Some translations

A well translated poem looks something like this. I take as an example the foreword to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong, as translated from the Chinese by Moss Roberts:

滚滚长江东逝水，浪花淘尽英雄。是非成败转头空。
青山依旧在，几度夕阳红。
白发渔樵江渚上，惯看秋月春风。一壶浊酒喜相逢。
古今多少事，都付笑谈中。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——调寄《临江仙》

On and on the Great River rolls, racing east.
Of proud and gallant heroes its white-tops leave no trace,
As right and wrong, pride and fall turn all at once unreal.
Yet ever the green hills stay
To blaze in the west-waning day.

Fishers and woodsmen comb the river isles.
White-crowned, they've seen enough of spring and autumn tide
To make good company over the wine jar,
Where many a famed event
Provides their merriment.

                                                         - From ershiwu shi tanci

Moss attributes the authorship of the poem to a collection of works "ershiwu shi tanci" (二十五史弹词??)  rather than specifically to 调寄《临江仙》.It is interesting in that this provides a wider context for people unfamiliar the genre (or the language).

A search into "ershiwu shi tanci" reveals that it is "a collection of popular songs on historical themes compiled during the Ming dynasty by Yang Shen (d. 1559)". Personally I had to look up what 调寄 means.

Alas, poor Simone

"Drama of my affections, pathos of life . . . . Indeed, I have a more complicated, more nuanced sensibility than his and a more exhausting power of love. Those problems that he lives in his mind, I live them with my arms and my legs. Has he ever known months when all the days were only tears? I do not want to lose all that . . . . Only I must make myself stronger in order to walk on despite my burden. Two cowardly attitudes: keep the burden and sit down - (this is very cowardly) - throw off the burden and walk on. One good one: keep the burden and walk on. I will walk on." 

Marketizing universities

[Marketising universities] rests on a fundamental misconception of the market and its functions: a misconception that could only be held by people who have not thought seriously about the market or its history. 

The market itself, for example, rarely drives innovation; on the contrary it usually reacts. Entrepreneurs certainly have a sense of what might be profitable, but the market does not tell them what will and what won’t. They rely, largely, on guesswork; they put something on the market and keep their fingers crossed. There is no certainty in the market. Nor does it necessarily signal what needs to be done. The market did not synthesise penicillin or put communications satellites into the heavens or discover how cholera is spread. In many cases the market can resist innovation. Businessmen get set in their ways or simply make the wrong guess. Nor are consumers natural innovators. On the contrary they are often very conservative and have to be induced to change their habits by the enormous engine of advertising.

In Defense of British Universities

Normalization by the virtue of "values"

12:51 AM me: TTV does give an impression of Taiwan as a normalized liberal society in keeping with the spirit of the times 

12:59 AM V: You talk about normalisation so skeptically, but what other perspective would they have?

1:00 AM It's like saying, boy, you can tell those Mainland TV shows are up to trouble by how hard they try to hide how naturally inscrutable and untrustworthy Chinese people are

1:04 AM me: it's like... Zhang Ailing writing about being love stricken in WW2 Japanese occupied Shanghai. One also gets the sense then that Republican China was modern and normalized, when it was actually mired in corruption and faced existential threats from the outside

1:06 AM Think about Shame...Amah! (which was published in 1944, before the war ended)

1:07 AM did you get the sense from the story that China was/or was about to be engaged in a struggle for its national survival?

1:10 AM I think normalization is meant to speak to a universal audience. In any age you would have people talking about love, nostalgia, childhood, innocence, remembrance

1:11 AM intentionally or unintentionally placed, it exists; it's reassuring

1:12 AM me: but it is tempting to think that the people on these TV shows reflect a society that has privileged access to normalization by the virtue of its "values", when another society under very different circumstances and values did experience it, as have others1:13 AM that is the skepticism I am trying to convey

View on Age of Fracture

One of the consequences of the disunity of a dominant idea is counter-revolution.

Corey Robin on Age of Fracture by Daniel Rodgers

Archie and the zombies

7:46 PM V: Sadly, `The Walking Dead' is as stupid and occassionally repulsive as ever

 It's all plot-based but the plotting and writing are very weak

7:51 PM It is also pretentious: it thinks its a platform for discussing serious issues on the human condition, but it aggressively shies away from having any real opinion or approaching any topic with any depth

7:58 PM       The show is also totally oblivious

8:00 PM Why does it just happen that, for a show set in the deep south, there is no attention paid to any of the minority characters, and that all the attention is paid to the white male characters?

  Who knows!

8:01 PM Why is the Asian guy an errand boy who has to prove his masculinity to the group, at which point he is rewarded with a white girlfriend?

  Who knows!

  The show is also fundamentally boring

8:02 PM There is, for example, a settlement of humans living safely under the control of an insane dictator

8:03 PM But this character is just a regular crazed villain, like an Indiana Jones Nazi

  This is an opportunity, however, where the show could delve into power structures

8:04 PM Instead of this bland one-dimensional villain, it could try something more clever and more thoughtful

8:05 PM For example, it might suggest something more fundamental about power structures: maybe this megalomania or this paranoia is actually a product of the circumstances or some necessary component of human organisation under such stressed conditions

8:06 PM Nope! He's just a mustache-twirling bad guy

8:07 PM And he's not even particularly smart in his evilness, and he's surrounded by the same old incompetent, cruel henchmen

8:08 PM One other problem with this entire genre is, well, what next?

