Constructing the Future

builders are now able to build with incredible precision with robots

from Monocle

Study says: leave the multitasking to your computer

it took an average of 15 minutes to return to the task they were working on after being interrupted

our context-switching penalty is extremely high

Even a small distraction such as a noticeable sound playing in the background can hamper the formation of "declarative memory," which is necessary for a full understanding of a new idea.

Yu Qiuyu: why book reading is a waste

Unlike the yearnings of literati of old, I do not believe that reading is an important affair. Investigation, travel, experience, and creativity are more important for cultural insight.:

"Literature is somewhat different, but the American author Singer said that one sign of a mature writer is that he no longer reads books. For the highest plane of writing is consulting one's own soul and facing the silence of nature."

黑社会 Election

I was really impressed by this movie. The knife fight scene(probably the only real fight scene in the whole movie) is intense in an movie that is filled with battles fought with wit.

I did not imagined the sequel: 黑社会2以和为贵 - Election 2 could best the first movie, but it surprised me. The ending message is just chilling. Just imagine that everything you do is really the whim of a greater power.

The unbearable weariness of being

=( on recruiting. My self-esteem right now is like an old man who keeps yelling, "Oiy-my knees!"

Amazon's Series of Fortunate Events

Computing power finally becomes a commodity

"...a high school student can rent one of the best, most proven, storage platforms of them all -- for a little less than $.50 per month. If he or she is willing to lay off the occaissional candy bar, he/she can be on an equal web infrastructure footing with the richest technology companies in the world. If I was an investor in MSFT, I might even ask if investing $200 million in Amazon makes more sense than $2 billion on your own technology and starting from scratch."

As Far as Florence

Netvibes RIP

Google finally puts its weight behind personalized homepage, and the result is beautiful.

Interview with Lego CEO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp

Lego finishes restructuring

sorrowing, as water streams without

I could speak to her on a day like this,
on a day when it rains as heavily.
You can open your heart on a day like this –
when you hear the clouds as the rain pours down
in gloom unbroken by light.

Those words won’t be heard by anyone else;
there’s not a soul around.
Just us, face to face, in each other’s sorrow
sorrowing, as water streams without
interruption;
it’s as if there’s no one else in the world.

Chinese financial magazines and media

From personal experience, Chinese magazines, TV talk shows regarding finance are much more technical than their U.S. counterparts.

The financial magazines and talk shows in China engages with the audiences very well. In this regard they mix investigative reports, common people reactions from the street along with technical exposés by famous financial figures in the U.S. It is no wonder then, these finance magazines and talk shows are ranked rather highly in the reader and viewer ratings.

In some aspect, this detailed technical focus reflects a tremendous curiosity and desire on the part of the audience to learn everything about the market.

Gmail outages

What is with the erratic outages lately? If Gmail turns out to have the same amounts of problems as blogger has, it is really going to hit Google's reputation. I couldn't access Gmail for over 30 minutes in just the past week. That puts Gmail's reliability around ~99.8%. This means I wouldn't want to use Gmail to communicate if I were the Navy or doing anything important, like pulling a major presentation that is worth 30% of my grade on Gmail for backup... oh wait, I just did that. Luckily I have a backup on flash drive.

Perhaps I am paranoid, but I see cracks everywhere on Google's services. Google spreadsheet being out competed by best of breed applications like EditGrid down the road. Lack of progress on natural language search and vertical search (although Google blog search is a good start). Blogger still remains behind the curve in terms of offering features that its competitors have for a long time. Now Gmail is having weird problems. Blogger and Gmail both have reliability issues. So instead of buying into Google when the stock price were at $440, I put my money into the S&P index.

Google really needs to refine its products now that they are mainstream, and focus on providing value added services for these products. It needs to do so in order to differentiate itself from all the upcoming startups, and must offer quality in order to survive.

Things

Things. In deluges.

Openings and closings, some are just the way I imagined them to be. I always smirk about the saddest things.

Time will pass you and this post by, and you would have gained nothing but a sense of your own mortality. Could there be a more sorrowful thing in the world?

The Buena Vista Social Club!

is awesome.

