HK TV dramas 1

Never thought one day I would start pimping for HK serial dramas. But A Step Into the Past is funny enough to merit an entry. What? are you expecting a synopsis or something? That would defeat the whole purpose.

My overall critique of HK dramas in general is the film stock used. Given the amount of attention and details going into costumes, filming the series with a stock that preserve the colors would add much to the production values. Although I could see how more vibrant colors would detract from the historic aspect of dramas in general. Both are artistic directions that I'm ambivalent about.

Reason and Imagination

"The leading group of 1930s poets, other perhaps than Empson, admired technology (all those pylons in poems), but, unlike the Romantics, seem to have had no sense of living in an era of scientific wonders."

The interwar years in general, Needham in particular and China peripherally.

Hobsbawm's description of the 1930s era inadvertently describes a feeling that I can't quite put my finger on, and that is whether Chinese language and culture is a determinism, and of science in particular.

If we look, even now, majority of (public) Chinese intellectuals (as measured in the audibility of their opinions and ability to stir debate) are not engaged in the sciences but in the arts. This is the Chinese version of the gap between reason and imagination that Hobsbawm writes of interwar Cambridge. Except in China's case, the gulf has yet to be bridged...

Progress

Summary of the progress of internet and freedom of speech in China

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The guilt of being fantastic

These messages were sent while you were offline.

3:38 AM basti:
I just woke up with this story idea: the guilt of being fantastic..

I was thinking about political frustration on the part of the liberal mass in this country and how their attempts at political expression are subordinate to their party's tendency to political expedience. For example, opposition to the Middle East conflict. A very large number of voters oppose it on moral, ideological grounds, and they see that they have only a single political choice in the system, no other. But the political situation limits the ability of this party to provide substantive objections. The best the party can do is object on empirical rather than theoretical grounds that mismanagement and inefficiency are the problem; nothing about moral violations.

Well the story idea is something about the guilt of someone who is fantastic. What if the conflict had been executed fantastically but with great tragedy morally? A cynical observer of American politics would suggest that opposition to the conflict would then be marginalized. What if this person in the story is a personification of this… someone who is so fantastic at everything he does that he begins to lose track of substantive ideological objection, because it stops having practical meaning to him.

And maybe the guilt from this…

We want our independence... and a U.S. passport too!

In December 2006, Lin hired Charles Camp to represent this case in the US legal system. Lin cited the fact that Japan merely gave up its power over Taiwan and the Pescadores after surrendering in World War II and that it did not return Taiwan’s sovereignty rights to China. He also said that the San Francisco Peace Treaty did not deal with the sovereignty issues of Taiwan and the Pescadores, adding that the US was still Taiwan’s principal occupying power.


And God Bless the United States of America!


Full disclosure: I am a U.S. citizen.

Dream sequence

in episode 3...

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was published in January 31, 1999. It is the only game to have invoke in me both a sense of introspection and an awareness of the sweep of time. It is less of a game than a novel and a movie combined. From the lights of its compelling narrative I saw the glimmer of an inspiring future. From the moment of the landing on Planet to The End of the Singular Sentience Era, humanity's strive and progress rages unabated. On this 10th anniversary of publication, I salute you SMAC!

Wireless, future

me: wireless is going to be one of the emerging economic frontiers, I'm excited about its prospects

basti: Yeah, I've seen this inductive power things before.
It will definitely be a luxury, but I am not sure it's such an innovation.

me: it will be a boon in manufacturing, electronics and drive new consumer demand

basti: You still have to make a physical connection - it's just a qualification on what kind of connection that is.

me: yes, there only needs to be one physical connection now as oppose to say, twelve

basti: No, there are still twelve physical connections.

me: how?

basti: Well, compare wireless power to wireless networking.
Wireless networking is much more of an innovation (when it was invented, like, a billion years ago) because it means that whether two devices in a communications network can connect is no longer a function of their locations. There is no need for a physical connection at all. I can put my laptop or cordless phone at any (x,y,z) point in this entire house and still be chatting with you. Inductive power doesn't really work like that. I can't take my laptop out onto the patio and have it powered there. I need to stick it on charging surface. So, while I no longer have to fumble around with cords and the very precise physical action of connecting the male power adapter to my laptop's female AC input, I still have some restrictions on where I can place my laptop if I want it charged.
I'm trading a precise action of "male->female connector" for a less precise action of "place on mat." But I'm still stuck to that mat. Whether I receive power is still a function of the location of my laptop - it's just not nearly as constrained as before. Do you see what I mean?