  We have seen the devastation and gruesomeness of the zombie aftermath, great

  And this show's appeal is, supposedly, that any character could die at any time

  So what's the point? What is it building to?

8:09 PM It's like a soap opera: a new love interest appears, lingers for a few episodes, a couple of shocking revelations, then suddenly meets tragedy just in time for the next plotline to start

8:10 PM Of course, I don't think the writers really think these things through at all

  It's all very last minute, thrown together, soap operatic plotting

8:11 PM What does the world look like five years after the appearance of zombies?

  What about ten years?

  Clearly, this band of travellers running around schtick will have gotten very old, and either everyone would have died or some people would have survived.

8:12 PM How do the survivors create a new world with all the existing structures of our world destroyed?

8:13 PM This is a very interesting topic, but it's beyond the capabilities of these writers to imagine and design

8:15 PM You can see how exceptionally boring this show is in its insistence on the most trivial plot points

  It's like an Archie comic with a comet hurtling toward earth?

  Who cares if Archie goes on a date with Betty or Veronica when the world is ending on page 10?

8:16 PM How utterly trivial and pointless

Proof

Make the call

How are we getting out of here?

1) Submarine
2) Experimental teleporter
3) Let's leave by the front door.

The smartest show on television

10:35 PM V: Homeland is the smartest show on television

10:37 PM V: I'm actually too tired right now to go into why this show is so offensive

  Not just intellectually offensive

  I'll just give you an example

10:38 PM The first few episodes are all about this is-he-or-isn't-he-a-terrorist for Damien Lewis's character.

  This is a Showtime show, so it's hour-long episodes forming a season-long arc.

10:39 PM Viewership is driven by cliffhangers.

  So the cliffhanger at the end of one of this episodes is that Lewis's character, a recently returned POW whose motives are suspect, goes into his garage, takes out a prayer mat... and prays to Allah.

10:40 PM How offensive is that?

  OMG, he's a MUSLIM... THAT answers it: he MUST be a terrorist

10:41 PM Additionally, the season-long arc is that there is this incredibly detailed and complex terrorist plot to target senior political figures.

  Now, recall that this show is trying to be `The Wire' of the technothriller terrorism genre

  So we, as an audience, are supposed to believe that what we're seeing is real

10:42 PM So the aesthetics are out of `The Wire' but the sensibilities are straight out of `24'

  Again, extremely offensive (intellectually)

  In the newest episode, it turns out that Damien Lewis (who we now know to be a repentant terrorist) has become a congressman is being put on the vice presidential ticket

10:44 PM I can't tell if this is intellectually offensive (lazily ripping of `Manchurian Candidate') or offensive to our sensibilities (I seem to recall a certain political figure subject to such accusations as a result of little more than peurile racism)

10:46 PM Even the political scenes are like watching CNN political coverage

10:48 PM The writers are way too impressed with their ability to present thoughts that would be controversial and counterintuitive if they weren't already so mundane and so hackneyed

  `Veep' is a better look into the political process than `Homeland' and it's a comedy!

10:49 PM You should watch this show to see modern, post-colonial racialism at work

10:50 PM The entire cast is this supposedly hyper-competent white CIA analysts who are experts on intelligence and the middle east

10:51 PM Also, what a bad actress, Claire Danes

6 minutes

10:58 PM V: Her only acting mode is bitchy high school girl

17 minutes

11:15 PM V: hahahaha

  So Damian Lewis's character, candidate for vice president, is a secret muslim

  hmm

  Not quite offensive enough yet

From myths to national self-appraisal

I nearly broke down altogether when I entered the lofty gallery where the blessed goddess of beauty, Our Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. I lay prostrate at her feet for a long time, and I wept so bitterly that it would have melted a heart of stone. And indeed the goddess did look down pitifully upon me, yet at the same time so hopelessly as if she were trying to say: But don’t you see that I have no arms and that therefore I cannot help you.

Hölderlin ‘grew up in the arms of the gods’; Heine’s goddess didn’t have any. The Greeks, Heine said, were of no use to Europe’s revolutions; genuine political reform required a much more mundane form of national self-appraisal.

Thomas Meaney: Germany Imagines Hellas

R.I.P. E.J.H

Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012

The ugliness of unreflective good intentions

'restored' masterpiece

An American's reflection on China

Sidney Rittenberg: Reflections on a lifetime in China

Retracing the life and times of one man in the Chinese Maritime Customs during the early 20th century

and something of a love story...

"It had been one of those peculiar relationships – common enough, or a by-product of alien circumstances? – like a broken figure of eight. She had fallen passionately in love with him; he married her with his mind elsewhere. She frustrated him physically, he disappointed her emotionally. Attachment frayed, they twisted away from each other. Yet her company became essential to him, and she accepted displacement for it. Tender and insensible, he certainly ended by loving her more than she did him, yet practically she gave up more for him, with only intermittent intensity of regret. When she was alive, he once said to her: ‘I wonder if you have ever really treated me as an equal.’ "

Part I

Part II

Rabbits

Solving simple problems

Korra

Really like how Avatar: Legend of Korra is starting out. It has the same internal consistency and production values that made the original Avatar: The Last Airbender such a great show beyond its intended audience. Things like the intrepid usage of Chinese characters (intrepid because the show is aired on an All-American children's TV network and marketed primarily to American audience [with Asian heritage or otherwise] who may or may not relate to such exoticism) and detailed martial arts fighting sequences set high standards for all future Asian mythology inspired animations.

