Old Man Out Of China

Inttellectual property protection, American style (#349, Topic B)

2007-03-05T23:44:00.000-05:00

USA talks big about intellectual-property protection. So, it is really an eye-opener to read a front-page story in today's Wall Street Journal captioned as "Ethiopia Battles Starbucks Over Rights to Coffee Names." It seems that the world's best coffee is produced in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia; its beans give the hint of "black cherry, chocolate and dark rum" wrapped together. The international chain labels it "Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo," (Shirkina, a word supplied by local farmers = partnership), and sells it for $13 per half-pound, back in 2004. How much were these farmers paid? "About 75 cents a pound" -- or 37.5 cents per half-pound. When the director-general of Ethiopia's intellectual-property office raised the issue of "unfair price gap," and wanted to trademark the names, the chain tried to sweet-talk him from doing so. Doing so "would place too much responsibility on the company to defend Ethiopia's trademark;" "it is not something you would do as a business." Intellectual-property protection, it seems, is a one-way street. According to WSJ, Ethiopia pioneered the coffee trade "more than 500 years ago." According to the World Bank, Ethiopia's total export in fiscal year 2006 was about $1 billion, of which coffee accounted for $354 million. In March 2005, the Ethiopia government applied for three trademarks for her three coffee-growing regions -- but "the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office blocked Ethiopia's application for Sidamo because Starbucks had already applied to trademark the name 'Shirkina Sun-Dried Sidamo." This is nothing new. Western phamaceutical companies have made a practice of trademarking Chinese herbal-medicine ingredients -- millennia old -- and then turning around to accuse Chinese merchants of intellectual-property violation for featuring these same herbal-medicine ingredients in their products. Well, the WSJ story continued by saying that the National Coffee Association, a U.S. trade group, sent a letter to the trademark office "urging it to deny Ethiopia trademarks for Sidamo and Harar [another coffee-growing region]." On what ground? "They are generic names." Specific geographic names as generic names? Talk to any farmer in Champagne -- similar products outside of this region may only use phrases such as "sparkling wine." Oh, excuse me; Champagne is an exception, because it is done by a developed country. According to the National Coffee Association, anothe reason to deny Ethiopia's application is "Ethiopia does not have the capacity to manage the trademarks." Bingo. If this is not enough, the WSJ further stated that "the U.S. trademark office provisionally refused Ethiopia's request for Sidamo and Harar." According to WSJ, "Ethiopia is now appealing the decision." In the meantime, Oxfam, a nonprofit relief and development group, (if my memory serves, it was initiated by quite a few World Bank staffers) began publicizing it by urging customers to complain about the company's stance. So much for intellectual-property protection in a developed country.

Voting in a democracy (#348, Topic P)

2007-03-04T21:50:00.000-05:00

Our retirement community holds, on the first Sunday evening of each month, a "fireside forum." Tonight's forum was billed as "Our place in the world of politics." I thought our refers to USA. I was wrong; it refers only to a school at the state university. Luckily, the talk was short, lasting about 15 minutes. Then it was the Q&A period. The first question was raised by a fellow resident whom I know. She asked: "Except for [our retirement community], which has high voter participation, why citizens do not care to vote?" (One research component of this school deals with voting; that unit provided voting machines for our retirement community.) That was indeed an interesting question. But the answer was even more interesting. Candidly, the speaker said: "Many people feel that they have nothing at stake, so they simply do not vote." After a moment, he added: "Many countries declare the election day a national holiday. But this is not so in USA. Perhaps you could write to your senators and propose making the election day a national holiday." To my way of thinking, voting is another example of "Do what I say, don't do what I do." USA travles around the world promoting democracy, which, according to the president, equals voting. But the percentage of eligible voters in USA who voted in the past several presidential elections -- if my memory serves -- never exceeded 60%. When the speaker was answering this question, I thought to myself. What is needed, for USA, is not promoting democracy around the world, but showing the world that citizens of USA respect democracy and cast vote. Show the world a passing grade in voter participation -- say, 70% -- and then promote democracy around the world. Before this threshold is reached, look inward and educate the citizenry instead.

Wall Street the follower? (#347, Topic M)

2007-02-28T23:40:00.000-05:00

The four newspapers I regularly read cover yesterday's "meltdown" in the Shanghai Stock Exchange (#346) somewhat differently. The lead story in today's New York Times does it comprehensively -- showing major stock exchanges' movements in chart form over a 30-hour time period, beginning with the Tokyo Stock Exchange (opening at 8 pm EST 2/25 Monday = 9 am 2/26 Tuesday, local time), down by less than 1%; continuing with SSE (opening at 8:30 pm EST 2/25 = 9:30 am 2/26, Shanghai time), down by 8.8%; then with Europe's and Brazil's, down by 3% and 6.6%, respectively; and ending with the Wall Street, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by 3.3%. The Washington Post does it dramatically, with a 4-column headline: "Stock Sell-Off in China Hits Wall Street," and a 15" x 7" chart, in red, on the front page of its Business section, showing detailed movements of the DJIA from Monday's close (12, 632.26) to 12,500 (at 9:30 am), to 12,450 (at about 12:15 pm), to 12,350 (at about 2:15 pm), to below 12,100 minutes before 3 pm (WP gives no specifics, but 2/27's low, reached at that time, was 12,086,86), to 12,216.24 at close. The Wall Street Journal does it analytically, showing two versions of the DJIA in graphic form, one official, and the other recalculated (to adjust for computer delays from 2 pm to 3:30 pm); it covers the story more cautiously: "Market's Slide Spotlights Risks." Invetor's Business Daily covers it sensationally; its headline "China Triggers Global Sell-Off" and an accompanying graph, captioned "Asian Contagion Revisited," seem to attribute every ill to China. Given IBD's editorial stance, this is understandable. What is puzzling to me is a second story by NYT's Shanghai correspondent. Labeling investors in Shanghai as naive, the correspondent cited reasons, such as (1) out of 15 initial public offerings in 2006, 12 had appreciation of 10% or more by yearend, and (2) when a company's CEO was under investigation, its stock went higher. Really. When reading it, I cannot help asking myself: Are there similar phenomena on Wall Street? According to IBD (1/2/07 issue), there were 198 IPOs in USA in 2006: "Restaurant chain Chipostle Mexican Grille started things with a bang in January, doubling on its first day and more than tripling by early May." MasterCard, Crocs, and J. Crew "are still trading at more than double their initial price." On the second point, if my memory serves me, a week or so ago, the CEO of a home-improvement chain in US resigned (along with a retirement package worth more than $200 million), and its stock went up by more than 15%. So, what is new? In any case, today, the price on the SSE rebounds with an increase of 3.8%, and DJIA follows suit with an increase of 52.39 points, or 0.4%. It seems that the Wall Street no longer leads, but follows the Chinese financial markets instead. We'll see what tomorrow holds.

Financial market melt-down (#346, Topic M)

2007-02-27T23:55:00.001-05:00

The lead story in this morning's NPR program concerned a 9% decline in Shanghai Stock Exchange's index, said to be the most severe in a decade. This decline had a domino effect, affecting first European markets and then the Wall Street -- suggesting that (1) international financial markets are intimately linked, and (2) China is now a major player in these markets -- after all, its index showed an increase of some 48% in 2006, whereas that on Wall Street was only 14%. On Wall Street, not sure why the market dropped in China (as far as I could gather, it was due to the Financial ministry's invoking new rules to tighten margin-purchase of securities and, thus, to rein in rampant speculation), conventional wisdom seemed to attribute this drop to a slowing of China's industrial growth. If so, this would adversely affect the demand for raw materials -- particularly copper, aluminum, and oil. Thus, shares of companies producing these industrial materials led the market down -- slowly though consistently at first, relentlessly as it gathered steam, and dramatically when programmed trading took over at 2:59. At 2:59, before programmed trading kicked in, the market, as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, was about 12,350, down by about 260 points, or 2%. As soon as programmed trading began, trading volume soared as to completely overwhelm NYSE's computer system -- the volume was over 2 billion shares, a record. But, even more dramatic was its effect on the DJIA -- in a matter of 60 seconds, at 3:00, the DJIA dropped by another 160+ points. At one point, the DJIA was down by 560+ points -- said to be the most severe after the market reopened on 9/17/2001, after the 9/11/2001 incident. As the market closed at 4:00, the market was down by a solid 416 points, slightly less than 4%. After the market closed, the financial punditry had a field day, asking one another what might be in store tomorrow. Their vagueness was matched only by their verbosity. At 8:00 pm EST (9:00 local time), the stock market in Tokyo opened (a leading stock was down by 3%); the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened at 8:30 (9:30 local time), but I did not hear anything. We'll wait for tomorrow's morning papers to find out -- whether the meltdown was a one-day event or whether it would last for a while. I suspect the former, but I am no financial pundit.

"Contending with Endless International Conflict" (#345, Topic F)

2007-02-26T22:31:00.000-05:00

Our retirement community has a Lifelong Learning Center, offering courses and lectures from time to time. The topic for today's hour-long lecture is captioned above. It was a follow-up lecture on "The Clash of Civilizations," which was given a couple of weeks ago, which I missed. Despite snow on the ground, about 50 fellow residents were in attendance today. (The flyer announcing the talk said that the earlier lecture attracted 85.) Our lecturer opened the lecture by asking attendees to provide a single word that best captured the reason for conflict. "People," one ventured; no. "Religion;" no. "Envy;" no. "Freedom;" no. "Survival;" no. "Greed;" no. It turned out that the word our lecturer had in mind is Difference. Difference? After some discussion, I ventured that since difference in physical features can never be erased, thus, conflict, were difference used as the criterion, can never be resolved. I mentioned that, in China, the approach is "Live and let live." Before I could say another word, I was asked to stop -- "I just want a short comment or question. You should give an hour-long talk yourself." So I shut up. To a large extent, the lecture was off-topic. After an hour, as the talk was at the tail-end of a Q&A period, I left and returned home for lunch, as I promised my wife before going to the lecture.

Call center (#344, Topic D)

2007-02-25T22:27:00.000-05:00

One reason we went to the beach over the weekend was to set up a DSL connection. Apparently, the demand for DSL service was extremely high, as we had to wait for 5 weeks; our appointment to get connected was set for 2/23. As it turned out, we were invited for dinner on Thursday, 2/22; repeated calls to Verizon, asking whether our account could be serviced in the afternoon of 2/23, were merely answered by a recorded message; we did not receive acknowledgment of any kind. As the dinner invitation was for an important occasion, we took a chance by attending it and then left for the beach early Friday morning. Luckily, Verizon's service technican came around 12:30, so our chance-taking paid off. (Hey, maybe the Year of the Golden Pig is good for us.) We also booked Verizon to do the internal connection, knowing that we would be unable to do it ourselves (the DSL service in our apartment was done by a consultant, and he had a hard time connecting). And a good thing that we did. Doing the connecting was indeed difficult, as the Verizon technician had to call his technical support staff for guidance. What I overheard was indeed a revelation. Though I did not know to whom he was talking, I suspected that that person was in a call center perhaps on the other side of the globe. Apparently, the question our technican had was somewhat advanced, above the level of that support staffer's capabilities. Our man repeatedly said to the other party: "I told you I already had that," "You are repeating yourself," "You don't know what you are talking about." After a while, our man demanded that he talk to another support staffer or to a supervisor, on the ground that "I cannot understand you." At first, this demand was resisted, but was later honored. There was a clear change of our man's attitude, saying to his new contact (who appeared to be a woman) "I am glad you said that," "Thank you for telling me that," "You made my day," etc. So, after I was able to sign on, our man said that he had a hard time understanding the first staffer's enunciation -- blurred and fast -- further strengthening my suspicion that that staffer was with a call center on the other side of the globe. I asked our man to confirm my suspicion, he merely shrugged. I mentioned to him that at least he was able to talk to two live persons; all I was able to connect was with recorded messages of one type or another -- a 24-hour technical support line was a mere recorded message; a forwarding telephone number was answered by a message I consider inexcusable: "This number cannot be reached from your area." Any way, I was happy that I was able to get DSL connection without too much inconvenience.

Freedom of speech in action (#343, Topic A)

2007-02-24T23:11:00.000-05:00

At the beach, other than shopping (Rohobeth DE, with 4 discount shopping malls next to one another totalling 200+ brand-name stores with thousands of parking spaces, and with no sales-tax to boot, is a shopper's heaven), the alternative is to read newspapers -- most newspapers published on the East Coast are available. In today's Washington Post, one of its headlines is: "Terrorist" Remark Puts Outdoorsman's Carrer in Jeopardy." The remark, according to the story, written on his blog, is thus: "Excuse me, maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I see no place for these [military-style assault] weapons among our hunting fraternity." The writer, despite his spending "much of his life writing for prominent outdoor magazines, delivering lecutres across the country and starring in cable TV shows about big-game hunting in the West," was quickly shot/shut down. Within days, his TV program on the Outdoor Channel was cancelled, the National Rife Association announced suspending professional ties with him, his editorship with Outdoor Life magazine "came to a sudden end," and Remington Arms and other "biggest names in gunmaking" "severed all sponsorship ties ... immediately." According to a fellow gun-owning-writer, this persona non grata "has been a voice for these people -- for hunting and for guns -- and they just turned on him in an instant." NRA's contention was: "Our folks fully understand that their rights are at stake," while Outdoor Life's editor-in-chief commented that "they ['terrorist'-rifle-owning' hunters] don't like to be called terrorists." So much for freedom of speech in action in USA.

Boogle brain buster (#342, Topic L)

2007-02-23T22:39:00.000-05:00

I am at the beach with very little to do. Reading local free weeklies, I came across a feature captioned above. I first encountered Boogle perhaps half a century ago, when I was walking in downtown Chicago one afternoon. At that time, Boogle was brand new; its inventor, in promoting his game, set up shop at one of the bookstores, complete with a young lady at the store's entrance, inviting passers-by to play a game with the inventory. The prize was to be a set of this new game. Well, with very little to do, and with cost-benefit clearly in my favor, I took the challenge and sat down in one of the seats. Three or 4 other contestants were already seated. So, after I joined in, the game was on, which lasted probably 5 minutes (after its rules were explained to ghe group). As luck had it, I was able to form, among other words, two 7-letter words (the longer the word, the higher the score). Thus, I beat the inventor hands down, and was given a set of the game. Later, I gave the game to our son. In today's feature, the 16 characters (4x4) are as follows:
CMME
ORTN
OAAF
BTLE
Each 3-letter word is worth 1 point; 4-letter, 2 points; 5-letter, 3-points; 6-letter, 4 points; 7-letter, 6points; 8-letter, 10 points; 9+-letter, 15 points. To form a word, letters must be contiguous; thus, COAT is a good word (2 points) but COME is not. Today's feature also has a feature not in the original game (when the 16 words are randomed formed) -- by putting "special-busting words into the grid of letters." The puzzle contains an 11-letter word beginnigh with C, a 9-letter word beginning with E, and a 7-letter word beginning with T. I was able to form the 11-letter word as well as the 9-letter word, but I could not find the 7-letter word beginning with T. I then spent about 10 minutes and was able to form 19 3-letter words, 17 4-letter words, four 5-letter words, and two 6-letter words. Adding the 11-letter word and the 9-letter word, my score was 103. (Scoring 151+ points, one is rated Champ; 101-150, Expert; 61-100, Pro; 31-60, Gamer; 21-30, Rookie, 11-20, Amateur; and 0-10, "Try Again.") I probably shall return to DC before the next issue of this weekly is out, so I shall not have a chance to see how this 7-letter word beginning with T looks like.

Chief Illiniwek (#341, Topic A)

2007-02-22T23:44:00.000-05:00

The lead news in this morning's PBS broadcast concerned the "death" of Chief Illiniwek, who danced to native music at University of Illinois' sports activities. The death was forced upon the university administration by NCAA, on the ground that the Chief is one of the "hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots." I beg to disagree. When I was a student at UI, the Chief's performance was always dignified; indeed, I enjoyed being exposed to some authentic native culture. Later this morning, I read, in today's Washington Post, columnist Robert Novak's essay, (I did not know that he is a second-generation fellow Illini) captioned "Death of the Chief." He was blunt: "The death of the Chief epitomizes some unsavory aspects of contemporary American public life: political correctness, hypocrisy and bureaucratic tyranny." Indeed it is. Novak continued by wondering whether the state name, Illinois (meaning "tribe of superior men"), should be abandoned. Clearly not so, though the phrase Fighting Illini is also disallowed. What a shame.

Noodles (#340, Topic I)

2007-02-21T22:40:00.000-05:00

Our retirement community is full of people with talents. One of the joys is to read our community's monthly newsletter -- edited by an energetic fellow retiree who doubles as reporter, writer, copy editor, composer, and art designer -- the only role he does not perform is probably being the publisher, which is done by our management office. When I started to do my blog, he came to our unit to interview me and then wrote an excellent column. The newsletter also has several interesting columnists, one of which, for want of a better term, is a food historian. In the current issue, she writes about noodles. It is so interesting and packed with so much valuable information that I cannot resist quoting her at length. She opens with the following: "Noodles are ... believed by many to be Chinese in origin. ... The Chinese culture considers them to be a symbol of longevity and eating them brings long life." Well, "eating them brings long life" may be an exaggeration, but, noodle as a symbol of longevity is certainly intuitive. Indeed, in China, one eats a bowl of noodle on one's birthday. During the Lunar New Year, we eat rice cakes 年糕, which are homonyms to another phrase 年高 meaning "reaching new high in the new year." Sorry, I digressed. Our columnist then says: "The earliest printed record of noodle use appears in a book written during the East Han Dynasty (25-220 CE). These original noodles were made from millet ground into flour. ... By the time of the Sung Dynasty (900-1218 CE), selling boiled noodles had become a thriving business. Marco Polo is said to have marveled at the number of noodle shops when he visited Hangchow in the 13th century." After two paragraphs on the dissemination of noodle to "Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and the Philippines," and on the many ways of preparing noodles, she ends with a teaser: "The Italians love their pasta. Did Marco Polo really bring the noodle back from China?" For the answer, we'll have to wait for the next month's newsletter. Stay tuned.

Mah-Jong (#339, Topic G)

2007-02-20T22:22:00.000-05:00

On Lunar New Year's eve, my wife and I were invited to a dinner party, which was preceded by playing Mah-Jong for a few hours (#337). While I have written a book on this game (The Happy Game of Mah-Jong, 1996), for want of time, I rarely play. The last time I played was probably five years ago, on a cruise from Los Angeles to Mexico, with my sister, brother-in-law, and their friends. Thus, the hostess for the New Year's eve party was hesitant to invite me to play, for fear that I was too rusty. In reality, Mah-Jong is a simple game to learn and, once learned, can be played even after an absence of decades. (I am, of course, referrning to the classical Chinese version of Mah-Jong. In the American version, "rules are frequently changed, winning hands are arbitrarily determined, a simple and happy game made mercilessly rigid and incomprehensible" (quoting from the preface to my book). Mah-Jong is a good vehicle to keep one's mind active (playing Mah-Jong is encouraged in senior centers, both here and in China); conversely, a person with an active mind usually plays well. Playing well means (1) formulating an overall plan for the hand early (not unlike playing declarer in a bridge game, where one decides on a plan before playing the first card from dummy), (2) playing with little hesitation (since subsequent plays are mere executions of this overall plan), (3) pausing only when new tiles picked up offer a new challenge, requiring one to evaluate whether it is cost-effective to work toward an even higher-scoring combination (in bridge, when confronted with an unfavorable trump distribution, the declarer, to fulfill the contract, must decide whether to squeeze, to throw in, and such). In any case, on this New Year's eve, I had a good account of myself, being the big winner at our table; two of the highest scoring hands were by me. (Indeed, playing on the Mexico cruise, one of my winning hands had the highest score.) True, I made a few mistakes (discarding a tile that would have allowed me to move in a more lucrative direction and such); but, also true to the game, I never attempted to retrieve the discarded tile. I simply charged that to experience. After the game, the hostess wondered whether I could fill in (to be the fourth) as needed; I plan to play my next game in five years' time.

US detention of Latin-American Japanese during WWII (#338, Topic J)

2007-02-19T21:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Lunar New Year's Day was indeed a joyful one (#337); today, the second day of the Year of the Pig, began better than I had reason to expect but ended rather miserably. One of the problems of living in our retirement community is that we have only one indoor parking space; thus, my car is left outdoors. Ten days ago, I neglected to turn off the lights on my car; as a result, the battery went dead. It was jumped; according to AAA, it would be ok if I drove or kept the car running for 30 minutes. I did what I was told. But, when I tried to drive the car a few days later, perhaps due to the single-digit temperature, the battery was dead again. So, I made arrangements to have my car serviced, which is today. Little did I know that it is a holiday today; so, the traffic was light, and the AAA towing service, which was to come "in 90 minutes," actually showed up in less that 20! Reading Washington Post at the shop, I came across an ed-op piece by two California congressmen, one Democrat and the other Republican, entitled "Justice for the Forgotten Internees." According to the piece, "[an] estimated 2,300 people of Japanese descent from 13 Latin American countries ... were taken from their homes and forcibly transported to the Crystal City camp during World War II. The U.S. government orchestrated and financed the deportation of Japanese Latin Americans for use in prisoner-of-war exchanges with Japan. Eight hundred people were sent across the Pacific, while the remaining Japanese Latin Americans were held in camps without due process until after the war ended." Reading it, I was miserable. I asked myself: Were there international laws? Were these Latin American countries mere US colonies? Is this another example of "Do what I say, don't do what I do"? Perhaps one is not supposed to remember events taking place more than half a century ago? While I deeply detest what the Japanese militarists did to people of Chinese ethnicity before and during WWII, as a fellow Asian-American, I empathize with these Japanese-Americans -- and now Latin-American Japanese. Indeed, I could only shake my head while reading this piece. Luckily, shortly thereafter, my car was serviced and ready to go. The shop being a favorite place for me to visit (we became friends rather than customers; indeed, for this visit, my wife made more than 2 dozen Chinese snacks, each in the shape of a gold nugget to celebrate the Lunar New Year, for the owner and his staff), I got off rather lightly. As to the battery, even though it was completely my fault, I was not charged (the battery is still under warranty). So, half wary and half happy, I drove home in time for lunch.

Chinese New Year celebration (#337; Topic K)

2007-02-18T05:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Lunar New Year's eve; one of our fellow residents, the dean of residents of Chinese ethnicity in our retirement community, invited my wife and me to her unit for a game of Mah-Jong and a pot-luck party -- both are traditional events during the Lunar New Year celebration among relatives and close friends. In China, playing Mah-Jong or other games of chance (technically Mah-Jong, not unlike contract bridge, is not a game of chance) by members of different generations was/is? invariably not done -- except during the 3-day Lunar New Year celebration period. My being invited to play Mah-Jong yesterday reminded me of a scene, some 70 years ago, in Shanghai. One night during the Lunar New Year period, my grandmother played banker in a game known as Pai jiu (with 32 tiles, each showing a different combination of two dice (a few are paired), similar to domino). Betting against her were her grandchildren, none older than 10 -- I was the first son of grandmother's first son, thus, the oldest, and I was probably 9. Throwing the dice to decide the sequence of gathering tiles, she would say: "Let me win H.F.'s bet (my Chinese name)." There are 6 betting positions in Pai jiu -- three outright (comparing one's holding with the banker's holding one-on-one) and three hedged positions (one's bet is on two outright positions; if one of these two positions wins but the other loses, it is a draw; for a better to win, both outright positions must win.) I was a conservative player, usually making hedged bets. (To discourage players making hedged bets, only players making outright bets were allowed to handle the tiles. Thus, I usually stood on the edge of the gaming table.) Thus, in effect, my grandmother was saying her hand would be better than two of the three outright positions. I did not mind her saying so, realizing that, deep in her heart, she cared a great deal about her grandchildren. Indeed, the hong bao (red envelope) she gave to each of her grandchildren would be at least 100 times their individual bets on the gaming table. After an hour or two, the game would be over and we would gather around to have lunch or dinner. A joyful gathering that allowed members of different generations to have a good time together. Oh, these are the good old days. Now, of course, my grandmother was long gone; even my wife, my grandmother's granddaughter-in-law, has become a grandmother herself.