me: yes

basti: I'm just moving up in the classes of connectors from the simpler "male-female" style to a much more flexible "contact point" style. This can provide a lot of luxury, but it's not terrible groundbreaking.

me: sure, and it will drive innovations in industrial design. That is why I'm optimistic about its economic impacts

basti: Yeah, definitely. But you do realise this is nothing in comparison to what we would see with consumer-grade true wireless power. That would truly be monumental.
The effects might seem kind of minor, but, man, that coupled with cheap energy, and we'd really be living in the future.

me: we will also be dosed with electromagnetic radiation

basti: Yes, but we already are. EM radiation sounds scary, 'cause it has the word radiation in it, but the term radiation in this sense does not mean alpha or gamma decay; it refers to the dispersal mechanism. It "radiates." Sitting in a room with a lightbulb on exposes us to electromagnetic radiation. As does going out in the sun.
However, one is far more damaging than the other, which suggestions that the problem isn't just that it's EM radiation, but that there is some qualifying aspect to it. e.g., UV rays and radicalising, &c. Anyway, I have no idea how consumer-grade wireless power would even work.

me: anyways, wouldn't it give great satisfaction to be working on those technologies that would bring society into the future? Instead of analyzing human's pettiness, endlessly

basti: Is that really what we do?

me: yes, and in doing so we try to free ourselves of this pettiness

basti: Yeah, that's good. Better than some damn boring power engineering crap.
I prefer the analytical path, really. What would you suggest?

me: whichever that makes the more money and gives more spare time

basti: ha, sinecure

me: honestly, something that would be continuously challenging. I imagine the power engineers would be like "Ok, what now?" after they introduce wireless power

basti: Well, it would be a long, long path to just that. Like, I could just as well become a doctor with the intent of curing cancer.

From the people who brought you the Minotaur China Shop.

Blush.

Some thoughts

11:00 AM basti: haha
This is almost dramatic.
Like, there is so much pessimism about the future of the nation, with this being held up as a chance for a return to past greatness.
But it doesn't even try.
And it's obviously trying to try.

A Song of Ice and Fire in a Chinese Wiki

冰与火之歌

　　《冰与火之歌》系列
　　共七部：
　　第一部《权力的游戏》（A Game Of Thrones）　
　　第二部《列王的纷争》（A Clash Of Kings）
　　第三部《冰雨的风暴》（A Storm Of Swords）
　　第四部《群鸦的盛宴》（A Feast Of Crows）
　　第五部《魔龙的狂舞》（Dance with Dragons)
　　第六部《凛冬的寒风》（The Wind of Winter）
　　第七部《春晓的梦想》（A Dream of Spring）(原先为 A Time for Wolves「奔狼的年代」)

　　作者已经完成并出版的为前四部，其中前四部已经由重庆出版社引进发行，翻译用心，质量非常优秀。
外传 《邓肯与伊戈》 系列
《雇用骑士》（The Hedge Knight）
《效忠剑士》（The Sworn Sword）

Translation on the titles have minor variations. 《权力的游戏》 is "A Game of Power" and 《冰雨的风暴》 is literally "A Storm of Icy Rain".

My take on the variations: the term 'power' is more salient to a Chinese audience. Struggle for the throne (singular) in Chinese historiography often meant a rebellion caused by grass roots discontent, natural disasters befalling the populace that nevertheless is perceived as a supernatural portent for dynastic change. Although the world of Westeros is on the verge of a supernatural cataclysm, it is not enough of a smoking gun for the events in the world of Ice and Fire. Hence, the story does not quite fit in the Chinese literary memory as something of a struggle for the 'throne'.

"Icy Rain"? or sleet? No idea.

"A Clash Of Kings" - see the Warring States, the Three Kingdoms, the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In short, yes, it is in the Chinese literary memory and hence would cause no dissonance.

Do you know your Middle Chinese? 你知道你的中古汉语吗？

lessons

After some intensive training this Du Fu poem should prove to be no problem, right? right?!

Anyone want to go to México?

"Anyone want to go to México?"

Grapefruit. The rush of relief that drug war violence didn't spill over from the Rio Grande. God Bless America.

Managed to pick 23 tons of grapefruit and citrus with 40 people in one day. Few people hauled off about 20 pounds of souvenir but I only felt like bringing one citrus back. And on the way to boarding a female flight attendant said that it looked lonely.