The choreography of Republic City is simply fantastic. The scale gives a cinematic quality to the animation.

V: Korra is good but it is missing a bit of charm. It needs time to get its feet, (it feels) very action-y. Also, it's missing some themes that made the original very compelling: (that of) these three children thrust into an adult world, and the subplots of all the secondary characters, like Zuko.

The Life of Eleanor Marx, whom translated Madame Bovary

.. and whom shared similar elements with the book's protagonist.

From FT

Rather than take the path of Ibsen’s Nora, who abandons her home in order to save herself, Eleanor had submitted to the fate of Emma Bovary, a woman consumed by her own desires. 

Happiness in times post-modern

I must have felt an inescapable loneliness when I first read this a few months ago to recall it even now. 

From Cosmic Neutrality, by Fredric Jameson. London Review of Books. Vol. 33 No. 20 · 20 October 2011 pages 17-18:

[T]his particular fairytale is perhaps not so affirmative when it comes to the value of chance meetings. It tells of a country boy who seeks, not to make his fortune, but only to return home with it (he has just served an apprenticeship of the traditional seven years and received his accumulated savings in the form of a lump of gold). In the first of many chance meetings, admiring the alacrity of a passing horseman, Hans is offered the horse itself in exchange for the troublesome lump of gold, an offer he is happy to accept. Then, after being thrown by the horse, he is not unwilling to exchange it for a cow, led by a farmer who explains the advantages of its sustenance, in the form of milk, butter and cheese. But it milks poorly, and a passing butcher persuades him of the benefits of a young pig, for which he gladly exchanges it; a bargain then soon enough replaced by the swap of a fat goose; and so on and so forth until he loses the final avatar – a grindstone – in a well and, no longer burdened by that weight either, joyously reaches home with nothing left in his pockets at all. ‘There is no man under the sun so fortunate as I,’ he cries happily as he greets his mother. We should take into consideration the possibility that this really is a happy ending...

The beginning of world history

From: The Age of Capital, 1848 - 1875, by Eric Hobsbawm (Vintage, 1996), pp 46 -47.

The period from the late 1840s to the mid-1870s proved to be not so much, as the conventional wisdom of the time held, the model of economic growth, political development, intellectual progress and cultural achievement, which would persist, no doubt with suitable improvements, into the indefinite future, but rather a special kind of interlude. But its achievements were nevertheless extremely impressive. In this era industrial capitalism became a genuine world economy and the globe was therefore transformed from a geographical expression into a constant operational reality. History from now on became world history.

Dragon-Slayers

Robin, Corey. "Dragon-Slayers." London Review of Books 29.1 (2007): 18-20.

Imagining themselves as ‘dragon-slayers who went enthusiastically into far and curious lands to strange and naive peoples to slay the numerous dragons that had plagued them for centuries’, colonial administrators and secret agents – the empire’s emblematic figures – took on ‘a responsibility that no man can bear for his fellow-man and no people for another people’: to protect those who are ‘hopelessly one’s inferiors’...

Atavistic monks and nationalism

Using religion as a talisman of conflict is a bad sign, but this perhaps has more to do with a barely concealed ethnocentrism - Vietnam to send Buddhist monks to Spratly Islands

Waking from a dream

I woke up last night, confused and disorientated. Like Zhuang Zi, I could not determine the direction in which I had been dreaming.

I recalled the various dreams I have lived in and tried to trace a continuity of memory to establish which must be real, but I was tired and scattered.

Kind

Caribbean Food Made Easy

I experience this at work...

Speaking of the British

I recently went on a business trip with three members of the British ruling classes. The late-night banter over drinks was predictably excellent. Sometimes, though, we had to work. When that happened, my companions showed up unprepared and without notes – and did just fine. No wonder, because their entire education had been a lesson in winging it. They knew that all you need to succeed is to speak well, and that’s what the British ruling classes do: they speak well.

What motivates achievers

Whither the judiciary

I wonder how the US and UK judiciaries differ. The U.S. Supreme Court judges are (expected to be) political actors. Judicial activism goes by many guises (it is easier to defend a static "original" constitution when one's goal is to defend inequality, and make acceptable the status quo)...

A young couple fall in love and marry. She is British; he is Chilean. Because they are both under 21, immigration rules, which set out Home Office policy, forbid him to settle here with his wife, who has a university place and a promising career ahead. The purpose of the rule is to inhibit the importation of spouses by forced marriage. Forced marriage is a serious matter meriting determined government action, but there is nothing to link the vast majority of young couples affected by the rule with it. The young couple bring judicial review proceedings. The impact of the rule on their right to marry and to live as a family is manifest. The rule itself has a lawful purpose, but the Home Office accepts that it has no bearing on them. How could the courts decide whether the impact on the couple was legitimate without considering in detail the justification for the rule itself? That is what both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court did. Had they not done so, the home secretary’s case would have gone unheard. All but one of the judges decided that the impact on the individuals before them was out of proportion to the policy objective. The result was not to stifle policy initiatives designed to inhibit forced marriages; these remain a matter for government alone. It was to ensure that such initiatives conformed to the law by not impacting disproportionately on individuals. This is a critical linkage which recurs in the now well developed law of legitimate expectation, which sometimes requires government to honour its promises even when its policy has legitimately shifted.