China's antisatellite-missle test - III (#336, Topic F)

2007-02-17T13:09:00.000-05:00

Today is Lunar New Year's eve; I was planning to write something about the charming things we do during this family-oriented period. This idea, however, is trumpted by an important interview I read in today's Wall Street Journal -- of Tom Schelling, last year's Nobel laureate in economics, whose specialty is the application of game theory to negotiation, by Michael Spence, one of Schelling's students at Harvard and himself a Nobel laureate in economics, in 2001. The interview covered a lot of territory. Let me cover only its last segment, on China. Schelling said: "I believe we do not pay enough attention to China. China has a small, well-managed nuclear arsenal, which they never brandished or threatened to use. China does not react well when we treat it as if if were irresponsible. Recently China conducted a test and shot down a satellite, and was criticized for contributing to the militarization of space. What appears not well known in the U.S. is that China has been trying to negotiate treaties on outer space, antisatellite weapons, and limiting the production of fissile material for a number of years, and has not been able to get the U.S. to participate. Since we are clearly developing antisatellite capabilities, accusations against China for escalation are viewed by them and others as hypocritical." Well said. Since I am not in their league, it is vain to say that I could not say it any better. I did, along with my good friend Anonymous, comment in earlier entries (Anonymous, in comment to #314; mine, as #317) that China attempted to interest USA in agreements concerning the outer space and antisatellite missiles, but her efforts were brushed aside. At that time, presumably, China did not have the capability. Now, she has -- at least on a par with USA's. Well, with this, let us say goodbye to the Year of the Dog and welcome, in a few hours' time, the Year of the Pig. (It is already the morning of the New Year's Day of the Year of the Pig.)

English is not an easy language (#335, Topic L)

2007-02-15T23:00:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned that a reader in Ann Arbor felt a notice he saw in a hotel room in Manaus, Brazil, was worthy of writing a letter to the editor of Wall Street Journal (#332) -- and editors at WSJ felt that it was worthy of publishing. A friend asked me how that notice was phrased. Here it is: "Press 9 and we will come to take off your clothes." It is unlikely that our letter writer was concerned with the fine distinction between we shall and we will; more likely, it was the phrase take off that prompted him to write -- after "wacking English" in Beijing "made [the letter writer] laugh." Is the notice really that bad? Is it wrong, grammatically speaking? Given my limited understanding of the English language, I have to confess that I cannot find anything wrong with this notice -- grammatically speaking. Perhaps the letter writer felt that the phrase take off has only one meaning. If so, I have news for him. Dictionary: Macmillan, which is intended for high-school students -- or for people like me -- finds the verb take so difficult that it adds (and defines), after the main entry, more than a dozen prepositional phrases -- from take after, take back, take down, take for down to take to, take up, and take up to. As to take off, one of the phrases defined, the dictionary offers no less than 5 different meanings -- "a to remove, as a garment; b to deduct, to subtract; c to imitate; d to rise up in flight; e to depart, leave." Frankly, I am more interested in knowing how people to whom English is the first language handle their mother tongue. Yesterday, I wrote about the presidential news conference (#334). Today's Washington Post has a long story on that event. At one point, the president asked a reporter: "Michael, who do you work for?" Who? not whom? It is understandable that Americans want non-native speakers of English to have a good command of the language; fair enough. But, please show us the way; set a good example. Show us how English should be used; spare us the nitpicking. Spare us a tree or two.

Presidential news conference (#334, Topic R)

2007-02-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

One of today's Wall Street Journal editorials, commenting on the just concluded 6-nation meeting on North Korea's nuclear program, is labeled "Faith-Based Non-Proliferation Pact." At 9:30, the President held a news conference, carried live by CNBC. The shot showed the president standing behind a podium, with a huge red carpet -- for Valentine's Day, no doubt -- covering the vast ground separating him from the journalists. Perhaps influenced by the word faith I read earlier, I thought the setting resembled the interior of a church, with the one behind the podium pontificating. As the president spoke, he somehow began comments with "I believe." On the North Korea agreement, he said: "I believe it's an important step in the right direction." Fair enough. He also said: "I believe that success in Baghdad will have success in helping us secure the homeland;" "I believe [in the Middle East policy];" "I believe [in NATO's stabilizing influence in Afghanistan];" "I believe [in securing the border]" About the same time, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was testifying before a Senate Committee. At first, CNBC showed both the president speaking and Bernanke testifying on a split screen -- side by side. About 10 minutes later, CNBC dropped the president's image and focused on Bernanke's answers to various senators' questions. Why so? I ask myself. Clearly, both the president and Bernanke were making forecasts -- one on international politics and the other on international political economy -- both are, of course, vital. Was it because the former's forecast lacked fact-based documentation while the latter's forecast was more solidly grounded? In any case, as far as I could gather from their non-verbal gestures and body languages, the latter had more confidence or self-confidence. But, of course, confidence or self-confidence is not in the same league as faith. Saying "I believe" undoubtedly moves confidence or self-confidence to a higher level.

Here is to you, whose native tongue is English (#333, Topic L)

2007-02-13T17:59:00.001-05:00

A week or so ago, the Wall Street Journal had a front-page story, complete with color photographs, headlined "Tired of Laughter, Beijing Gets Rid of Bad Translations." This apparently has made many readers laugh. Indeed, in today's WSJ, a reader, in a letter to the editor, said as much. He then wrote about a notice he read in a hotel in Manaus, Brazil. I must admit that I have never been to Manaus. According to National Geographic's World Map, Manuas is strategically located on the Amazon River, and has an airport -- but, it is certainly not in the same league, in terms of population, as Ann Arbor (the letter writer's hometown) or NYC, where WSJ is headquarterd. So, let's see how WSJ fares, in its own paper -- in its own language, English. Every day, a two-column-wide section on page A1, captioned "What's New," serves as an annotated index to that day's stories. Today, the lead entry under Business and Finance begins with this sentence: "Home Depot said it would considering selling or spinning off its wholesale-supply business to focus on its retail operations, bowing again to pressure from activist investor ..." Considering, selling, spinning, bowing -- they are participles; where is the verb? On today's B1, WSJ's Hong Kong correspondent offers this gem in his column: "Sometimes, my Chinese colleagues nap at their desks during lunch." Having touted how good Chinese food is in the same column, one wonders why this correspondent's Chinese colleagues would prefer napping to enjoying their lunch. Let me hazard a guess. Our esteemed WSJ correspondent meant to say during their lunch period. Today's WSJ also has an 8-page special advertising section, touting "focus on energy," in which leading oil companies each has a full page ad. One leads off with the following: "There are 193 countries in the world. None of them are energy independent." None are; not none is? English is not my native tongue, but I cannot laugh at what I have read or what I have captured here. I do wish to plead, however, that a person whose native language is English be more tolerant of those who are trying their best to speak the language. To err is human; indeed, to err in a language not your own is to be expected.

Freedom of speech in action (#332, Topic D)

2007-02-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

Every Sunday, the Washington Post has a column by its ombudsman. In last Sunday's (2/11/07) column, she talked about editing supervision over blogs posted on WP's website. In particular, she said she was flooded with complaints against an entry, posted in January, concerning the troops in Iraq. Somehow, the following sentence appeared in that post: " it was an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary -- oops sorry, volunteer -- force that thinks it is doing the dirty work." Yesterday's WP had a follow-up story on that post; in it, the executive editor of washingtonpost.com was quoted as saying "We certainly apologize for using it [the word mercenary] on the site. ... I know it offended a lot of people, but I don't think it's something he should be fired for." Was he or was he not fired? I am too stupid to tell from reading that follow-up story, though it mentioned that the blogger apologized "for his 'blasphemy'," and that he was ambushed "in a parking lot, called his remarks 'disgraceful,' and said that The Post and NBC News, where [this blogger] works as an analyst, will be 'forever tainted' by the incident." Today's New York Times has an editorial, "The Courage of Others' Convictions," concerning the Dixie Chicks, a trio of female vocalists who won three top awards (album of the year, record of the year, and song of the year) at the Grammy Awards last Sunday. It seems that, back in 2003, the lead singer, in a concert in London, said that she was ashamed that President Bush was from her home state of Texas (she opposed the Iraq war). Since then, according to the editorial, "their music was boycotted and banned by country music stations, their CDs were burned and smashed, and group members' lives were threatened." The editorial continues to say that "The Chicks' offense was ... labeled unpatriotic." The editorial ends with a reference to another incident more than half a century ago: "Lililian Hellman scalded an Academic Awards ceremony in 1977, 25 years after she defied the House Un-American Activities Committee." Today's WP also carries a story that two bloggers on the staff of a presidential candidate on the Democractic side were fired for using languages that infuriated people in power. So much for freedom of speech.

What is democracy - III (#331, Topic P)

2007-02-11T11:59:00.000-05:00

When I am using my computer, I usually have TV in the background. Last night, PBC showed a BBC segment on Russian President Vladimir Putin at the international security conference in Munich. Today, the Washington Post has this as its lead story, quoting Putin as saying: "Russia is constantly being taught democracy, and the people who try to teach it don't learn it themselves." I must admit that, though I have tried, very hard, to learn what democracy is, I have never been able to put my hands on a book on what democracy is. I have to infer that democracy is easier said than done. Indeed, while reading today's WP story, I thought, maybe, I should compile one myself, using what I have gathered in recent months as a starting point. I was thinking of the following entries. "(1) Democracy means voting. (2) A precondition to voting is to have a campaign chest -- for the 2008 election, the minimum is $50 million; $100 million is better. (3) Because voting is expensive, it needs to be done only once every four years. (4) After you have voted, retire and come back in four years; your vote is valuable." Then, in another section of today's WP, I read another lead story, by a retired Army lieutenant general who also was a former director of the National Security Agency and now is a Yale professor -- certainly much more authoritative and, indeed, sober. He wrote, inter alia, the following: "First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. ... [Neoconservative agitators] ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today. ... Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to ge over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.)" The last sentence, in brackets, is certainly a revelation. After reading it, the quote I frequently make comes to mind again: "Do what I say; don't do what I do" -- or, what I did, for that matter.

Arithmetic puzzle (#330, Topic N)

2007-02-10T23:15:00.001-05:00

From time to time, Washington Post has an arithmetic puzzle. Whenever I see one, I am always reminded of the time I took the entrance examination to a prestigious middle school in China. This was a playing-field-leveling device, allowing candidates who had only a couple years of English to solve problems that require little narrative. In today's WP, I see the following puzzle, where I = 5 and N = 1:
RED
RED
RED (+
-----
WINS

I solved a similar puzzle at that entrance exam; with that, I was admitted -- to the A section, no less -- despite my low proficiency in English. The answer to today's puzzle in WP will be given in Monday's edition, 2/12. Unable to resist the temptation to see whether my mental capacity has deteriorated to that below a 12-year-old (as I was at the time), I hazard a solution below:
R = 8; E = 3; D = 9; W = 2; S = 7. We'll see how I fare Monday.

Applying Sun Tzu to war of politics (#329, Topic P)

2007-02-09T23:48:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post (#327), I mentioned that, in my view, "Politics is a zero-sum game at its purest. Its rules of engagement are cut-and-dry (vote count), its decision criterion is clear-cut (majority/plurality wins), and its result is cut-throat (winner takes all)." This quote is from the preface to my translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War (as The Art of Leadership by Sun Tzu); it was published in October 2000, a month or so before the November 2000 presidential election in USA. When I was doing entry #327, PBS's second installment of "The Supreme Court" was in the background. With this juxtaposition, I could not help recognizing the irony of what I was relating. For the 2000 presidential election, the voting results from Florida were crucial -- the candidate winning Florida would win the presidency. So, while it seems that counting votes cast by citizens in Florida would be doubly important at this critical juncture, what actually took place was the reverse. In the second installment of "The Supreme Court," the court actually took action to stop vote counting in Florida. On the criterion of "majority/plurality wins," given the peculiar provisions in the constitution (stating that the right to vote for the presidency vests with the electoral college), a candidate with the largest number of total votes cast by all citizens in all states and jurisdictions is not necessarily the president-elect -- this happened in two previous elections, and it happened again in 2000. My good friend, Anonymous, in commenting on entry #327, suggested a good way of leveling the playing field -- "forcing each Presidential candidate to run on US$5.0 million each." But, war -- and, by extension, politics -- is invariably an exercise in, using a word in vogue, asymmetry. (Only in war games, such as Xiangqi or the western chess, do the two teams begin playing with a level playing field.) I have read, on many occasions, that restricting spending money in political campaigns is a freedom-of-speech violation. Besides, what can $5 million do? We are talking billions!

Voting in congress (#328, Topic P)

2007-02-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

It is always interesting to read how the congress spends its time when it is in session. The most pressing topic confronting it at the moment, it seems, is to debate/vote on President Bush's "surge" of troop deployment in Iraq. Indeed, today's Washington Post has this as its front-page story; its headline says: "7 GOP Senators Back War Debate: Lawmakers Had Blocked Action on Troop Resolution." Reading in context, it seems that, last week, the Senate's minority leader, using procedural tactics, allowed the debate to go on and on -- thereby delaying, if not preventing, a vote on the issue itself. If a democracy's signal feature is to vote, it is really interesting to read that, once elected, a senator or a representative would prefer not to vote -- at least not to vote on substantive matters. A columnist in today's WP comments: "The result of [the minority leader's] tactics is that no resolution will be passed by the Senate anytime soon." He then follows with this gem: "The White House was overjoyed." Interesting. Today's WP, on A2, has a chronology of work done by the house yesterday. Voting on a bill "commending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln volleyball team." Voting to remember "a deceased NASCAR driver." Voting to name "a court house in Duluth, Minn." Voting to honor "the grandfather of two congressmen." And a "full debate, ... congratulating the Indianapolis Colts for winning the Super Bowl." Two Indiana Republican representatives asked for "unanimous consent to add to the Congressional Record the names of all the members of the Colts offense, defense, substitutions and the coaching staff." Another Republican representative, from Tennessee, even added that Peyton Manning, Colts' quarterback voted the MVP, "is married to a Chattanooga girl." Interesting. Really interesting. A member of the Congress spends many millions of dollars to be elected, and earns between $135,000 and $165,000 per year. And then votes as "people's representative." Well done.

Presidential race and Sun Tzu (#327, Topic P)

2007-02-07T23:06:00.000-05:00

In 2000, when I translated Sun Tzu's classic as The Art of Leadership by Sun Tzu, I wrote 26 case studies specific to the book (two each for its 13 chapters). Of these, 11 are on USA's 2000 Presidential nomination process. In the preface, I explained my reasoning for including these cases as follows. "Sun Wu's leadership concepts and planning emphasis adapt well -- perhaps even better -- to politics. Politics is a zero-sum game at its purest. Its rules of engagement are cut-and-dry (vote count), its decision criterion is clear-cut (majority/plurality wins), and its end result is cut-throat (winner takes all). " In my very first case study, labeled Republican Party Presidential Nomination for 2000 - The Iowa Straw Poll, I discussed how a candidate may use the Iowa Poll and Sun Tzu's 5 factors of success in war (#326) to self-assess his/her relative attractiveness. Now that the 2008 nomination process is upon us, I am tempted to do the same. Though the earliest primary is about a year away, hopefuls are already jockeying for position. Indeed, a story in today's Washington Post states, in passing, that many have "referred to [this year's money race] as the first presidential primary." Fund raising may be equated to "Support", Sun Tzu's 5th factor of sucess in war, which he elaborated as "military organization, administrative direction, and fiscal appropriations." Fund-raising allows a candidate to ask himself/herself questions such as, as noted in my case, "Are my resources adequate? Do I have a support advantage?" According to today's Wall Street Journal, "on July 1, 1999, Mr. [George W.] Bush reported raising a record $36 million in six months. Within days, two Republican hopefuls ... dropped out of the race. ... By the end of the year, [two more] also quit after lagging in the money race." For the 2008 race, in reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, as of 12/31/06, Rudolph Giuliani, formerly mayor of NYC, led the Republican candidates with $2,093,993 in his campaign chest; among Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton, #1 among all candidates, had $11,021,087; Sen. Chris Dodd, #2 overall, had $4,925,913; Sen. Joe Biden, #3 overall, had $3,598, 479; and Sen. Barack Obama, #4 among Democrats and #5 overall, had $516,553. Several campaigns "are shooting for about $30 million [in their campaign chests] in that first [quarterly] report" due 3/31/07. At the moment, there are about 10 Republican candidates and an equal number of Democratic candidates. I also read that, to be viable, a candidate must generate between $50 million and $100 million. Thus, for the 2008 race, we may look forward to campaign spending of between $1 billion and $2 billion. My, my, democracy is an expensive proposition.

Sun Tzu on authority to declare war (#326, Topic C)

2007-02-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

After President Bush talked about "surge" in troop deployment in Iraq, I came across several essays on the authority to declare war in USA. Interestingly, for a topic as important as this, a story in TIME suggested that Founding Fathers never gave an unequivocal answer. Thus, I read, with great interest, an op-ed piece in the 1/31 issue of Washington Post. Responding to that piece, I submitted a letter to the editors of WP. Given my batting average on this front (about .020), I was not surprised that my submission did not appear in print. For the record, this submission is reproduced below.
Sun Tzu's Art of War (c512 BCE) begins with "War is a major affair of the State." In my translation of this classic (as The Art of Leadership by Sun Tzu, published in 2000), I provided the following annotation: "Affairs of the State are the domain of heads of state; of these, only two, deemed major, expect the head of state's personal attention: officiating in ceremonies honoring past kings and deciding whether to engage in war." After saying that "For better understanding, [war] needs to be delineated into five factors and analyzed separately," Sun Tzu offered "Direction," dealing with the decision to engage in war, as Factor 1, and "Commandership," dealing with the conduct of war, as Factor 4. He then subtly suggested that, for best results, the latter be delegated to another person. (Sun Tzu's work was intended to be read by heads of state.) America's Founding Fathers seem to have come to the same conclusion. As succintly stated by Fred Barbash, "Why Would Congress Surrender?" [Jan 31], they vested the Congress, which, collectively, represents the head of a democratic state) with the authority to "declare war" (Article I of the Constitution), while making the president the commander-in-chief in Article II.
While doing this entry, my TV in the background is tuned to C-SPAN2, showing Secretary of Defense Gates's testimony before a Senate Committee. A Republican senator from South Carolina, in his commentary, says: "We cannot have 435 commanders-in-chief or 435 secretaries of state." The implication is that the conduct of war is best given to the president -- which is not inconsistent with Article II of the Constitution. The question of who has the authority to declare war -- or its converse, to end a war -- is not addressed. Again, it is strange that an issue as important as the authority to declare/end a war is still under debate in a democracy that is more than 200 years old.

SuperBowl evening at our retirement community (#325, Topic D)

2007-02-05T15:13:00.000-05:00

After posting my entry yesterday (#324), at 6:15 pm, and then dinner at home, my wife and I, at 7 pm, left for our retirement community's clubhouse for a Fireside Forum on Eleanor Roosevelt. At the clubhouse, we went to the foyer, where there is a fireplace and two 50" HDTV mounted on walls. I thought the forum would be held at that cozy foyer and, thus, was disappointed to see only 4 people sitting nearby, three women and 1 man. As it turned out, the talk was to be held at the auditorium (the auditorium was closed for some time for renovation); the four residents were watching the Super Bowl, which, by that time, was about 10 minutes old, with the score 14-6 Bears. The auditorium has 500+ seats; when the talk started at 7:30, there were about 300 in attendance. After introduction, the speaker, a U of Maryland professor (who was, at one time, a Washington Post reporter) thanked the attendees for attending, mentioning, specifically, the sub-freezing temperature and the Super Bowl. The talk was shorter than expected (lasting but 40+ minutes), though it was followed by a fairly long Q&A period. Unable to contain myself, as usual, I asked: "You talked about drug use and addiction in the family. To what extent was opium a factor?" (My wife and I went in early, at about 7:15, and were able to find good seats: the fourth row near the podium, with an unobstructed view of the speaker.) She looked at me, and, without missing a beat, said: "You mean the Delano family and their opium trade in China." She said a few words on this and then went on to say that one of the family members did have an addiction to opium, caused by using it, medicinally at first, for knee pain. As we passed through the foyer on our way to the parking area, there were only three in front of this 50" HDTV -- two women and 1 man. One woman volunteered the score at that point: 22-17 Colts in the 3rd quarter. Upon returning home, I was able to turn the TV on, mainly as background, while working on my computer. I saw the opening kickoff return (when the game was barely 14 seconds old), witnessed a few plays in the 4th quarter, and knew the final score was 29-17 Colts. I did not see any of the commercials (at $2.6 million per 30 seconds), though it became a hot topic in the media (the Wall Street Journal has a 1-1/2-page coverage in today's edition)

Super Bowl XLI (#324, Topic G)

2007-02-04T18:05:00.000-05:00

In the last decade or so, among professional sports in USA, the biggest game is, most likely, the Super Bowl, whose 41st encounter will be held this evening in Miami, beginning at 6:30. Ticket to today's game, according to CNBC, were offered by scalpers at $10,000 each a few days ago, but down to $2,000 each last Friday, and even to $1,700 each on the internet. The minimum wage in USA, before it was adjusted to $7.25 over a two-year period last week, was $5.35 per hour -- it would take a hamburger flipper, earning the minimum wage, almost 1900 hours -- 10+ months -- to make $10,000 before taxes; a Super Bowl game will be over in 3 or 4 hours. With 6 billion people watching over TV around the world, a 30-second ad costs more than $2 million. The economics of professional sports is staggering. The biggest game begets the biggest gaming (there is no gambling in USA, only gaming); I would not be surprised if several billion dollars were bet on the game's outcome. One columnist predicted a score of 31-28 Bears, on the ground that Chicago Bears are strong on defense. And, in tense games, defense tends to shine over offense. I have seen Super Bowl only once, VII, between the undefeated Miami and Washington Redskins, in Los Angeles -- at that time, I was on leave to a Federal government agency from my professorship at U of Washington, and was on business in Los Angeles that weekend. I managed to buy a ticket just outside the stadium -- at face value, for $20, if my memory serves me. The stadium was not full, and the game (the first time I ever watched a professional football game in person) was the dullest I had witnessed up to that time. (Miami won, 14:7.) I have since seen two other pro football games, one 2 or 3 years ago in Washington (the security check was extremely tight, spoiling whatever fun there was), and the other last Christmas eve in Detroit, between Lions and Chicago Bears. Again, if my memory serves me, during the entire second quarter of that Lions-Bears game, neither team made a first down; it was punting back and forth for the entire 15 minutes, though the game, during the second half, was quite exciting. Using this game as a gauge (at that time, Detroit's record was 2-12, one of the poorest, while Chicago's was 12-2, one of the best), I do not think this XLI encounter will be a high-scoring game, nor do I think Chicago will prevail. Of course, I have never seen Indianapolis Colts in play, so the above is merely heresy on my part. At 7:30 tonight, our retirement community has a Fireside Forum, feathering a speaker on Eleanor Roosevelt. My wife wants to go to listen to that lecture. Since I do not watch ballgames over TV anyway, we'll be at the Fireside Forum. It would be interesting to find out how many others from our community (which has a population close to 10,000) would be there. We'll see.