Citrus, poignantly alone

Looking forward to 2009

2008 has been an interesting year. Just the other day, I was debating whether to turn up the thermostat. Then I realized natural gas prices has fallen 25% (now it's more like 40%). Majority of the power plants, as they were, use turbine engines that burn natural gas, which means the price of natural gas directly translates into the price of electricity. So I turned the temperature up a comfortable margin (enough so that I won't have to leave my desktop on at night as a radiator).

Cost of living is going down, which means more discretionary income. Auto-makers are going bankrupt, which means 2009 is going to be a good year for buying a car as car companies try to offload their inventories, or other methods of augmenting their cash-flow (as long as their suppliers don't collapse before they do). Yes! 2009 is a year for shopping! Now just patiently waiting for the stock market to hit its trough and load up as it rebound...

Here are my moments of clarity for 2008:

Books:
Garner's Modern American Usage

Blogs:
ESWN

Literature:
The London Review of Books

Movie:
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

Language Police:
"Recital is the unsophisticated assassination of poetry."

Now Watching

彼氏彼女の事情



YOU MAY DREAM 追いかけて　素直なこの気持ち
伝えられたなら 真っ白な恋は翼になる
天使のゆびきり　叶うように

目の前を過ぎる横顔　ときめきが踊り始める
話す声　耳を傾け　またひとつあなたを知った
ほんの少し勇気だして　その瞳を見つめたい

YOU MAY DREAM 追いかけて　素直なこの気持ち
伝えられたなら 真っ白な恋は翼になる
天使のゆびきり　叶うように

Episodes 1 to 4: good
Episodes 5+: rather pointless
Episode 19: all right, so I kept watching. But the premise of post 4 episodes are stretched and good intentions forced. If I didn't know the propensity of GAINAX to run out of money, I would have said the animations in this episode were especially charming.

Politics and Economics

Can you recognize the following quote:

"...when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.."

If you can then congratulations! You have at least an awareness of the historical friction between democracy and capitalism in the United States.

What strikes me is that contemporary Chinese intellectuals lacks a particular vigor in applying the analysis of the country's current constitution and its founding intentions in formulating political theory for the state. Unless these analysis are hidden in the archives of the Central Party School somewhere, which still doesn't do anyone much good. Perhaps, reconciling the country's founding intentions with law (the constitution and institution) could go some way in easing the mental indigestion of Chinese intellectuals, who are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by advocating wholesale adoption of western institutions. And doing it with such disregards for the complexity and historic scope of China's problems that would make any disingenuous supporters of democracy in China proud.

The current problem that needs to be examined in China is, can the free market and authoritarianism co-exist?

P.S. the quote is from the dissenting opinion of Oliver Wendel Holmes in Abrams v. U.S., 1919. The interesting thing about this opinion is that Holmes in a previous decision sided with the right of the state to interfere in economic matters. Yet here he limits the state's interference in speech. This paradox between democracy and capitalism is the defining issue of American politics.

A more salient contemporary example is how the energy industry have such a strong influence on American domestic and foreign policy. Often these interests are out of step with public opinion in issues such as global warming and American intervention abroad.

Medieval credit crunch

King Edward I

"It seems that money has disappeared" said the Ricciardi, just like a modern banker complaining that everyone has stopped lending.

Lightless Day

This photo came out quite different. It was actually taken on the flight today at mid-day but the shadows caused by the intense sunlight must have occult the lens area, making it look like dusk instead.

Anyways, so I woke up at 11 and decided I was in no mood to drive. Book a flight 2 hours before departure, then threw a bunch of clothes and my EEE 901 in a bag. Three hours later, I am sitting at home in Dallas typing away. Maybe I can finally get some reading and writing done during these few days. My mind is more at ease now.

Flying is much better than the mind numbing experience of driving, and having to wait for hours on end during holiday traffic. I Need to do this more often.

Self-Deceptions of Empire by David Bromwich

All of the good that a nation can do by violence is contingent; the evil is real and palpable.

Spreading Democracy by Eric J. Hobsbawm

Although great power action may have morally or politically desirable consequences, identifying with it is perilous because the logic and methods of state action are not those of universal rights. All established states put their own interests first.

Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic Church

"In this Christmas BMJ paper, researcher Gareth Payne and his two colleagues from Cardiff investigate whether there is any substance to the intriguing urban legend that has arisen in Wales in recent times: "Every time Wales win the rugby grand slam, a Pope dies, except for 1978 when Wales were really good, and two Popes died." Wales won the Grand Slam in 2008 - so should Pope Benedict XVI be worried? "