The Hardest Heart - Blank and Jones

Let the morning sun proclaim
The light of the world
Let the golden day unfurl
On every wave
On every hill

Each angered fist uncurl
Caress the hardest heart
Stir the sleeping earth
Each stone
Each blade of grass

The soul of the world
Ignite a brand new day
Let the morning sun proclaim
A brand new start
Caress the hardest heart

Caress the hardest heart

The soul of the world
Ignite a brand new day
A brand new start
A brand new way

Parenting Advice from a Polish Holocaust Hero

Janusz Korczak

Search engine arbitrage and the decline of Google

R/W mentions that California is home to quarter of top 100 alt search engines. What is amazing about this news is not that California is the center of web innovation, rather, it is striking that there are 100 alternative search engines (and them being mentioned).

Other search engines like Naver are gaining strength in the local and vertical search markets. What puzzles me is that there are so few news about Google's search engine innovation in comparison to the torrents of startup specialized search engine companies. If Google fails to keep up in areas of natural language searches and vertical search, then it will loose its technology leadership. Furthermore, this might pave the way for best of breed products to replace Google in different industries. Result: erosion of Google market share.

Where is my termocline transducer?!

Wave farms

renewable energy from the oceans

Liechtenstein invaded!

Fri Mar 2, 8:51 AM ET

ZURICH, Switzerland - What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.
ADVERTISEMENT

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

"We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem," Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. "It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something," he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn't have an army.

雷场相思树

1986年电影《雷场相思树》片段 - 胡亚捷媒体资源

The Lives They Left Behind is the title of the movie.

Low quality, heavily abridged version. The files are in Real Player format.
http://kmyc.gbaopan.com/bt/e0/e07b622a92214cbe938a6e62aacfc25f.torrent
http://kmyc.gbaopan.com/bt/12/1267099c5eb44c9e8f9b4876533cf4aa.torrent

Windows for Warships nears frontline service

For a Type 45 to be even vaguely worth having, you really do need five-nines, rock-solid dependability. A 90 per cent punt won't do here. Against six sea skimmers, that equates to only a 53 per cent chance of survival.

Wealth managers: The new masters of the universe

Catching up with the Joneses

Al Qaeda has a China problem

Al Qaeda has a China problem, and no one is watching. Despite al Qaeda’s significant efforts to support Muslim insurgents in China, the Chinese government has succeeded in limiting popular support for anti-government violence.

When She Makes More Money Than He

At $45 Billion, New Contender for Top Buyout - New York Times

Two Nobel laureates sit down and talk about the dangers of today

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China's lost talent overseas

YouTube - Real battle field video from Chinese Army (1984) part 1 of 7

Documentary. About The Second Sino-Vietnam war of 1984-1989. Part 1 of 7. The series shows the team taking a hill in 15 minutes.

Sarfraz Manzoor: When art imitates life

on memoirs

EditGrid - New Online Spreadsheet, Better Than Google Spreadsheets

I use it; its pretty nice.

Congress to FCC: You've got some splainin' to do

Google defeated in Belgian copyright case; everyone but Google loses

Ma Ying-jeou resigns

My guess, the DPP controlled judiciary will find Ma guilty, sentence him to maximum number of years in jail, therefore giving the DPP victory in the next election.

don't want to sleep yet but must in order to wake up early. can't wake up early because I am forcing myself to lie in bed

If GRRM were to write the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree, it would be the greatest story of all time. Until then...

His is the song of ice and fire

What makes a master?

A Chinese air conditioner tycoon

A singing workforce, Mongolian millionaires in Porsches, and saving the planet—inside the empire of a Chinese tycoon with more than money on his mind

Zhang has never wavered from this technology, even when, in the early 2000s, market conditions temporarily turned against it and his sales force begged him to add normal, electric-powered air conditioners to Broad’s offerings. Its advantages all involve energy savings. Compared with typical compression systems, nonelectric air-conditioning as Broad makes it will always require less energy per unit of cooling, because when energy is converted from one form to another, some of it is lost. Electric-compression cooling requires more stages of conversion—fossil fuel to electricity at the power plant, electricity to mechanical power at the compressor, both stages very wasteful—than does using natural gas to boil liquid. Nonelectric cooling will also always be more adaptable to other sources of energy, since it is easier to apply a variety of heat sources, including solar power and biomass burning, to do the boiling than to use them to generate electricity in a remote plant and transmit it to the air-conditioning site. And this method of cooling helps reduce the costly peak loads imposed on the power grid, because natural gas is cheapest and most abundant in the summer, exactly when the demand for air- conditioning goes up. Indeed, since storing natural gas is expensive and difficult, in many countries the available gas is simply burned off—wasted—during the summer, when no one needs it for heating. In China, air-conditioning accounts for as much as 50 percent of the electric load during peak times in the summer. Zhang pointed out to me—as he has noted in countless speeches, and as is emphasized by the Harvard Business School case study—that with all of these advantages, his kind of air-conditioning can make both the electric and the natural-gas networks less wasteful while still keeping people cool in the summer. And while we’re at it: the nonelectric systems use a relatively benign natural salt (lithium bromide) rather than using—and inevitably releasing—Freon and other chlorine-based products that erode the Earth’s ozone layer.