"Articulate" (#323, Topic A)

2007-02-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, a presidential candidate, in throwing his hat into the Democratic-party- primary ring, commented, when asked by a reporter, that a fellow presidential candidate (#310) was "the first African-American who is clean, articulate". The comment was intended to be a praise (certainly, it was not meant to bring about any controversy) , but the media took it differently, accusing this newest presidential candidate with tinges of racism. This brings back an issue that has been on my mind for, by now, 20+ years. It was 1985; I was interviewed by the World Bank Group for a position, and talked to quite a few staff members in the process. At that time, I was in the academia for over 30 years and a tenured full professor for over 20, with dozens of papers and 8 books under my belt. After I joined WB, I somehow got to read some of the notes written by people I talked to. One said that I was "articulate." While a lot has taken place over the 20+ years, and while my memory has been deteriorating by the day, somehow, this word left a strong impression with me -- I always thought it was a strange word, but I could not put my fingers on why I thought it this way -- until now, until I read the various commentaries by the punditry on this current event. It is racism -- subtle, yes; almost unnoticeable, yes; probably unintended, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Still, it is racism. The implication is that you -- I -- being not a WASP, cannot be expected to speak the WASP language in complete sentences, let alone in grammatically correct sentences. When you -- I -- prove to be beyond this normal expectation, the only adjective that comes to a WASP's mind is articulate. So, this 20+ year-old puzzle is solved. Q.E.D. Thank you, senator from a state in which I have an oceanfront condo for 30+ years.

China's antisatellite-missle test - II (#317, Topic F)

2007-01-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

My good friend, Anonymous, who has kept me honest in my postings, has done it again (see comment to #313); I thank him. In it, he said that China signed an international understanding, back in 1985, concerning moves to prevent the militarization of space. I confess that I know nothing about it. So, after this comment, I paid particular attention to subsequent developments on this topic. On 1/25, Washington Post had a long op-ed piece, by the director of Asia studies at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. After a long list of complaints against China, she declared: "If we want China to be a responsible world power on issues such as energy security, climate changes, human rights and even space-based weapons, we need to step up and lead. We can and should condemn China for not respecting the international rules governing these issues or negatively affecting other countries' well-being, but we must be prepared to play by the same rules. While other powers may have granted American exceptionalism in the past, China is not inclined to do so. Indeed, China is more likely to seek its own 'exceptional' status." Reading between lines, it is clear that USA has not set a good example. A case in point might be the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. China, as a developing country, is exempt from signing it, while USA, as the leading industrial power, is expected to sign it but didn't. So, this director wants China to respect "international rules" even when they do not apply to her, while excuses USA for not respecting same on the ground of "exceptionalism." What a sweet deal. The 1/27 issue of Economist, received yesterday, has a 2+ column coverage of this ASM story; a key paragraph, to me, is the following: "George Bush has refused to talk to China about a proposal it [China] raised in 2002, with Russia's backing, for a treaty outlawing the 'weaponisation' of space. Mr Bush authorised a new national space policy in August last year that irked the Chinese. It defended America's right to use space for defense and intelligence gathering purposes as well as to stop 'adversaries' from using space in ways that threaten American 'national interests.'" So, this must be the "American exceptionalism" the CFR director was talking about. But, for our purpose, it seems that international laws concerning ASM tests are yet to be written. In any case, to my way of thinking, ASM in the 21st century is analogous to anti-aircraft artellery in the 20th and to anti-warship gunnery in the 19th. It was the lack of the last that allowed Britain, with a fleet of 20 obsolete gunboats, to control China's coastlines and subdue the then most dominant country in the world -- the Opium War -- an event China is unlikely to forget for millennia to come.

"Surge" as a gaming strategy (#316, Topic P)

2007-01-27T23:50:00.000-05:00

President Bush, in his State of the Union address on 1/23, talked about a "surge" in troop deployment in Iraq, raising it by 21,500, or about 20%. The following day or two, I heard, over CNBC and BBC, two reporters' commentary, suggesting that this strategy is "a gamble." I had the same impression -- ever since the contents of this SOU address were leaked, several days before the actual delivery date. I was equating the president's proposal to a sure-fire gaming strategy I know (on Wall Street, gambling is a taboo word, preferring to use the word gaming instead, so I'll follow suit) -- the strategy applies well to playing roulette. One of roulette's many playing options is to bet on numbers (odd or even) or on color (red or black); the payoff is 1:1. The strategy, which is simplicity itself, calls for betting a single chip the first time. When (or whenever) you win, remove the winning chip(s) and leave only a single chip on the table. When you lose, double your bet. Thus, on the second turn (after losing the first turn), bet two chips. If this turn also results in a loss, double again -- making the bet 4 chips. If the luck is against you, the next bet would be 8 chips, then 16 chips, 32, 64, 128, etc. Any time one of these bets comes in, remove all chips except one. So, given the law of large numbers, you are bound to win once in a while -- though the winning might be a pittance. The loss, on the other hand, could mount quickly -- and exponentially. The strategy fails when one of two conditions, ostensibly remote, becomes applicable: (1) the house has a table limit -- no single bet beyond a pre-set large number -- say, 10,000 chips; or (2) you do not have money to double and redouble and redouble again. (On a doubling basis, on the 9th round, the bet would be 256; 10th, 512; 11th, 1024; 12th, 2048; 13th, 4096; and 14th, 8192). When either of these conditions becomes applicable, you lose, and lose spectacularly. The president's surge proposal, by merely adding 20% of troops, is not a doubling move -- it is hardly substantial (as felt by many in the Congress); the strategy, it seems to me, resembles betting both odd and even, or both red and black. With each turn, you win some and lose an equal amount, while allowing you to make the claim that you have won, which is technically -- though partially -- correct. Another claim you can make is that you are at the time for a long time -- which is a feat in itself. But -- and, in roulette, there is a big BUT. The roulette's turning table has 36 numbered numbers, 1 through 36, half odd and half even; in addition, it has a 0. When the ball lands on that slot, a 3%+ chance, the house wins all.

Christian foster parents? - II (#315, Topic R)

2007-01-26T23:44:00.001-05:00

Two of Chinese-language weekly newspapers (published onFridays) feature the Tennessee foster-parenting case (#314) as lead stories in their issues today; one covers it rather extensively, in one page and half. From reading them, I learned that the father of the 8-year-old girl was a professor in China; he came to USA in 1995, to Arizona State U as a graduate student. In 1997, he was awarded a scholarship from U of Tennessee at Memphis, and became a PhD candidate in Economics. A few months after he and his wife agreed the Caucasian couple to be their daughter's foster parents (which took place in February 1999) , he was falsely accused of sexual harassment (in September 1999) -- falsely, because he was later acquitted of all charges, though this verdict came too late to be of any assistance to the father. Almost immediately, he was asked by the university administration to suspend attending school, as a result of which he lost his student visa. Beginning a week or so after that, the Caucasian couple tried every which means to make his and his wife's visiting their daughter difficult. In October, they requested the Caucasian couple to return their daughter to them -- it was denied, on the ground that the wife was again pregnant, and that it was best to defer any action. In the meantime, he received a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, threatening deportation. In January 2000, on their daughter's first birthday anniversary, the couple wanted to take her for an outing and to take some photographs. This request was denied, on the ground that the daughter was ill. This prompted the husband to say: "Enough is enough. Don't give me any further excuses." The Caucasian husband retorted: "Get out right this moment." When the father responded with "I'll never leave," the Caucasian husband dialled 911. In court, the Caucasian couple testified that the police said "Don't come back again, else you will be incarcerated" -- though the police testified, when he was called to the same court, that he merely said: "Don't come back today." In any case, the Chinese couple never visited their daughter from that day onward. In the following months, the Caucasian couple's attorney wrote letters to the husbant's employer (he was a manager in a restaurant) as well as to the INS, requesting the former to terminate his employment and the latter to deport the Chinese couple immediately. He also wrote to faculty members at the University who are of Chinese ethnicity, threatening lawsuit if they continue to lend support to the Chinese couple. One faculty member responded: "Well, we are tenured professors. We are not afraid. If you want to bring suit, do so." Of course, this empty bluff was called; nothing happened. While reading the stories, I kept asking myself: Is this the Christian love we are witnessing?

Christian foster parents? (#314, Topic R)

2007-01-25T15:21:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's Washington Post prominently displayed, on page A3, a 4-column story, complete with two photographs, on "Court Rules Against Foster Parents." It seems that, a couple from China were living in Memphis TN, where the husband worked as a restaurant manager. Eight years ago, they had a new-born baby, a daughter. Perhaps short of funds, certainly short of living space, the Chinese couple sought foster parenting when she was 3 weeks old. Another church member, who ran an adoption agency, "vouched for the [Caucasian] couple," fellow members in the same church, "as experienced, loving foster parents." So the baby was left to the Caucasian couple's care. When the Chinese couple asked for their daughter's return when she was 2, "the relations turned ugly." Indeed, they "won a court order barring the [Chinese couple] from any contact with [their daughter]." Why that Caucasian couple could win such a court order is beyond me -- and, for cry out loud, where was the adoption-agency owner when her professionalism was most needed? And where was her Christian spirit of love and care? But, more fascinating events were yet to unfold. "A Memphis judge stripped the [Chinese couple] of their parental rights in February 2004, citing 'parental misconduct' and abandonment, suggesting that [the Chinese couple] had pursued the custody case merely to delay their own deportation." The WP story mentioned that the baby's mother "used to hide inside a neighborhood gas station [after the earlier court ruling barring contact] to catch glimpes of [her daughter] being taken for a walk or out for a ride." So much for "parental misconduct" and "abandonment." When the mother shouted that she wanted her daughter back, the "lower court concluded that her behavior amounted to 'emotional instability' that would be detrimental to [the daughter]." So much for judicial impartiality, at least in a lower court in USA's South. Luckily, the Tennessee Supreme Court thought otherwise -- it found no evidence that the daughter was willfully abandoned. "The justices concluded that the couple misunderstood the possible implications of transferring custody and guardianship to the [Caucasian couple], believing it merely enabled the[m] to get [the daughter] health insurance." The Caucasian couple cited "emotional upheaval" to the daughter as grounds for their keeping her, but the high court rejected that as well -- it "does not constitute the substantial harm required to prevent the parents from regaining custody." Bravo. So much for the pretense of using church to take advantage of immigrants who have neither the language proficiency nor the financial resources to fight the establishment. But, in the final analysis, it is parental love in the Confucian tradition that prevailed, and prevails -- it trumps all.

China's antisatellite-missle test (#313, Topic F)

2007-01-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

On Jan 11, China destroyed an aging weather satellite in orbit. A week later, this successful testing of an antisatellite missile was officially acknowledged. This week-long silence apparently irked the so-called "international community." Exactly why this is so completely escapes me. The test, apparently, was conducted over China's airspace; thus, unless there are specific international regulations covering same, it is none of other countries' business. Further, since, by definition, an antisatellite missile is a defensive device, a country testing a defensive device is -- or, at least, should be -- of no concern to other countries. Indeed, if my memory serves me, USA conducted two such tests last year: one over Alaska and the other somewhere over USA's west. I did not recall reading about other countries being irked. If anything, it was the US's Department of Defense that was irked -- the first test (again, assuming my memory serves me) was not a success; the second test was a success, partly because the satellite that was shot down emitted a signal, allowing the antisatellite missile to follow the signal and destroy it. According to today's Wall Street Journal, China briefed USA's Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher Hill, during his visit to Beijing last week, though "U.S. is hoping for more information about the test." It would be interesting to know if the weather satellite used in the Chinese test also emitted a signal. According to WSJ, "analysts outside China have speculated that the test was intended to ... put U.S. on notice that it no longer enjoys unchallenged military domination of space." WSJ continued by saying that "the U.S. military relies heavily on satellites for surveillance, communication and weapons-guidance systems;" one probaly could infer that, in such uses, other countries' airspace has been violated. When the Chinese foreign-ministry's spokesman was asked about "concerns that debris from the destryed satellite could damage other countries' satellites, he said that the issue was too technical for him to address." Perhaps he was too polite. Before answering that question, one must first establish, what right, if any, that other countries' satellites were travelling over China's airspace. The same would hold true, without asking, when other countries' satellites were travelling ove USA's airspace.

Gasohol (#312, Topic B)

2007-01-23T15:38:00.000-05:00

President Bush is scheduled to deliver his sixth annual State of the Union address tonight. One of the topics he is likely to cover in his address, widely speculated among commentators over the airwaves all day, appears to be energy policy, including strategic petroleum reserve and alternative energy sources, particularly ethanol. At the beach, one of the games I enjoyed playing is to find gasoline stations posting the lowest prices -- Delaware, with lower gasoline taxes, generally has a 20-cents-per-gallon advantage over Maryland. Last week was no exception. One station, in Rehobeth Beach near a factory-outlet shopping mall, posted premium at $2.219 per gallon. The price was not only 34 cents per gallon cheaper than the gas in our car (I filled the tank in a station near us before going to the beach); it was also five cents per gallon cheaper than other stations in Delaware. (Hey, I am a retiree; every penny counts.) So, I drove in. At the pump, there was a small sticker: 10% GASOHOL. So, the gasoline this station was selling contained 10% of ethanol. I have never added ethanol before. All I read was that gasoline from ethanol was more expensive to process than gasoline from crude oil. (On the basis of BTU content, the former costs between $1.50 and $2.50 per gallon, while the latter costs between $0.50 and $0.60 per gallon.) Here, not only was the price not higher, it was in fact the lowest. (On the way home, I never saw another station posting such a low price.) So, unsure of what I was getting, before pumping any gas, I went in to the station and talked to the manager. She said that many customers stated to her that that was the best gaoline they had ever added. Being a good sport (after all, I was driving my wife's car), I took a chance and filled the tank. My instinctive reaction was that it ran smoother -- perhaps the octane rating is higher than 93 posted -- and quieter. So, my first ethanol experience was a pleasant surprise on at least two fronts -- the low price and the good performance. Ever since that experience, I got into thinking -- why is gaohol so reasonably priced? Is there a government subsidy about which I know nothing? The latter point seems quite plausible. A decade and half ago, while a staff member of the World Bank Group, I had the opportunity to visit a conglomerate in Brazil. One of its companies was involved in ethanol processing -- at a loss. Upon inquiry, I was told that the government provided ample subsidy to assure itself of a good energy source. I am curious how the president plans to cover this topic in tonight's address. Let us wait and see.

Audacity of Hope (#310; Topic P)

2007-01-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

The first person, on the Democratic side, who threw his hat into the ring by announcing the formation of an exploratory committee (to assess the candidate's ability to generate campaign contributions) is an African-American, a senator from a midwest state from its state university I earned my PhD. He wrote a book, a bestseller no less -- The Audacity of Hope. I had an occasion to read some of the chapters, particularly the epilogue. In the epilogue, the senator talked about his experiences in attending the Democratic Conventions in the past. In early years, when he was a nobody, he dreamed about attending a convention but the dream was simply a dream -- nothing new here, any nobody -- and I am one -- can only dream about such occasions throughout one's life. In a later convention, when it was held in Chicago, he landed at the O'Hare airport and presented himself at a car-rental counter to pick up a car he had reserved. Interestingly, the clerk denied that he had a car reserved; he had to call the credit-card company. What happened next was not stated in the book; the sentence immediately following talked about something completely unrelated to this unresolved issue of denying him a rental car -- some deletion? poor editing? no idea. In any event, we all knew that he gave a rousing speech at the convention that propelled himself into a hot property, showing his likeliness on covers of news weeklies and encouraging him, as noted above, to be the first to form an exploratory committee. Yes, he has come a long way; yes, his audacity has worked for him; yes, his hope has materialized; yes, we are happy for him. But, I probably would not combine the words audacity and hope in the same phrase -- at least not for me, and probably not for millions others. For more than a dozen years in the past, when I registered as a Democrat, I voted, in one presidential primary in Maryland, for Jesse Jackson, when he was a candidate. After moving to the retirement community 20 months ago, I decided to revert to my earlier designation -- as an unaffiliated/independent. Now, of course, I do not have to worry how I should cast my vote during the primary (independents are not permitted, at least in Maryland, to cast votes in primaries). Another candidate, Hillary Clinton, is as much a member of a minority as this African-American is.

US - A Service Economy? (#308, Topic B)

2007-01-17T23:26:00.000-05:00

Our oceanfront condo needs new carpet. Though carpet in our unit has been replaced many times in the 30+ years of our owning it, we never know/knew the exact footage of areas requiring carpeting -- somehow, it is considered trade secret to which we are not privy. This time is no different. But, with our regular carpet installer having retired, we had to shop around. Clearly, before anything can be done, our unit needs to be measured. I never realize that it is so difficult to arrange for a service such as this. The standard elapsed time is at least three days, which is more time than we have planned to stay in our unit. During our second visit, we were advised of a cancellation, so we lucked in. Our measurer came very much on time, at 8:30. I thought we were his first assignment for the day. Not so; we were his third. He acted very professional, though he used only a measuring tape and a clipboard. The clipboard, as it turned out, is a lap-top without a keyboard -- he showed it to me, with a sketch showing the exact shape and dimension of one of the bedrooms he measured. I asked him whether he would be the installer as well. No. He is a professional measurer -- he does this between 20 and 25 times a day. He is not an employee of the store with which we contracted, but an independent contractor. I do not know how much he is paid, but I know that the store charges us $35 for this service. Assuming he gets $25, his daily income is between $500 and $625, or between $12,000 and $15,000 a month. Not a bad profession to be in. Our condo is also wired for DSL service -- but, being on the 12th floor of a high-rise, the reception has been poor. On this trip, I decided to call Verizon, our local telephone service provider, to have our unit separately wired. The standard installation charge is $199, not unreasonable, since I spent more than that when a consultant did the wiring of our unit in the retirement community. What surprised me was the long wait. I called on Monday, January 15, but the first opening for a Verizon technician to visit us to do the wiring is February 23, a solid 6 weeks away! If this is not bad enough, the following day, I received a call from Verizon to the effect that my appointment had to be moved forward another week -- to March 2. Since I am not handy, I really had no choice. Tom Friedman, in his The World is Flat, talks about job security in the service industry. These two instances exemplify this point vividly.

Gender equality in US Politics (#304, Topic P)

2007-01-04T23:27:00.000-05:00

Today is said to be a big day in US politics. It is the first day of the 104th congress, but, more importantly, it is the first day when Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from CA and formerly the House Minority Leader, assumes the role of Speaker of the House -- the first time when a woman assumes this role in USA's 200+ years of history. For a country that incessantly talks about other countries' deficiencies in gender equality, it is indeed good to see that this, finally, is being practiced in USA. So, as an observer of democracy, let us first say: It is about time. Let us also ask a question: Why does it take so long? The media reports that the new Speaker's and her party's first order of business is to introduce a package of rule changes that, according to today's Washington Post, "ban gifts and trips from lobbyists, restrict privately funded junkets and begin to sever the cozy relationship between lobbyists and lawmakers that scandalized the last Congress." Other rule changes, according to WP, are to "combat many of the strong-arm tactics that Republicans used to leave House Democrats virtually irrelevant when the GOP was in control." So, this is the way democracy is -- or, at least, was -- practiced in USA. WP also cites other interesting practices I never knew before: (1) votes were "held open indefinitely while leaders twist arms to win the outcome they want," and (2) lawmakers were not "notified before final legislative negotiations between the House and Senate." The proposed rule changes would require "those negotiations ... be held in public, and once they were complete, changes could not be slipped into legislative agreements in the dead of the night." Arm twisting. Secret negotiations. Dead-of-the-night changes. So, this is democracy in action in USA. Shortly after Pelosi knew she would be the new Speaker, in early November 2006, she smartly remarked: It takes a woman to clean the House. Again, let us say, Indeed, it is about time.

Pack rat (#303, Topic D)

2007-01-03T23:33:00.001-05:00

Among 3 pages of comics carried by Washington Post every day, I tend to identify with Dagwood in Blondie (Dean Young is the cartoonist) -- a lazy fellow who takes naps whenever he can (ditto with me), avoids doing house work by giving all sorts of excuses (ditto), makes last-minute dashes just to avoid being late (ditto), and eats whenever he is not taking naps and longs for food whenever he is not at the dining table (ditto and ditto). Yesterday's 3 panels capture another trait I share with Dagwood: a pack rat. In the first panel, Dagwood asks Blondie, his wife, "Have you seen my old bowling ball?" (Luckily, I do not bowl; I do have, however, old tennis balls.) Blondie, perhaps taking advantage of this being just the second day of a new year, offers a cheerful suggestion: "Are you finally going to throw that thing away this year?" Blondie is usually depicted as an understanding and supportive wife -- here, I think she is not her usual self -- referring to one of his prized possessions as that thing is simply too much. Understandably, Dagwood does not take it well. Thus, in panel 2, he says: "Of course not! I just want to know where it is." Well said; simply perfect. Undisturbed, Blondie's come back is: "Well, you don't use it, and you aren't going to throw it away, so it shouldn't matter where it is." The logic behind this statement is, it must be admitted, unassailable. Still, Dagwood argues, in panel 3, "What kind of twisted logic is that?!" Indeed, unassailable is one thing, unacceptable is another.

Presidential pardon (#302, Topic P)

2007-01-02T22:46:00.000-05:00

Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president, who died last Tuesday evening in Palm Desert CA (#294), had his body flown in to Washington DC for public viewing the last few days and a national funeral today, beginning with a motorcade at 9:30 am, a memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral at 10:30 (where President George Bush, former president George H. W. Bush, and others eulogized), before flying the body out for burial at the Ford presidential museum in Grand Rapids MI. Federal offices, post offices, and the stock markets were all closed in Ford's honor. Debated over the air the last few days were Ford's achievements, his sincerity, serenity, decency. A major topic receiving a lot of pundits' time seems to be Ford's pardoning his immediate predecessor, Richard M. Nixon; most felt that his so doing was the main reason for Ford's inability to be elected on his own volition in 1976. As a layman but an interested observer of democracy, it seems to me that the administrative pardon is a mockery to democracy. It imparts two messages: (1) that the judicial process is deficient, irrelevant, and/or meaningless, and/or (2) that the power of the executive branch is above that of the judiciary. In Nixon's case, he was never referred to the judiciary -- the pardon, in effect, is pre-emptive. I learned that, to be granted a pardon, the pardonee must admit his/her wrong-doing. In Nixon's case, his chief of staff, General Al Haig, got wind that Nixon would be pardoned regardless, advised his boss not to admit any wrong-doing -- which proved to be so. I vaguely recall that, during Nixon's administration, he pardoned a soldier who committed atrocity in Vietnam -- the case was too well-known, so he had a "trial" to calm the international outcry; the soldier was judged to be guilty, but, after a short period of perfunctory incarceration, he was pardoned -- quietly, to escape the unavoidable international attention. There is now a case similar to that one being tried before a US military court: an American soldier violated a 14-year-old girl in Iraq in her house; with more than a dozen eye-witnesses to this action, he proceeded to keep them all. How would this military court rule? If the soldier is judged to have committed wrong-doing, would the president pardon him? We'll see.

