The husband has an affair with the neighbor's wife. Enough said.

So family life as Ang Lee portrays it, is no Hallmark special. But it's hard to pinpoint his final message, if there is indeed one. Is he being judgmental? Is he criticizing? Is he simply portraying, simply telling a story? Does he have an angle?

Anyway, just sharing my latest movie viewing. I'm not really in the mood to review, but it beats sitting at my desk with my eyes glazed over.

Letters from Hu Shih to Edith Clifford Williams

2006-05-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

I borrowed this book from the SF Public Library. It's a collection of private letters(translated from English to Chinese) from Hu Shih to Clifford Williams in the span of over 50 years of their friendship and love affair.

A little background:

Hu Shih is one of the most prominent scholars in the 20th century China, whose contribution to the May 4th Movement in the 20's undeniable. (see Emily's "my May 4th Movement" blog, hehe..). When he studied in Cornell between 1914 and 1917, he met Edith Clifford, a bright young woman from an intellectual family, and became good friends with her. After he finished his phD with Dewey in Columbia, he returned to China and married an illiterate girl under the arranged marriage by his mother. Later he became a Chinese philosophy professor in Beijing University and the center force in the May Fourth Movement that changed China's literature course - that speaking(vernacular) chinese language, as opposed to classical and orthodox, is alive and beautiful and should be used as the written language.

His marriage from the perspective of modern society(or should I say western modern society) is a tragic one. He married a person whom he never met out of 2 reasons:

1. to satisfy the wish of his mother whom suffered decades of widowhood.
2. to set himself up as an authority in the midst of the great cultural and political changes in China - although he promoted extreme progressiveness of the western world(everything we would agree today. E.g. love marriage, equality between man and woman, etc etc), the convervatives could never attack him based on his own ethics, for he followed the traditional way in his own marriage.

Anyway, he's a very good writer and I was very fond of his writing and his life. The marriage was a sad one because the wife could never understand him, not his work, his writings, and couldn't really play the role of the wife of a scholar, ambassador. But in addition, she must bear the knowledge that he had always been in love with someone else and that his heart probably never really belonged to her.

And to Edith Williams, who never married in her life; I wonder what this whole affair meant and did to her. A research project conducted on this subject by a fellow scholar in DePauw U. said the following:

The once fiercely independent feminist had lost her self. She had taken on the habit of deprecating herself, wondering why Hu would love her when she was of "small breasts and inadequate housekeeping, of the fuzzy, inadequate brain."

Maybe this is hardly the whole picture. But it's tragic for all parties. And it's very selfish(Hu) as well, that Hu Shih did so little for her, and she would have such feelings at the end. He was incredibly generous to strangers, to youngsters, and went great extend to sacrifice certain things to liberate a society that needs liberating. Well, he couldn't quite do it for himself and those closest to him.

The 300 something letters from him to her were saved by Williams and she gave them to Hu's wife after he died. The letters are now belong to the Hu Shih Memorial in Taiwan.

I guess money does matter =)

2006-05-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

I think this article about disparity between friends' income causing friction in friendships depicts a realistic picture of life in big cities in the US without exaggerating the matter. But having said that, I suppose sometimes people tend to make it much more complicated than it needs be.

It is a bit like the topic of who is paying for the bill on a date. This one is more about income than gender.

Frida

2006-05-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched this movie finally! I've been curious about it, so I have wanted to watch it.

Some thoughts...

1. Salma Hayek was really good in the movie, quick and light, fully capturing the sense that Frida Kahlo was an irrepressible character full of storm and energy. Her supporting cast went a long way to creating that memorable era.

2. I didn't understand why they had to speak English even in Mexico. It was as stupid as the Geishas speaking English in Japan. The movie may have benefited if they had just spoken in the original tongue of their land. Still, it was a better movie than Geisha by far.

3. The movie contained surreal elements in line with Frida's imaginative space. There is a merging of her artwork to her life as interpreted by the film-maker, and it could have been cheesy, but it worked.

4. Since it IS a hollywood movie, the sex was emphasized. I feel that while she did carry on numerous affairs with both males and females, what is even more interesting and less explored was the fact that she lived life with numerous physical afflictions. The movie could have done more to play into how she used drugs, sex and alcohol to escape from her physical/mental pain.

How blue are you?

2006-05-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Or how red?

http://www.slate.com/id/2103764/

Thought some of the questions were interesting indicators....

I am "a little blue."

The Rehabilitation of the Cold-War Liberal

2006-05-02T14:41:00.000-07:00

Really interesting article in this Sunday's NY Times Magazine by Peter Beinart - too long to paste here, but I do recommend it.

A thoughtful and (I thought) pursuasive arguement for a US foreign policy rooted in the foreign policy of the post-war Left. I think that choosing "moral clarity" as the defining issue is a very wise move.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30liberal.html?ex=1146715200&en=b8d0c8370bf80013&ei=5087%0A

Side note - How much do any of you know about Reinhold Niebuhr? I was discussing this article with my Dad , who was saying that one heard about Niebhur much less of late, and I was thinking I know next to nothing about him....

Anyway....

《阳光与荒原的诱惑》 Temptations of Sunshine and Wilderness

2006-05-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

This is a photograph and travel journal on Tibet. The author Ba Huang was the first woman, in fact, the first human crossed Ngari Prefecture - a no man's land in western Tibet in the late eighties by herself. The prose in the this book is heartbreakingly beautiful.

I found exerpts of the english translation online.

Politics of Old Age

2006-04-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

This is kind of a depressing article. It made me feel like we talked too much about love, too little about realities of money, life and marriage.

--------------------------------------
April 30, 2006
Ideas & Trends
The Bell Tolls for the Future Merry Widow
By KATE ZERNIKE
NYTimes

MEN are catching up to women in the life expectancy game; the National Center for Health Statistics reports this month that the gap between them has shrunk to five years, the narrowest since 1946. If current trends continue, in 50 years men and women will live the same length of time.

This is better news for men than for women, if you believe some economists and therapists. It's not just the extra years; it's all those extra meals to prepare.

By necessity, women have gotten used to a life lived for long periods without men. They have had the advantage in life expectancy since the late 19th century, when overall longevity started to climb. More than men, women have developed strong friendships to support them in their frailest hours. They have forced doctors to pay attention to their health concerns. They no longer have to cater to men. Travel companies now cater to their interests.

"Women don't need men as much as men need women," said John Gray, the therapist and author of, most famously, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus."

But for all that, consider how women would be better off.

Men living longer means women are less likely to suffer the fate that Miranda from "Sex and the City" so feared: dying alone with only the cat to rake over her rotting bones. With the existing gap, women are more likely than men to be widowed — 71 percent of people over the age of 85 are women, and the majority of them will have been married. And being alone increases their risk of dying or getting sick. No one is there to help when they fall; they eat less, and poorly.

"Even given the limited capacity of men, having a surviving spouse is going to mean that women do not go as early to nursing homes when they have chronic illnesses," said Ronald D. Lee, an economist and the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California, Berkeley.

And a shorter widowhood means women will be better off financially, largely because, as Heidi Hartmann, a labor economist and the president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, said, "Money attaches to the men."

Men, typically the higher wage earners, get bigger Social Security checks. And if the couple is living on his checks alone, she gets less when he dies. The surviving spouse's cost of living is about 80 percent what the couple's was, economists estimate, but the Social Security payments decline to about 65 percent.

Men are much more likely to have pensions, too, leaving women dependent on them, and one-third of men, Ms. Hartmann said, do not leave theirs to their wives. (That number used to be higher, she said, until wives were required to sign off on the deal.)

But men and women growing old together is not always easy.

"Men have this expectation that women should take care of them," Dr. Gray said. "And she has her own expectations, that she should be there for him."

Particularly after retirement, she is not used to having him around quite so much. "It's different taking care of him for dinner, as opposed to him being home all the time, and expecting her to make every meal," Dr. Gray said.

Though some may object to the assumption that sex roles will be this traditional by 2040, recent studies have shown that among husbands and wives who both work, the woman still does the much larger share of the housework. As one Connecticut woman in her 70's was heard to retort recently when her husband asked if they were ready to move to an assisted-living facility, "You've had assisted living for 40 years."

This dynamic is reflected in the statistics: men are four times as likely as women to remarry after the death of a spouse, experts on aging say. (Men who divorce also remarry faster; within three years, compared with nine for women.) They're looking for love, Dr. Gray said, but they're also looking for lunch.

Marriage lowers everyone's risk of death, Professor Lee said, but the benefits go mostly to men; women lower their risk only slightly by marrying. Similarly, a man's risk of death increases sharply after the death of a spouse; a wife's does only negligibly.

"Women are very helpful for men," he said. "Men are not very helpful for women as spouses."

Women not only do fine despite a spouse's death, they may even do better.

"In married couples, women tend to be the ones who manage the social sphere," said Laura L. Carstensen, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Life-span Development Laboratory there. "They're the ones who make dinner plans and invite friends over for weekends. So a man loses a social network, whereas a woman continues to make plans and see people."

People have traditionally felt sorry for older widows, thinking they had so few prospects for remarrying, she said. The truth is, they may not want to remarry.

"They're the ones taking care of everyone; they've often taken care of a frail husband, and doing it again isn't necessarily appealing."

Then there are the disputes over sex. Dr. Gray said a woman's sex drive increases as she ages, while a man's declines. But then, is Viagra upsetting that balance, putting men in retirement homes permanently on the prowl?

On that count, at least, things may even out. And that may be true over all.

"There is a lot of poverty among older single women, so if men live longer, that's good economically, for women and men," Ms. Hartmann said. "Men are generally happier when they're married. The women may not be happier, but at least they've got more money."

Prep Discussion

2006-04-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

I'll start off by saying that Cross Sugarfield sounds like he's pretty hot but as his actions have demonstrated, he's obviously a smooth operator and he used poor Lee pretty badly through and through. Then again, it's good to get that heartbreak young while you are strong and starting out. Then you can take on anything after something like that.

Name Popularity Ratings

2006-04-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

This site will let you know what the most popular names are today (Emily is #1 for girls!) It's rather entertaining...

Apparently the name Amelie is now emerging out of obscurity... it's number 814!

I'm fascinated with names....