Judicial Politics

Political and Economic Exigencies in Republican China

From Sino-Americana, by Perry Anderson (London Review of Books, 2012), Vol. 34 No. 3 · 9 February 2012, pages 20-22

"The historical reality was that no outstanding leaders emerged from the confused morass of the KMT in the Republican period. "

"The military clique that ruled Guangxi, on the border with Indochina, were better generals and ran a more progressive and efficient government, but their province was too poor and remote for them to be able to compete successfully against Chiang." ( whom was based in Shanghai and Zhejiang, and the surrounding Yangtze delta region, where he cultivated connections in both criminal and business worlds, in what was by far the richest and most industrialised zone in China)."

Normalization of Asian-American perceptions and power relations still have long ways to go...

 “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”

Harvard Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe

 

Space opera never looked so delicious

I've just started re-watching the 110 episode Legend of the Galactic Heroes and all its prequels.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes Café

The Plight of the Poor in the Midst of Plenty

A well-ordered society advances the good of each and all of its members, so that there is no one from whose gaze or plight we have to avert our eyes, no one whose complaints can be met only with lies or pious nonsense about following one’s dream.

The Plight of the Poor in the Midst of Plenty

‘Well-ordered’ does not mean docile or regimented. Quite the contrary, it means a society whose members – all of them, individual men and women of every creed, class and background – are prepared to raise awkward questions about how things are organised and to justify their laws and institutions to one another in good faith, without any myths or illusions.

Overlooking the city

U.S. wealth gap in the 1960s and 70s

It’s a complicated empirical issue.

The Great Compression 

Then came the economist

Thomas Sargent, speaking for himself and the other Economics winner, Christopher Sims, decided, in effect, to tell the Swedes (and everyone else) to lower their taxes and cut their social spending, in obedience to what are coming to appear more and more discredited free market theories. They must remember, he said, that ‘there is a trade-off between equality and efficiency’. But this is just what the Swedes over the years have shown to be untrue. Sweden is both more equal and more efficient than (say) the USA. Most Swedes would say the two qualities are connected. The mean, narrow dogmatism of Sargent’s contribution contrasted vividly with the breadth and humility of the natural scientists’.

Then came the economist

Mobile Armor

All paths...

... lead to K162

 

Downton Abbey

I think that thing of being polite, of making people easy in your company, of not burdening them with your troubles; that's quite nice...

Julian Fellowes Q&A

All successes grow to be alike; only the failures remain interesting

From Cosmic Neutrality, by Fredric Jameson. London Review of Books. Vol. 33 No. 20 · 20 October 2011 pages 17-18:

One of the most decisive things that happened to narrative in the 19th century had to do with the problematisation of its formal conclusions, which closed their narrative circuit in earlier and simpler societies either by way of a happy ending (in fairytales, for example, or romances) or a catastrophic defeat. Those older endings had content, as we might put it in philosophical language; in the new world of money and business, the whole social variety of existential outcomes was slowly reduced to a new set of abstract categories: the opposition between success and failure. Winning the girl is success, losing the war is failure: these abstractions do not on the face of it involve earning or losing money, but it is in reality the abstraction of money as such that governs the new system and which begins to impose the new simplified classification in terms of the stark alternatives of winning or losing, success or failure.

The formal result, for the novel, is strange and paradoxical, yet momentous: all successes grow to be alike, they lose their specificity and indeed their interest. Success sinks to the level of emergent mass culture – which is to say, fantasy and wish-fulfilment. Only the failures remain interesting, only the failures offer genuine literary raw material, both in their variety and in the quality of their experience.

Apophis

Drink from the cup of ice, drink from the cup of fire

"Fantasy gives us the colors. Fantasy is strong emotion and red wine and dreams and visions. It's life imagined more intensely, and lived more intensely, vicariously as we read about it in our own lives, that we can experience great loves and great tragedies, and do things we would never do in real life. It's the whole reason I think people read, and particularly when they read fiction. The non-reader just lives one life, while the reader lives a thousand lives, does amazing things: climbs mountains, goes to other planets, explores the bottom of the sea, loves a hundred women/loves a hundred men, lives and dies, and gives birth to children and conquers kingdoms, and all of that you experience only in fiction (most of us anyway)."

Text

Texas Prisons End Special Last Meals In Executions

via NPR 

A former inmate cook who made the last meals for prisoners at the Huntsville Unit, where Texas executions are carried out, wrote a cookbook several years ago after he was released. Among his recipes were Gallows Gravy, Rice Rigor Mortis and Old Sparky's Genuine Convict Chili, a nod to the electric chair that once served as the execution method. The book was called "Meals to Die For."

Taipei Exchanges

第36個故事
作詞：雷光夏
作曲：雷光夏

夏天的雨水飄落　寧靜公園
深夜的微風拂過　吹乾了樹
在街角的咖啡店　相遇的一刻
故事從頭　我對你依然心動

溫暖的太陽照著　冬天的花
你微笑著讓我　抹去眼淚
看這座城市　漫漫　被時光移動
若伸出手　還是渴望被你把握

給我　我想要的生活

面對　最坦白的眼眸
前方　是一片晴朗星空
答案　靜靜擁抱我

V: I am watching `Taipei Exchanges'. I am having a hard time watching this. They're just too rich. The city is too clean. I don't know about the vox pop sections, either.

me: Oh?