Year 2006 in review (#301, Topic D)

2007-01-01T20:13:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year. As usual, I got up at 6:30, and was ready to take my morning walk. But, it was raining. On rainy days, I spend my time by walking backward at the lower-level indoor garage. According to our late Tai Chi teacher, Master Tang, walking backward, which one seldom does, is very helpful to one's lower-back pain -- even better than Tai Chi, which has a short sequence featuring walking bakward. Due to car accidents, I had lower-back pain. Through Tai Chi, in time, the pain became unnoticeable, except when I had to stand still for 15 minutes or longer (as when washing dishes). Thus, this morning, I again walked backward. This being the New Year's Day, this backward walking also gave me a chance to review the year 2006. During the entire year, I was never sick -- nor was my wife. I attributed this to our having a regular routine (up at 6:30 am, nap in the early afternoon, and to bed at 11 pm), modest exercise (for me, daily walk and weekly Tai Chi; for my wife, daily swimming and weekly Tai Chi), good diet (oatmeal and flexseed in the morning; salad and turkey burger, sometime with soup, for lunch; simple Chinese dinner; a glass of soy milk at 9:30 pm), regular physician and dental appointments, flu shots, no cigarettes nor hard liquor. I keep myself mentally alert by reading 3 or 4 dailies (in print: Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Investor Business Daily; on-line, New York Times), several news weeklies (Economist, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report), and several specialized journals. Still, I cannot help feeling that I am not too far away from being inflicted with first-stage dementia. On the last point, I mentioned it to a retired physician, who was sitting next to me at luncheon yesterday (#296); she pooh-poohed the idea, saying that a person who deals with figures all one's time cannot be so inflicted. But I beg to differ. One of my acquaintances, a brother of my college classmates, was a Certified Public Accountant and, when I first met him in Beijing, was the resident representative in China for a Big Five CPA firm. But he later contracted dementia, so much so that he was unable to do his own income tax. I am not far away from that. Recently, I have paid special attention to brain and brain cancer, as several of my friends died with this disease. The current issue of Economist (12/23/06, a holiday double issue) has a special report on brain; I only glanced at it, and need to read it more carefully. In any case, I hope this no-illness streak continues throughout this year.
PS - To the end of 2006, I have blogged for slightly over a year (I began in late December 2005), with 295+ entries, but not quite 300. I have decided to use the last few numbers before 300 for a comprehensive index covering these entries, and begin 2007 with #301.

New Year's eve 2006 (#296, Topic K)

2006-12-31T23:46:00.000-05:00

By now, we have lived in our retirement community for more than a year and half. We begin to know other residents (in addition to those we knew before moving in). Today, at noon, 12 residents of Chinese ancestry got together and went to a Chinese restaurant for our year-end dinner, a tradition in China -- except that, being old, this group decided to change the time to lunch, thereby avoiding driving in the evening. The 12 consisted of 3 couples, 2 single men, and 4 single women -- among the 5 men, I was ranked fourth in seniority. Thus, I drove, taking three others and my wife to the restaurant. Traditional year-end dinners are invariably banquets, with each dish symbolizing (through the shape or name of food served) happiness, success, prosperity in the coming year, etc. Ours was no different. The set-menu we selected was intended for 10, but, with each dish being served on a large plate, the food was plentiful -- along with our reduced ability to consume food, about 1/3 of food was left. (Known for my frugality, the group wanted me to bring home the leftovers. Needless to say, I did not disappoint them.) This evening, the entertainment committee in our retirement community held a New Year's Eve party, offering wines, soft drinks, and a movie; attendees were encouraged to bring snacks and such. Since the party was held in the party room in our building's ground floor, we decided to attend, bringing some Asian-style food with us. About 50 were there -- 10 men and 40 women. My wife remarked that the committee chair, invariably fashionably dressed at the door to welcome attendees, was absent. Indeed, it was the vice chair who came to me, after my wife and I each had a plate and were comfortably seated, to suggest that I pour myself a glass of wine. I joked that I had a long way to drove, but accepted the gracious offer and had some pinot noir. Again, the food was plentiful. Before starting the movie, the vice chair announced that the chair's husband died this morning; thus, she could not be with us; still, she wante everyone to have a good time and stay after the movie. The movie, The Devil Wears Prada, an adaption of a best-seller, is on the tense life on New York's high-fashion industry. Though lively and quite educational (to a country cousin like me), it seems far-removed from a run-of-the-mill retiree's daily life. The movie ended at about 10:30. After eating a piece of cake decorated with Happy New Year and a clock at 2 minutes before midnight, we elected to leave. We could no longer last until midnight. After doing this entry, I retired for the day and Year 2006 -- a solid 15 minutes before Year 2007 is ushered in in the East coast of USA. Happy New Year.

2006 - Year of Chinese stocks (#295, Topic B)

2006-12-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

After yesterday's close, the US markets had another successful year -- "4th straight year, their best since '03", according to today's Investor's Business Daily. "For '06, the Dow led with a 16.3% advance. The S&P 500 rose 13.6%, the Nasdaq climbed 9.5% and the 600 was up 14.1%." Still, it pales when compared to the rest of the world, particularly China. "The leading Shanghai index surged 130% and India's Sensex rallied 47%. Germany's Dax gained 22%. ... Mexico's Bolsa gained 49%." Only Britain's FTSE, rising 11%, and Japan's Nikkei, up "just 7%," lagged behind US's performance. China also claims other firsts. "China-themed ETFs [exchange-traded funds] left the rest in the dust by a country mile in 2006. IShares of FTSE Xinhua China 25 Index gained 82% while Power-Shares' Golden Dragon Halter USX China Fund sprang 52% for the year. IShares MSCI Spain Index came in third with a 48% gain." Among US-originated IPOs [initial public offerings], there were 198 totalling $43 billion in proceeds, with 6 exceeding $1 billion each, and MasterCard the largest at $2 billion. In comparison, the IPO of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China raised $19.07 billion -- the "world's largest" according to Wall Street Journal (10/20/06), and some 44% of the total raised by 198 offerings in USA in 2006. For individual stocks, China Life Insurance, with a price change of +282%, is ranked 3rd among "The Best Stocks of 2006" by IBD. (IBD tracks 8000+ stocks on a daily basis.) While past performance does not necessarily reflect the future, as the saying goes, it is difficult to deny that 2006 has been a banner year for stocks headquartered in China.

Lion, lions, lions, and lions (#294; Topic D)

2006-12-29T20:09:00.000-05:00

On the last day of our visit to our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, our grandchildren's paternal grandmother took us to dinner at a very nice restaurant, the Capital Grille. On either side of the restaurant's entrance is a statue of a lion. The thought suddenly occurred to me that, in the last month or so, I had come across lion or lions at least four times -- two while visiting our son and two while visiting our daughter. While in New York, our son took us to see a Broadway musical, the Lion King. The following day, on my own, I visited the New York Public Library. (An exhibition was on at the time; it inspired me to a thought on which I planned to write an entry in this blog. So far, I could not find time to do it.) The NYPL's entrance also has a pair of lions, one on each side, similar to the entrance to the Capital Grille. While in Detroit, our son-in-law treated us to a professional football game, Chicago Bears v Detroit Lions, on Christmas eve. I have been to only two professional football games before (Miami v Washington in a Super Bowl played in Los Angeles, and a Washington regular home game a couple of years ago); I found both games boring. For this third pro game, the start was equally boring. (We arrived at the stadium a bit late, at the opening moments of 2nd quarter; the first quarter's score was 10:7 Chicago.) For the entire 2nd quarter, there was nothing but 3 down and punt; there was no first-downs, to my recollection. For the second half, I thought one of Lions' ends (R. Williams) played well, catching some long passes for scores. Thus, while Lions were behind by two touchdowns, they came back and even led by a couple of points for a while. Then, through two consecutive field goals, Bears led. With the clock running down, Lions received the kickoff and, for practical purposes, had the last possesion of the ball. Deep in home territory, Lions managed to move the ball forward. Perhaps in desperation, they gambled to gain a first down (rather than to punt) on 4th and survived. On the very last play of the game, another receiving end (M. Williams; no relation to Roy Williams) had his hand on a long pass in the end zone. Had he held on to it, Lions would have won; he didn't, and Lions lost. A very exciting game toward the end, with spectators who chose to remain well pleased. (A sports columnist advocated, in Detroit Free Press, that spectators walked out at 8:47 in 2nd quarter, as a protest of Lions' miserable season. Many, apparently, complied, including some 20 near where we were sitting.) Bears' record was 12: 2, readying for post-season games, while Lions' record was 2:12, tying for the worst-record season with another team. Since the team with the worst record has the first crack at this year's draft pick, it really is to Lions' advantage for losing the game to Bears. So, the write-up in next day's paper was not particularly harsh. Who knows? Maybe Detroit, by losing this game we saw, would have the season's first draft pick. The Capital Grille is a steakhouse. I rose to the occasion and ordered a steak; it was prepared just right, and I really enjoyed it; the food is excellent. Still, our grandson, who enjoys filet minon, ranks it second to Antepasta, an Italian restaurant in Ocean City MD that features charcoal steak (60 oz, good for at least 2 or even 3), which we had visited on two occasions in past years when we congregated at the Bethany DE beach during summer.

Teaching western chess to a 6-year old (#293, Topic G)

2006-12-28T21:26:00.000-05:00

When we parted company at Thanksgiving, our 6-1/2-year-old granddaughter wanted me to teach her how to play western chess the next time we met, which was less than a month -- during the Christmas holidays. Earlier, I have taught her brother how to play the game; when we played, she was always with us, sitting quietly while watching. The fact that she wanted to learn now suggested that she felt she was ready. Western chess, because of two rather inexplicable moves, is more difficult to teach than Xiangqi (Chinese chess, which preceded western chess [or, using a term I coined, Queenqi]). The first such move is en passant, which, technically, is an imaginery move. (The dictionary describes it this way: "a method of capturing a pawn that, in making its first move of two squares, passes over a square [on an adjacent file] controlled by an opposing pawn. The opposing pawn has the right to capture it by advancing immediately to the square that was passed.") A pawn-capture move is difficult enough. (A pawn, on its first move, may move forward one or two squares; afterward, it may move forward only one square at a time -- except in capture, where it moves diagonally forward one square.) An en passant move is simply too much -- at least for a 6-1/2-year-old, in my view. The second such move is castling, which, technically, is not one move, but two moves -- moving two pieces, the King and a Rook, separately, though counting these two separate moves as one -- the logic is difficult to explain, at least to a 6-1/2-year-old. Still another move is queening -- a pawn moving to the last rank is promoted to any piece, generally to a Queen. Though the logic is equally elusive, at least its move is easy to understand. So I decided to introduce it after 3 or 4 games. In each game, I gave our granddaughter ample opportunity to move correctly -- and, later, to move correctly resulting in captures. We set the limit at one game per day (her older brother wanted, and got, equal time). Our granddaughter likes to write, draw, and keep score. On our western-chess contests, she has a 5:0 record against me. She certainly is a quick learner and plays well.

"I am not a Lincoln; I am a Ford" (#292, Topic P)

2006-12-27T23:02:00.000-05:00

Visiting our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, I was impressed by the 3-inch type, PRESIDENT FORD DIES, in the local newspaper, The Detroit Free Press; Ford died the previous evening in Palm Desert CA. A congressman from nearby Grand Rapids, Ford was considered a native son. I asked our son-in-law whether he was a member of the Ford family well known in this motor-town. The answer is no. Ford moved to Michigan when he was two, after his father passed away and his mother re-married; Ford is his step-father's last name. A -- perhaps the -- most important feature of democracy, as viewed by President Bush, is that leaders are elected by majoirty vote. But as practiced in USA, it seems to me that that feature is honored more by its breach; American leaders, at least in recent memory, are the product of legal maneuvers. And Ford is an excellent example. When Richard Nixon, the 37th president, was reelected in 1973, his running mate on the Republican ticket was Spiro Agnew; Ford was the minority leader in the House. When a president is unable to discharge his/her responsibilities, the law in USA states that he/she is to be succeeded by the vice-president; if the vice-president is unable to fill the vacancy, the Speaker of the House is the next in line. Though legalistic, this law is nevertheless simple and straight-forward; still, it cannot cope with modern-day complexities. Here, were Nixon forced out (he was on the verge of being impeached), Agnew, the vice-president, would be the president. But Agnew was under a cloud himself, being charged with corruption and such. (Agnew lived in an exclusive -- exclusionary would be closer to the mark -- area, Kenwood, which has the Kenwood Country Club bordering its north and cherry trees lining its streets; as late as the 50s, Jewish-Americans were not allowed to have property there. To accommodate them and others, another development, Kenwood Park, was established; it is just north of the Kenwood Country Club and adjacent to the well-regarded Walter Whitman High School. How do I know the history? My wife and I lived there, on two tours totalling more than 25 years, before moving to this retirement community.) So, were Agnew similarly impeached, the Speaker of the House would be installed as the president -- but the Speaker was a Democrat, which would be a clear no-no. So, the brightest of the legal community took over. First, force Agnew to resign. Second, install Ford as the new VP. Third, after Nixon left office in mid-stream (he chose to resign in 1974), install Ford as the new president. So, Ford was never on a national ticket. One of the first acts Ford performed, after assuming the presidency, was to pardon Nixon -- "absolute pardon," in Ford's own words. So, in a country where no one is above the law, the president acted no differently from an emperor, who has the absolute power to pardon. Many historians felt that one reason Ford was not elected on his own accord is this very pardoning act. During the day, a local TV station had a segment on Ford uttering, among other gems, the sentence used as the title to this entry.

Xiangqi in Finland (#291, Topic G)

2006-12-21T17:31:00.000-05:00

This morning, 12/21/06, a good friend of mine in Finland, Raimo Lindroos, President of Friends of Chinese Chess in Finland, sent me the following e-mail:
On Saturday [9 Dec 2006], we had our ninth Xiangqi friendship match against the Chinese Embassy in Finland. The match was played in Jarvenpaa with ten players from each side. We played three rounds with mixed pairs. The Embassy won 18.5 : 11.5. The Ambassador Mrs. Ma Keqing and the Jarvenpaa Lord Mayor Erkki Kukkonen played [two] friendly [games] outside the match. The very new Ambassador (she started in May in Finland) won both games. I think these matches are very unique in the entire World! Season Greetings, Raimo
This match is indeed unique, both in scope (10 regular players and an honorary player on each side) as well as in longivity (9 annual matches so far!). It takes both organizational skill and foresight to bring these matches about. And Mr. Lindroos is indeed well suited to this role (as evidenced by his being re-elected as the FCCF's president many times). In addition to being a successful entrepreneur and a correspondence-(western)-chess master, Mr. Lindroos plays a vicious game of Xiangqi. In the second of my 6-volume series on Xiangqi, Xiangqi Syllabus on Cannon - Chinese Chess 2 (1998), dedicated to him and other members of Friends of Chinese Chess in Finland "for their contribution to promoting Xiangqi internationally," I annotated a game he played which won him the 4th Jarvenpaa Xiangqi Championship (August 1996). In recent years, he has become a mentor to younger Finnish Xiangqi players -- a Finnish delegation made its presence felt at the 8th World Xiangqi Championship (Hong Kong 2003), and one of its members won the fourth prize at the 9th WXC (Paris 2005). Well done, Raimo. We again salute you for your contribution to promoting Xiangqi internationally. Kindly keep up the good work.

"Treasury Declines to Rebuke China" (#290, Topic B)

2006-12-20T23:26:00.001-05:00

On page A6 in today's Wall Street Journal, one reads a brief story, whose headline is given above. Compared to the fanfare last week, when Treasury secretary Henry Paulson led a cabinet-level delegation to China to deal with this very issue (and when the story was covered on its front-page), this is truly a letdown. The essence of today's story is that "the Treasury has again declined to brand the country [China] a currency manipulator." What constitutes a "currency manipulator" is never defined. When a country pegs its currency to a fixed rate in US-dollar terms, "that country has, in effect, delegated its treasury function to the Fed", as Larry Ludlow summarized in his program over CNBC today; he further stated that such a move is to be cherished rather than condemned -- I share Ludlow's views fully. There are, at the moment, more than 30 countries using the US dollar as their legal tender. Tagging a country's currency to a fixed exchange rate in US-currency terms is but a step removed from that. Last week, over the same Ludlow's program at CNBC, a commentator angrily protested that promoting a weak US dollar resulting in consumers' paying a higher price is "amoral." Another commentator on the same program stated that the administration must view US's employment policy in the "totality" -- meaning that protectionist actions that benefit certain segments of the US economy (such as textile workers in the south, with one of its senators acting as their vocal spokesman) are invariably at the expense of other industries or the citizenry as a whole. Indeed, this is confirmed by another story I read last week. After some 18 years, the administration has finally removed stiff tariff over imported steel. While such tariffs have undoubtedly benefitted domestic steel workers, they have adversely affected the automobile industry. (The story only mentioned the auto industry; presumably, other industries that use steel as raw material are similarly affected -- this may account for their moving to China to set up factories there: to take advantage not only of her lower labor cost, but also to escape the stiff tariff on steel.)

Thailand's financial market (#289, Topic B, F)

2006-12-19T22:23:00.000-05:00

A major piece of news this morning, repeatedly stated as such by several anchors at CNBC, is Thailand's invoking a 30% withholding tax on foreign "investments"; this move resulted in a 15% decline in its stock market for the day (12/19/06). Later, after financial markets in Thailand closed, presumably at 5 pm or so Thai time, the government said to have "reversed itself." The effect of this "reversal", at the time of this broadcast, is yet to develop. (Thai time is 12 or so hours ahead of EST; at 9 am EST (about 9 pm Thai time), the Thai market is closed for the day while the NYSE is yet to open.) So, there are wild speculations. One commentator obliquely referred to the 1997 crisis, which originated in Thai's currency market, that "brought down a hedge fund" -- its name is not mentioned, but it is the famous Long-Term Capital Management case. That crisis put the free-market capitalism to test (result: F; the US government agencies had to bail it out.) At 5 pm EST, Larry Ludlow, a champion of free-market capitalism (he signing-on message, at 5 over CNBC, is always words to this effect), is less kind. He bluntly asks his panelists whether these "clowns" -- meaning Nobel laureates in Economics and world-class currency speculators of the LTCM fame -- had anything to do with Thailand's 2006 move. Every one answers in the negative. In my assessment, the withh0lding tax is not aimed at investments but at speculations; not directed at long-term investors but at currency speculators; and the "reversal" is merely a clarification of its intended target. Who needs these hot-shot currency speculators who could, single-handedly, damage not only the currency of a country, but currencies of a region? The recent high-powered US delegation to China, hoping China would "open" her financial markets and allow her currency more flexibility, is merely a prelude to introducing this type of drama to China. The west wants nothing better than seeing China in turmoil. Luckily, China in the 21st century is not the same push-over in earlier centuries. Nowadays, China has done precisely what Thailand proposes to do: "we welcome your capital investment; please leave currency speculators at your own door." We'll see whether the west sees the difference between investment used in the conventional sense and used as a camouflage for speculation.

Ability to infer - Westinghouse nuclear plants (#288, Topic B)

2006-12-18T23:36:00.000-05:00

Early Saturday morning, I heard, over PBS, that "Westinghouse will build 4 nuclear plants in China." (#287, 12/16/06). I was hoping to read more about this -- at least to me -- important piece of news. Nothing. The weekend TV and news coverage were mainly on politics. This morning, there is a good article in Wall Street Journal, with a heading befitting its importance: "US-China Nuclear-Power Pact May Shape Technology Standard." It also answers many of my questions. One, Westinghouse was indeed bought, "this year", by a consortium led by a Japanese company. That confirms my vague recall, including that the company which took Westinghouse over is a Japanese firm; last Saturday, I refused to put any credence to this last point -- I could not believe that China would allow a Japanese company to build facilities as sensitive as nuclear plants. But, of course, the WSJ article proves me both correct and wrong. Two, all these 4 plants are "1,000-megawatt reactors." These are useful information, but I cannot convert this to oil-substitute equivalents -- so, this piece of information is wasted. Three, the consortium includes an engineering consulting firm, Shaw Group, of which I know nothing. Wall Street professionals, of course, have this down pat -- SGR (Shaw Group's ticker tape symbol over NYSE) opened this morning, as I heard over CNBC, four points higher -- it closed some 8.5% higher than Friday's close, with a volume almost 5 times its usual. Four, China selected Westinghouse over a French govenment-owned company, Areva, even though Areva offers a broad range of "nuclear cooperation, encompassing everything from uranium mining to waste management" -- and French president, who was in Beijing last October, "made it clear that France would agree to such a pact only if Beijing buys some of Areva's advanced nuclear reactors." Five, with Westinghouse winning the coveted contract, valued at "$3 billion to $4 billion," Westinghouse's technology "could ... become a standard for a new, so-called third generation of reactors." Reading in context, it seems that this technology has never been used anywhere, including USA -- "if completed, the Chinese plants would be the first... The company is looking at building 12 nuclear plants in the U.S. with its new technology." Six, it seems that only a letter of understanding has been inked; no definitive contract has been signed. So, we'll wait and see how this project develops.

Ability to infer in the stock market (#287, Topic M)

2006-12-16T20:11:00.000-05:00

On the way to the Library of Congress this morning, the PBS beamed a short message: "Westinghouse will build 4 nuclear power plants in China." Based on my recent find (that one's ability to infer improves as one's store of knowledge is broadened (#284, 12/14/06)), I thought this brief message gives me an excellent opportunity to test my ability to make inferences. Apparently, this was the result of the US-China Economic Summit concluded the day before (#286, 12/15/06). What inferences can I make? (1) It would add pressure on the demand/supply situation in nuclear material. [My own assessment: This is a simplistic answer, too general to be meaningful.] (2) By how much? No idea. [Were I knowledgeable about the size of a typical nuclear plant, I probably can answer that question.] (3) When would these new plants be built and new demand for nuclear fuel be felt? Again, no idea. [This makes strike 3; were this baseball, I would be struck out.] (4) How would this affect the demand for fossil fuel? No idea. [However, an energy specialist should have this down pat.] (5) Which companies would benefit? Clearly, one would be Westinghouse. However, I vaguely recall that the company had been sold to a foreign company a year or so ago, but I do not recall this new company's name. (6) Which companies constitute investment opportunities? Other than a company that produces nuclear material in which I have a few shares, it is another blank. So, with this little experiment, I must conclude that I am a complete failure. One of the persons who can make quick inferences in stock market is undoubtedly Jim Cramer, the host of the Mad Money program over CNBC. He can recall details about thousands of stocks almost instantaneously -- not only how a stock closed a couple of hours ago and whether it was a gain or loss, but also its price-earnings ratio, its earnings-growth figure, its main product lines and their market share, its cash and debt status, names of its CEO, its main competitors and how they compare, etc. Still, I must not give up so easily. Let me improve my knowledge base and test myself again.