Political Clout in the Age of Outsourcing

2006-04-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

A very interesting point...and while contrary to my own interests, I can still agree with some of the bones of contention here.

David Leonhardt
Political Clout in the Age of Outsourcing

A FEW years ago, stories about a scary new kind of outsourcing began making the rounds. Apparently, hospitals were starting to send their radiology work to India, where doctors who make far less than American radiologists do were reading X-rays, M.R.I.'s and CT scans.

It quickly became a signature example of how globalization was moving up the food chain, threatening not just factory and call center workers but the so-called knowledge workers who were supposed to be immune. If radiologists and their $350,000 average salaries weren't safe from the jobs exodus, who was?

On ABC, George Will said the outsourcing of radiology could make health care affordable again, to which Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York retorted that thousands of American radiologists would lose their jobs. On NPR, an economist said the pay of radiologists was already suffering. At the White House, an adviser to President Bush suggested that fewer medical students would enter the field in the future.

"We're losing radiologists," Representative Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said on CNN while Lou Dobbs listened approvingly. "We're losing all kinds of white-collar jobs, all kinds of jobs in addition to manufacturing jobs, which we're losing by the droves in my state."

But up in Boston, Frank Levy, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, realized that he still had not heard or read much about actual Indian radiologists. Like the once elusive Snuffleupagus of Sesame Street, they were much discussed but rarely seen. So Mr. Levy began looking. He teamed up with two other M.I.T. researchers, Ari Goelman and Kyoung-Hee Yu, and they dug into the global radiology business.

In the end, they were able to find exactly one company in India that was reading images from American patients. It employs three radiologists. There may be other such radiologists scattered around India, but Mr. Levy says, "I think 20 is an overestimate."

Some exodus.

URBAN myths feed off real fears, and this myth caught on because Americans don't know quite what to think about globalization. There is no doubt that trade makes countries richer, but it also creates victims. And since the country is doing almost nothing right now to ease the burden of those victims — the people whose jobs really have gone to India or another country — it is easy to become scared.

Radiologists seem like just the sort of workers who should be scared. Computer networks can now send an electronic image to India faster than a messenger can take it from one hospital floor to another. Often, those images are taken during emergencies at night, when radiologists here are sleeping and radiologists in India are not.

There also happens to be a shortage of radiologists in the United States. Sophisticated new M.R.I. and CT machines can detect tiny tumors that once would have gone unnoticed, and doctors are ordering a lot more scans as a result.

When I talked this week to E. Stephen Amis Jr., the head of the radiology department at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, he had just finished looking at some of the 700 images that had been produced by a single abdominal CT exam. "We were just taking pictures of big, thick slabs of the body 20 years ago," Dr. Amis said. "Now we're taking thinner and thinner slices."

Economically, in other words, radiology has a lot in common with industries that are outsourcing jobs. It has high labor costs, it's growing rapidly and it's portable.

Politically, though, radiology could not be more different. Unlike software engineers, textile workers or credit card customer service employees, doctors have enough political power to erect trade barriers, and they have built some very effective ones.

To practice medicine in this country, doctors are generally required to have done their training here. Otherwise, it is extremely difficult to be certified by a board of other doctors or be licensed by a state government. The three radiologists Mr. Levy found in Bangalore did their residencies at Baylor, Yale and the University of Massachusetts before returning home to India.

"No profession I know of has as much power to self-regulate as doctors do," Mr. Levy said.

So even if the world's most talented radiologist happened to have trained in India, there would be no test he could take to prove his mettle here. It's as if the law required cars sold here to have been made by the graduates of an American high school.

Much as the United Automobile Workers might love such a law, Americans would never tolerate it, because it would drive up the price of cars and keep us from enjoying innovations that happened to come from overseas. But isn't that precisely what health care protectionism does? It keeps out competition.

For now, the practical effect on radiology is small. At its highest levels, the United States health care system may be the best the world has ever known. India doesn't even have many radiologists today, let alone a large number who measure up to American standards.

But that's going to change. Eventually, Indian doctors will be able to do the preliminary diagnoses that are a big part of radiology. Something similar will happen in accounting, architecture, education, engineering and the law, as Mr. Levy and his colleagues suggest in the coming Milken Institute Review.

These fields tend to be regulated already, giving them noble excuses — like certification, client privacy and legal accountability — to put up trade barriers. But the real reason will usually be a simple desire to protect jobs and salaries.

When factory workers have asked for that kind of protection, the country has told them no. So why does the answer change when the request comes from a wealthier, more influential group of workers?

Prep Discussion

2006-04-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

Now
That
We have
All finished
Prep. Shall we then
Begin discussion with gusto?

Ha, I'm too cheesy for words. But seriously, has everyone finished?

Fibonacci poems

2006-04-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Article passed from Amelie. Want to give it a try?

Here's Emily's attempt:

I
have
to go
study for
the MCAT exam.
But who wants to party later?????

And Here's Wendy's:

I
Love
Summer
In this place
No rain no fog but
Big white clouds hanging down the sky

-----------------------------------------------------------

Gregory K. Pincus, with an example of his poetry, said that more than
1,000 "Fibs" have been written so far.

By MOTOKO RICH
Published: April 14, 2006

Blogs
spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry?

THAT'S exactly what happened after Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children's book author in Los Angeles, wrote a post on his GottaBook blog (gottabook.blogspot.com) two weeks ago inviting readers to write "Fibs," six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line.

Within a few days, Mr. Pincus, 41, had received about 30 responses, a large portion of them Fibonacci poems. Most of them were from friends or relatives or people who regularly read his blog, which focuses on children's literature.

Then, last Friday, a subscriber to the popular Web site slashdot.org — which runs over a tagline that reads "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" — linked to Mr. Pincus's original post, and suddenly, it seemed, Fibs were sprouting all over the Internet.

Mr. Pincus, who wrote in his original post that he conceived of the Fibonacci poems in part as a writing exercise, said in an interview that he figures more than 100 other Web sites have linked to his post and more than 1,000 Fibs have been written since the beginning of April, which just happens to be both National Poetry Month and
Mathematics Awareness Month.

"It tickles me that it can spread like that," said Mr. Pincus. "It's such a wonderful thing."

Readers of the blockbuster best-selling "Da Vinci Code," of course, may recognize the Fibonacci sequence as the key to one of the first clues left for the novel's hero and heroine. It is also a staple of middle-school math classes. Though relatively rare in poetry, it shows up in the musical compositions of the early 20th-century composer Bartok and the progressive metal band Tool, the spiraling shape of the Nautilus shell and in knitting patterns.

By and large, most of the people who have written Fibonacci poems over the past couple of weeks are not professional poets, but actors, comedians, video role-play enthusiasts, musicians, computer scientists, lawyers and schoolchildren. Casey Kelly Barton, a stay-at-home mother and home-schooler in Austin, Tex., who started a blog called Redneck Mother to chronicle her "dissatisfaction after Bush got re-elected," used the Fib form to write a rant against the president.

Chat rooms linked to Web sites ranging from Actuarial Outpost, a forum for actuaries, to em411.com, a site for electronic musicians, have taken up Mr. Pincus's challenge and generated strings of the whimsical poems. Even a Hungarian technology site has linked to the Fibonacci post.

The allure of the form is that it is simple, yet restricted. The number of syllables in each line must equal the sum of the syllables in the two previous lines. So, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, which is also 1, 2 comes next, then add 2 and 1 to get 3, and so on. Mr. Pincus structured the Fibs to top out at line six, with eight syllables.

For many people, writing one of the poems is a little like solving a puzzle. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a 32-year-old computer science researcher at AT&T Labs-Research in Florham Park, N.J., said he was attracted to the Fibonacci poetry because it reminded him of "what a computer scientist would call the 'resource constraints.' " On his
blog, Geomblog, Mr. Venkatasubramanian added two more lines to Mr. Pincus's original prescription, while still keeping to the Fibonacci sequence:

I
like
to blog.
Frequently.
Theory matters.
Computer science (theory)
is my home and geometric algorithms are
sublime. Let P be a set of points in general position in the plane.
Amen.

The last line, said Mr. Venkatasubramanian, is an inside joke in geometry.

Emily Galvin, a screenwriter and film production assistant who is writing a collection of poems and short plays in verse for Tupelo Press, has written one of her plays using the Fibonacci sequence. Instead of using the progression to dictate the number of syllables in
a line, she let it regulate the number of words.

Ms. Galvin, who said an ex-boyfriend once sent her love notes composed in the Fibonacci sequence, was delighted to learn of Mr. Pincus's success in spreading Fibs around the Internet. "How great that something mathematical could be bringing together all sorts of people who don't write professionally and giving them a form," she said.

More professional poets may be attracted to the form, said Annie Finch, a poet who teaches at the University of Southern Maine. "Poets are very, very hungry for constraint right now," said Ms. Finch, who has written about formal poetry. "Poets are often poets because they love to play with words and love constraints that allow the self to step out
of the picture a little bit. The form gives you something to dance with so it's not just you alone on the page."
Even those who were not compelled by the idea of Fibonacci poetry could not resist the challenge. When asked for her insights, Judith Roitman, a poet and math professor at the University of Kansas, wrote in an e-mail message that she "found the phenomenon pretty uninteresting." But she then went on to write:

So
you
no doubt
will not find
it interesting
to talk to me about this stuff.

《莲花》 Lotus

2006-04-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading this book by Annbaby 安妮宝贝 brought back by a friend from her recent trip to China. It's very good; it makes me want to write.

Prep (again)

2006-04-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

Just started reading it yesterday and it is quite the page turner. I am now 300-some pages into it and it kept me up reading WAY too late last night.

Great book pick!

Are we still aiming for tuesday?

Commencement address by Steve Jobs

2006-04-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

* * * * *

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

All the President's Men

2006-04-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

As you might or might not know, I am slightly obsessed with Watergate, and with this book/movie in particular.

I read the book a few years ago - it's quite gripping.

I've seen the movie several times now - most recently this last saturday. It was on the television (PBS, so no ads) and I decided to watch it again...

It's quite impressive how it manages to grab your attention while being, most of the time, really low key, relaxed and naturalistic.