V: I understand how those HK movies can make the city seem so beautiful and romantic. This movie makes Taipei look like Austin. It very much is not.

me: What city does it closely resemble?

V: Detroit, haha

Sleepwalking towards the 1930s

"The problem is in large part to do with the application of an incorrect metaphor, the easy-to-understand idea that a household has to live within its income. But governments are not households, and the idea of cutting your way to prosperity cannot be read across from an individual’s finances to those of the state."

The Belgian Solution

Texas Smoke Barbecue

"...although the meat itself has been slaved over for hours by the pit master and refined to the nth degree, no one sees any contradiction in serving it with cheap saltines, industrial white bread or the world’s worst beans or corn bread. "

Texas Cult of Smoke Barbecue

"...obsession with limited government produces impressive failures of wisdom and compassion in otherwise intelligent people"

Sam Harris

HoMM3 - Stronghold theme

Honour

"With the primitive barbarian, before the simple content of the notion has been obscured by its own ramifications and by a secondary growth of cognate ideas, "honourable" seems to connote nothing else than assertion of superior force."

Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen, Kindle Loc. 205

Yes! Another Avatar series!

Can't wait. Looks like the Avatar world set in the Republican Shanghai period. With a bit of steampunk clockwork contraptions thrown in.

A Song of Ice and Fire - book 5

Finished A Dance with Dragons and came away not satisfied with the un-GRRMesque cliffhangers. For example, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Storms all have their plots and resolutions; ACoK with destruction of several of its pretenders and ASoS with the Red Wedding. Feels like ADwD needed maybe another 200 pages?

I do like how the dreams and prophecies are continuing to play out. Coincidentally, a friend tells me the HBO adaptation of the first book doesn't have any of the dream sequences. I guess it's something that doesn't translate well into the other medium; unfortunate, because they are some of the reasons why the writing is great.

The HBO adaptation, however... appears to have upped the sex without conveying the sense of female agency in the novels. I suppose the more narrow purpose of the TV adaptation is to entertain and not to overturn conventions. Regrettably, one can watch the TV series and utterly miss this dimension of the novels.

If I have to pick one favorite part of the book, it would be this chilling passage:

...A shadow fell across them both, blotting out the sun. The queen felt cold steel slide beneath her, a pair of great armored arms lifting her off the ground, lifting her up into the air as easily as she had lifted Joffrey when he was still a babe. A giant, thought Cersei, dizzy, as he carried her with great strides toward the gatehouse. She had heard that giants could still be found in the godless wild beyond the Wall. That is just a tale. Am I dreaming?

...

Cersei never saw where Qyburn came from, but suddenly he was there beside them, scrambling to keep up with her champion's long strides. "Your Grace," he said, "it is so good to have you back. May I have the honor of presenting our newest member of the Kingsguard? This is Ser Robert Strong."

"Ser Robert," Cersei whispered, as they entered the gates.

"If it please Your Grace, Ser Robert has taken a holy vow of silence," Qyburn said. "He has sworn that he will not speak until all of His Grace's enemies are dead and evil has been driven from the realm."

Yes, thought Cersei Lannister. Oh, yes.

Controls

"One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?”

"Half of X is pointless, we just don't know which half"

Prerogative of the harlot

"... power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Clash of the press titans

Collapse & Rescue

Morality, public opinion, and punishment

"道德不能代替法治，舆论不能代替法治，而严厉的刑法更不能代表真正的法治"

仲伟志 - 明史、海瑞、主旋律

"Morality cannot replace the rule of law; public opinion cannot replace the rule of law; severe penal codes cannot represent a true legal system."

Zhong Weizhi - Ming history, Hai Rui, and the main theme

The Last Space Shuttle

What if mankind, realizing he will never reach the stars, builds himself a digital universe to spite God?

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - opening title, closing credits

Interregnum

Courtesy of Wikipedia,

An interregnum (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next (coming from Latin inter-, "between" + rēgnum, "reign" [from rex, rēgis, "king"]), and the concepts of interregnum and regency therefore overlap.

Everything is forgiven Pearl Buck, everything

Women in China: A Social Revolution

L.A. Noire - 'Main Theme'

Tales from the Annals of French Exceptionalism

Band of Insiders

'Once again, Lévy claims that the rules of law do not apply to those with whom he dines:

"I hold it against the American judge who… pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."

Even more incredibly, he writes:

"I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed ‘accusatory’, meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime."

One wonders what system of justice Lévy would propose.'

France attempts to impose e-book prices on Apple, others

"I am happy, as we all must be tonight, that our gathering is prepared to vote definitively on what will be the first such law in the world for digital books—a pioneering text in our ever-changing world," said MP Hervé Gaymard last week as a joint parliamentary commission presented its final version of the bill text.

eG8

"In France, there are still people who maintain their criticism of this [three strikes authority HADOPI], who view it as a repressive body, whereas in actual fact it creates momentum from a pedagogical standpoint." (Minster of Culture)

Beverly Hillbillies and fukujinzuke

V: I am watching this anime version of X-Men. It's really cliche. It just doesn't fit, X-Men is too American.

HAHAHA. Like, every Japanese show that's set in some other country suddenly and inexplicably returns to Japan. In this case, every one of the X-Men has been recalled by Professor X to investigate the disappearance of a mutant... who just happens to be from Japan.

And Professor X is talking about how she's from some city in some tiny prefecture, and no one has any question about, like: what's that? where is that?