US-China Economic Summit (#286; Topic S)

2006-12-15T15:47:00.000-05:00

By now, the first US-China Economic Summit meeting has come to a close. With such a high-profile delegation (#285, 12/14/06), the expectations are understandably high. What has been achieved? Well, CNBC's on-site reporter said, elegantly, "there is no list of deliverable tangibles". Using words I can understand, the answer may be shortened to one word in English, nothing -- or three in Chinese, 沒什麼. Oh, he tried his best and listed three "accomplishments." One, another meeting has been scheduled, in May 2007 in DC. This may be done, given that e-mail runs freely between the two countries, in two minutes flat, by an administrative-assistant secretary, not by a cabinet-level secretary. Two, both sides agree to work on "trade imbalances." It seems that imposing restrictions is not a one-way street -- today's Washington Post quotes Secretary Gutierrez as saying: "They would like no restrictions [on exporting US technology to China and on China's investing in USA], and we have restrictions, so there are certain things that they would like we can't give on." Three, China agrees to introduce more flexibility in its currency, renminbi (RMB). This has been going on for at least a year and half; indeed, last Saturday's Economist (12/9/06) has a graph showing a gradual -- but consistent -- revaluation of RMB, putting into practice a public statement by the Chinese government, more than 2 years ago, that the target of RMB revaluation is for it to move at about the same rate as interest rate -- the purpose is to discourage currency speculators (indeed, last Saturday's Economist cites one by name, who single-handedly wrecked the Thai currency market and whose presence in the Chinese currency market the government would not want to see. So, this high-level delegation is on its way back to USA. Already, there is displeasure: a long-term flexibility is inconsistent with US's orientation that strives for instant gratification. Well, after all, China has a 5,000-year history (Vice Premier Wu wrote a 20-page paer and gave a lecture on same to the US delegation yesterday); this lack of history is probably an important reason for US's harboring misunderstandings about China.

"Americans have a limited knowledge of China" (#285, Topic S)

2006-12-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

Initiating a US-China Economic Summit, which begins today in Beijing, Treasury secretary Henry Paulson assembled a delegation that includes four other cabinet-level members (Commerce, Carlos Gutierrez; Labor, Elaine Chao; EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson; Trade representative, Susan Schwab), not to mention Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. In its honor, I set up a new topic, S, for Sino-US relations. This morning at 9, CNBC's reporter, beaming from Beijing, summarized today's activities (Beijing is 12 hours ahead of DC; 9 am Beijing time = 8 pm EST). Though mainly ceremonial, Wu Yi, China Vice Premier, nevertheless set the tone for China. She said (and quoted repeatedly by CNBC): "we have the genuine feeling that some American friends are not only having limited knowledge -- but harboring much misunderstanding -- about the reality in China." Well said. In my view, this limited -- distorted would be much more descriptive --knowledge is mainly the result of American educational system. Last year, I joined a Library of Congress sponsored tour group to China to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's first overseas voyage in 1405. In Shanghai, I can understand that they were in awe with skyscrappers -- I was too, after an absence of but a few years . But they were not equipped to seeing that there are 4 times as many skyscrappers in Shanghai as NYC -- or seeing a 5-year-old financial district (in Pudong) having more skyscappers than Manhattan. In Nanjing, where the tour group visited the building where the Unequal Treaties were signed, tour members who are natives of USA professed complete ignorance -- this was/is never taught in US schools. I can understand that too -- with USA first participating in the opium trade in China and later joining the other western powers to extract excessive indemnity from her, keeping this sorry event mum is the best policy. Ditto for the Rape of Nanjing Museum -- after all, with Japan being USA's best friend in Asia, why bother with historical inconveniences. This reminds me of an incident. Last year, during the 65-year memorial of Pearl Harbor, high-school children were asked: Who did that? Even that "infamy" (using President Roosevelt's word at the time) was shielded in the name of geopolitics of the 21st century. "China?" many of these next-generation leaders responded. Bravo. At the moment, there is a very interesting TV commercial by FedEx. It shows three managers standing in front of a world map and watching a young man trying to put a pin to show where China is. After the young man's first attempt, one of the managers says: "This is Russia." The young man makes another gallant attempt; this time, it is Greenland. Another manager then says: "You really don't know where China is. Don't you?" Not wanting to be further embarrassed, this young man simply tears the map, which is mounted on a wall, down. The implication, it seems to me, is that one can hide one's ignorance by simply not facing reality. "Americans have a limited knowledge of China" -- this TV ad captures it fully.

Ability to make quick inferences (#284, Topic P)

2006-12-14T11:44:00.000-05:00

The ability to make quick inferences from very little factual matters (clues) is what Kriegspiel is about -- without seeing any of the opponent's pieces, a player is suppose to postulate, mainly by inference, (1) where the king is, (2) whether the king is sufficiently guarded, and thus (3) whether the player may mount an attack to checkmate the opponent's king. Clearly, one's ability to infer improves with more play; one also learns by observing how people in other endeavors make inferences -- for me, I try to learn from bridge, mah-jong, and the stock market. Last night, I heard, very briefly, a commentator stating that a senator had undergone surgery. In the next utterance, he said "That means the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote." His first announcement is a statement of fact, which I understood; his next utterance is an inference, which I failed to grasp. This morning, over PBS, the announcer, after broadcasting this news, was kind enough to add some background information; now I think I understand. The reasoning process runs something like this. (1) The senator undergoing surgery is a Democrat. (2) In the new senate that begins in January 2007, Democrats hold a 51:49 advantage. (3) If the senator in question is incapacitated and resigns, Democrats' advantage is reduced to 50:49. (4) The vacancy created by the resignation is to be filled by the governor from the state which elected the senator. (5) The senator who resigned, in this instance, is from a state whose governor is a Republican. (6) That Republican governor will, undoubtedly, fill the vacancy with a Republican. (7) After filling the vacancy, the senate line-up becomes 50:50, a tie. (8) In the senate, in case of a tie, the vice president casts the tie-breaking vote. (9) The vice president is a Republican. (10) The vice president's tie-breaking vote will, undoubtedly, vote with his fellow Republicans. (11) Thus, in effect, Republicans regain the control of the senate. Q.E.D. Upon further reflection, I realize that one's ability to make quick inference improves as one's store of knowledge is broadened. What constitutes as a lack of information to one may be a routine matter to another. Were I as sufficiently knowledgeable as the announcer whom I heard, I might be able to make a quick inference as well. This is an important find (for me); let's see whether I can apply this to Kriegspiel and to the three allied fields of bridge, mah-jong, and the stock market.

"China's Africa Strategy" (#283, Topic F)

2006-12-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

This afternoon, the Carneige Endowment for International Peace offered a seminar on "China's Africa Strategy." Being a "hot" topic, it attracted nearly 200 -- from the list of attendees, it seems that about 20 came from various executive departments/agencies (State, 6; Treasury and Commerce, 3 each); another 20 or so from congressional offices/committees; 20 or so from various embassies (China, 5); and 30 or so from various think tanks around town. The main speaker is a visiting scholar at Carneige; on each seat a paper of his was placed, which I hastily read, since I showed up early. Though its US-centered views are to be expected, I thought the paper is unnecessarily antagonistic to China. At one juncture, it says: "China's involvement [in making aids to Africa] could threaten this African renaissance. Growing Chinese loans to Africa, especially at high commercial rates, could threaten billions in recent forgiveness by the World Bank and IMF's Heavily Indebed Poor Countries Initiative, since China also loans to these nations." The renaissance he talked about is Africa's "strongest growth rates since independence" -- no mention, of course, of the continent's past history of being enslaved by the west. The speaker's presentation was coupled with slides. Interestingly, the "high commercial rates" in his paper was never mentioned; instead, he talked about China's forgiving loans to Africa. The talk took many issues with China, particularly her Confucius Institutes (teaching Chinese language around the world, including Africa), and her offering "aid without any conditions". Both, of course, are tradition-shattering moves -- the former, not mentioned in his paper, laments, it seems to me, at the break-up of the cosy duopoly of English and French language usage, while the latter, covered in both the paper and the talk, laments at the break-up of single-source aids taken for granted by the aids community. A second speaker, an ambassdor with earlier postings in Africa, offered comments on the first speaker's talk; his views were both more moderate and temperate, befitting his earlier training in diplomatic talk. During the Q&A period, one asked about India's role in international aid -- answer: so far, not a factor. I wanted to ask two questions -- one, the seeming discrepancy between his mention of "high commercial interest rate" said to be charged by China in his paper and her forgiving loans talked before this audience; and two, the concern the speaker seemed to have on teaching Chinese in Africa. But I restrained myself and did not open my mouth (except to sip coffee, which was good) during the entire proceedings, a rare occasion for me.

"One Dead in Silver Spring Crash" (#282, Topic N)

2006-12-11T23:38:00.000-05:00

A heading (used as today's title) in the Metro section of today's Washington Post caught my attention. It appears that a female passenger and a male driver, in a Japanese-make SUV, "lost control, struck the curb and then smashed into a pole supporting power lines. The impact knocked the pole down ... [and the female passenger] was pronounced dead at the scene." This reminds me of a similar incident some 15 years ago, in China, when I was the passenger sitting next to a female driver. In early 1990s, I was teaching a course on how to prepare financial reports for the World Bank, in Suzhou. After the 2-week course was over, I was to leave for Shanghai. The sponsor was responsible for securing a train ticket for me. At that time, the currency used in China was two-pronged: renminbi (RMB) and foreign-exchange certificates (FEC) -- though the exchange ratio between the two was 1:1, non-residents must use the latter. When my sponsor, the Audit Bureau of PRC, attempted to buy a train ticket for me, it did not have FEC -- since I was a non-resident, FEC must be used for items/services I bought myself or bought by others for my benefit; there were no exceptions. (China has a 5-branch system: in addition to the executive, legislative, and judical (as in USA), it has examination and auditing -- so the Audit Bureau is on a par with the executive branch; the Ministry of Railways, being a subordinate agency in the latter, ranks below the Audit Bureau.) So, my sponsor used an official car to take me to Shanghai -- the driver was a young lady in her 20s. This being late in the afternoon (a one-way trip from Suzhou to Shanghai took about 1 hour and half), the sponsor also asked a student in the class to keep her company for the return trip. This student was smart; before we boarded the car, he said: "Let me sit at the back" as if he was doing me a favor. I did not object; after all, I was a guest, the trip was short, the road was well travelled and in good shape, I was imposing on her (being after hours), and I did not want to leave the impression that I was treating her merely as a driver. So, I sat at the passenger seat in front. The car, Red Flag, a domestic brand, was quiet and smooth, and the driver was quite skilled. Indeed, the drive began smoothly. But, along the way, the driver's handbag fell on the car's floor; she did not want to stop the car to fetch it, nor did she want to leave her handbag on the floor. So, she drove using her right hand, while stooping down to fetch the handbag with her left hand. Her attention was diverted, andhe car began to zig-zag; suddenly, a utility pole was standing directly in front of our car. She pressed the brake just in time, so a direct hit with the pole was averted. I said nothing; indeed, the remainder of this drive was done in silence, until I was safely delivered to my hotel in Shanghai. Over these years, I often wonder what would happen if she did not press the brake in time -- I could speculate, but I was/am not sure. Thus, over these years, I kept this to myself, mentioning to no one. Today's story somehow confirms what I have long speculated. Well, it was/is over -- else I would be writing this entry. What a narrow escape!

Tai Chi class (#281, Topic D)

2006-12-10T23:37:00.000-05:00

For the last 7 or so years, my wife and I have been to a Tai Chi class. At first, we went three times a week, Sundays 2-4, and Tuesdays and Thursdays 7:30 - 9 pm -- after moving to our retirement community, only on Sundays. A lot has happened during these 7 years, the most tramatic being the sudden (and untimely) death of our Tai Chi institute's founder, 40-ish Master Tang, four years ago. Since then, the institute's 7 or 8 classes around DC are being taught by a dedicated group of the master's early-day students (along with Mrs. Tang as the institute's president). These students were selected (and personally taught by the master) with a view that, in due course, they would be teachers on their own volition; they certainly have carried out the master's wishes admirably. The institute's most amazing practice is that, since its inception some 20 years ago, students attend classes free of charge -- the master (a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a world-class expert on computer security) wanted nothing better than to have more people exposed to the benefits of Tai Chi -- all a student needs to do is to pay a nominal registration fee to cover rental of high-school gyms (at present, $35 per semester, 16 or so weeks; in comparison, our retirement community offers a 6-session, 1-1/2 hour per session course for $90). When I first joined the class, I was extremely clumsy and stiff. Frequenty, I was invited to join the master at the front, standing next to him, so that the class could see the two of us making the same moves. I was happy to oblige, and we did it all in good spirits, often with laughs, since these one-on-one occasions allowed me to realize how far off I was from being considered minimally fit. The master, though only in his early 40s at the time, was fully aware of Tai Chi's benefits to senior citizens. He had thus developed a series of moves, lasting an hour or so (the first hour of each 2-hour session), on these, dubbed as 養生法 well-being exercises -- easy, gradual, flexible (one does each move to the best of one's ability), yet giving every part of a person's body some needed exercise or vibration -- from hair to toe, with emphasis on the waist and weight-shifting. Over the years, my clumsiness gradually diminishes and my stiffness becomes less noticeable. Now, I can do some moves better, but my ability to do other moves has deteriorated, perhaps due to my getting older. Today, in the class, I realized I could not do a move -- standing on one foot while first shaking the other foot and later moving that mid-air foot in an arc -- as well as before; ideally, one should be able to do this for at least a minute; I can do only 30 seconds while standing on my right foot (down from 45-50 seconds) and only 15 seconds while standing on my left foot (down from 35-40 second). On the other hand, I have maintained my ability to bend one leg at the knee as low as possible while stretching the other leg as far to the side as possible -- this is a common exercise done by American footballers before a game (I played international fooball, known as soccer in USA, while a youngster in China). While doing this last move today, I somehow caught our teacher's attention. She, Teacher Chung, said: "Dr. Li, 你好棒 you are doing well." (Technically,棒 = splendidly. Generally, teachers are very generous in their praise. I feel I am not worthy of this.) I thanked her. It was a happy occasion.

Asian Division at Library of Congress (#280, Topic D)

2006-12-09T09:50:00.000-05:00

One of the nation's treasures is the Library of Congress, on a site next to the capitol and easily accessible by public transportation (a bus stops at the door; a Metro stop is less 2 blocks away; another Metro stop, next to the Union Station, is 5 blocks away). Better yet, it is open to the public -- free of charge -- with convenient hours (8:30 to 5 on M, F, and S; 8:30 to 9 on T,W, andTh) at its main reading rooms. And its collection is truly vast, covering, geographically, not only USA and the Americas, but around the world; topically, not only legal and technical treatises, but works on fictions and games as well (LC, being in charge of copyright registration, is a depository of every book published in USA); stylistically, not only books, but newspapers, magazines, even music recordings and microfilms. I have benefitted from it ever since my doctoral-student days (I needed a German document done during WWII, too expensive for a needy graduate student to acquire; LC did not have it, but managed to get it, microfilmed it as a 600-frame roll, and sold a copy to me at 1 cent per frame -- I still have it as a momento). Ever since I moved to DC, I tried to go to LC once a week -- my two books on Kriegspiel benefitted from LC's excellent collection of books/magazines on chess; its Asian Division has an equally excellent collection of books/magazines on Mah-Jong and Xiangqi (Chinese chess), from which I benefitted when writing my books on the two subjects. The Asian Division Reading Room, being a special-purpose reading room, was open only 8:30 to 5, M-F -- inconvenient to those with full-time jobs (and even to me after we moved to a retirement community). Luckily, about 2 years ago, the Asian Division had a new Division Chief, Dr. Hwa-wei Lee, formerly Librarian at a university in Ohio. Seeing the underutilized resources in the Asian Division (its Japanese collection, the largest, has about 1.25 million volumes; its Chinese collection, 1.1 million), Dr. Lee took immediate action to improve the Division's visibility on several fronts. One, by instituting The LC Asian Division Friends Society and inviting VIPs (senators, congressmen, ambassadors, senior government officials, celebrities) as honorary board members and public-spirited citizens and researchers as working members. (I was honored by being invited to be a member.) Two, by opening the Asian Division reading room on Saturdays -- an "experiment" at first, but, with the increased utilization on Saturdays, the experiment is being continued "until further notice" -- to the delight of many researchers, myself included. Three, by sponsoring or co-sponsoring lectures and book readings on Asian subjects about once a month -- the variety and depth of various regional offerings are truly astonishing. Four, by having open houses to make members of the public aware of the ready availability this truly valuable national treasure -- indeed, last Saturday, 12/2, there was an Asian Reading Room Holiday Open House; about 100 came to enjoy demonstrations in Indian dance, Qigong, Holiday-theme books in various Asian languages, and, of course, delicious Asian refreshments. Five, by speaking in front of community meetings -- indeed, this afternoon, Dr. Lee will be giving a talk on LC's collection of books and maps on Zheng He before a meeting of the Zheng He Society of the Americas. Well done, Dr. Lee. We look forward to listening to your lecture this afternoon and on other occasions. We also wish to thank your dedicated staff willing to work on weekends, making Saturday openings a success.

Chinese stocks (#279, Topic M)

2006-12-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

The Investor's Business Daily headlined "Slew of China Firms Thrive as Economy Keeps On Surging" as its top front-page story on 12/5. The story gives a tabulation of 25 publicly held companies, headquartered in China, with their shares listed on stock exchanges in China as well as in US (the latter through American Depository Receipts). Many, apparently, hit new highs in recent days. "China Mobile, the country's [as well as the world's] biggest telecom, set a 52-week high on Nov. 6. ... Focus Media hit a record Nov. 29. No.1 oil and gas producer Petro China set a fresh peak Monday [12/4]." Among new issues, the story cites Mindray Medical International, Home Inns & Hotels, and New Oriental Education & Technology. Not mentioned is the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which had the world's largest initial public offering on 10/19/06 -- some $22 billion's worth -- not to mention that it was oversubscribed by more than 10 times (meaning that a total of $220 billion could have been raised were shares available for subscription); this is only because its shares, at the moment, are not listed on US exchanges. Also mentioned in the story is Bidu, which holds Google to a distant 2nd place in China's search market (Bidu's market share in China is 68%; Google, 23%.) Tonight, Jim Cramer's Mad Money program, after bad-mouthing China all these months, suddenly had a turnaround and recommended a Chinese stock, Global Sources (not in the 25-stock listing in IBD). So, perhaps the gold rush is on -- not in San Francisco, but in China.

The Iraq Study Group Report (#278, Topic P)

2006-12-07T23:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the long-awaited report by a 10-member bipartisan Iraq Study Group was released. The project is of interest to me from several perspectives. One, as a publisher, I am impressed by the speed at which this report was published and made available to the public -- the manuscript was turned over to a commercial publisher Friday, 12/1; a 96-page book was printed up barely 3 days later, 12/4; copies were sent to members of the Study Group (as well as to bookstores) the following day, 12/5; the day following, yesterday, 12/6, at 9 am, a copy signed by all 10 members was hand-delivered to President George W. Bush; an hour later, the embargo to bookstores not to sell this title was lifted; a few hours later, there were only Sold Out signs at these bookstores. (A bookstore near the White House had ordered 300 copies, received only 75 copies, all spoken for by members of the media.) Two, again as a publisher, I am impressed by the general readership's tremendous interest in this report, as evidenced by these Sold Out signs. (The book sells for $10.95, with the commercial publisher undertaking the project as a public service -- all profits would be donated.) Three, I am impressed by the important role played by the internet -- a non-profit organization managed to make contents of this report available at its website -- there were 400,000 downloads the very first day (several million downloads were anticipated in the next few days). Four, I appreciate the valuable role played by the print media. Our local newspaper, Washington Post, has 7 or 8 pages' worth of coverage in today's edition -- barely 20hours after the embargo was lifted. It gives the names and background of this blue-ribbon Study Group (co-chaired by James A Baker III, secretary of state in the George H W Bush adminsitration, and Lee H. Hamilton, formerly Democratic chairman of the House International Relations Committee); it reproduces the study's executive summary in its entirety (it begins with"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating."); it summarizes the report's 49 recommendations, complete with a regional map and a key-word milestones in tabular form; and it gives several human-interest stories. Members of the Study Group, after delivering the report to the president, held a news conference. To a question on how the president reacted to the recommendations, Lawrence Eagleburger, another former secretary of state, began with "His reaction was, 'Where is my drink?'", continuing with "He was a little loaded. It was early in the morning, too, you know." Today, I read, in a free financial service, the president was quoted as saying that, while many Washington reports were unread, he did read the Study Group's report. I missed seeing this very quote as a clip on TV, but I did see a variation of that, this evening over BBC, when the president held a joint press conference with British premier Tony Blair, visiting him for the very purpose of discussing this very report. The BBC clip presents the president saying "I read the report," along with a big smile on his face, giving one the impression that he was doing the Study Group a great favor. The accompanying BBC commentary said that the president used the word "interesting" but was otherwise "deliberately vague." Well, we'll see what develops in the next several days.

Speaking in English in Chinese Club (#277, Topic L)

2006-12-06T18:02:00.001-05:00

Our retirement community has a Chinese Club, with 100+ members. Though most members came from China and speak Chinese as the first language, meetings in the club were nevertheless conducted in English. Why? One, some members have non-Chinese-speaking spouses. Two, some members can only speak dialects such as Cantonese, but not 普通話 pu tong hua (common [Chinese] language = mandarin, best spoken by residents of Beijing as 京片子, analogous to the Oxfordian accent in Britain or the midwestern accent in US). Still, it makes me uncomfortable. Indeed, I feel ashamed that a person of Chinese ancestry cannot speak the common language. A couple of days ago, our Chinese Club talked about starting a computer club, teaching fellow residents how to use computers to input Chinese characters and send/receive e-mail in Chinese. Shouldn't such a club use Chinese for discussion purposes? Apparently no. My suggestion that Chinese be the standard was simply ignored. Reason: some computer terms cannot be easily rendered into Chinese. An example is menu (choices or options in a computer) which, somehow has been translated into Chinese as 寀單 = offerings in a restaurant. Fair enough. Still, why give up so easily? I said to the organizer of this compute club that, back in 1983, I lectured at Qinghua University for five weeks, on Computer Applications in Business -- and I spoke only 普通話. I translated technical terms into Chinese to the best of my ability. (They also translated a book of mine on the subject into Chinese as the textbook, so I knew how some words are to be translated.) Indeed, later on, I repeated the same course at the Shanghai Institute (now University) of Finance and Economics. Again, I spoke only 普通話. One student was brave enough to stand up and ask: 能不能請您用上海話講演? ("Will you please use Shanghai dialect to lecture?") (All students were university professors or lecturers, so they were less afraid to speak up.) I declined. I said: "My Shanghai dialect is better than my普通話, since I had my elementary-school, middle-school, and university education here. However, Shanghai is a metropolis with residents from all over the country; using 普通話 is probably better." So, they endured my Shanghai-accented 普通話 for the entire course.