To go off on a slight tangent, there was a documentary on Watergate after the movie (this being PBS), which I (being the quintessentially uncool person I am) found fascinating. According to McGrudder, (sorry if I spelled that wrong) Nixon DID know about the break-in before it happened - he was not merely guilty of the cover-up...

During the documentary, one of the members of the senate committee that investigated Nixon was saying that the conventional wisdom is that watergate (the whole process, ending with N.'s resignation) proves that the system works, but that he could only say that he hopes it proves the system works. I would put it as Watergate proves the system CAN work.... Of course it requires everybody - from the press to the congerss to the courts to the public to do their jobs honestly and unbiasedly. Which seems to be the root of some of our problems today....

Sorry not to have any new insights here, just airing out my mind...

Animal Associations

2006-04-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

So a question to everyone - what animal do you associate yourself with?

What animals do you associate other people, esp. mutual acquaintances, with?

Embers by Sandor Marai

2006-04-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

Okay I got lazy...but I do want to recommend this book.

From Publishers Weekly
Two very old men Konrad and Henrik, "the General" once the closest of friends, meet in 1940 in the fading splendor of the General's Hungarian castle, after being separated for 41 years, to ponder the events that divided them. This 1942 novel by a forgotten Hungarian novelist, rediscovered and lucidly and beautifully translated, is a brilliant and engrossing tapestry of friendship and betrayal, set against a backdrop of prewar splendor. In the flickering glow and shadow of candlelight, the General recalls the past with neither violence nor mawkish sentiment, but with restrained passion. The two met as boys, Henrik the confident scion of a wealthy, aristocratic family, and Konrad the sensitive son of an impoverished baron. Of their closeness, the General says, "the eros of friendship has no need of the body." When they are young men, Konrad introduces Henrik to Krisztina, the remarkable daughter of a crippled musician. Henrik and Krisztina marry, and the two keep up a close friendship with Konrad, until one morning, on a hunt, Henrik senses that Konrad is about to fire at him. Nothing happens, but Konrad leaves at once, vanishing. For the first time, the General goes to his friend's rooms, and then his wife unexpectedly comes in. He never speaks to her again. Capturing the glamour of the fin de siŠcle era, as well as its bitter aftermath, M rai eloquently explores the tight and twisted bonds of friendship. (Oct. 2)Forecast: M rai's history he was born in 1900, rose to fame in Hungary in the 1930s, fled the country after WWII and committed suicide in San Diego in 1989, virtually forgotten is at least as compelling as the story he tells here. Embers has already been published to much acclaim in Europe 250,000 copies sold in Italy and 230,000 copies in Germany and is licensed in 18 countries around the world. Feature coverage is to be expected, and though sales may be less explosive on these shores, Knopf's plan to translate future works by M rai should encourage a reappraisal of the writer's place in literary history.

The Underbelly of American Lexicographers

2006-04-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

Should there be an authoritative definition of the English language and its proper use, or should language be a collection of what native speakers speak and write? Should a guide book of English usage be a prescription of what is right, or should it simply be a description of what is there. David Foster Wallace, in his meandering style, explores the opposite camps of English lexicographers in his review of yet another English usage dictionary.

http://www.knowltonian.net/dfw.html

American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips

2006-04-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a book talk by Kevin Phillips at the Stacey’s bookstore. He’s on a book tour selling his new book American Theocracy, and I suppose SF is a must-stop place for this sort of political criticism books.

The second floor window area was packed, and the majority of attendees are people well over forty I believe. The following is the premises for his book, for those of you who might be interested:

1. The Middle East and all the happenings there are underpinned by oil. Oil is the single most important reason we went there and to say the war is not related to oil is close to absurdity. As the US dependency on oil import goes from the current 60% to two-thirds of the total consumption, we’re increasingly vulnerable and reliant on the military to protect our oil interest.

2. The Republican Party has become the first ever religious party in this country. It has succeeded in absorbing the most religious sections of believers(regardless of their sect) and made them its strongest base. Religions in the US have always been more extreme than other parts of the Christian world, he said. We have more church goers, they go more frequent; they rely more heavily on the text. And this government has increasingly tied religion to politics. During this process, religious right has succeeded in changing direction of a lot of public policies and benefits – e.g. adding “intelligent design” to the public education, promoting “global abstinence” as a solution for AIDS, pushing their agenda on abortion issues, to name a few.

He believes one of the most important fact contributed to this tilt is Clinton’s “extracurricular affair” in the last administration. – it offended and infuriated a section of believers in the South so much that they turned to support the republican and George Bush.

3. The structure of US economy in the past three decades has evolved from a manufacturing based to more of a financial service based one. And the financial based economy benefits a much smaller sector of people, as opposed to large number of blue collar workers for manufacturers. Individual debt (credit cards, mortgage) is far more ubiquitous nowadays. Credit card companies derived 40% of their profit from fees. This is a country of debtors.

4. The role of George Bush and religion. Kevin Phillips puts the question of how George W Bush’s, a born again Christian in the 80’s after serious alcoholic problem related to his oil business going down, view his role of president in relation to God. So frequently in his speeches, he colored the war as a struggle between Good and Evil, and talked of consulting a higher Father as opposed to his real father, that he invaded Afghanistan because God told him so etc as reported by middle east media. Did he consider himself a messenger of higher source? Kevin Phillips questioned.

He said he's out of the Republican party and is now an Independent.

Well.....What I got out of the little talk is:

1. The guy is smart and a good speaker. I suspect his book is a more rigorous study of this set of issues than many others out there.

2. The oil and financial part were not new to me. But the Republican Party as a religious party is a bold statement, though not that surprising either. He gave quite a bit of validation to this characterization.

3. The most interesting part comes putting everything together, tying the religion piece to the oil and finance.

4. Everything he talked about is quite depressing. The "hidden" and yet the most obvious message projected is much more serious than what i want to carry through the tone of this blog. Not that I expected anything different. He’s a doom sayer, and this suits the mood of the post-modern liberal San Franciscans on such rainy day.

5. Judging from the reaction of the audience, he’s going sell his books quite well, although I didn’t stay to see.

I finally feel so little temptation in buying political criticism books. I think spending money on comics is more worthwhile. =)

an angel with an incredible capacity for beer

2006-04-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

On a rainy and gloomy day, it's passages like the following that brings up a sunny smile on my face:

“I believe and I doubt, I hope and I get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.”

Brennan Manning
The Ragamuffin Gospel : Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Crabwalk - Gunther Grass

2006-04-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting novel about the complicated ties between the present and the past set in modern-day Germany. Great use of a not-quite-linear structure for the narrative as well. That's what the title refers to. Are you fans of nonlinear structure?

I am, but not reliably or exclusively. It all depends on the story...

I think it can work brilliantly, but I am not sure it is the answer to the question of where does the novel, or storytelling in general, go from here?

Never Let Me Go

2006-03-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

I just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's book Never Let Me Go.

I don't want to say that much about the book itself, because I don't want to give anything away. However, I can heartily recommend it. But don't read too many reviews first - they give away too much info.

I am a big Ishiguro fan in general (The other books of his I read are the Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World). He's a very ingenius and controlled storyteller.

Interesting book to discuss..

I started reading Prep...

2006-03-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

last night before bedtime. BAD idea. I couldn't stop! Good choice Viola, I feel that the female protagonist has such a true voice. She comes across as a very real, very realistic person.

So I'm probably about halfway through right now. I should try to temper my reading, so as to allow more time to digest the book.

The World's Religion

2006-03-29T12:05:00.000-08:00

This is a very good introductory survey book that sorts out all major religions of the world. The author understands and truly appreciates each. I've been wanting to read a book like this for a while.

our desires not too strong, but too weak

2006-03-29T06:07:00.000-08:00

“If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord find our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

C. S. Lewis
“The Weight of Glory”

It's so nice to have discovered this sermon, as I thought altruism would have been evolutionarily selected against!

V for Vendetta!

2006-03-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

I love this movie, going to buy the book! See some of the pictures here.

Prep

2006-03-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, as a forum, I am starting to see the lack of the blogger medium. In other forums, when someone post a message or response, they are usually shuttled to the top of the page so anyone can see that there are new and relevant discussions going on. Here, the comments can get lost, especially for people not in habit of checking the comments page from previous posts. Any suggestions guys? Shall we be content with status quo or strive ever more ambitiously onward, by starting a true web forum elsewhere? Just a thought to throw out there.

So regarding the book, Prep. I have not heard of it but I will definitely check it out when I get a chance.

When do people expect to have it read by? Throw out a date, anyone!

Re: There is No Progress!

2006-03-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

First of all, I would like to welcome Sapphire_Gal and Shu among our midst. I also chanced upon this comment made by Shu. Now, I have to admit, I barely understood what the excerpt by Simone Weil meant except that it sounded impressive. Hahaha. So I'm reposting it here in case you guys are interested. But I do love beauty so maybe I can consider myself somewhat a progressive being. =P

Shu said...
I attribute progress to humans’ love of the order and beauty of the world. If I may borrow 3 paragraphs (quoted below) from an essay by Simone Weil here, I’d like to point out how intrinsically and yet paradoxically intermingled are the physical and the spiritual. I wonder whether we have been turbo-charging human progress as an existential necessity rather than internalizing it as a teleological certainty. For with the latter come solace, hope, and a sense of return.

“The love of the beauty of the world, while it is universal, involves, as a love secondary and subordinate to itself, the love of all the truly precious things that bad fortune can destroy. The truly precious things are those forming ladders reaching toward the beauty of the world, openings onto it. He who has gone farther, to the very beauty of the world itself, does not love them any less but much more deeply than before.

Numbered among them are the pure and authentic achievements of art and science. In a much more general way they include everything that envelops human life with poetry through the various social strata. Every human being has his roots here below a certain terrestrial poetry, a refection of the heavenly glory, the link, of which is more or less vaguely conscious, with his universal country. Afflication is the tearing up of these roots.

Human cities in particular, each one more or less according to its degree of perfection, surround the life of their inhabitants with poetry. They are images and reflections of the city of the world. Actually, the more they have the form of nation, the more they claim to be countries themselves, the more distorted and soiled they are as images. But to destroy cities, either materially or morally, or to exclude human beings from a city, thrusting them down to the state of social outcasts, this is to sever every bond of poetry and love between human beings and the universe. It is to plunge them forcibly into the horror of ugliness. There can scarcely be a greater crime. We all have a shame by our complicity in an almost innumerable quantity of such crimes. If only we could understand, it should wring tears of blood from us.”