Chinese refusal to recognise the authority of the Vatican is an "act of war", Hong Kong's cardinal tells the BBC.

Er, ok.

I think the cry of English kings down the centuries was, "Who runs Britain - the government or the Vatican?" Or in this case, "Who runs China - the government or the Vatican?"

Costume dramas sing the main theme

As Ming Dynasty 1566 was being broadcast, an official in SARFT's TV show department revealed that starting in February and lasting for at least eight months, all cable TV stations would have to broadcast "main theme" television shows during prime time. As the news circulated, many local stations expressed confusion over the concept, not understanding where the line would be drawn - for example, would Ming Dynasty 1566 be considered main theme? Subsequently, an official at SARFT explained that "main theme" should be interpreted broadly, that it would primarily be a look at the value orientation of a show; as long as a show had a positive, uplifiting attitude toward life and expressed desirable emotions, there would, in general, be no problems. This could be a very innovative definition. Judging from this interpretation, Ming Dynasty 1566 ought to fall under the "main theme."

This is not an imperial drama that preaches reverence for royal power. What it describes is not the "rise of a great nation," but rather the lessons of a great nation's fall. This is the critical era when feudal Chinese society moved from prosperity into decline. Here, we see the corruption of the political system and the loss of humanity, we see the rulers issuing decrees and the insecurity of the common people, and we see the long-absent Hai Rui - he lambasted the emperor, was dismissed from office, and 400 years later even became the fuse that set off the Cultural Revolution - at odds with the bureaucratic system. The show discovers the impotence of morality yet praises moral beauty. It seems to lead us to believe that the just, upright, filial Hai Rui is the backbone of the Chinese people, a representative of outstanding culture, the hope of modern China. There is no question that the Hai Rui of Ming Dynasty 1566 is yet another performance of the "main theme" of the traditional spirit of the Chinese people.

However, in that age of exploding population, a calcified system, slack law enforcement, and an insular country, regardless of how pure or corrupt the officials or how worthy or foolish the emperor, the sun would ultimately set on the massive, once-flourishing empire that had exhausted its potential. Hai Rui used a Puritan-like moral self-discipline and lofty ideals as instruments to transform society, intervening in land rights, placing limits on the brutal gentry, and controlling corruption, but ultimately things could not be repaired, and things even turned out contrary to his desires. Morality evidently cannot replace the rule of law; public opinion cannot replace the rule of law; severe penal codes cannot represent a true legal system. Hai Rui used all his strength to sound the "main theme," but it was the "Guangling Melody"* of the old era, and ultimately never entered the powerful current of modernity.

The Kingdom of This World

In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the midst of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in the Kingdom of This World

Disappointed by 龙应台's writings. She seems to think that Chinese people are sheep incapable of thinking or acting for themselves and therefore must be guided like children (shown in 中国人，你为什么不生气？）.

She also helped promulgate the stereotype that Shanghainese men (and of course by extension - Chinese men) are effeminate.

This reminds of me of something in our 12th grade AP U.S. history book. It mentioned an American female (anti)feminist who urge women to wait for their husbands to get home from work by wearing an apron, "and that's all!".

Ok, the comparison is a bit crude and comic. So are 龙应台's writings.

Prejudice for all

Stereotypes of Chinese people from different regions of the country.

Scientists 'reverse' vCJD signs

Is modern Chinese in need of a revival?

In this sort of outcome, the variety of unique perceptions and creative discovery stemming from individual observation have been obliterated. I am indeed speaking, but not my own words; rather, I am following the current thinking pattern, as if a steamroller has rolled across my heart.