"Western value" (#276, Topic F)

2006-12-05T23:51:00.000-05:00

This noon, I attended a seminar on "A Neocon Critique of Six Years of the Bush Presidency", at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. It was presented by a member of the British Parliament (and a former scholar at WWICS), scheduled with short notice to take advantage of his being here for high-level discussions with senior members of the administration. He opened with a very interesting remark. Last night, while having dinner with members of the Senate, he was given a sheet "This Day in Senate's Past". It showed that, on 12/4 in 1815 -- 191 years ago -- British troops burned the capital. So, this MP apologized. I could not help thinking that the British were equal-opportunity international pillagers! (They did the same thing, though much more thoroughly and much more profitably, to the Summer Palace in Beijing after the second Opium War, in 1856.) Before presenting his theme, he disclosed that his grandfather was American; thus, he claimed that he is not anti-American. His theme is that using foreign policy to justify military action is unacceptable -- military action is justified only for self-defense. He advocates order and stability, mutual recognition, and peaceful coexistence -- all high-sounding words. US, by moving away from multilaterialism and acting unilaterally, has lost "high moral ground." Further, by engaging in regime change and in preventative military action, US has made the world "highly destabilizing." His prescription? "Impose 'western value'." Along with "moral high ground"/"high moral ground", he repeated the two terms several times, though he never defined what "western value" is. In one instance, perhaps a slip of the tongue, he used the phrase "Christian and European value." During the Q&A period, I did not raise my hand at the beginning. The first 2 or 3 questions were apparently raised by the Center's staff (the seminar was held during lunch hour; two staff members actually brought their lunch to the conference room), since the moderator recognized them by their first name. My hand was not recognized for quite a while -- I got the impression that the moderator was afraid of unknown questioners raising unacceptable issues. Finally, with no one raising one's hand, I was recognized (it was the next-to-last question, as it turned out). I thought I would start with "Perhaps you might want to apologize for ransaking the Summer Palace during the Opium War as well," but restrained myself -- I was a guest just as the MP was; a sharp beginning would be counterproductive. I merely said: "You talked about 'western value' repeatedly; you also talked about 'Christian and European value' as well as the loss of 'moral high ground.' Is it time that you broaden your 'western value' by embracing Asian value as well? Instead of President Bush's 'you are either with us or against us,' why not follow the Chinese view of 'live and let live'"? He jotted down a few words and then made a perfunctory response. His final sentence deserves writing down: "I am not going to invade China." Well, our MP still dwelled upon the glorious 19th century -- but these days are gone forever. I almost felt retorting with "And you will be crushed." Before I could open my mouth, the last questioner began his query. So I left it stand unchallenged.

Historians' ranking of US Presidents (#275, Topic P)

2006-12-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

Coming to USA as a graduate student, I lacked a good exposure to US history, invariably a required course in the undergraduate curriculum. Thus, it is always a treat when I can read authoritative versions in summary form. In today's Washington Post, its editors invited 5 historians to answer a question: What Will History Say [About George W Bush]? One, a history professor at Columbia, answers it with: He's The Worst Ever. (He ranks Lincoln, Washington, and Roosevelt at the top; Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Richard Nixon as "occupy[ing] the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them." Another one, a professor at Rutgers, is kinder, with "At Least He's Not Nixon." A third one, a professor at Tulane, made a similar point with "Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won't have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon ahd Harding at the bottom of the presidential sweepstakes. Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonumous with failure to respond to the Great Depression... He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president." A fourth one, a fellow at a think tank, says "He's Only Fifth Worst" -- the worst, Buchanan, whose inaction toward 7 southern states' secession led to the Civil War; next-to-worst, Johnson, who "didn't like blacks" and whose "policies led to his impeachment;" third worst, Nixon, "a criminal in the White House ... the only president to run a criminal gang out of the Oval Office engaging in spying and burglary;" fourth worst, James Madison, for the War of 1812, when "The United States was a minor neutral nation that was frequently harassed by both of the warring empires, Britain and France," for siding "with the more dangerous power [France] against the less dangerous [Britain]" despite Madison's superb reasoning: a grand design "to conquer Spanish Florida and seize British Canada." Bush, ranked fifth worst, mainly because he "has inadvertently destroyed only Baghdad, not Washington ["the British ... torched Washington, D.C., while Madison and first lady Dolley fled to Virginia"], though "he will be remembered for the Iraqi conflict for gnerations." A valuable US history lesson for me.

"Bearing the Burden" (#274, Topic H)

2006-12-02T23:32:00.000-05:00

Reading Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002) at the Library of Congress today, I could not help being agitated by many of its comments. On the Opium War, which was the main purpose of my reading it, the author, a professor at Oxford, covers it in only one paragraph (in a 400+ page book). A key sentence and half is the following: "The Opium Wars of 1841 and 1856 were, of course, about much more than opium. The Illustrated London News portrayed the 1841 war as a crusade to introduce the benefits of free trade ..." (pp 166-7) Of course, free trade -- particularly free trade in opium -- must be defended at all cost. Too bad these good old days are gone forever -- as the author reluctantly acknowledges in the book's title and frankly admits in the concluding chapter. "The British Empire is long dead; ... The great creditor became a debtor. ... British imperial expansion changed their [sic] direction in the 1950s [from emigration to immigration]. As for the missionary impulse that had sent thousands of young men and women around the world preaching Christianity and the gospel of cleanliness, that too dwindled, along with public attendance at church" (p 358). What are lessons to be learned? One, "empire as a form of international government can work." (p 362) Two, "the United States has -- whether it admits it or not -- taken up some kind of global burden just as Kipling urged ... in the name of liberty, even when its own self-interest is manifestly uppermost." (p 369-70) The burden talked about by Rudyard Kipling (whom the author praised as "the Empire's greatest poet," is the so-called white man's burden. I have a standing objection to the word white, since white is a color (#?); change the first two words to caucasian. Aside from that, I would add an a, so that the phrase now reads: white man's a burden. As a group, caucasians waste too much of the world's resources; they are by far the world's greatest debtors -- they do not (and cannot) bear the world's burden; they are the world's burden.

Banning luxury items for personal use (#273, Topic F)

2006-11-30T23:36:00.000-05:00

TToday's Washington Post has a front-page story to the effect that the US has set up a list, consisting of some 60 items, that US would not supply to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. The story adds that "The United States reserves the right to take away even more privileges away, should Kim's behavior continue -- or should his tastes change." Since when has US been appointed to be the arbiter of personal tastes of foreigners? The story concludes with this gem: "... there will be no -- repeat, no -- Samuel Adams beer on Kim's table this season." I am a bystander and do not enjoy beer. But, were I otherwise involved, my reaction to the above gem would be: so what? who cares? The story quotes a psychiatrist with a local university that this banning "involves "subtler reasoning", which is "to frustrate the senior circles of cronies." I see it only as a crude display of western arrogance. If the purpose is to ask a nation's leader to set a good example, I have a good one. This country is the world's greatest importer of oil. Frequently, when I am in DC doing research, I find myself stranded on a bus, along, say, Pennsylvania Avenue, with its engine running (meaning wasting fuel). Why? Because a VIP would be passing through momentarily. And when the caravan does come through, it is preceded by some 20 policemen on motorcycles, then upwards of ten limousines, then another 20 policemen on motorcycles. Now, perhaps these VIPs and their senior circles of cronies could set a good example -- of saving oil -- by announcing that, henceforth, the VIPs limousine need be accompanied by only 2 motorcycles, one before and one after. If one were really sacarstic, one might imagine a scenario whereby an Arab King, being a major oil exporter to US, would set up a list on how to save oil, including one limiting the number of vehicles accompanying a VIP caravan. Now, that would be setting a good example.

Stories on China in WSJ 11/29/06 (#272, Topic B)

2006-11-29T11:17:00.000-05:00

I was not planning to sign on to my blog until in the afternoon. However, while reading today's Wall Street Journal, I cannot help being impressed by its extensive coverage of China-related stories. In Section A alone (20 pages, including 6 full-page ads), I find the following headlines (shown with interior words capitalized) as well as text references:
1) "Eyeing a Billion Tea Drinkers, Starbuck Pours It On in China"(front page + p A12, complete with a chart, a photo of Beijing, and a sketch)
2) "Foreign Banks in China Receive More Time to Follow New Rules" (p A8)
3) "Public concern that trade is driving a wedge between winners and losers in the U.S. economy, he [Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson] said, is a factor in tension between the U.S. and China" (Story on Paulson's talk in London yesterday; the quote is his response to a question after the talk) (p A11)
4) "Beijing Corruption Probe Rattles Supermarket Chain" (p A16)
5) "Miller Beer to Be Sold in China" (p A16)
6) "China Set to Name Catholic Bishop Without Consent" (p A17)
7) "In China, Anheuser-Busch's profit climbed more than 20% in the past year" (Story on Anheuser-Busch; the headline is: "Brewer Warns of Profit Fall In Internatioanl Operations", p A14)
8) "There are many more places, such as China and the former Eastern Europe, where high returns can be had" in an editorial entitled "The Devaluationists" (p A18)

Cultural superiority and inferiority (#270, Topic A)

2006-11-27T04:35:00.000-05:00

Shortly after I returned home, I received a phone call. He introduced himself; he is a fellow member of the Washington Literary Society. There will be a meeting on December 9, when an author will discuss and sign his new book. The author has prepared some slides and a DVD, and plans to show them at the meeting. My caller then said, since I am an expert in slide projection, he requested that I do it at this meeting. Saturdays are days I normally go to the Library of Congress, unless there are events more important than my research project. Since I spoke to WLS at its November meeting, I asked my caller whether he was there. He wasn't, but he heard from others that my PowerPoint presentation went over quite well. Though I know WSL's meeting's time (I am a life member), I nevertheless asked my caller to make sure. On that specific date and time, I have a previous engagement: to attend the quarterly meeting of the Zheng He Society of the Americas. Thus, I declined my caller's request, and gave my reason. He then said: "Zheng He is an important person. He may be compared to Columbus." (All exchanges were in Chinese; I rendered them into English for this entry.) I immediately corrected him: "No, no, no. You should say that Columbus may be compared to Zheng He. Zheng He sets the standard." He said he would remember this; with that, we ended the call. But I was upset. I am invariably upset when a person of Chinese ethnicity fails to acknowledge China's rivaled cultural heritage but, instead, merrily (ignorantly?) misattributes her contribution to other countries. A common encounter with me is on the origin of chess, the proto-chess. Before I could continue by saying that it was a Chinese invention, I was invariably interrupted: "Chess was invented in India, isn't it?" With that self-assured declaration, my enthusiam in continuing the conversation is invariably lost . I would merely say "It was a Chinese invention" (#46, 1/22/06) and proceeded to excuse myself.

Amtrak's service to seniors (#269, Topic D)

2006-11-26T10:44:00.001-05:00

Over the years, I have been to NYC's Penn Station probably 20+ times. (At one time, I was a board member of St. John's U's Alumni Association, meeting quarterly in NYC; I have been to US Open Final 3 or 4 times, along with visiting our son from time to time.) But, it always puzzles me that there are no seats for waiting passengers in the concourse level. I now know that this is not so. On our last return trip to DC, we arrived at the Penn Station sufficiently early. Our son took us to passengers' waiting area, which is on one side of the concourse level. While he wanted to help us with putting our luggage on our train, a long wait, we insisted that he go back to work. He did. As I returned to the waiting area after visiting the restroom, I saw a red cap pushing a wheelchair and a luggage cart at the same time. I knew the latter service, but not the former. So, I stopped him to ask; he suggested that I talk to the Customs Service representative at the entrance to the waiting area. On the way in, I made a quick cost-benefit analysis. My wife has knee problems; she cannot walk fast. We have three small carry-on luggages to take care of. The train departs from the lower level, and I don't know where the elevator is. And we don't want to miss the train. Even more important, I don't want my wife to fall. So, whatever this service costs, I would be 'way ahead of the game. As it turned out, both services are free; all I needed to do was to book it, so I did. Looking back, I must pat my own back; I have made a very smart decision. With the holiday rush, our train, which originated in Boston, was 10 minutes behind schedule. More importantly, the track number on which our train was to come in was undetermined. Needless to say, I was anxious. In the meantime, a red cap came to us (by that time, we were seated close to the entrance, reserved for handicapped passengers needing assistance), first to introduce himself (his name is Stanley Simon), then to put my wife in a wheelchair. He also assured me that he would take care of us, and motioned me to calm down. When the time came, Stanley came, loaded our suitcases, and directed me to follow him. Not knowing what I should do, I gave him a $5 trip (probably inadequate) as our token of appreciation. He then negotiated the traffic, got on two different elevators, and placed our luggage onto the train. Excellent service, particularly during this holiday season. Also, while waiting near the entrance, we could see the CSR in action. He was busy, but he was courteous. I said I wanted to write to Amtrak about his excellent service; he tore off a page from a pad, which shows Amtrak's website, wrote his name (Noel Roman), and gave it to me. Upon returning home, I signed onto Amtrak's website (from which I bought our tickets a few days earlier), but there is no space to write comments. I think Amtrak should redesign its webpage to allow passenger comments. In any case, my wife and I received excellent service from the staff, and our train ride home was pleasant. This entry records our Very Satisfied experience.

"Nation's hero"? "War criminal"? (#268, Topic Q)

2006-11-25T23:27:00.000-05:00

A week ago, I saw, in Washington Post, a front-page photo of President Bush, at the Presidential Palace in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, for the APEC forum. The background of this photo is a bust of Ho Chi Minh. I thought the photo provides contrast at several levels: (1) optically, Bush in the foreground is well lit while Ho in the background is dark; (2) visually, Bush is smiling while Ho is grim; and (3) geopolitically, US and Vietnam, formerly enemies, are now friends. This contrast is simply too much, even to an uninvolved bystander like myself. To those who were deeply involved, I thought this photo would produce a lot of reactions. Sure enough, in today's WP, there are two letters to the editor commenting on this photo -- WP also saw fit to reproduce that photo in 6"x6" size. One, who lives in Maryland, queries, cryptically, the following: "Where does the Post get the arrogance to disgrace a nation's hero and father with the picture of one of the worst war criminals in modern times?" After reading it several times, I confess I do not know how to interpret this quote. Another one, who lives in Virginia and is much more straight forward, concludes with the following query: "Where were his [Bush's] advisers when he was allowed to be seen in that photo op?" Both are excellent queries. All I need do is to include both, together, as an entry in this blog.

Movie: "Cave of Yellow Dogs" (#267, Topic D)

2006-11-25T22:37:00.000-05:00

Doing research at the Library of Congress, I suddenly hit upon an idea on how my project is to be focused when I am ready to write. I liked the idea, but I needed a time out to think about it. So, after lunch, I took off early to see a movie, captioned above. The movie, highly recommended by the movie critic in yesterday's Washington Post, has a week-long exclusive screening downtown, beginning yesterday. The movie's producer/cinematographer is a Mongolian woman, Byambasuren Davaa, whose earlier movie, The Story of the Weeping Camel, won international awards (I missed seeing it). For this movie, the setting is again Mongolia; it features a 5-member sheep-herding family: a mid-30ish father, an early-30ish mother, a 9-ish daughter (she, named Nansalmuu, is the star of this movie; WP's movie critic gave her age as "about 9"; I think she is closer to 8 than to 9), a 6-ish second daughter, and a 2-1/2-ish son. In a pre-title scene, which is actually the final scene of this family-centered story inconvenient to present chronologically, she and her father bury a dog. She asks a question on burial, and the father answers, "Every one dies, but no one is dead." (It is a profound statement; I did not get it at the time, so I jotted it down in the dark.) The movie opens with Nansalmuu returning from town (living in a relative's place) at the end of a school year; their embraces and greetings suggest that this is a close family. When Nansalmuu is sent by her mother to gather dung, which is used as fuel (the first of several family responsibilities to which she is assigned), she finds a dog in a cave and brings it back. The father wants the dog removed, fearing it to be feral for having lived with wolves in caves, but he does not insist, allowing Nansalmuu to keep it for the time being. When Nansalmuu shepherds their family flock to pasture (the second of her responsibilities), she brings the dog with her. Trying to find the dog when it does not respond to command, she neglects the flock, but they are able to return home unattended. With the storm coming and Nansalmuu nowhere in sight, the mother is worried. She leaves the two youngsters to play by themselves while she mounts a horse to find Sanmanmuu. At this point, the thought occurred to me that the movie is about maternal love, because there are so many mother-and-child scenes. (Their father is gone to town, at the crack of dawn, to market sheepskins and buy supplies and toys.) Somehow, a neighbor takes Nansalmuu in during storm, and her mother gathers her after it is over. The two ride on their separate horses and return home. Though the mother is clearly worried and later relieved, there is no reprimand as they ride in silence. While the cinematography is outstanding throughout, this particular scene, showing the two in silhouettes against a peaceful meadow in dusk, exiting slowing toward the right but occupying no more than 1% of the screen, is truly magnificent. It indeed shows maternal love at its very best. I was frankly touched. Later, the family dismantles the camp. On the way to their winter living quarters, Nansalmuu's assignment is to keep an eye on the young brother. She appears to be preoccupied by the dog's absence, as it is left behind and tied to a pole at the campsite. Somehow, the young brother climbs out of his basket before the caravan leaves, and wanders about at the campsite -- alone. When the father discovers the son missing, he rushes back. By then, the movie becomes one on parental love. The movie ends when the family is reunited -- alone on the open road, in the midst of moving to their winter living quarters. Shortly before that final scene, there is a jeep roaring in from the opposite direction, with the loudspeaker blasting: "Please vote. Your vote is important." In the context of this caravan, this interjecture is rather ironic. After the final scene, there are several flashbacks. In one, Nansalmuu is caressing the dog. With it soundly asleep, Nansalmuu laments: "Whenever I want to play with you, you are asleep. You must be lazybones in a previous life." (I jotted this passage down as well, even though, by that time, I understood the message being transmitted.) This is, in my view, the movie's third -- and most important --message. The religion in Mongolia is Buddhism; one of its beliefs is that one's life is continuous: one had a life before the present one begins, and one has another life waiting after the present one ends. The word one in the above sentence must be interpreted with care -- it does not necessarily mean a human being; any living being will do. Thus, Nansalmuu's final words probably mean the following: By becoming a lazy human being in the previous life, he/it is now a dog. The pre-title statement, quoted earlier, makes sense when it is interpreted this way. The message, as I see it: live a life that makes you worthy of being a human being.

Senior travel (#266, Topic D)

2006-11-24T17:19:00.000-05:00

As I grow older, I cannot help feeling that travel has become more and more a chore. Still, compared to others, I must say that my physical condition is better than many other seniors. On Monday, my wife and I visited our son in NYC. At NYC's Penn Station, after getting our luggage in an elevator and readying to move to the concourse level, I saw a couple, perhaps in the late 80s or early 90s, about 20 feet away, walking very slowly, probably toward the elevator. The man had a cane, and his forward motion was at best 3" or 4" per step; the woman was in a slightly better physical shape, but she had a hard time taking care of both her traveling companion and a small carry-on case. Seeing this, I stepped out of the elevator, walked toward them, and said: "Go ahead. Let me take care of the suitcase for you." The couple seemed startled, at least reluctant (later, I learned that what I did was not done in NYC), thinking that I was trying to separate their suitcase from them. On the other hand, they saw my wife in the elevator with our luggage. So, they acquiesced to my command and moved toward the elevator, while I managed to put their little suitcase next to them before closing the elevator door. When the elevator door opened at the concourse level, I asked the couple to get out -- ahead of their suitcase. Again, there was incredulity on their faces, but after seeing their suitcase after a 10-second separation, they seemed relieved and walked away. Not a single word was said by either one of them. My wife then got out from the elevator; we then walked toward a predesignated location to meet our son. Next day, I was on a NYC subway going downtown with our son. I was able to find a seat to sit. After a few stops, on came an oldish Chinese-looking lady, carrying a cane. No one seemed to notice her handicap; thus, no one got up to ask her to sit. She was about five body-lengths away from where I was sitting. Since I felt that I was more fit than she, I got up and motioned her to come over to take my seat. She did. After 5 or 6 stops, at Canal Street, she left the train. As she passed me, she said "Thank you" in Chinese. Interestingly, I was able to reclaim my seat. My son said nothing at the time. Later, he said that this was not done on NYC subways. Everyone simply minded one's own business and remained silent and nonchalant. So, as to travel, not only am I physically out of shape, I am also socially out of date.

War game played with cards (#265, Topic G)

2006-11-23T11:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, our 6-1/2 year-old granddaughter suggested that she and I play a war game, using a deck of playing cards. I did not know the game, so she taught me. It is a 2-player game, each being dealt 26 cards, which are stacked in a pile. The game begins with each player showing his/her top card face-up, the player with the higher-valued card winning that skirmish; these two cards then become a part of the winner's pile for reuse when those in his/her hand are exhausted. The game continues until a player's holding is reduced to zero, and the game is over. Adding an element of unexpected to this "it is just luck" assessment by our astute granddaughter, the rule states that, when the card shown by both players has equal value (suit designations are irrelevant), these two cards are to be placed, side by side, on the table. Each player then places two cards, face down, and shows the next card face up -- the winner of that fourth card then wins the entire 8-card pile, a not-insignificant gain. It is conceivable that the fourth card being used for determining that round, now a battle, may also have equal value. This situationnever came up in our game yesterday, so I do not know how this is resolved. During our game, our granddaughter's holding was indeed reduced to only one card; still, she kept on smiling. For that skirmish, she won; she was also able to increase her holding to several cards until her hand was again reduced to only one card. All the time, she kept smiling. This time, after that skirmish, she won a battle, and then some additional skirmishes. By that time, her holding had increased to about 8 cards. Then we had a war -- we each had shown an Ace; after putting 2 cards face down, her next card was another Ace -- so she won that war as well. (The only way one can gain possession of Aces and Kings is when these cards are placed face down; thus, these face-down plays are odds-equaling devices). By the time I called a time-out a few minutes later (the game had been going on for almost an hour), she had 3 Aces, 3 Kings, and 1 Jack. Her winning chances were substantial. We decided to have a recess to allow us to go downtown to visit our son's new office, take on a Broadway musical (The Lion King), see how ballons for Macy's Thanksgiving Parade are blown up, and have dinner at, supposedly, a NY institution, the Tavern on the Green. By the time we returned our son's home, we were all very tired. So, I conceded the game to our granddaughter. Her mother concurred. It was a good game and a good day.

Pure capitalism v Government intervention - Friedman (#264, Topic B)

2006-11-22T10:50:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman passed away at age 94. He was said to be a champion of pure capitalsim and disliked government intervention. What happens when the two are in direct conflict? I knew three instances addressing this issue of which Friedman was aware, and he reacted differently. One, the Long-Term Capital Management, a 1980-ish hedge fund in US, that was heavily invested in illiquid foreign bonds. When some of them were defaulted, LTCM financial viability was in jeopardy; this, in turn, caused the Wall Street to be in jitters, necessitating a bailout by the New York Fed. Friedman acquiesced. One reason might be that many of his fellow Nobel laureates in Economics were principals in LTCM; another might be that both LTCM and NYF are US entities. One certainly does not want to say bad words against rescuing one's friends in jeopardy by one's own country. Two, Thai's currency crisis in late 1990s, with US speculators in Thailand's financial market. The latter was no match to the former; it was almost brought down -- in addition, other capital markets in Asia were seriously threatened. Friedman was silent. Conceivably, he was pleased; it was a triumph of pure capitalism. Armed with this success, and emboldened by an absence of any international disapproval, these same speculators moved, a year or so later, to the Hong Kong market, with a view to destabilizing not only her capital market but her political status as well (HK had just been returned to China after 156 years following the loss in the Opium War). A HK government agency responsible for the securities market intervened. With a sizable government treasury behind it, these speculators' indiscriminate selling (producing big short positions) were readily absorbed (squeezing their short positions in the process), causing them substantial losses -- and a much needed lesson. This was written up in a long research paper, published in the China Quarterly (Cambridge U, 2003), by a professor at HK Polytech and an ex-colleague then teaching at an Australian university. The research included a question: Should the HK government have intervened? For those who have lived in HK ten years or longer, a majority answered in the affirmative. For those who have lived in HK less than 10 years, including transients or visitors (Friedman's name was mentioned as a member in the latter group), a majority answered in the negative. Why so? It seems that US government intervention to bail out US entities is okay, while foreign government intervention to bail out her capital market against US capitalists is not okay. In other words, pure capitalism is permitted to play second fiddle to government intevention when US's national interest is at stake; pure capitalism must prevail, without foreign governments' intervention, when their national interest at stake. There is nothing wrong with nationalistic capitalism, if I may introduce a new term, which was what is being preached; but, just don't set a double standard. Every country has to protect her national interests; it is not a US monopoly.