Book Club

2006-03-23T12:10:00.000-08:00

So I am a big fan of Emliy's brilliant notion.

Is anyone else interested in doing an online bookclub via Beyond the North Wind?

Does anyone have any reading suggestions?

Activity: Ranking the Arts...

2006-03-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

A bootless task, I know. And silly too.

But vagely entertaining. And I seem to have some sort of addiction to list-making. A quirk perhaps better left unexamined...

Anyway -

How would you rank the following arts in order of their importance to/impact on you? (the present order is alphabetical)

Art (ie visual art)
Books
Dance
Movies
Music
Theater

Is ther any other art that belongs in here?

Hi Emily! : )

2006-03-22T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'm doing ok. Supposed to be writing about the hunting habits of jaguars for work at the moment...

I've been bad with the posting lately - very sorry!

I keep meaning to write on the two books I just read - Jack Maggs by Peter Carey and Magic Seeds by V S Naipaul - but not quite getting around to it. I was going to do it from home where I would have the books sitting next to me while I wrote about them. I'm not sure how I got this idea stuck in my head. It wasn't like I had any plans to cite extensively from the primary text or anything....

I think that all my years of schooling and close reading have warped me forever. The perils of being an english major...

Now the 2 books are back at the library, so I should just get on with it.. new posts are coming...

The columbia book club seems to have faded away into the darkness of time past. At the moment I'm in a bookclub at work though. Our next book is Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. After that we are doing J G Ballard's Concrete Island. I ordered them both from amazon and they just got here! It's such a thrill. Yeah! I love getting new books!

I'm all for insituting a bookclub through Beyond the North Wind. Brilliant notion, Emily!

I have these pretty concrete (if not totally clear) memories about watching Chinatown, but maybe I just have an unexplored halucinatory streak... You never know... : )

I do remember seeing Boys Don't Cry, though... Definitely a memorable movie...

Happy to hear that you found an independent movie theater... It really does make all the difference in the world...

By the way, is it to late to take you up on the invitation to join the food blog?
I just made some scones for work...

Dear Amelie

2006-03-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

I was getting tired of seeing my own post as the last most recent post. So I decided to write a personal letter to you. How are you doing? I hope all is well in New York City.

To date, I still don't recall watching Chinatown with you on my computer or anyone else's. =P I do remember watching Boys Don't Cry with you and Wendy. I remember stumbling out half stunned, shell-shocked, not know whether to cry or to scream. That movie made me lose my sense of orientation as well as my usual calm cool collectedness. I think my respect for independent films was born from that moment on.

Speaking of which, I discovered an independent theater down here in Bethesda, MD. Happy Day! There is actually an outlet from the usual commercialized fluff shown in major chain theaters. Not that I'm so above commercialization, but a girl needs a good dose of "independent works" now and then.

Lastly, do we still have a book club in existence? If not, maybe we should resurrect this five year old idea and see where we go with it. What better place to carry on the book club than beyond the north wind? *wink*

Laters!

I love talking about this topic I really do

2006-03-16T13:53:00.000-08:00

As one of those so-called repressed, uptight Americans, I wholeheartedly agree with the article below but perhaps the Christian/Chinese/Puritanical Morality deal has been inculcated in me too strongly now to uproot. Suggestions on how to remedy that guys?

European Sex Appeal

Medicine Sans Frontiere

2006-03-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

I think part of the attraction in this lifestyle is that it combines the promise of adventure and new stimulus with the noble vision of helping mankind. I'm sure it is the same draw that appeals to early missionaries, who are adventure-seeking and restless with their homelands and at the same time, wish to justify their missionary lifestyle as "saving souls."

I admit that it appeals to me greatly too and I have always fancied being one of those types of doctors. What this article doesn't focus on however are all the sacrifices that needs to be made in order to fully immerse in a lifestyle like this. The lack of comfort nonewithstanding, you also have to face constant and possible danger and/or health hazards. Not to mention, if you have a family, the challenges increase ten-fold. I think I have become somewhat cynical these days and it's not a development I am particularly proud of. Hopefully I will be able to find a happy balance one day as a physician.

Emily
________________________________
Olson a doctor without borders

Doctor's practice is war, epidemics, disasters

By Peggy Peck
MedPage Today Managing Editor

Editor's note: CNN.com has a business partnership with MedPageToday.com, which provides custom health content. A medical profile from MedPage Today appears each Tuesday.

(MedPage Today) -- Dr. David Olson has had patients in a remote region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He has treated people in the breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia near the Black Sea and in a gulag prison hospital in Siberia. He has had patients in a northwest Uganda town called Arua.

He has lived or worked as a doctor in London, England; Paris, France; Chicago, Illinois; and Brooklyn, New York. He bummed around Berkeley, California, before medical school.

Olson, 46, has been around.

So it should come as no surprise that when the Texas native graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio, his first goal was to "do a bit of traveling."

These days he rides his mountain bike over the Brooklyn Bridge to work in New York. There he serves as medical adviser to Doctors Without Borders, the U.S. affiliate of Médecins Sans Frontières.

MSF is the Nobel Prize-winning international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or manmade disasters, or exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries.

Following in Dad's footsteps

Olson, whose father was a general internist in Fort Worth, Texas, says he decided on a career in medicine while he was still in his teens.

"I used to go to the hospital with my father and go to his office with him," he recalled. "I even worked for him for one summer doing ECGs (electrocardiograms)."

After Oberlin, a small liberal arts college, he hit the road in a Volkswagen convertible. He drove to Maine, then eastern Canada, and then headed west, landing in Berkeley, where he worked at a variety of jobs, including pizza delivery.

After a year, he started medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. From there he went to the University of Chicago, where he did residency training in internal medicine followed by fellowship training in pulmonary and critical care medicine.

A non-traditional career choice

In the last year in Chicago, he rejected the two obvious options for the future of a young doctor, academic medicine or private practice.

"Neither felt right for me," he said.

He learned about a free clinic that some medical students had started in a church that housed a shelter for battered women. They needed a full-fledged doctor to oversee their work, and he did that while he was still in fellowship training.

"At about that same time I read a book, "Not All of Us Are Saints," by a doctor living and working in inner-city Washington. It described what he did and he wasn't a perfect person. That humanized this type of work and made it accessible and attractive to me."

When he finished his fellowship, he got a job working at a free clinic that had a federal grant to treat tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, which was a good fit for a newly minted pulmonologist and critical care specialist.

Medicine knows no borders

Olson worked at the clinic for two-and-a-half years and then went to the London School of Tropical Medicine for a special three-month postgraduate course. When his training in London was complete, he headed to Paris.

"I got an apartment there and figured that I would spend a year learning to speak French, because I thought you had to speak French to join Médecins Sans Frontières," which had become his goal.

After a year of eating through his savings, he had not only mastered French but also roller-blading. He also spent some time traveling to Ireland, England, and Iceland.

Finally, at age 40, he signed on with MSF, and -- after a week of intensive training -- was sent on his first mission, to the area between Armenia and Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh, which was a hotbed of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Most such missions are limited to 18 months, but Olson stayed for 24 months, so that he could be sure the TB treatment plan he had introduced to local physicians worked.

At the gulag

During his time there he also worked briefly in Abkhazia in western Georgia near the Black Sea and made a two-week trip to a gulag prison hospital in Siberia. Both areas had a number of patients with drug-resistant TB, but his trip to Siberia was particularly moving.

"It was interesting, and a bit shocking. One building for drug-resistant TB had 30 to 35 people sleeping in triple bunks. We had to step over a frozen body that was lying in the entrance. I don't speak Russian, so communication was difficult, but you can imagine the looks that these people gave us. They were in prison with a fatal disease and they give you a look that is a mixture of hope and hopelessness and anger. This really stands out in my mind because there are times when we just don't have the resources to help."

After his first mission, he went to a northwest Uganda town called Arua. He arrived there in 2001, five days after 9/11. "My mission was to start an HIV treatment program with the idea of introducing antiretroviral therapy in a rural part of an African country."

Ugandan mission

He was in Arua for a year, during which time he helped build a new clinic just for HIV. He returned there in January and "it was great. You see people that you started on antiretroviral therapy and they're still around. That is very satisfying."

Less satisfying but nonetheless exciting was a short-term mission in June 2003 that took him to the capital of Burundi in the final days of the Hutu-Tutsi civil war.

He said he became inured to the sound of gunfire and mortars "so that when you eat your dinner on a terrace you realize that when the gunfire stops, you can hear the birds singing."

Olson and his wife, Cecile, a French nurse who he met on his first mission, fill the few empty corners of their lives with recreational biking, such as a trip to Tucson and the Grand Canyon they have planned for this spring.

And Olson continues to travel with a guitar, an instrument he has been playing for 25 years.

Wolf Totem (As Opposed to Dragon)

2006-03-15T00:20:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading 狼图腾, the paper book version. The full online text is here.

There was a Times article about this book from last year:
---------------------------------
A Novel, By Someone, Takes China By Storm
By HOWARD W. FRENCH (NYT) 1189 words
Published: November 3, 2005

CORRECTION APPENDED

BEIJING - For the author of one of China's best-selling novels of recent years, and moreover, one about rugged life among wolves on the Mongolian plains, Jiang Rong makes a surprisingly timid introduction.

''I am sorry, I have no name cards,'' said the man meekly as he entered the living room of his home here, where a foreigner was waiting to see him recently. Having no cards, at least, seemed appropriate, for much about Mr. Jiang, beginning with his real name, is a mystery.

When asked who he is, the writer demurred, embarking on a halting defense of his efforts to remain anonymous from behind the screen of his heavy-framed, somewhat antiquated eyeglasses. ''This is the first time I've received anyone in my home,'' he said. ''You must understand, my situation is a bit complicated.''

This much is known: Mr. Jiang, a 59-year-old political scientist at a Beijing university, has written his first novel, ''Wolf Totem,'' a stirring allegorical critique of Chinese civilization, which he calls soft and lacking in individuality and freedom. He volunteered for farm work on the prairie of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution and became versed in the ways of China's northern hinterland. And although he will not comment, it is rumored that he was in political trouble in China in the late 1980's, perhaps spending time in prison.