Read the comments

Love is the Pulse of the Stars

Something from my childhood:

A gust of wind carried away the verses of the ages 一阵风 , 留下了千古绝唱

Back for a week now; school has started, I'll slowly recall my trip and write it down.

I find it hard not to despair a little after traveling. The enormity of China's problems are there for everyone to see. Here are some notes on the places I visited, in chronological order; I'll revisit them periodically and add details I remember.

Guangzhou:

Airport - Sleek, clean and awe inspiring. Impressed. Cousin jests that it is built with blood.




Smog, bridges, cars, traffic, new airport, and new metro. Living in Guangzhou is like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Wake up in the morning, taxi around all day, and by the time you get back home your nose is all black. Pictures of the lungs of chronic smokers come to mind.




Not yet Hong Kong, but getting there. West side of the city have apartments like those towering buildings of Hong Kong. The environment is cleaner on this side too, well, all except for the half-black-half-brown river one can see during the day.




Real estate prices: 500,000 - 1,000,000 RMB - 2 bedroom 1 living room to 3 bedrooms 1 living room. that is $60,000 - $125,000. Consider the average income of Guangzhou is around $7,500 (for those who are well off), it takes a couple of lifetimes to pay off the mortgage. Actually the prices are pretty "reasonable" if one compares Guangzhou to the other less well developed big cities in China. A lot of overseas Chinese investors. They buy a unit, contributing to the price inflation, in hopes that one day they can retire here. In the meanwhile, they will rent it out and let the rent for for itself. Expected more Hong Kong investors and higher price inflation, but I guess they are all in Shenzhen, where the real estate are 2 to 3 times more expensive.

Metro - best subway system I've experienced. A marvel of Teutonic engineering. Cousin mentioned that the city's public servants' salaries were frozen for a couple of years to contribute the subway.

Food - when one thinks of Chinese food, it is actually Guangdong cuisine they are thinking about.


Ningbo:




Poor country side, reminds of the cultural revolution movies. Especially miserable because of the cold weather. As a general rule, the countrysides get poorer and poorer the further north one gets.

Home of Jiang Jieshi - didn't/don't care.

Place of Zhang Xuelang's first imprisonment - lonely, cold. worthy place of imprisonment for a hero.


Putou Shan - Monks try to rip people off, WTF. This is one thing that I am really furious about.

Uncle's high school classmate, now a PLAN captain, invited us to dinner. Got drunk. Never drinking with PLAN naval officers again.

Fast boat to Shanghai.



Shanghai: It's cold here. The winds cut to the bone, and even northerners complain about the freezing weather. Cousins sleep with windows open when it is 4 degrees Celsius outside...

Suzhou: Just another travel spot




Nanjing: Zhong San Ling, the steps become harder and harder to climb the high up you are. Sun Zhongsan is about 5'5''-6''. The city seems a bit desolate.

Hangzhou: Just another travel spot

Maoming: Didn't realize how poor it is until I saw it this time. Well, it is a developing city.

Gaozhou: second home. Even in a small (relatively speaking) such as this, there are huge wealth disparities. For example, Me and two cousins, including one of their parents and my grandfather and grandmother use to/still live in a 3 story/now 2 story (1st floor rented out) house. Whereas one of my cousins has two floors of his family's 7 floor house all to himself. Although, while living here I have never felt "poor". There were always things I would like, but I was too busy studying to begrudge.


Zhanjiang, Nanyou: Never saw Zhanjiang proper until this time. I grew up in a medium enclave called Nanyou, a bit south(?) of Zhanjiang proper. It is the base of operations (is it the HQ? I'm not sure) of CNOOC in the south.






The place I lived is still the same, fifth floor of a building bordering on: civilization, a hospital, a water pumping station, and the country side. #2-18. Even the discoloration on the building is still there. I wonder if any of my childhood friends are still there. They are probably in college, Winter Vacation don't start for them until the end of January. On second look, where I grew up is really not a bad place to live. Nanyou is pretty nice, palm trees everywhere, the park during night time is lovely, you can see the beach and occasionally, fishing boats. There was a French village here that my mom never told me about until I came home this time... I swear, some adults treat kids like they don't/shouldn't know anything...





The elementary school I attended has changed its name. From Nanyou Second District Elementary School to Nanyou Central Primary School. Just another way of saying it got upgraded. The arboretum is still the same: small. But the plants inside are as green as I remembered them. Green and brown. Leaves and dirt.