It's like if the Japanese remade the Beverly Hillbillies, they'd go out to eat ramen in the second episode and argue about whether to eat it with fukujinzuke or not.

They don't know how to look at themselves from an outsider's perspective. I mean, it totally makes sense for a bunch of American and Canadian mutants who have never been to Japan to have intimate, detailed knowledge of Japanese geography and history, right?

I just think that the producers and consumers of this media are unable to dissassociate themselves from their own cultural context. Which is not terribly uncommon, but it does show a lot of their cultural arrogance. Smaller countries may be similarly unable to disassociate themselves, but they won't then suddenly put themselves at the centre of every story. It also suggests that the Japanese could never make an Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The voice acting is also in the cliche dramatic mode. Lots of elliptical phrases, single word answers, and lots of grunting/sighing... The grunting is what really gets me, though. Just too much. And it's just not an acceptable substitute for dialogue. I cannot be sure, but I suspect the dialogue itself is nothing special.

These characters have no personality at all. Well, there's gruff and not-gruff, that's about it.

Oh, gruff, not gruff, and woman.

Gruff, not gruff, woman, and villain

Those are the character types.

I guess this must be a children's show.

On Self Doubt and Constructed Realities

V: self-doubt is too difficult to actually communicate.

Like... If you express a rational self-doubt, you will just come across as a loser. Even if you are capable and effective and elite.

me: Self-doubt has no merits to a girl

V: Precisley. It's really hard to convey a multi-dimensional personality. That is, if you have self-doubt, you'll come across as a loser. If you are capable and effective, you will come across as a winner. But you cannot communicate a personality that has both without necessarily being either of the two predicates.

Revolutions

There will be no education revolution before there is an employment revolution.

Either/Or

I felt immeasurably happy the moment I found this passage in Kierkegaard's Either/Or. I remember reading this when I was younger (in high school); finding it again cheered me up and made me feel less alone in the world.

My Friend!

... I think of my early youth, when without clearly comprehending what it is to make a choice I listened with childish trust to the talk of my elders and the instant of choice was solemn and venerable, although in choosing I was only following the instructions of another person. I think of the many occasions in life less important but by no means indifferent to me, when it was a question of making a choice. For although there is only one situation in which either/or has absolute significance, namely, when truth, righteousness and holiness are lined up on one side, and lust and base propensities and obscure passions and perdition on the other; yet, it is always important to choose rightly, even as between things which one may innocently choose; it is important to test oneself, lest some day one might have to beat a painful retreat to the point from which one started, and might have reason to thank God if one had to reproach oneself for nothing worse than a waste of time...

And although my life now has to a certain degree its either/or behind it, yet I know well that it may still encounter many a situation where the either/or will have its full significance. I hope, however, that these words may find me in a worthy state of mind when they check me on my path, and I hope that I may be successful in choosing the right course; at all events, I shall endeavor to make the choice with real earnestness, and with that I venture, at least, to hope that I shall the sooner get out of the wrong path.

Two stand-ups

Stewart Lee on Skins



Russell Brand On Newsnight

Avatar: The Last Airbender (cont.)

me
You know what I think when a western martial arts related film and animation is set in a snow covered setting? I think, "Oh boy, there is going to be some allegory related to Tibet" - and this constant reference and inflation of some of the worst orientalism...

...I have to say, the fidelity to the martial arts movement sequences are incredible

V
Yeah, it's a good show, but your commentary on it is terrible.

me
Haha

V
There are references but they aren't dogwhistles, and they don't fit into any consistent or substantive or meaningful narrative.

Aang's son in the new series is named Tenzin and his monk tutor is named Gyatso, but this doesn't really mean anything, since the Fire Nation is so over-the-top Japanese. They are so aggressively Japanese: visually, culturally, symbolically, linguistically... I mean, the derive their power from the rising sun? They are ruled as a feudal empire? Their names are orthographically almost Japanese: Azula, Sozen, Ozai, Iro...

A 'Sozin's Comet' moment - a beautiful illusion

I was particularly struck by the scene in which Azula loses her mind, and in a state of paranoia cuts locks of her hair. "What a shame," Azula hears a woman's voice and and sees her mother's image in the mirror: "You always had such beautiful hair," the image laments...

"Even YOU fear me." Azula says coldly, resentfully.

"No; I love you Azula, I do," her mother's image responds, and clasps its hands together in benediction...

GoT on HBO

Not promising. There are two executions in the first 15 minutes of the show, there's no economies of scale in the violence, and it reeks of desperation to create this grim dark atmosphere for the show.

The screen writers for this show are terrible. For one, the physical direction is awful. Twice, the prologue Nightwatch characters have come across a suspicious circumstance in the woods and they draw their swords, but these are very short weapons and i would imagine they'd be useful only in very close combat. So why would you even bother, if you could see all around you?

Is having a sword drawn meaningful preparation? Or is this just a trope? Like the police office drawing his gun as he investigates the suspect's house?

Ugh, part of me want to skip the TV series and just reread to the books. But I'll be on watch for two scenes: 1) Ned's fevered dream about the Tower of Joy and 2) Maester Aemon's Reveal.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

V: The show's internal consistency, long story arcs, and inventiveness with its basic premise illustrate a lot of love and care on the part of its creators

They cared enough to pay this kind of attention to detail.