There are also these much happier facts: The legally published version of Mr. Jiang's book has sold at least one million copies in China since its release last year, along with perhaps six million black market copies and other knockoffs. The novel was also recently bought by Penguin for $100,000, a record for the overseas rights for a contemporary Chinese writer. And Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director, a specialist in dark fantasies like ''The Lord of the Rings,'' has bought the story rights to the novel and plans to produce a film based on it, recounting how a young Han Chinese man and his friends steal a young wolf from its pit and raise it in their tent.

The main character, clearly drawn from Mr. Jiang's own experience, watches with mounting dread as the Han population and cultural influence on the plains rise, leading to the killing off of the wolves and the desertification of the grasslands.

One might assume that the delicacy of Mr. Jiang's situation lies in the novel's criticism of China's Han majority and its Confucian-inspired culture, which he repeatedly called autocratic and sheeplike. The author insists this is not so, however, and the evidence seems to support him. ''Wolf Totem'' vaunts the cultural merits of Mongolian nomads, which the author lists as ''freedom, independence, respect, unyielding before hardship, teamwork and competition.'' It has been talked up abundantly on television programs, handed out by corporate executives as a motivational tool and, it is said, praised among the officer corps of the People's Liberation Army.

There is another mystery at work besides Mr. Jiang's identity, however: how could a book that is heavy on anthropology and philosophy, concerned with obscure rituals and Mongolian folk tradition, and lacking in traditional plot lines have captured the attention of so many readers?

The appeal, Mr. Jiang says, lies partly in the book's explanations of one of history's great riddles: ''How could Genghis Khan have conquered the world with so few people?''

''The answer lies in something shared between East and West, and that is the nomadic culture,'' Mr. Jiang said, chain smoking in his austere living room, his face lighted sharply by the crisp rays of autumn light that filtered in from his garden. ''The nomadism that people always talk about is full of killing and violence, but what it is really about is freedom. This wolf totem culture began earlier in Mongolia and is more sophisticated than anywhere else.''

According to Mr. Jiang, Chinese civilization is the product of two strains, nomadic and agricultural, and each has its symbols, the wolf and the dragon. For the author, the wolf is akin to the soul of the Mongolian grasslands, a worthy rival to man as well as a symbol of heaven itself. ''You can look at the wolf and dragon as opposites,'' he said. ''The dragon represents autocratic emperors. The wolf means freedom, the mother of democracy, and China opposes freedom more than anything else.''

He said the gradual demise of China's wolf heritage helps explain how the country was surpassed by the West. ''As long as most people are lambs, the dragon has no problem,'' he said in what seemed like a thinly veiled comment about China's politics. ''But the more wolves there are, the more interesting things become.''

Mr. Jiang's iconoclasm is the product of an unusual upbringing. His parents fought in China's war against Japan on the side of the Communists and were seriously injured. They became government officials after the Communist takeover in 1949, leading to a relatively privileged life for their son, an avid reader and lover of foreign culture from an early age.

''I was deeply influenced by my mother, who took the family out traveling on the weekends,'' he said. ''Before 1964, when controls on everything tightened, I could find movies from India, the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union. I could read foreign news reports from my father's copies of Reference News,'' a news digest circulated only among party cadres.

On the eve of the Cultural Revolution, a period of extreme radicalism that lasted from 1966 to 1976, Mr. Jiang volunteered to do agricultural work in Inner Mongolia, he said, preferring it to the other, far more popular volunteer destination of the day, the far northeastern province of Heilongjiang. ''Everywhere I looked people were confiscating books, and I was collecting them,'' he said. ''I brought two big cases of hundreds of books with me: Balzac, Tolstoy, Jack London and Jane Austen. If I had gone to Heilongjiang, I would have been living with the army, and they would have been confiscated.''

Mr. Jiang said he chose the most remote place he could for his 11 years on the plains, the Elun grasslands, so close to the border that he could see Mongolia's mountain ranges. The story he wrote had been with him, he said, for more than 20 years, and was forged in friendships on the plains and an appreciation for the Mongolian reverence for the wolf and for the environment.

The book was six years in the writing, during which time the author shared it with no one, including his wife, who is a well-known novelist herself.

Today, Mr. Jiang says, laughing slyly, friends who know of his past in the grasslands contact him to talk about the book. They ask, ''Do you know the writer?'' he said. ''Can you help me with an introduction?''

Correction: November 7, 2005, Monday An article in The Arts on Thursday about ''Wolf Totem,'' a best-selling Chinese novel by an author who writes under the name Jiang Rong, referred incorrectly to the film director Peter Jackson. Mr. Jackson has not bought the story rights and does not plan to produce a film based on it.

Photo: ''Wolf Totem,'' which has sold millions of copies in China.

NY Times essay on physics and metaphysics

2006-03-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

So this fuzzy-headed English major thought this was a good article. But maybe it was just well-written.

What do you real science people think?

Essay
Far Out, Man. But Is It Quantum Physics?

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: March 14, 2006

Can physics save your soul?

Two years ago, a movie with the unpronounceable title "What the #$!%* Do We Know!?" became an underground new-age phenomenon, raking in $11 million out of midnight screenings and word of mouth, spawning an industry of books, tote bags, clothing, DVD's and "biofield" jewelry.

It purported to argue, based on the insights of modern quantum physics, that reality is just a mental construct that we can rearrange and improve, if we are enlightened or determined enough. Science and spirituality have tied the knot, and the world is your infinitely deformable apple.

This winter an expanded version, "What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole," began to play to audiences who say that the movie confirms what they already thought about the cosmos, some vibe they had that it is a slippery, woo-woo-woo kind of place. The movie just finished a two-month run in New York and is to be shown in May at the Quest for Global Healing Conference, in Ubud, Bali, with luminaries like Walter Cronkite and Desmond Tutu attending.

Like its predecessor, this film features a coterie of talking heads: physicists with real Ph.D.'s, biologists, philosophers and a woman who claims to be channeling a 35,000-year-old spirit warrior from Atlantis. It tells the story of a sourpuss photographer played by Marlee Matlin who learns to love herself and take a chance on life.

Like its predecessor, the film touts the alleged power of meditation to affect the crystalline structure of water, as revealed in photographs by Masaru Emoto, a doctor of alternative medicine in Japan. Love and gratitude make for symmetrical and intricate crystals, according to the film, while hatred produces an ugly mess.

If thoughts can do this to water, imagine what they can do to humans, who are, after all, mostly water — at least so runs the mantra repeated several times in the film.

When I first heard that Marlee Matlin had made a movie about quantum theory, I was excited. (Total disclosure: Ms. Matlin once bought an option on the film rights to an essay of mine about Albert Einstein and his wife.) What could be more deserving of wide-screen cinematic treatment than the weirdness and mystery of the laws that sculpture our space-time adventures?

But hours and hours spent watching the two films and navigating their splashy Web site have tempered my enthusiasm. These films and the quantum mysticism industry behind them raise a disturbing question about the muddled intersection between science and culture. Do we have to indulge in bad physics to feel good?

The "rabbit hole" in the title refers to the philosophical muddle that the contemplation of quantum mechanics, the paradoxical laws that govern subatomic life, can lead to. And it is a legitimate and maddening one. Quantum physics proclaims, for example, that an electron (or any object, elementary particle or not) is both a particle and a wave before we look at it, a conundrum neatly illustrated by a cartoon featuring "Dr. Quantum" in the new film.

Physicists have been at war for the last century trying to explain how it is that the fog of quantum possibilities prescribed by mathematical theory can condense into one concrete actuality, what physicists call "collapsing the wavefunction." Half a century ago the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Eugene Wigner ventured that consciousness was the key to this mysterious process.

Wigner thereby, and inadvertently, launched a thousand New Age dreams. Books like "The Tao of Physics" and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" have sought to connect quantum physics to Eastern mysticism. Deepak Chopra, the physician and author, has founded a career on the idea of "quantum healing," and a school of parapsychology has arisen based on the idea that things like telekinesis and telepathy were a result of probing minds' manipulation of the formless quantum potential. And now the movie.

All of them promote the idea that, at some level, our minds are in control of reality. We are in charge of the holodeck, as one of the characters in "Down the Rabbit Hole" says. And if it doesn't work for you, it's probably because you don't believe.

So what's wrong with that? Like everyone else, I am inspired by stories of personal change. The ideas that consciousness creates reality and that anything is possible make for terrific psychology.

We all know that self-confidence breeds its own success. I wish I were a member of that club. But physics has moved on. The parapsychologists were booted from the American Association for the Advancement of Science 30 years ago. It has been even longer since anybody took Wigner's idea seriously, said David Albert, a professor of philosophy and physics at Columbia, who has the dubious honor of being one of the talking heads in both "What the Bleep" films and is not pleased with the results.

Many physicists today say the waves that symbolize quantum possibilities are so fragile they collapse with the slightest encounter with their environment. Conscious observers are not needed. As Dr. Albert pointed out, Wigner framed the process in strict mathematical and probabilistic terms. "The desires and intentions of the observer had nothing to do with it," he said.

In other words, reality is out of our control. It's all atoms and the void, as Democritus said so long ago. Indeed, some physicists say the most essential and independent characteristic of reality, whatever that is, is randomness. It's a casino universe.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. There's a great story to be told about atoms and the void: how atoms evolved out of fire and bent space and grew into Homer, Chartres cathedral and "Blonde on Blonde." How those same atoms came to learn that the earth, sun, life, intelligence and the whole universe will eventually die.

I can hardly blame the quantum mystics for avoiding this story, and sticking to the 1960's.

When it comes to physics, people seem to need to kid themselves. There is a presumption, Dr. Albert said, that if you look deeply enough you will find "some reaffirmation of your own centrality to the world, a reaffirmation of your ability to take control of your own destiny." We want to know that God loves us, that we are the pinnacle of evolution.

But one of the most valuable aspects of science, he said, is precisely the way it resists that temptation to find the answer we want. That is the test that quantum mysticism flunks, and on some level we all flunk.