I remember digging up cicadas around here. During the summer, you can start digging on the dirt around the trees. About a few inches down you will find unhatched cicadas, sleeping. What is weird is that occasionally we find red, soft coral like flowers (they have no leaves, only the stem part that grows out like a flower). When we dig down we find that the root is actually a unhatched cicada. The plant sprout from the cicada's body. And like the Cicada flower, people in Nanyou are from different places in China, transplanted and sprout up in a protective body, and grow up to be beautiful but strange.

Perhaps it is the sea wind here, my aunt remarked that I was once very dark. Now I am all pale (relatively speaking). I think my complexion is once brown, from the sun and the palm trees. Of all the places, I never thought I would miss this place. I wonder when will I be back next time? If only to walk among the rocks in the park during sunset, and feel the sea wind.

Guangzhou crime dog "trained" to swipe cellphones - Engadget

HBO to Adapt A Song of Ice and Fire

They better not ruin the series.

Hong Kong and Shanghai Duel for Financial Capital

Hong Kong has better food

China January 2007 (1)

China January 2007 (2)

China January 2007 (3)

Pictures taken from the trip

Feeling sick. Body is still on Beijing time and caught a cold. Hope school cancels tomorrow.

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

good predictions

Is it health care vs. high-tech in the war over obvious patents?

Will be traveling until January 12th. Guangzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Gaozhou

In the meanwhile, the reader can engage in a voyage of the imagination, imaging the protagonist of this blog encountering exotic roadsigns and confronting the memories of his past.

Happy holidays! I will bring back lots of pictures. I would bring back love too, but we all know that my heart is an engine forged from the remnants of a supernova.

Kindest regards,

“I don’t know much about this restaurant, but generally, American food is not known for any particular virtues”

The 2006 Weblog Awards

gems here and there

China Tightens Adoption Rules for Foreigners

Professor Murray is single and she adopted Bin from China. In our business law class we would hear hilarious stories from her, such as how Bin developed a Shreveport accent (Professor Murray is from Louisiana). I am glad the professor adopted Bin before these rules are coming into being.

"Contained inside is absolute truth in liquid form!"

Just finished watching Days of Being Wild. Leslie Cheung is simply incredible with his acting. Another one of his movie that I also liked is Farewell My Concubine. His death is truly a great lost to cinema.

如果我还有哀伤　让风吹散它
如果我还有快乐　（也许吧)

birthday

Have you ever experienced waking up, but it is too late for breakfast? How about after eating lunch, you watch an old HK film and then when you set foot out of your apartment, the sky is already dark. Oh how time passes us by...

Perhaps I should move to Antarctica. I hear it has light 24 hours a day, it never rains, and there is never darkness.

Today's children, who so want to be 'cool', are growing up to be the miserable victims of consumer culture

Cooked for myself, the beef actually turned out pretty well, and watched a HK film (Chungking Express), feel like I am being spoiled.

National Flag 'Re-branding' for Political Correctness or Marketability

watching the autumn leaves fall,轻看着人间风浪.

I wrote the story of O

Read this article while I was in France.

It piqued my interest, so I went to Shakespeare's and ask them where I can find The History of "O"?

The ever helpful response I got was, "Look in the history section."

Smiley's People

OLED with blue methyl alcohol fuel

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy... Jedimaster

Spacing out on the bus. Missing my stops.

foreign authors win 4 of 6 major French literary prizes

the Yangtze freshwater dolphin (baiji) appears to be extinct

Very Rich Are Leaving the Merely Rich Behind - NYTimes

狼图腾

Getting Rich - Pankaj Mishra reports from Shanghai

‘Alternative modernity’ and ‘institutional innovation’ may also sound like mere slogans. The New Left belongs, after all, to a very small and powerless minority of intellectuals. But its growing appeal suggests that the post-Mao reversals of ideology and politics – based on a simple moral opposition between socialism and capitalism, the free market and the state, private and public property – are beginning to lose their force as the storm of progress blowing through China continues to scatter debris everywhere.

Is this what the final frontier has become? A golf course?

It is a troubling symbol of humanity's aspiration: the latest installment in our great space quest saw an astronaut tee off

Dégringolade
Union Sucrée

The first article I read about the decline of France. The scholarship of which, and many more self critiques made me believe that there is still hope for France in the future. If it wasn't for the alacrity with which these authors continue to seize the problems at hand, I would have given up on French long ago.