Still in the dark

The Springtime of Peoples

R: As all good things in the Middle East, Springtime started with a noble cause and ended up a tool of regional politicking. This is not a revolution anymore, its everyone settling scores.

The sun rises for everyone

""

Star Wars

V: The ‘Star Wars’ universe has just become pathetic. The original series of licenced fiction were bad, but the official materials in the past few years have just destroyed it. Well, the original films paint this picture of a gigantic, sprawling galaxy. Then the films and ancillary material make basically everyone important know everyone else. And then rigourously map out and explain as much as they can. Making the universe seem simple and trivial.

This is even without all the badness of the prequel films. The prequel films tried to normalise all these little interesting features of the original films. The original films hint at some allegorical parallels, but the prequel films just go over the top trying to cast each new species introduced with an existing ethnic group. So now all the flying things are Jews, the trade federation guys are all Chinese, the floppy eared guys are all Jamaicans. And it's this constant theme of racial essentialism. Humans are the only species which show any variation in accent, culture, or personality.

Then lots of weak fan service. The videogame lets you fight and beat Darth Vader. The television shows that Jabba the Hut is, like, Luke's brother-in-law, and Chewbacca bagged his groceries at the supermarket. Oh, and then lots of really stupid political content.

The ‘Battlestar Galactica’ prequel series ‘Caprica’ had this, too, which is what made it so incredibly boring. Very dull, simplistic political plots. It's like if you took the love triangle stories from any average soap opera and just replaced ‘X loves Y’ with ‘X is allied with Y‘. No consistency or realism, and just lots of names and dates to memorise, but no real thematic content.

This isn't even touching the bad acting and just general dumbness in plots. There's an episode of ‘Clone Wars’ where the main characters stumble across an enemy Jedi's base. And one of the supporting characters is, like, let's finish our main mission first. But, no, they decide to set a trap for the evil Jedi, but they do it so incompetently, the enemy Jedi side steps it trivially, and they have no real backup if he exploits the obvious flaw of their trap.

So he kills the supporting character and gets away. And at the end of the episode, the main characters are, like: "Man, war is so bad. We lost a good man today". Even though it was their own decisions and incompetence that precipitated everything that happened in the episode.

It's one of those shows where, like, the good guys will take a bad guy hostage without checking him for hidden weapons, and then the bad guy will conveniently escape at just the right moment to advance the plot.

One good example of how they take something that was interesting in the original movies and then beaten to death is Yodi's speech patterns. In the original movies, there is this conceit where he speaks in this sometimes reversed English. He is this oriental master of some sorts. But this is done very naturally as just a little ornamentation of the character. But in the movies and the series, they decided to make this a central feature. So now he always speaks in this exact same fashion, which just comes across as lame, clumsy, and annoying.

As you can see, it's such a stupid conceit, they can't actually give the character any good dialogue, because the addition of too many relative clauses would quickly make him incomprehensible. So it has this side-effect of disallowing the character from ever speaking more than the simplest of phrases.

Modern Slavery (in the Big Apple)

V: "The slave whips himself harder than the master, in hope of destroying the whip."

me: Sounds like some cheesy line from Ayn Rand

V: The opposite. It is mocking you for working hard to make money to not have to work.

me: No. Ayn Rand would mock you for not being a genius who righteously crack the whip on the huddled masses.

V: Well, she grew up under a brutal, insane regime - I can forgive her some madness.

me: It's the same incalculated personal exceptionalism experienced by the privileged

V: You're feisty today

me: I'm just being exceptional

V: It's surprising how little money means to me anymore.

me: According to Bloomberg, the average millionaire feel they need $7.5 Mln to feel secure. I am guessing you already have that amount of money.

V: No, but I have become numb to it since my days of poverty.

me: Numb in your palatial suite eh? In the city at the center of the world while making six digits? I can see how it all could feel like a dream.

V: Numb to the misery of middle class slavery

me: You sound like a proper ibanker, for a moment I thought you were going to row out the galley slave analogy and complain bitterly about how you have to work ten hours a day and then go home to your penthouse.

There is no better form of self-aggrandizement.

Power and Prerogative

9:39 PM

V: I wonder how this Net Neutrality thing will pan out.It is interesting, because I have difficulty conceiving of the telecom industry as being particularly astute in any fashion.

But it's quite amazing so far how much they seem to have accomplished. Well, let's ignore the actual merit of the arguments for a moment. Let's just look at who is on what side. Content providers all want net neutrality, because this is how can ensure their own survival. This means Google, Netflix, Hulu, Facebook...

Carriers wants net neutrality done away with, because this could lead to all sorts of market advantages in terms of optimising revenues or pushing their own content businesses.

I guess this could be a skewed portrayal, but it does really suggest a different type of management. It suggests on one side you have a bunch of much more agile and competitive companies trying to ensure a level playing field - that they do not have to compete in terms of basic access but in terms of services.

It gives this feeling that these carriers are just these lumbering giants who can only think in terms of their monopolies. I get this same impression from how some big media companies seem to operate. That they almost begrudge the need to create a product. That it is this burden for them to have to actually make something so that they can transfer money from your wallet to theirs, and if they could just find a way to charge you directly without this unnecessary intermediary of providing a good or service, they would happily do so.

I think that companies of this sort actually can be very successful and profitable, but that it's not sustainable. This kind of operation does not lend itself to astute or clever action, so these organisations have no ability to actually compete on merit.