I'd like to believe that like Galileo, I would have the courage to see the world clearly, in all its cruelty and beauty, "without hope or fear," as the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis put it. Take free will. Everything I know about physics and neuroscience tells me it's a myth. But I need that illusion to get out of bed in the morning. Of all the durable and necessary creations of atoms, the evolution of the illusion of the self and of free will are perhaps the most miraculous. That belief is necessary to my survival.

But I wouldn't call it good physics.

Kai Fu Li - Google China CEO

2006-03-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

Currently reading - Be Your Personal Best.

p.s. I wanted to put a link to the text on Internet but couldn't find any through Google Search. Is Google helping him to preserve the copy right so the book can sell in China? Hm......it probably just takes a few lines of code!

There is No Progress!

2006-03-13T00:52:00.000-08:00

When I read Nietzsche proclaimed, “there is no progress”, for a moment I didn’t understand what he meant[perhaps I still don’t since he twists his word usage so much]. But "progress" the word is deeply rooted in the book of ideology for some of us; and I have always believed in human progress; because without it, how can one be hopeful even?

I think progress can loosely fall into two realms: that of physical and that of spiritual. For sure we have progressed much in the material realm. In the modern western world, life is no longer “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” as Hobbes lamented in the 16th century. Not only have we improved our standard of living by great many folds, but also have advanced in preserving our bodies.

But progress in terms of spiritual well being does not necessarily go hand and hand with the physical. I am not sure if we have traveled far in this realm. Facing mortality, we humans still struggle for a spiritual home as we always have. For a great many if not more since the world population has reached a point never before, we still worship the same supernatural being(s) and dream the same afterlife, though some ideas are more adjusted to the modern surroundings.

Science has far more effect on the material world than the spiritual, and it does not really solve the most important aspect of human condition – our emotional needs. The emotion stems from hope, fear, love, biological needs that make us who we are – a soul inside a bag of blood and flesh. We project ourselves outward, and yearn to associate ourselves with others(physical and nonphysical) beings outside our bodies. We know we are so small and so limited, yet could be infinitely bigger if we find a way.

Progress must be sought in the spiritual realm and this sometimes is reflected in social changes. Societies moved from primitive “tribal” to “feudal” to “democratic”(these are just crude labels of course). People are recognized as entities that are entitled to “rights” and exercise of “free will”. And of course there are those who don't believe it and thought it an illusion.

Now that we have entered the 21st century and embraced modernity defined by technological advancement, we still face the same dilemma in the spiritual area. After millenniums of wars and suffering, we face yet the greatest danger of all, the total extinction of human race by nuclear weapons. That, is NOT progress. And wars, cruel and inhumane, reflect the “total failure of human spirits”, as Robert Fisk quoted a courageous fellow reporter.

Ah, maybe modernity has made us complacent and even further away from reaching a spiritual home. It’s really a double edge sword. With so much capability, we could accomplish so much as we have - improving life beyond our ancestors’ imagination, but we could also bring destruction in great scale and efficiency. Has Modernity made us less cruel or less dogmatic or brought greater sympathy towards others? I don’t know. Not necessarily. Extreme poverty in other continents is almost a tiresome topic in this country. Although Jeffrey Sachs said that for the first in human history, it’s possible to eliminate poverty, we don’t see much progress in fact(regression maybe in the last decade in Africa). It's not because we can’t do it. We rather order the unenlightened poor men and women not to use condoms to prevent HIV so that they are moral. In the US, we rather save “the most vulnerable – the unborn” – than taking care of the existing human beings. This is yet the most ridiculous and outrageous argument I heard, by the South Dakota governor.

Progress is hard. But I still think there was progress. One just have to struggle for it.

Robert Fisk - A video of his interview

2006-03-13T00:10:00.000-08:00

He is what I consider real war journalist.

Dr. Wafa Sultan - A video clip of an angry and eloquent speech

2006-03-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

This is not a clash of civilisations, it's a clash of modernity and the primitive.

A quote that made me laugh

2006-03-11T20:41:00.000-08:00

"Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, dont put it off."
- Ellen DeGeneres

Chinatown

2006-03-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Made in 1974, Chinatown was the last film Roman Polanski directed in the United States. It was his best, hands down. Not only did it win the Oscar for the best screenplay, it has been voted the fourth greatest movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly, and consistently ranks among the top 50 movies in the Internet Movie Database. Like all masterpieces, Chinatown is rich in themes and interpretations, and can be savored in repeated viewings (I've watched it twice, and have copied it onto my IMac G4). The story unfolds at a well-calculated pace, delivering new clues and surprises just as the audience absorbs the previous ones. As the denouement finally unravels, the film delivers the final shock: a tragic ending where evil triumphs over good, all summarized in the famous tagline: "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown." The experience is like watching a Fourth of July firework show: in the beginning, the fireworks go up into the sky slowly, one by one, and you follow each one with your eyes. But as one explodes in the sky, new traces of fire have gone up and engage your attention. And the rate quickens, and your eyes can barely keep up. Then suddenly comes the climax, when all the traces of fire burst into a panoramic display of shapes and colors, for a fleeting second. Then all is dark and quiet again. Only embers fall from the sky.

Some books to check out

2006-03-08T18:27:00.000-08:00

"But there is a wealth of rich material from which to choose. No man lives long enough to read a fractional part of the worth-while books which would enrich his mind and inspire him to greater achievement. But the newspaper-hash habit dies hard, and there are many who will not discipline themselves to give it up or to modify it. One member of my class said, " I don't give the newspaper a half-hour a day, only about two or three hours a week." He did not realize what can be done with two hours a week. Why, in two hours you can read that wonderful little book by Bennett, How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day, or Allen's masterpiece, As a Man Thinketh. In two hours a man can memorize the Twenty-Third and Ninety-First Psalms. Or you can read that marvelous little book by Griggs, The Margin. In two hours spent every week for a month you can read and digest Rabindranath Tagore's masterpiece, The Realization of Life, the book which won the Nobel prize a few years ago and is probably the best work of modern philosophy to-day. Or you may read Beveridge's book, The Life of Chief Justice Marshall, or Henry 'Van Dyke's great; story, The Other Wise Man, or review that grand old work of fiction Les Miserables, or read the book by Professor Parrington, Main Currents of American Thought, which won the award as the best book on contemporaneous American Life written in 1928, or best of all you may t-ake your two hours a week, which is only seventeen minutes a day, and you can memorize enough memory gems within a year to enrich your mental storehouse and to develop a strong retentive memory. "

-- Excerpted from www.oldandsold.com, antigue digest article on mental fitness.

A really neat site

2006-03-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

of old articles that were published back in the day. Early 1900's to mid 1950's.

Antiques Digest at www.oldandsold.com

Click here for a sample article

The Encyclopedia of Mammals- Ed. David Macdonald

2006-03-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

Just browsing - not reading the whole thing. I am writing a series of books for little kids on safari animals, and have been using this as a reference book. I'm amazed by how little I know about mammals. This is the sort of topic I sort of figured one grasps the basics of while in elementary school. Apparently I have much to learn. There are whole groups of mammals I never heard of - cavies, hyraxes, tenrecs,chevrotians, the list goes on...

So much information out there, so little held in a single brain...

Sula by Tony Morrison

2006-03-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

Finished the book recently and thought there were some well-written passages in a book, more concentrated on characters than storyline. Naturally the book focuses on the African-American woman's psyche but had enough of a universal touch that all women will be able to relate somewhat to the female characters in the book.

The character of Sula is indeed a very strange and bizarre one. She is a person devoid of a personal sense of responsibility in anything. Morality, shame, pride, all fall meaningless at her feet. She contains a mere intellectual curiousity regarding the world and has also been cruelly disappointed by it. She is a true cynic and despaired at finding anything new under the sun. However, the book hints that had she been an artist, she would have found more meaning in her life. Instead, lacking an artistic channel to vent her frustrations, she spends her days sleeping with other women's men. That ultimately proves to be unfulfilling and disappointing. She is also supremely judgmental, haughty. She held herself high above the "common people." I have noticed it's easy for dreamers to fall into that trap.

LIke I said, I felt that I could personally relate to some parts of her character. Yet overall, I felt that her portrayal was not realistic enough to take seriously. In the sense that, we are constantly reminded that she is a fictional character because some of her traits appear too fictitious.

Jon Stewart and the Media

2006-03-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

1. Interview by the NPR about his book America and others, September 30, 2004

2. Transcript of Jon Stewart's incendiary appearance on CNN's Crossfire, Oct 15, 2004

A well-written debate between evenly matched thinkers

2006-03-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

This is from the Slate magazine. Have you guys read it?

From: Steven Johnson
To: Dana Stevens
Subject: TV Junkies Are Exercising Their Minds More Than Ever
Friday, May 13, 2005, at 8:44 AM ET

Dana,

I'm glad to hear that at least part of Everything Bad's argument rang true to you, and I'm tempted to just call it a draw: If you accept the premise that the interactive media and the games are indeed sharpening our minds along the lines I describe, perhaps I should just concede the point about television and end the debate right here. But that wouldn't be any fun, would it?

So here's my ultimate question to you about the state of TV watching, borrowed from the Gipper's debate-school playbook: Are we better off today than we were 30 years ago? You seem willing to concede the formal advances of today's television: the complex storytelling, the more intricate social networks, the refusal to pander to lowest-common-denominator explanations of every little plot twist, and so on. Perhaps we disagree about how transferable those skills are to the real world, but at least there seems to be agreement that the 30-year story is a positive one where complexity is concerned.

How about the ADD-enabling annoyances of the advertising? I find commercial breaks every bit as distracting as you do, which is why I much prefer watching shows on DVD or on TiVo or on HBO. And of course, DVDs and TiVo and HBO didn't exist back in the '70s; the only way to avoid commercial breaks was either to leave the room or watch PBS. So, however annoying the advertising is today, there are many more ways around it than there were 30 years ago.