I am technologically challenged (#263, Topic D)

2006-11-21T09:12:00.000-05:00

Spending Thanksgiving holidays at our son's place in New York, I tried to turn to CNBC this morning. The TV was already on, to CNN, so all I needed to do was to (1) find whether CNBC has an outlet in NYC. Since the answer is obviously yes, all I needed to do was (2) to find which channel beams it, and (3) to switch to that channel. I could not find the remote, so I tried to do it manually. Not knowing which key to press, I accidentally pressed a key that turned the screen to snow. I did not what to do, so I simply left the TV as it was, and began to read the newspaper. In came our 11-year old grandson, who, along with his parents and his younger sister, was visiting his uncle for the first time. Seeing snow on the screen, he asked: "May I help you?" He found the remote, and, in less than a second, pressed a key that showed the channel lineup. He then pressed another key. And, viola, CNBC was on. After breakfast, I wanted to sign on to my laptop, which I brought me, knowing that our son's place is wireless. I could not do it. This time, our son-in-law, who has a laptop by the same manufacturer (HP), came to my rescue. In no time at all, he got my laptop connected and I was able to do this blog. I cannot help thinking that I am now severely technologically challenged. Such is life.

Mistranslation of 夷as a cause of Opium War (#262, Topic L)

2006-11-18T22:01:00.000-05:00

Lydia Liu's book, The Clash of Empires (Harvard U 2004), which I read at the Library of Congress today, greatly disturbed me. Liu is a linguist; in the summer of 1997, just days before Hong Kong was to return to China after 156 years, she was in London doing research on issues related to the Opium War. In her book, after an overview, she devoted the entire Chapter 2 on the use/meaning of the Chinese word 夷 (pronounced as yi) and its translation/mistranslation into English. In China, 夷 refers to places/persons far-away from China proper -- an appropriate English rendition would be foreign (adjective) or foreigner (noun); the word has no derogatory connotation (see, however, my footnote at the end of this post). Indeed, it is so rendered in a Chinese-English dictionary compiled by a British missionary (that dictionary page is reproduced in her book). But, in the hands of British commercial representatives and their English- or Austrian-born translators in the 1830s, whose aim was to be provocative, 夷 was translated as barbarian (adjective and noun). Of course, these commercial representatives' counterparts in Africa (Liu uses the word colonists in her book) used this word routinely to refer to those Africans under their control -- but they were agitated when they used the word to refer to themselves. In any case, the rendition of 夷 as barbarian was self-administered (by staff members of these commercial representatives) and, thus, if they were agitated, self-inflicted. When a new chief commercial representative came from Britain to China, the Chinese governor of Canton, in one of his memorials to the emperor, used the phrase 夷目 to refer to this new foreign chief -- 目 means chief (Liu's book provides but a two-page glossary of key words in Chinese, 目 is not among them; pronounced as mo, this Chinese word is inferred by me); thus, the two words together, a chief from a foreign land. What is wrong with that? But the two translators in his employ (both, incidentally, were men of cloth by training [else they would have no need nor opportunity to gain a knowledge of Chinese]), who forsook their calling for the mighty pound sterling (they were ordered not to wear clothing traditional to men of cloth), rendered the phrase as barbarian eye (目 does have another meaning, which is indeed eye). This new chief was greatly alarmed, because his secret mission, to collect intelligence preparatory to a British invasion, was somehow exposed -- a sheer coincidence and, in any case, again self-administered and self-inflicted. This new chief, said to be a Lord, was obnoxious and unbecoming. Unable to accomplish anything (in a PhD dissertation I read, he violated six Chinese rules for his very first act, an illegal entry into China without proper documentation), he was forced to retreat to Macao in disgrace -- and he died there. His government took offense and claimed that its honor was tarnished -- it was later cited as one of the reasons for starting the Opium War. This is a long story, and this post is already long enough. Let me stop here to add a footnote. In my view, though the word 夷 has no derogatory connotation, it does imply, by virtue of their being removed from China proper, that they have an inferior cultural heritage. There is nothing wrong with that either; it is commonly used by the west when viewing that their culture is superior. The word 夷 appears 9 times in Confucius's Analects. In one instance in my translation (at p 107), I added this note: Yi refers to any area east of the Great Plains of China populated by underdeveloped people.

"Isolationism and protectionism" (#261, Topic F)

2006-11-16T20:07:00.000-05:00

This morning, I was awaken by NPR's rebroadcast of President Bush's speech at the National University of Singapore -- he is on the first leg of an 8-day trip to Asia to attend the APEC forum. When I began listening, the President was talking about "we" "we" repeatedly (in reference to the Iraq involvement). When I was the Director of Chinese University of Hong Kong's graduate program in business administration and its Dean of Faculty of Commerce and Social Science, I was also an external examiner for Nanyang University, which later became a part of the NUS. In that capacity, I have probably been in Singapore 6 or 7 times. Later, when the 4th World Xiangqi Championship was held in Singapore in 1995, I was also there. Thus, I think I know a little bit about Singapore, which is generally regarded as one of the best managed countries in the world. About 70% of her population is of Chinese ethnicity; the remainder is composed of people of Indian, Malaysian and European ethnicity. So, when I heard the President's speech, I asked myself: Were I in the audience, how would I react? On USA's plans in Iraq, how would that affect an average Singaporean? As the former secretary of defense famously said: "You break it, you own it." You went to Iraq; you take care of it -- please don't drag us in, don't "we" "we" us. In short, that portion of his speech was, in my view, designed mainly for domestic US consumption. Why export it? The president then talked about USA's flirting with isolationism and protectionism. Over and over again, he talked about "free trade", but it did not seem that he really meant it. In actual deed, Singapore scores well on the free trade front, whereas, in US, one reads two US senators' threatening, off and on, about slapping a 27.5% tax on all items imported from China, and wonders whether this is free trade or protectionism in action. So, why talk about free trade abroad when it is not practiced at home? This evening, over PBS, a panel was analyzing the president's speech, using words such as "hypocritical" to describe it. One panelist stated that, instead of blaming Asians for their high savings rate, do something with Americans' living hand-to-mouth or incurring a heavy load of debt. Tonight, the president leaves for Vietnam, where the APEC forum is held. He was supposed to carry a greeting, from the US Congress, on Vietnam's joining the World Trade Organization. But he will be going there empty-handed.

"Do you remember me?"; Kriegspiel (#260, Topic G, N)

2006-11-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

At the end of my presentation last Saturday, on issues related to translating Analects (#254), a young man came to the podium and asked: "Do you remember me?" His face looked familiar, but I could not place him. Not wanting to embarrass me further, he said: "Ten years ago, I interviewed you for articles published in the Washington Chinese News." This reminder brings back many fond memories. One of the interviews he (Gary Cheng) did on me, later published as a full-page article in that paper, was on Kriegspiel, a western-chess-based game that focuses on one's ability to infer rather than on regurgitation -- a game even Bobby Fischer, a world champion in western chess, considered "difficult." (#13, 1/2/06,Topic G) Realizing that there was no English-language book to introduce this fascinating game, after reading a western-chess columnist to this effect, I wrote one, which was published in 1994. (At the time, I was aware of a Kriegspiel end-game book written in English, published in London in the 1950s; later, I learned that there is an introduction to Kriegspiel written in German, published in Geneva in the 1930s.) The publication of my book received attention on both sides of the Atlantic -- one reason might be my bold statement in the book's preface: "In a few years, and certainly by the end of this millennium, a computer, endowed with a gigabyte of memory to store all past games and nanosecond speed to retrieve winning moves from these past games, will be the World Chess Champion." (This proved to be so, when, in 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, then the world's western chess champion.) In addition to Gary's interview, there was another full-page article, in English, published in City Paper, as Like Chess, But Not So Easy. One year, our son, daughter, and son-in-law had this article framed and gave it to me as a Christmas gift -- it is now displayed in my study. Come to think of it, I must do justice to this Chinese-language article by framing and hanging it in my study as well. The article in WCN has two photographs, one was on a game of Kriegspiel played in DuPont circle in DC, being videotaped by ABC (and, later, beamed by a local station in Seattle as well, since many games in my Kriegspiel book were played by faculty members at the U of Washington, where I was a full professor). The game was invented by a Fleet Street (London's Wall Street) reporter in 1896. Hoping to mount an international congress to celebrate the game's centenary, in 1995, I went to London to promote it. An editor of Chess came to my hotel to interview me, which, along with an article I wrote on the subject (touting that, at one time, a Cambridge biochemistry professor who was a Nobel laureate as well as the President of British Chess Federation, preferred Kriegspiel to western chess, with a 7-move game resulting in a checkmate to prove it), appeared in that magazine; telephonic interviews were published in Rochade Europa. Lacking a financial backer (a million pounds would take care of it nicely), this centennial tournament, for London in 1996, did not materialize, I regret to say. In my presentation last Saturday, I also added my blog address. Gary later sent me an e-mail saying that, using my blog as a model, he had set up a blog of his own, lqj.blogspot.com. If I may say so, his is much more colorful than mine, with color photographs and vivid prose in Chinese. Yesterday, he sent me another e-mail saying that he had written an article about my talk last Saturday, and that, in addition to posting it in his blog, it will be published in tomorrow's (11/17/06) New World Times 新世界時報, a Chinese-language weekly, of which Gary is, in all likelihood, a contributing editor. My, my, the vitality of the young generation!

Nuclear stress tests (#259, Topic D)

2006-11-15T19:55:00.000-05:00

Nuclear, as a word, is very much in the news. If a reader wanders onto this entry on the assumption that it deals with fatigue caused by nuclear tests in the conventional sense, one would be greatly disappointed; I apologize. Two years ago, on the eve of my scheduled visit to Shanghai to partake three events -- the wedding of one of my nephews, the 70th anniversary of the now-defunct high school from which I graduated, and the 6th world reunion of alumni of St. John's University, a school which also no longer exists) -- I was asked to do a stress test on the treadmill. I failed the test, necessitating an angioplasty with stent (my second in 8 years) within days and the cancellation of my trip to China. Last year, after we moved to the retirement community, I decided to change my cardiologist to one close to the Washington Hospital Center, where both my angioplasty operations were performed, and to which I would likely be sent if another operation would be needed in the future. A former classmate of our daughter's, who became a cardiologic surgeon after Yale, is a member in a cardiology partnership having an office in WHC -- she actually visited me, during my stay there two years ago, at least once a day. She gave us a referral, the head of another cardiology partnership practicing in an office building next to WHC. After an initial visit two weeks ago, I went there today to do my nuclear stress tests (so written in the instruction sheet I received earlier) -- in addition to the conventional stress test on a treadmill, there was imaging of my heart and other monitoring activities. On the treadmill, the goal set for me was to reach 120 heart beats per minute without being stressed out. (I learned from one of the technicans that the goal is established by (1) substracting one's age from 220, and (2) multiplying the remainder by .85. In my case, the resulting product is 120.) I was on the treadmill for 7 minutes: stage 1, slow with a small incline, 3 minutes; stage 2, faster with a slightly higher incline, 3 minutes; and stage 3, much faster with a pronounced incline (necessitating my moving as if running), 1 minute. Whether I should have stayed for 3 minutes on stage 3 (meaning that the actual test was cut short), I had no idea. After reviewing my test results, my cardiologist proclaimed me that I have passed. I was told that my heart was/is pumping at 78% efficiency, said to be in the top 1 percentile (probably for my age group, though he did not say so), as the average is 55%. So, I guess I still have a few more years to live, allowing me to finish the book or two I hope to do before I say goodbye to the world.

At the post office (#258, Topic D)

2006-11-14T22:47:00.000-05:00

After moving to our retirement community, the thought occurred to me that the Post Office has been extremely thoughtful of our welfare, giving us no less than 3 post offices with a 2-mile radius. One, the closest, is actually in our compound, opening from 10 to 2. Another one, the farthest, about 2-miles away in a shopping center, has regular hours of 8:30 to 5. The third one, in another shopping center just outside of our community, has attractive hours of 10 to 6:30 -- most convenient for us to frequent. My fellow retirees apparently have the same idea. Yesterday, while in a queue to be served, a young lady, two slots behind me, was using her cellular 'phone. She was apparently conversing in French, with not infrequent reference to d'accord. Since that word is very close to the Chinese phrase da ge (big brother, with which my younger sisters addresses me), I could not resist the temptation not to turn around and look at her. Another lady, who was immediately behind me, asked her whether she was conversing in French. I then added my 2-bits' worth, by first saying that I was from China originally. The lady behind me then asked: Where are you from? From the mainland, I answered. Is that Taiwan? she asked again. This conversation attracted the attention of another lady waiting in line just ahead of me. So she said: No, no. Mainland China is as big as USA. The lady behind me then asked me in which city in China I lived. Shanghai, I answered. In Shanghai, they speak Cantonese, she volunteered. It turned out that she was born in Harbin, and had been to Shanghai before she migrated to USA. I knew that there were many so-called White Russians in China in the pre-PRC days, so I asked: Are you of Russian ancestry? To which she answered in the affirmative. And she lives in the same retirement community. Apparently, I was not paying much attention, because, by that time, one of the clerks was ready to take care of business. As I did not step up quickly, she chad to say: Next. I excused myself and proceeded to the counter to conduct my business, which was to mail two packages of books and to buy some stamps. In our retirement community, you meet interesting people as soon as you step out of your apartment. Very lively.

Rent control in 21st century USA? (#257, Topic M)

2006-11-13T22:40:00.000-05:00

"Do as I say, don't do what I do" is a saying that applies to USA well. My anonymous friend's comment to yesterday's entry, Admissions Bar Higher for Asians (#256), is a good example. Of course, purists may argue that admissions criteria are subjective and, therefore, is not indicative of what really goes on in this great country. Fair enough. So, let us talk about beans -- beans can be counted objectively, regardless of who is counting. I know, I am, as people are fond of calling members of my profession, a bean counter. Many years ago, a colleague at the time said the following to me: Do you realize that, regardless of the size of a pile of money -- say, a budget in the trillions or millions of trillions -- it can (and, indeed, must) be balanced to the last penny? I never thought of my profession this way before, but it is so true. And it makes me feel good. Well, any way, in yesterday's Washington Post, I read a six-column story, complete with a 4x6 photo, that residents in 11,232 apartments in New York City "fear loss of rent controls in historical apartments." Rent control? Involving more tha 11,000 apartments? "Since 1940s"? In a town said to be the center of capitalism? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. The market-rate for a 3-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, according to the story, is $3,833 on average; a rent-regulated 3-bedroom apartment, $1,514 -- not even 40% of the going rate. What a deal! Now that the 110-building complex has been sold, for $5.4 billion no less, these residents worry that rent would increase -- rent control on these buildings cannot be revoked; they are "protected by the law." What is the justification for this rent-stabilization law? There is no mention, so I don't know. The story did say that "only whites were allowed to move into the complex, until protests desegregated it several years after it opened." So the authorities were practicing segregation as well -- legally, of course. A demographer is quoted as saying: "New York is a cosmpolitan place where many people want to live, but not many people can afford to live." So? Is rent control the answer? I enjoy escagot, but I cannot afford to eat it. What shall I do? Have a law passed to allow me to pay only 40% of the menu price? Well, this is capitalism in action, and ready for export. For domestic consumption, just do what I say, don't do what I do.

"Admissions Bar Higher for Asians" (#256, Topic A)

2006-11-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal carried a front-page story: "Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asian at Elite Schools?" (it is abbreviated to that shown above as this entry's title). This is a mere rhetorical question, since, from reading the story, the answer is an emphatic YES. A 17-year old, who came from China when he was 4 years old, armed with an almost perfect score -- 2400 (out of 2400) in SAT and 2390 (out of 2400) in SAT2 subject tests in Physics, Chemistry, and Calculus -- applied for admission to 9 schools. One would think that all 9 would welcome him, an apparent genius and a future Nobelist (mark my word), with open arms. Perish the thought. He was rejected by Princeton (#1 in 2006's US News's ranking), Harvard (tied for #2), and even my alma mater Pennsylvania (#4) in the Ivy League, as well as by MIT (#6, the only school affliated with the Ivies for admission purposes) and Stanford (#5) -- the last one is not unexpected, since it is in the Bay area close to San Francisco. Luckily, he was accepted by, and is now a freshman at, Yale (tied for #2). (He was also accepted by Cal Tech (many considered this the most difficult school to get into in the US), Rutgers and Coopers Union.) After reading a research study indicating that for an Asian-American to be admitted to Princeton, he/she "needed to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants to have the same chance of admission", this young man filed a complaint with DOE's Office for Civil Rights, asking the Government to withhold funds to that institution until this inequity is remedied. The matter is now under investigation. The story also cites a 2005 study that Asian-American applicants admitted to U of Michigan had a median score of 1400 in SAT (at that time, before SAT was revamped, the score for SAT ranged from 400 to 1600), 50 points higher than that of "white students", 140 points higher than Hispanics, and 240 points higher than "blacks." The story also gives statistics at UC Berkeley after affirmative action in college admission was banned by California voters -- Asian-Americans constitute 42% of this year's freshman class, up from 34.6% in 1997, the last year before the ban took effect. What a story!

Religious news in Washington Post (#255, Topic R)

2006-11-12T10:23:00.000-05:00

Every Saturday, our local paper, Washington Post, devotes 1+ pages to religious news. In yesterday's issue, in space set aside for News in Brief, there are five entries. One, the Vatican will convene an advisory group to "study scientific insights into the evolution of the universe and of life," on which, in 1996, the predecessor to the current pope had said that "Darwin's theory of evolution was 'more than a hypothesis'" -- undoubtedly a major concession, since the earlier view held that it was only a hypothesis. Two, a Missouri Baptist group "has voted to oust 19 churches for donating money and having other ties to more-moderate Baptist groups." So, this is religious toleration in action in USA. Three, a Presbyterian minister was "charged with breaking church law for performing a lesbian marriage." Another example of religious tolerance? Four, a Holiness Church in Kentucky, following a passage in the Gospel of Mark where "Jesus is quoted as telling the apostles that they will be able to 'take up serpents' without being harmed" Well, "A woman has died after being bitten by a snake during a church service." Five, a Florida man, carrying garbage to a trash bin, was ambushed by two men with a rifle, but two copies of New Testaments in his shirt pocket stopped the bullet and saved his life. So, at least one story ends with a happy note.

Issues re translating Confucius's Analects (#254, Topic C)

2006-11-11T23:05:00.000-05:00

I was invited to give a talk on issues related to translating Confucius's Analects to members of the Washington Literary Society this afternoon. This was the second time I was asked to give such a talk in recent months. With a younger and more serious audience as well as a longer time period (1:30 - 4), I spent some time extending my PowerPoint presentation. I outlined seven topics for discussion. One, three principles of translation (first advocated by Yen Fu 嚴復, who translated Huxley's Evolution into Chinese in the 19th century); my English renditions of these three principles are fidelity 信， fluency 達， finesse 雅 -- together "3F". Two, a brief history of translating Analects into western languages (beginning with Latin, published in 1687, of which I have a xerox copy); at the marketplace, 30+ English renditions are readily available; I have read 20+. Three, a comparison of selected passages in Analects in 11 other renditions (not including mine); one of several examples cited is 三人行，必有吾師矣 -- with two troublesome words likely to be mistranslated, 5 non-Chinese-native translators had indeed committed 7 errors (out of 10 opportunities); 6 Chinese-native translators fared better, but only slightly: out of 12 opportunities, they committed 7 errors. Four, areas where translators may contribute to a proper understanding of Analects -- Chinese classics, Analects included, are without punctuation marks; they risk being misinterpreted through misplaced punctuation marks. Five, areas where translators may add to a better appreciation through footnotes and rhyming. Six, areas where I am still looking for English words to improve my translation -- an example of words I have resolved is 懷; one I am still searching is 仁 -- I have changed the rendition of 仁 some 20 times before committing one in the volume I published in 1999, but I am still open to suggestions in future revisions. (In a Q&A session, one attendee, an experienced interpreter for high-level visiting delegations, suggested a transliteration, simply as ren, without translating it. My long-held view is that such an approach is an insufficient discharge of a translator's responsibilities (I disapprove of those who did in their renditions); given this comment, whose view I respect, I must reassess my own view.) Seven, areas where western religionists (Jesuits in the 17th centuries and British missionary Legge after the Opium War) deliberately misinterpreted the Chinese custom of 祭 as religion and Chinese reverence to parents 孝 as ancestor worship (and translating the word as filial piety). To correct these deliberate misinterpretations was the main purpose of my engaging in a translation of Analects. Thus, in the Q&A period, I encouraged the attendees to express their views on these issues. (At the beginning of my presentation today, I apologized to the attendees, in advance, by saying that I would have harsh words for western religionists, but these words must not be construed as my disrespect for their religions. After my wife joined the session, at about 2:15, from attending a lunch-time banquet (I had to forgo it for this talk), I mentioned that I respect her religious belief.) At the end, I left my e-mail address and the address to my blog. I have already received one e-mail, and I look forward to others.

審心息爭，寬懷得樂 D. C. Chen, R.I.P. (#253; Topic N)

2006-11-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

I was at the Gate of Heaven cemetery this afternoon to say goodbye to D. C. Chen, PhD in Biostatistics from Yale, one of my wife's cousins, about 5 years my senior. I first met D.C. one Saturday afternoon in May more than two decades ago, in a hospital room in Bethesda -- only a few months earlier, I came to Washington for my second tour, joining the World Bank from my professorship at U of Texas; my wife was still in Texas to handle the sale of our house there. For the forthcoming Mother's Day that year, D.C. bought some flowers on behalf of their adopted son, who was about 5 or 6 years old at the time. In a split-second inattention, when crossing a street without looking at oncoming traffic, he was hit by a Metro bus, necessitating the amputation of one of his legs below the knee. When I met him, D.C. was most courteous, calm, spoke with a soft voice, as if nothing had happened. His stay at the hospital, however, gave him a lot of time to think; after his discharge, he decided to leave Christianity (which was deeply entrenched in his hometown in China; he was forced to accept it since infancy without his approval and certainly without enthusiam) for Buddhism. A dramatic effect of this conversion was his decision not to sue the bus driver nor the Metro company, even though the Metro bus driver was more at fault than he. His reasoning: money meant little to him; he had a fulfilling job (a supergrade position at the National Institute of Health; his highly regarded understanding of pain management won him a year-long fellowship to evaluate acupuncture in China); he had a comfortable home and a loving family; conversely, were he to sue and were the bus driver convicted, he would, most likely, be out of a job and his family, though faultless, would suffer nevertheless. He also refused early retirement, arguing that his handicap was not a sufficient reason but a mere rationalization. (He eventually retired at his normal retirement age.) By the same token, he refused to apply for a handicap parking permit (even though, with that permit, he would be able to park at any legal parking space without charge). For several years, D.C. and I met for lunch every Wednesday, the purpose of which was for me to provoke him into discussing his belief (or, perhaps, beliefs), in connection with my years-long research on the influence of western religions on Chinese culture. He took a strong interest in Dao De Jing, a Chinese classic I translated (indeed, afterward, he gave me a copy of this work as translated by another person of Chinese ancestry); he augmented my translation and annotation with comments from his Buddhist understanding, and we discussed them as we met. At the end of one meeting, perhaps my comments were too provocative, he left the impression that they made him uncomfortable and that he would no longer entertain further meetings. And he kept his words. My repeated 'phone calls were to no avail; so were calls by my wife. We last saw him about two years ago. At the burial-side today, I asked another relative (a follower of Buddhist faith) whether D.C. had left any writings. She said that he wrote a lot, and, on the spot, gave me several 5x7 cards with his writings. The following eight words, from one of D.C.'s writings, describe his outlook (as well as his reasoning for not suing) most fittingly: 審心息爭，寬懷得樂。Examining [your] heart avoids argument; broadening [your] embrace produces happiness. D.C., you have set a good example for all of us; we'll always remember with your kind words and outstanding deeds. R.I.P.