I offer something more with these thoughts, which only you will notice. Do you remember that moment by the banks of the Ganga? That silent dark? Those wanderings in imagined worlds? Those deep discussions in low, serious voices? The two of us sitting silently, saying nothing? That breeze at sunrise, that evening shadow! And, once, those rain-bearing clouds, Sravan’s downpour, the songs of Vidyapati? . . . I have concealed a handful of contentment and grief in these thoughts; open these pages once in a while and look upon them with affection, no one but you will be able to see what’s in them! The message inscribed into these words is – there’s one writing that you and I shall read. And there’s another writing for everyone else.

Selected Poems by Rabindranath Tagore

The prophecy of Saro-Wiwa

11 years after the Ogoni leader's brutal hanging, violence is erupting in the Niger delta region

P. W. Botha, Defender of Apartheid, Is Dead at 90

SHOCK-WORKERS AND LOAFERS.

"Как живут ударники?
Ударники живут хорошо.

How do shock-workers live?
Shock-workers live well."

Alexander Lipson. A Russian Course

Scientist at Work: Shing-Tung Yau

A Tell-All’s Tale: French Politicians Stray Early and Often

“When I was president of the republic, I was in love with 17 million French women,” Mr. Giscard d’Estaing said in an interview taped for the television show “Private Life, Public Life” to be broadcast Wednesday. He added, “When I saw them in the crowd, they felt it and then they voted for me.”

Added the froth and bubble category, hope you like it.

Kindest regards,

  

Defcon: Everybody Dies has one of the best ambient atmospheres for a game.

You must listen to the soundtrack. It is a background of recycled air, radio chatter, static, and a soprano singing... perhaps of your loneliness. You can't help but feel like you are in a remote bunker pushing the button to end millions of lives. Then suddenly, you hear the faith sounds of a women crying... is she crying about someone who just died?

Disturbing.

China’s New Leftist

sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.

Comparison between Singapore and Hong Kong as the financial center of East Asia

On Gentlemen Giving
iPods as Gifts

I am speechless, how could I have been so foolish all along! Miss Keira you are mein guardian angel!~

Portal

You maybe required to perform simple tasks... these tasks will be supplemented with insurmontable obstacles...

French try woman as president - but first on a sitcom

The president of France has problems: plummeting approval ratings, few political allies, an outbreak of pimples before an important speech, and now this. She's barely past her first 100 days in office and she's pregnant.

Catastrophe!

Internet's future in 2020 debated

"The less one is powerful, the more transparent his or her life. The powerful will remain much less transparent."

Biofuels: Green energy or grim reaper?

Competition in the food market by biofuels is an interesting point that I hadn't thought about.

"Governments also need to provide leadership in the form of economic incentives to minimise competition between food and fuel crops, and ensure that water, high-quality agricultural land, and biodiversity are not sacrificed on the altar of our convenience."

In China, Children of the Rich Learn Class, Minus the Struggle

“At the top of the pyramid will be exceptionally strong graduates from top American or European universities who become a sort of ‘international freemen,’ ” said Qiu Huadong, an author and editor who has written about the new elite. “They work several years in China, and then they go abroad for a while, shifting locations every few years. At the bottom of the pyramid will be those who didn’t get such an outstanding education, and they’ll be sweating and bleeding for China and globalization.”

China and U.S. involvement in Sudan

Unable to explain its awkward, unrealistic, and now disintegrating flirtation with this terrorist state, the White House understandably looks for a scapegoat:

China.

The title of the Washington Post’s September 6 editorial Responsible China? Darfur exposes Chinese hypocrisy pretty much conveys the political line of frustrated administration policymakers.

The United States and its European partners have called upon Sudan to let the U.N. force in. But China, which has enormous leverage over Sudan because of its investment in Sudanese oil fields, has failed to push the Sudanese into accepting the "realistic option" of a U.N. deployment.

Rather ironic that Sudan, which was supposed to serve as the keystone of Bush administration engagement with Africa, has turned into an exclusive sandbox for the Yellow Peril.

一江春水向东流

pictures of great libraries

The 9/11 report: a graphic adaptation

Gathering of friends, cooking, boisterous conversations, football game. Didn't care much about the football game, but all the others are dear to my heart.

An interview with Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the U.N.