How about the substance of the shows—the question, as you put it, of what we're learning when we watch these shows? Perhaps we disagree here, but when I look back at the television lineups from the 1970s, I don't see a lot of psychological depth or complex social analysis. I see CHiPs. At the high end of the spectrum, I don't see anything from 30 years ago that rivals the genuinely novelistic scale and originality of The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, the dark satire of Arrested Development or Curb Your Enthusiasm, or even the cinematic dread and general creepiness of Lost (though I admit I am only a few episodes into the latter, so please—no spoilers.) I like Soap and M*A*S*H as much as the next person, but I'll happily take the more formulaic sitcoms today—Everybody Loves Raymond or King Of Queens—over the generally awfully Garry Marshall sitcoms that dominated the ratings back then. But perhaps your mileage varies—these are aesthetic judgments, after all. I can point only to another review of my book—this one from Salon—where my argument about the positive trends in TV quality was critiqued for being too obvious: "What I wonder, though, is, Doesn't everyone know that today's TV is better than yesterday's TV? It's here that I think Johnson's too focused on straw men. … Is there anyone who prefers 'Hill Street Blues,' which as Johnson points out was one of the best dramas of the 1980s, to 'The West Wing' or 'ER' or 'The Sopranos'? I imagine only the very nostalgic would say they do."

And then there is the question of passivity. You rightly point out that TV doesn't offer the truly interactive engagement of games or the Web. But the Net has actually had an important lateral effect on the way people now engage with TV. Since the late '70s, the number of armchair critics, annotators, fan-fiction remixers, and Monday morning quarterbacks has exploded in number, all of them posting their comments or stories or fan resources on the vast pop encyclopedia that is the Web today. Take a look at the discussion forums for a show like The Apprentice, and you'll see the intensity with which these fans dissect the actions of the show's contestants: arguing over their ethical behavior, their business acumen, their strategic thinking, their personal responsibility—in other words, all the issues that people grapple with in their real-world office relationships. So, yes, the act of watching television is technically still as passive as ever. But there has been a tremendous increase in the number of people who compensate for that passivity by actively writing out their thoughts on last night's episode and publishing those thoughts for the world to read.

Add all those factors up—more complexity, fewer ads, richer content, and more interactivity—and I think the trend is undeniable. Today's TV junkies are exercising their minds more than their predecessors did in the 1970s, and they're not just training their ability to multitask. Does that mean that I think people should watch 30 hours of TV a week? Of course not. Would I prefer to live in a culture where people read as much George Eliot as they watched Fear Factor? Absolutely. But I'm not describing what my ideal cultural ecosystem would look like; I'm trying to combat the tiresome idea that we live in age where cheap pleasures and instant gratifications are on the rise, and subtlety and complexity are growing increasingly obsolete. In fact, the trends all point in the opposite direction. That's not reason to give up on the novel or stop fighting the encroachments of banal advertising. But it is reason for hope.

From: Dana Stevens
To: Steven Johnson
Subject: The Sopranos vs. Star Trek
Friday, May 13, 2005, at 1:28 PM ET
Dear Steven,

Yesterday I got so worked up in my response to you that I ran way over my word count, so I'll keep this brief. To begin with the Gipper's question, I'm not so sure we can unproblematically claim to be "better off" in terms of televisual offerings today than we were 30 years ago. Comparing CHiPs, a low-end network cop drama of its day, to The Sopranos, a premium-cable offering that's arguably the most sophisticated television show in the history of the medium, seems like some serious deck-stacking to me. But even if we posit that the '70s were a particularly low point for TV (just my luck, as a child watching endless amounts of it), skip back a few years and you have smart, literate, politically savvy shows like The Fugitive, The Twilight Zone, or the original Star Trek. Comparing the relative merits of different decades is a fun parlor game, but ultimately, every era will have its high-end, intelligent works of art and its dumb, gladiatorial spectacles. The advent of cable has certainly increased the number of worthwhile shows on television (and thereby, perhaps, raised our expectations of what TV can be), but has it increased the percentage?

Your point about televised advertising being more skippable than it was 30 years ago is well-taken. But I have two important objections: First of all, the technologies that enable us to avoid advertising (TiVo, HBO, renting entire seasons on DVD) are class-bound; they're available only to those who can afford them, which means that the commercial breaks of network television are rapidly becoming the province of the less well-off. Second, even as that happens, the advertising industry is mutating like a virus, finding new ways of invading our consciousness at every waking second. Recently, TiVo added "billboard" ads that pop up as consumers fast-forward through commercials. And the inroads product placement is making into program content are well-known. If advertisers could embed microchips in our inner ear playing the Oscar Mayer jingle they would, and I'm sure they're working on it now.

I know that each new technology paradigm shift has brought in its wake a nostalgia for the technology that existed before. (Your book has an epigram by Marshall McLuhan to this effect.) After the printing press took off in the 16th century, there were no doubt cranks bemoaning the damage that would be wrought by the Gutenberg Bible (though their arguments would likely have been framed in terms of spiritual, not intellectual, decline). But even for those of us not given to Cassandra-like declamations about cultural decay, there's something a little too rosy about your book's assertion that everything is for the best in this most cognitively demanding of all possible worlds.

In general, I tend to mistrust arguments about culture that claim an evolutionary progression of any kind ("Hey, we're getting smarter!") for the same reason I look askance on those who bewail the loss of some formerly pristine state: Evolution and devolution are flip sides of the same coin, and both models can be easily deployed for ideological purposes. I'm not accusing you of this—your book is clearly motivated by a scientific curiosity about the effects of new media. But I do think that too complacent an appraisal of the merits of these technologies runs the risk of turning us into uncritical consumers of them.

Because you conclude on the notion of "hope," I'll end by hoping that you and I, coming as we do from different approaches to media criticism, both share a desire to keep open the question of exactly what our culture's working definition of "intelligence" should include. Does it allow for imagination? Aesthetic judgment? Critical thinking? And if so, how can we make sure that our relationship to technology encourages these difficult-to-define, but essential, qualities, as well as more quantifiable skills?

Thanks—I've enjoyed our back-and-forth these last two days, and I hope your book is flying off the shelves, so that many people can continue the conversation.

Dana

A good discussion for "Great Minds"

2006-03-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

this was wendy's comment on my other blog. i decided to move it to a more fitting home. Home of the "great minds"!

-----------------
The word "hypocrite" has a negative moral label to it. it's like "selfish" but worse than "selfish". it describes certain inherent and inevitable human traits and stamps a moral judgement on it. I mean we're conditioned by our society and culture such that we conform to their values. when doing that, we have to pretend we're better than what we are.

but the word applies to all of us I think, just at different levels. I don't think "hypocrite" == "bad" is an absolute equality, even "bad" itself can't be absolutely bad[maybe you disagree, sorry I don't intend to open up a conversation on whether absolute good or bad exists, or good vs. evil]. Maybe we should just admit it for once and all so that we don't feel the need to be righteous, attempting to prove otherwise. what do you think?
-----------------

I guess I feel that the so-called morality is essentially a social contract. Everyone agrees to play by the same rules because everyone lives in the same society together. It's not about being righteous per se, but it is about finding that perfect balance of doing what one wants and at the same time, live in harmony with the society at large.

Nine Professors At Columbia Are Deemed 'Dangerous'

2006-03-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

---------------------
I'm amused by the third paragraph to the end of this article.
---------------------

By ALEC MAGNET - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 21, 2006

Nine of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" teach at Columbia University, according to a new book by conservative activist David Horowitz.

The book, "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America," published by Regnery, profiles 101 professors from campuses across the country.

"Columbia is a national scandal," Mr. Horowitz told The New York Sun in a telephone interview. "That a serious, top-tier university ... is an ideological fortress is an emblem of the utter debasement of the academic endeavor."

His book lists several professors from the university's department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures, including Joseph Massad, who emerged as the central figure in a series of student complaints over anti-Israel bias and classroom bullying.

"Among a faculty distinguished more for its militancy and political activism than its scholarship, Professor Massad is in a radical class of his own," Mr. Horowitz writes. On January 13, the Sun reported that Mr. Massad's prejudice and intimidation contributed to the decision of one student, Anat Malkin, to drop out of her graduate program after two years. This semester, Columbia promoted Mr. Massad to associate professor, a position from which he can receive tenure.

Mr. Horowitz also criticizes the dean of Columbia's School of International Public Affairs, Lisa Anderson, for her sponsorship of Mr. Massad and her fundraising from Arab sources for an Edward Said chair in Middle Eastern studies.

The Sun in January reported that Ms. Anderson had along with several other Columbia professors taken a junket to Saudi Arabia paid for by the kingdom-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco.

Mr. Massad and Ms. Anderson did not return requests for comment. Nor did the holder of the Edward Said chair, Rashid Khalidi.

Other Columbia professors Mr. Horowitz censured did respond, criticizing the book's interpretations, importance, and research.

"I was flattered to be included, despite the inaccuracies and false innuendos, although I didn't and don't feel I have earned the right (either as a professor or a clear and present danger) to be on such a list," a Columbia journalism professor who is the editor of the Nation and chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, Victor Navasky, told the Sun in an e-mail message.

A professor of American history, Eric Foner, whom Mr. Horowitz describes as an "apologist for American Communism," said in an e-mail, "Mr. Horowitz's 'chapter' on me is full of errors, beginning with the long quote with which he opens, which was written by someone else, not me. This is a fair example of the reliability of his work. But to get into a debate about Horowitz is a waste of time, and accords his attacks a legitimacy they do not deserve."

Mr. Horowitz attributes to Mr. Foner a statement by the late author and journalist, Paul Foot, from a collection of responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the same feature, which ran in the October 4 issue of the London Review of Books, Mr. Foner wrote: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House."

A professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia, Todd Gitlin, said Mr. Horowitz misinterpreted two of his essays as anti-American. "In fact, the burden of these essays is exactly the contrary. In both essays, I distinguish between the country that is worthy of respect and allegiance and the government policies that are not."

Mr. Gitlin said he was not present at a March 2003 anti-war "teach-in" at Columbia when another Columbia professor the book criticizes, Nicholas De Genova, called for "a million Mogadishus" - a reference to a 1993 incident in Somalia in which 18 American servicemen were killed. Had Mr. Gitlin been present for or heard about the remark, he said, "I would have expressed my disgust."

Mr. De Genova, who is another of the "101 most dangerous" professors, did not return requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for Columbia, Susan Brown, said the university's professors "are among the most preeminent scholars in their fields. They and the university take seriously the responsibility to expose students to the modern world in all its complexity and to foster greater understanding of its diverse cultures and political systems."