This is a very interesting political battle, because it is really a fight between two large corporate groups. It isn't the public against corporations (since we already know that the public almost always loses in these cases.)

You too can be good if you have enough money from perpetrating evil

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Is Lost to Tax Loopholes

I tend to treat organizations with purported good intentions with great skepticism, because it is easy to talk about those things when you have the money, money from tax evasion no less.

M01

me: Here is the operative anime formula: have a silly philosophical idea, inject some violence, add a boy meet girl situation and/or fan service. If that doesn't work then it means you haven't dialed it up far enough.

V: The counterpoint to anime structure is that regular western programmes are themselves so adolescent - western animated shows have no choice but be worse.

me: Really? Even for films like Toy Story?

V: Toy Story is good, but it is good children's entertainment. Calling something children's entertainment generally means it's bad, but that's only because this country doesn't care what it feeds its kids.

Houston, we hardly know ye

Trinidad

From Trinidad

Over the Gulf of Mexico

From Trinidad

From Trinidad

From Trinidad

From Trinidad

Port of Spain

From Trinidad

The two lane roads are narrower, yes, narrower. In my haste I forgot to take pictures of driving down Waterloo.

From Trinidad

Busy streets

From Trinidad

If one gets the impression that there are not enough pictures of the inhabitants then the fault is entirely one of the photographer

From Trinidad

The Red House

From Trinidad

The building where the Jamaat staged their coup in 1990

From Trinidad

Port of Spain by night

From Trinidad

The Lion House (Naipaul's ancestral house), Chaguanas

From Trinidad

lions

From Trinidad

Green mountains

From Trinidad

Green building

From Trinidad

Chaguaramas

His eyes always that of an outsider

V: I had a discussion with one of the traders last week about how he wanted to make sure his kids grew to respect hard work and the value of a dollar.

I think it's very easy to ignore one's own privileges. He talked about how he had to work from being a poor boy to where he was and so on and so forth, and he had a lot of pride in having accomplished what he has. But this does not seem quite correct. Because if he were urban minority poor, I think he could have worked just as hard but still ended up nowhere.

Similarly, I should thank my background for the advantages it has given me. If I were white, I'd probably belong to some unimpressive but competent professional class. A good amount of my analytical skills are a direct result of my background, I think.

me: Yes, the consequence of being an outsider

V: Actually, that is it exactly. If I were not an outsider, I wouldn't have such a strong desire to rebel intellectually, and I would be much less curious and much less analytical.

...

V: Being an outsider means that even if it's easy to make friends, it's still very easy to remain dis-integrated.

me: I'm not so certain I want to become fully integrated

V: Why not? It's lonely otherwise.

me: You can be integrated and lonely

V: Really?

me: Is that not a possibility?

Happy New Year!

Avatar

11:49 AM

V: ... the natives present this unified cultural force, right? We're supposed to support their choice to retain this primitive culture that is close to nature, because it's presumably the most environmentally intentioned.

But this seems flawed, because they are hunters and gatherers. They don't seem to farm, but they are still predators, despite whatever pseudo-religion they practice after their kills. (Unfortunately, it's never explored whether the killed creature really appreciates or cares being dispatched in such a natural spiritualist fashion.)

These hunting techniques the native aliens use could potentially be extremely ecologically damaging. In fact, I would suggest that, given their primitivism, they probably have a very poor understanding of preservation.

Though our own ideas may not apply to this world, which seems to be full of movie-style predators. Predators without behaviours realistic to earth animals. Like, completely omnivorous across all species. Like a grizzly bear eating snails.

Yeah, this is a pretty shite alien planet. Yeah, this is still neocolonialism. It fails to really understand nativist resistance.

12:49 PM

V: Wow, this movie is so bad. A decent sign of a bad movie is probably how many lines of dialogue are devoted to `woo!' `yeah!' `nooo!'

Also, I guess, in the end, it's the white man's burden to help the natives. And they are lost without him.

Man, I wish this movie had been made better. And it would have been pretty easy to do.

1066

"A thousand years ago, a great war came to Middle Earth, the Anglo-Saxon name for the world of people.

Three kingdoms fell into battle, the victors would change England forever.

Then English, led by the newly crowned King Harold Godwinson.

The Normans, their Duke William of Normandy, eager to extend his territories.

The Vikings, fearless, warlike, and fronted by the great King Harald Hardrada..."

link

Singular purpose

The Rise of the New Global Elite

F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me. But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.

11:01 PM

V: This article talks a lot more about finance high-rollers than industrialists. In fact, I would suspect a lot of these stereotypes are applicable only to finance high-rollers.

I am skeptical how much the world of finance really means in the short or long term.

... for all this article talks about idea festivals and idea makers and thought leaders and whatever. Well, what was the last idea that you heard come out of one of those? That wasn't just, hey, I have an idea, why don't I go network with a bunch of people so I can hob-nob and make money?

I think Taleb makes the point that people who are successful almost always attribute their success to some remarkable quality of their own personalities - some individual exceptionalism - even when such success could just as adequately be explained by pure chance.

I guess there is just a continuation of the same excesses of past plutocracies. This sense of personal exceptionalism, singular purpose - the pretenses of culture and nobility.

The Last Psychiatrist

Are Chinese Mothers Superior To American Mothers?

"...[it] is really a summary of her episode of MTV Cribs. "Welcome to my home, yo, let me show you my gold toilet. It's for peeing and flushing the coke down when the heat comes in the back way."