"Columbia is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in the world and a place where all students can flourish, regardless of their background, race, or religion," she added.

Other Columbia professors criticized by Mr. Horowitz were Gil Anidjar, Hamid Dabashi, and Manning Marable.

New York University is home to only one of the 101 professors Mr. Horowitz profiles, Derrick Bell, a law professor who left Harvard Law School.

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York has two professors on the Horowitz list, Eve Kosofky Sedgwick, whom teaches English, and Stanley Aronowitz, who Mr. Horowitz quotes as saying that what he most enjoys about his publicly funded position is "the ability to procrastinate and control my own work time, especially its pace: taking a walk in the middle of the day, reading between the writing, listening to a CD or tape anytime I want, calling up a friend for a chat."

Two of the professors on the list teach at Brooklyn College, Priya Parmar and Timothy Shortell, and one at City College, Leonard Jeffries, a black studies professor.

Mr. Horowitz argues that the professors should be seen as representative of academia as a whole.

Hmmm

2006-02-28T19:22:00.000-08:00

Now that I've made it to the "Great Minds Think Alike" exclusive club extraordinaire, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I haven't read too many great works of literature recently. I don't think "Nanny Diaries", snatched as a last minute whim from the library I was studying at counts. =P

However, I have started a series of audio lectures entitled "Birth of the Modern Mind" lectured by a history professor at the U of Pennsylvania. So far, some notable facts learned are:

1. Descartes proves the existence of God through logic - if man can conceive of the ideal of God, there must exist an actual God that exceeds our wildest imagination, think Plato's Cave Analogy.

2. Thomas Hobbes: there is no "good" or "evil" only "pain" and "pleasure". There is no free will either, it's just an illusion.

3. Blaise Pascal was not very impressed with Descartes nor with the God that is summoned at the end of Descartes' logic reasoning. He is termed the first modern Christian.

About Grace - Anthony Doerr

2006-02-28T14:24:00.000-08:00

Interesting book - some gorgeous passages on the natural world, with science woven in. Definitely a novel, though, with a tone that is, overall, more visionary than scientifically objective.

To Kill a Mockingbird the Movie

2006-02-26T15:55:00.000-08:00

Somehow I felt that the movie is all about God without saying one word of God.

It also makes one remember the magic of the childhood.

Marjorie Williams

2006-02-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

A piece commemorates her by the Washington Post staff writer in early 2005 after she died.

***
washingtonpost.com
Post Columnist Marjorie Williams Dies

By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 17, 2005; Page B05

Marjorie Williams, 47, a Washington Post columnist known for her elegantly crafted essays on American society and fearless profiles of the political elite, died of cancer Jan. 16 at her home in Washington.

Ms. Williams produced definitive journalism across a range of forms, from short essays to in-depth magazine pieces. Ms. Williams was an editor of great promise in her twenties and became a piercing portraitist of Washington power in her thirties, writing profiles of government and media leaders for The Post and Vanity Fair magazine.

A portrait by Ms. Williams was seen as a ritual signifying that a person had reached the center of the political universe. First came the charm, then the withering scalp-to-toenails examination under her all-seeing eye. Her conclusions were published for millions to read in keen and crystal prose.

She profiled everyone from Bill Clinton to James A. Baker, Al Gore to Colin L. Powell, Larry King to George Stephanopoulos, from archetypal insider Clark Clifford to upstart moneyman Terry McAuliffe. Her portraits blended microscopic observations and universal conclusions as a sort of Plutarch's "Lives" for an end-of-millennium Washington.

In 2000, she began a weekly op-ed column that attracted an immediate and admiring audience, according to Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt. "The quality of the response to her work was remarkable," Hiatt said. "While she was doing it, there's never been anything better on our page."

Liver cancer was diagnosed in July 2001. Ms. Williams turned a prognosis measured in months into a stoic and good-humored campaign for nearly four years, hard-won time that she lavished on her husband, journalist Timothy Noah, and their children, Will and Alice.

The shelf-life of newspapers generally is measured in hours or days, of magazines perhaps in weeks; Ms. Williams was the rare journalist whose best lines and sharpest insights are still fresh in the minds of fans.

Hiatt, for example, instantly recalled her observation in a column from March 2000: "In years of writing about political figures, I have heard the friends and associates of a really striking number of men offer, as proof of the great men's warmth and cuddliness, that when their children call during work hours, they actually take the calls."

A number of other admirers cited her 1991 Style section profile of Clifford, an adviser to presidents from Truman onward, who found himself mired in scandal at the end of a long career as one of the most venerable of Washington wise men.

"But there is another mystery in Clifford's history: the intriguing question of how Washington came to repose so much confidence in a corporate lawyer-lobbyist, making him the personification, the very definition, of integrity," Ms. Williams wrote. "The answer to that mystery lies in . . . how eager Washington always is to think of its fixers as statesmen."

The guts to call a fixer a fixer, no matter how many history books he might figure in, and the craftsmanship to do it with eloquence, and the brains to make it stick -- those were the main guns in her arsenal. "She had an extraordinary concern for getting it right, not just in the details, but in the context," according to former Post Magazine editor Bob Thompson. Simply having her byline on cover stories was enough to rivet the attention of official Washington, Thompson said.

She had a one-of-a-kind résumé to match her distinctive voice. The path she trod -- seemingly casual, yet in retrospect supremely efficient -- served for many colleagues to underline the idea that there could be only one Marjorie Williams.

Ms. Williams was born in Princeton, N.J., daughter of a prominent book editor, Alan Williams, and his wife, Beverly. Perhaps Ms. Williams's ability to see through power to the human and vulnerable layers beneath was shaped by her childhood amid the dueling wits and clashing egos of an over-lubricated literary salon.

As editorial director of Viking Press, her father shepherded authors ranging from the Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer and the military historian Sir John Keegan to the blockbusters Frederick Forsyth and Stephen King. Her father was a raconteur and opera buff who loved jousting over trivia with a martini in his hand. Her mother was a scientist-turned-homemaker, equally skilled at serving up gourmet meals and acerbic commentary.

"I come from a family in which alcohol played a devastating role," Ms. Williams once wrote of her Cheeveresque upbringing.

She became a voracious reader and satisfied three years of Harvard requirements in just two academic years. But she was unhappy at college. She dropped out after her junior year and landed a job in New York as assistant to editor Joni Evans. Evans discovered that Ms. Williams "had practically read everything before I ever met her."

Together they handled a string of bestsellers, and Evans concluded that her protege was destined to become "a major publisher, major." But in 1986, Ms. Williams decided to try Washington and journalism -- evidence, Evans said, of her "enormous presence, her enormous sense of her own happiness and her own path."

"She was complicated," Evans said. "Very sure of her own goals. She didn't need the outside approval of others."

Washington Post associate editor Robert G. Kaiser was then running the paper's National staff and looking for someone to jazz up the Federal Page. He took a flier on the uncredentialed Ms. Williams. She was an immediate success, coaxing writers into banking their Page One ambitions long enough to contribute articles for her and launching the gossipy column "Talking Points."

"But she wanted to be a writer," Kaiser recalled. A lucrative offer to run the Book of the Month Club was the lever she used to pry open a slot as a reporter in the Style section. Her profiles there and in the Post Magazine were an immediate sensation -- from the start, she wrote with an authority that simply closed the book on subject after subject -- and soon led to an enduring relationship with Vanity Fair.

"Marjorie was one of the finest Washington reporters I know," Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter said. "She combined the political and the social aspects of the place in a way that was seamless, and she often did it without being granted access to her subjects."

Ms. Williams's dogged reporting carried her past the obstacles and barriers that image-guarding public officials tried to place in her path, Carter said.

Her byline appeared in various publications over portraits, character studies, essays, book reviews and online exchanges. She wrote trenchantly on topics ranging from the presidency to parenthood, from Julia Child to Jennifer Lopez. She ran the octaves from trivia to timelessness with speed and harmony. She could do funny and wise and sad all in the same paragraph, with no seams showing.

Many more people liked Ms. Williams than could easily explain her, for she defied easy categories. Her prose was razor-sharp, her personality gentle. Her mind was relentless, her manner good-natured. Her standards were exacting, her impulse forgiving. She was by nature the center of most rooms she entered, yet preferred to draw out others, to listen.

"This was a woman," her friend and Post colleague Ruth Marcus said, "who could be intimidated by her nanny, then turn around and skewer the secretary of state."

Said former Post executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee: "She had that miracle touch. She made people feel so good -- about life and the paper and everything."

During her illness, she wrote occasional op-ed pieces that sometimes touched on the ordeal, but always as an illumination of a larger point. Her final column, published Nov. 3, reflected on what she knew was likely her last Halloween. She described her third-grader dressed up in a rock star costume; in that bittersweet glimpse, Ms. Williams divined the young woman she would not live to know.

Ms. Williams faced her death open-eyed. She had watched her mother die, and afterward she wrote: "You bear the unbearable, in the orbit of a loved one's death, because you have to. . . . Death is the one matter that is out of our hands."

Neither a romance nor a melodrama; just the truth. Truth was, to the end, the thing she handled best.

Besides her children and husband, a columnist for the online magazine Slate, Ms. Williams is survived by her stepmother, Robin Rue of Jersey City, N.J.; and three sisters.

Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

2006-02-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Beautiful novel, if not for every taste. More meditative than narrative...

Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman

2006-02-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

Excellent dialogue between Don Juan and the Devil. (wk1 Feb 2006)

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

2006-02-23T22:04:00.000-08:00

Great movie!

The movie is so superbly directed and acted that one can’t quite ask for more. It depicts the wild west beauty and harshness with realism and suppressed emotions. The story is told by a masterful director and a crew of actors. The scenery blends into the story and emotions that the characters carry. The main character, Pete(Jones) like Texas wilderness, a tough human being with few words and holds all the emotions in. He reminds me characters in Hemingway’s novels – one endures life, emotions are seldom revealed, but in brief moments that they do, they reach down deep into your heart in the most unexpected way. You could feel them in your bones - the love, sadness, emptiness, frustration, anger, hurt, repentance and human longings that words can’t describe.

And it is with wit, humor and violence.