Democracy: A Cruel Sport (#252; Topic P)

2006-11-09T22:15:00.000-05:00

One of my wife's nieces, an attorney, after working in an administrative capacity in the Dallas court system for some 10 years, was appointed last year to be a judge, to fill the remainder of a vacancy. Judgeships in Dallas (and, in MD as well [#240]) are elective offices. Thus, this year, to retain her judgeship, she had to campaign. I frankly do not see why judgeship positions and such are elective posts, but that is beside the point. Campaigning means spending time away from legal matters; campaigning also means recruiting volunteers to help out. Clearly, her parents are automatically involved -- hosting get-togethers in various communities for voters to meet their daughter. (We had attended similar functions, in our retirement community here, hosted by parents of candidates running for various positions; we could appreciate the time and effort needed in mounting them, while our only outlay was time -- to be there to enjoy the delicious homemade cheesecakes and such.) I do not know how many other volunteers my wife's niece had, but I do know that her siblings and their spouses all pitched in -- a younger brother, a Harvard MBA running a mutual fund, probably handled finance; another younger brother, an architect, probably helped out with office work; his wife, though expecting, nevertheless handed out flyers from door to door while rolling a baby stroller; her younger sister, a successful pediatrician practicing in Los Angeles, flew in to provide both financial and logistical support. My wife and I are too old to be of any help; we merely wrote a modest check as an expression of our moral support. All in all, donations exceeded $100,000 -- likely to be a substantial portion of a judge's annual salary. Yesterday morning, my wife called her brother to find out how her niece fared; bad news. Later yesterday, she received an e-mail from her sister-in-law, delivering even worse news. It seems that there were 42 judges running on the Republican ticket in Dallas -- and all 42 lost. According to my wife's sister-in-law, this complete wipeout never happened before. Is this rational? Difficult to say. But, I might cite a personal experience. In Maryland, not only judges, but Register of Wills is an elective office. The day before election, at our local library, I saw a flyer bearing his name; it seems that he was severely handicapped. This piece of information, along with a statement that he had been in this capacity for 20+ years, was enough for me to cast a vote for him. Is this rational? Certainly it was not based on a careful study of this candidate's performance. But, again, I have a strong reservation why some positions, administrative in content, must be subjected to vote confirmation, thereby wasting a lot of financial and human resources. My own conclusion: democracy (which, in US, means casting a vote every other year) is a cruel sport.

"All Slander All the Time" (#251, Topic P)

2006-11-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

This morning, the day after Election Day 2006, there was an interesting op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, written by a former reporter, now a partner in a venture-capital firm; the piece's title is shown above. He first cited a Gallup Poll, where, among votes in states with closely contested Senate races, "The vast majority described [political advertising] as either 'somewhat negative,' 'very negative,' or 'extremely negative'." Extrapolating, he expressed the view that "2006 will be the first year that negative political advertising expenditures reached the $1 billion mark." He lamented that "in America, the major parties don't ever think in broad, national terms. They're all tactics and no strategy. They don't advertise themselves at all. Instead, they spend the hundreds of millions they raise microtargeting supposedly single-issue voters and bombarding them with negative messages about the opposite party's alleged disdain for those concerns." He concluded by saying that "The alternative [to a new political party], after all, is a new record every two years -- $2 billion of negative advertising, then $4 billion, then $8 billion. All slander all the time eventually collapses of its own foul weight." Is this -- democracy in USA in the 21st century as descried in this piece -- to be exported to other countries?

China Garden Musical Gala (#250, Topic D)

2006-11-08T11:47:00.000-05:00

Sunday, 11/05/06, Friends of China Garden mounted a musical gala at the Strathmore Music Hall, (1) promoting this 4-year-old ready-to-be-built project, a 12-acre China Garden 中國園 in the US National Aboretum in DC, and (2) raising funds from the Chinese-American community for 8% of the total budget of $100 million. The remaining 92% have been underwritten by both the US government (responsible for providing land and related infrastructure and for site maintenance) and the Chinese government (responsible for designing and constructing dozens of buildings and for decorating their interiors with Chinese cultural artifacts). The gala featured traditional Chinese musical instruments, such as Zheng 箏 pipa 琵琶 hujin 胡琴, and played classical Chinese compositions. In the finale, a chorus performance, there were no less than 120+ peformers on the stage -- 50+ female voices, 30+ male voices, a soprano, a tenor, a 30-member Chinese-instrument orchestra, a conductor, augmented by three cellos, a bass, and a piano. It was both visually impressive and musically pleasing; above all, it was an artistic success. With the gala exactly two days before the midterm election, and with the venue held in Montgomery County Maryland, the governor (represented by his wife), Democratic candidates for senate and for house, and Montgomery county executive candidate, all appeared on stage to wish the project success. Maryland's secretary of state also read a citation honoring the Friends of China Garden 中國園之友. When the project was first publicly announced by the Undersecretary of Agriculture in Research, 任築山, Joseph J. Jen, to a gathering of the Chinese-American community in 2003, he wanted to sign up 100 donors, each pledging $10,000, so as to raise $1 million to give the project a fast start (thereby telescoping the unavoidable delays of a year or two in the US goverment budget-approval process). Sensing the hesitation among the 100 or so gathered, I decided to get the ball rolling by taking the initiative; I was pleased to see that 5 or 6 followed my lead before the end of that gathering; soon thereafter, the goal of having 100 donors was met. Needless to say, as evidenced by this gala, Friends of China Garden are still soliciting funds. Indeed, while at the Musicl Hall, the principal of a Chinese-language school, sitting just behind me, introduced me to a student in her school, who had initiated a dollar-a-name project, soliciting donations mainly from students, though participation by adults was equally welcome. My wife and I managed to meet our quota by giving this young man a dollar bill, 2 quarters, and 5 dimes. At the gala, the chairman of Friends of China Garden, 陳壯飛 Jeffrey Chen, announced that he had secured three pledes of $10,000 apiece that very evening. The Garden, designed by renowned Chinese architect 貝聿銘 I.M. Pei, will be the largest Chinese Garden in North America when it is completed in about 2 years' time.

Election day 2006 (#249, Topic P)

2006-11-07T19:25:00.000-05:00

So, the first Tuesday in November of even-numbered years, election day, today, finally came. I woke up, at 6:15, to NPR's rebroadcast of last night's speeches by the Campaigner-in-Chief (#244), warning his audience, over and over again, that a Democratic majority means higher taxes, less national security, etc. Earlier, I read that the CiC invariably goes to venues where his views are fully endorsed ("preaching to the choir"?), and NPR's rebroadcast confirmed this loud and clear -- after each of the CiC's utterances, there was a round of loud yells. Varying from my morning routine, I decided to have a quick breakfast and, with my wife, go to our new polling place (we moved to our retirement community in April 2005) early; we were there a few minutes before 7:00, when the polling place was scheduled to open. To my great surprise, there was already a long line, perhaps 150+, waiting for the door to open. I was equally surprised that the entire process -- from the waiting line to a waiting station (where seating was provided, a very thoughtful idea), to a two-person station where my identity was verified and a voting card issued, to a long corridor where I was directed by a poll worker to one of the several rooms where voting machines were stationed, to being escorted to one of these machines by an election judge and being briefed on how to use it before leaving me alone -- took barely 15 minutes. The machine was no different from the ones I was accustomed a decade or so ago (I think our governor did not want electronic voting machines in 2006), so it offered no problem. Since I have also read the sample ballot earlier, I was able to cast my vote reasonably fast -- I was done by 7:25. On the way out toward the parking place, there were still people handing out flyers and such. A young man, well dressed without a coat (the temperature was in the low 50s), but with a sticker on his jacket bearing a candidate's name, was among them. His face was vaguely familiar, so I approached him and said, pointing to the candidate's name on his jacket: "I attended one of his meetings." To my surprise, he said "I am he." So, I said: "I voted for you," and he responded with a "Thank you" and shook my hand. He was a candidate for Maryland's attorney general -- one of the top positions being contested today. With his being here in person, early in the morning, it does suggest that our retirement community has clout. Indeed, yesterday, Al Gore, presidential candidate representing the Democratic party in 2000 (in which he had more popular votes than the declared winner, the current CiC), was at a rally in our retirement community, on behalf of his party's nominee for the U.S. Senate (whom I also voted today). This will be a busy evening for the media, particularly as polls begin to close beginning at 7 EST (with Indiana and Kentucky, whose polls close at 6 CST [=7 EST], leading the pack). We'll see whether Democrats could pick up 15 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate to wrestle control from the Republicans.

Tai Chi (#248, Topic I)

2006-11-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

Tai Chi Quan, frequently truncated to Tai Chi, is a Chinese invention several centuries ago. To younger people in their teens and 20s, TC is fast moving and atheletic; when equipped with swords, now known as Tai Chi Jian , it is beautiful to watch, though it could be used in a duel no less fatal than gun duels in the west (witness the award-winning movie: Crouching dragon and taming tigers). When adapted for the mid-aged or older, TC movements may be slowed down as to be graceful and leisurely. I was first exposed to TC in 1991, when I was a consultant for the Asian Development Bank stationed in Shanghai -- I walked to the park to learn TC every morning at 6. Unfortunately, the teacher, with a group of students of different ages, made no concession to oldsters like myself (I was 63 then). So, I could not keep up with the class and, as a consequence, did not learn much; if anything, my back pain, to which TC is said to offer an effective remedy, became more pronounced. My next exposure to TC was in 1998, when a TC Institute held an open house in Rockville MD; out of curiosity, I went. There, I asked Master Tang, the Institute's director, about my back pain. His answer: "you did not do TC correctly." In September of that year (the beginning of a new academic year), I enrolled in a class which Master Tang personally taught. (The Institute, which Master Tang first set up about a decade ago or so with 15 students, had mushroomed into a dozen branches teaching thousands of adults how to do TC at no charge.) Master Tang's teaching method was/is undoubted well adapted to senior citizens, since I was able to follow (despite my gradual loss in memory). Indeed, some time ago, I no longer felt any back pain (caused by a major car accident). A few days ago, I was at a cardiologist's office for my initial visit. Upon knowing my age (78), he said: "You don't look that old." Indeed, I feel quite good and fit. A real good benefit from TC, particularly for older people, is to improve one's balance. (This has been documented through many academic studies.) An incident this morning prompted me to do this entry. In taking my daily walk, I invariably take the fire stairs, which, needless to say, are built with cement. This morning, for reasons unclear, on my way down, I somehow almost missed a step -- had I missed, I would have tumbled down about a dozen steps and be hurt, perhaps rather badly. However, doing TC for 8 or so years, I was able to be more aware of a basic but critical TC movement known as single weight. Single weight, viewed positively, means that one's body weight must always be carried by one foot (except at the very beginning or at the very end, when one is readying to begin or proceeding to end); one's body weight shifts from one foot to the other as movement progresses. Viewed defensively, single weight means that, before one shifts weight from one foot to the other, make sure that the footing one is to land is solid/level -- losing balance, viewed this way, is the result of landing on a footing one thinks is solid/level but is in fact not so. Landing on a footing that is not solid nor level leads one to lose balance; losing balance results in a fall. This morning, just before I was shifting my weight from my right foot to my left foot, I suddenly realized that the footing on which my left foot was to land was further removed from me than I visualized -- had I shifted my weight then and there, I would be deceived by my illusion and would lose my balance, resulting in tumbling down. This realization took barely a fraction of a second -- a nanosecond would be an exaggeration; a millisecond would be about right -- with this realization, I withheld shifting my weight to my left foot (that is, freezing my weight on my right foot in suspense) while instintively grasping the railbar next to the stairs. With my forwaard momentum arrested, nothing happened. I was able to walk down as if nothing happened. I took the walk and, in time, do this entry.

Champaign 2006: $100m for 1 proposition (#247, Topic M)

2006-11-05T11:35:00.000-05:00

Commenting on my post on campaign spending (#231), my anonymous friend was surprised (and judging from his tone, somewhat upset) that the total would be $2.3 billion for this mid-term election. While I have no intention of further upsetting my good anonymous friend, I regret to say that that figure, although barely a week old, is out-of-date. Last evening, I heard over my car radio that the total had just jumped by more than 10%, to $2.6 billion -- and the campaign season still has 2-3 days to go. Today, I read, in a post in an investment-focused website, that, in California, oil companies have invested more than $100 million to defeat a proposition (#87), aimed at the state's getting 6% "extraction fee" (royalty) from oil companies. Up to now, as I read the post, California receives nothing, while some states get up to 15% (Texas gets 6.4%). If this proposition passes, California is scheduled to receive $4 billion a year (out of oil companies' take of $70 billion). So, the stake is high and $100 million is a small sum to pay for such a big payoff. On the other hand, while I can see the value of "investing" in campaigns that have direct cost-benefit consequences, I fail to see the rationale of investing in congreesional-election campaigns -- the cost would be higher than $100 million, but where is the payoff?

"Stay the course" vs 以不變應萬變 (#246, Topic K)

2006-11-04T09:06:00.000-05:00

The feature article in the current (11/6/06) Election Preview issue of TIME begins with the sentence: "'Stay the course' is a time-honored rallying cry in politics" -- it is (or, more accurately, has been) one of the President's favorite utterances. The article then trivializes it by saying that "it has always been more a slogan than a strategy, meant to show the steadfastness of the person who shouts it rather than what he actually intends to do" -- and then ridicules it by saying that "when staying the course turns into 'constantly changing tactics to meet the situation on the ground.' That is how President Bush is now describing the battle plan in Iraq." I first heard the President's description (using the word in TIME) when he held a long press conference (and duly broadcast over CNBC) a few days earlier in the Rose Garden; at that time, I thought it odd that the President had to offer a clarification of his favorite saying -- to me, it was self-evident and, thus, unnecessary. As to the article in TIME, I only had time to read the first few sentences (quoted above) before I was called by the dental hygenist for my turn of teeth cleaning. As it turned out, lying on a dentist table with nothing to do was a perfect occasion for me to ponder this question: Why the popular reaction to the President's clarification differs so drastically from mine? Before long, it dawned on me. The functional equivalent to "stay the course", in Chinese, is 以不變應萬變, which may be rendered as "Use no-change to combat myriad changes". In China, with her sophisticated understanding of nature, 不變 (no-change) never denotes unchanging -- nothing under the sun is unchanging: one gets older with every passing nanosecond; one's position in the universe differs with every fractional rotation of the earth. This philosophy is best expressed by Li Er 李耳 (c571-c477 BCE) in his 5262-word essay, Dao De Jing 道德經: 獨立而不改，周行而不殆 (25.1) (It stands by itself, unwavingly; it is in motion, unendingly.) (my translation, published in 2001) By contrast, the west, particularly USA, is too heavily influenced by biblical sayings, for which no-change does indeed mean unchanging -- unchanging with respect to time, unchanging with respect to space. Thus, when a westerner says "stay the course", he is, using a word that has just gained currency, stuck with it -- any minor deviation therefrom is viewed, using another word precious to biblical followers, as being unfaithful. By contrast, when a person of Chinese ancestry says 以不變應萬變, it is understood that while one's policy is unwavering, one's tactics must necessarily adapt in the face of ever changing environment. This is exactly what the President saw fit to clarify. Q.E.D.

Candle in a poem in English (#245, Topic L)

2006-11-03T22:53:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, I wrote about a couplet in Chinese that uses candle as a metaphor for tears shed in a farewell among friends (#238). A reader in Toronto, who has bought several copies of my books as well as signing onto the internet to read my blogs, sent me the following. It is beautifully done, with deep feelings expressed not in two lines (as in the original in Chinese 蠟燭有心還惜別，替人垂淚到天明), but in four lines, rhymed -- and many times better than my rendition:
A simple wax candle has a sympathetic heart,
That saddens and cries when friends depart.
It covers gloomy darkness gently with light,
and sheds quiet tear-drops through the night.
With this publication, I wish to thank my Toronto friend, who is a fellow septagearian and only five years my junior. I also wish to take this opportunity to request others readers interested in contributing to my blog to send in their work using the space labeled comments (this is the space at the end of each entry). These comments may be either signed or unsigned (anonymous). Though the blog's software allows me to review comments before publication, all comments I have received so far are so well written that they are published without the slightest hesitation on my part.

Commander-in-chief in Chinese chess and in western chess (#244, Topic G)

2006-11-03T21:22:00.000-05:00

Proto-chess was invented in China (#243). The focus of Xiangqi (Chinese chess) is the commander-in-chief (CiC); when he is attacked, he must find ways to neutralize this attack -- (1) by marshalling his troopd to counter the attack (check) and, in time, to mount a counterattack on his counterpart, or (2) by moving to a different location to temporize the assault. When he cannot do either, he surrenders (resigns) and the game is over. The focus of western chess is the same, but there are three major differences. One, in Xiangqi, the CiC must remain in a 3x3 square (the headquarters), symbolizing that, in commanding his troops, he stands confidently at the center. In western chess, the CiC is moved to the side of the board the soonest (by the 7th or so move), symbolizing, at least to me, that he seeks safety at the expense of his troops. Two, in Xiangqi, when the CiC can neither defend himself nor move to safety within the 3x3 square, he surrenders. In western chess, the game is declared a draw when the CiC, even though hopelessly behind, being surrounded, but not being checked, cannot find a legal move for himself or for any of his pieces (stalemate)-- this rule bears no resemblance to real-life war which western chess is said to simulate (in Xiangqi, a stalemate is a win for the opponent). Three, in Xiangqi, the two CiC cannot stand face-to-face on the same open file (which may be up to 8 spaces apart vertically) -- known as telepotency, a word I coined when I wrote the first of, so far, five volumes on Xiangqi. In western chess, the two CiC must not stand next to each other; they must be separated by 1 space either vertically or horizontally. In USA, the President is also the CiC. The western chess seems to simulate USA's CiC well -- moving about the entire board/country unconstrained. As I write this, the President/CiC was on the road for the 6th consecutive day (today: Montana), campaigning for various Republican candidates for election/reelection to the congress or governorship (today: Montana's senatorship). Is that the proper role for a CiC? Yesterday's Washington Post and today's CNBC gave a cute answer: they spell the CiC not as Commander-in-chief, but as Campaigner-in-chief -- a sitting president is invariably an attractive draw; when he visits, it is the occasion to host cocktails and dinners, with his followers shelling out $5,000 or $10,000 for the privilege of shaking his hand and listening to his talk. The other day, I wrote about how much time is needed to earn $10,000 (#238). Perhaps I should also write about how fast one may spend $10,000 -- a 2-hour dinner meeting with the president.

Chess is a Chinese invention (#243, Topic I)

2006-11-02T21:32:00.000-05:00

The 10/29/06 issue of Book World, a Sunday Washington Post supplement, has a book review of The Immortal Game: A History of Chess. Regrettably, the book touts the shop-worn view that chess was invented in India. In my 383-page award-winning book, The Genealogy of Chess, published in 1998, I had shown that proto-chess was a Chinese invention (in 203 BCE, by the all-winning commander-in-chief Han Xin 韓信 during the period of Chu-Han Conflict 楚漢相爭). Through trial-and-error, the proto-chess became Xiangqi 象棋(Chinese chess); Xiangqi as we know it today was last modified in 820 when two cannons 砲 were added. The proto-chess was disseminated westward to Persia and India (in that order) to become Shatranj and Chaturanga, respectively; and eastward to Korea and Japan, to become Changgi 將棋 and Shogi 將棋, respectively. My book was based on 18-months' research at the Library of Congress; upon publication, it earned the Book of the Year 1998 honor from the book-review editor of GAMES magazine. Just a short note to register my displeasure that my book was not even mentioned in the above-mentioned book.

Candle in Chinese poems (#242, Topic C)

2006-11-01T22:40:00.000-05:00

On the first Wednesday evening of each month, the headmistress of a Chinese-language school offers a 2-hour seminar for townspeople as a public service, free of charge. This evening featured the work of a Tang dynasty (618-907) administrator-cum-poet, 杜牧 Tu Mu (705-755). Tu wrote 2,000+ poems during his life, but decided to burn them all prior to his death. Luckily, his family members were able to save 200+; of these 16 were discussed this evening (along with a long ode he wrote when he was 23, which made him famous). Each poem Tu wrote has 4 lines of 7 words each; the last word in lines 1, 2, and 4 are rhymed. I was particularly struck by the last 2 lines of a poem, written when he was in his 30s, on the occasion of saying goodbye to an old friend (Tu was preparing to leave the capital to be the city administrator in another province), using candle, on which I wrote recently (#237), as a metaphor. The 2 lines read as follows:蠟燭有心還惜別，替人垂淚到天明。(The candle, in its heart, regrets this pending separation; it sheds tears on humans' behalf 'till the following morning.) Simple, dignified, but expressing deep feelings nevertheless.

Sample ballot - Part II (#241, Topic P)

2006-10-31T10:33:00.000-05:00

In the Official Specimen Ballot I received yesterday (#240), there is a question on constitutional amendment (the seconf of four), which occupies one-half page of a 7-page ballot. The question's heading is Circuit Court in Banc Decisions; its subheading is "Allows appeals to the Court of Special Appeals froma decision by an in banc circuit court." After a parenthetical comment that the purpose of this is "(Amending Article IV-Judiary Department)", the body of this question reads as follows: "This constitutional amendment establishes the right of a party who did not request in banc review by the circuit court to appeal an adverse decision by the in banc court to the State's intermediate appellate court, the Court of Special Appeals. The amendment provides that a party in a circuit court trial conducted by less than three circuit judges is eligible for in banc review. The amendment establishes that three judges of a circuit court constitute a circuit court in banc. The amendment repeals the authority of the circuit courts to regulate the rules governing in banc circuit appeals, and establishes that the Maryland Rules are to provide the procedure for such appeals. The amendment also eliminates obsolete language pertaining to writs or error from this provision of the Constitution." Following this 131-word explanation, there are two lines, one is "For the Constitutional Amendment" and the other is "Against the Constitutional Amendment." Realizing that, among voters there must be slow ones who may still be in the dark after reading this 131-word explanation (not counting the heading, subheading, and parenthetical comment) -- and I must admit that I am one of them -- the specimen ballot adds, thoughtfully, a page-long Summary of this proposed constitutional amendment (which, at least to me, is equally tense). Were I to read this amendment while standing in a voting booth -- which might take at least 10 minutes -- those people waiting in the line to vote might have a long wait. Let's see how this works out next Tuesday.

Sample ballot (#240, Topic P)

2006-10-30T22:51:00.000-05:00

With democracy in USA being equated to voting every 2 or 4 years, opportunities for an ordinary person to gain an understanding of the process are limited. One of the best ways, in my view, is to become an election judge; a few years back, I was fortunate enough to be selected to serve as one -- I learned a lot, and, on top of that, I was well paid. Today, I received an Official Specimen Ballot in the mail, a 36-page (8-1/2 x 11) package, half in English and half in Spanish. Of the 18 pages in English, 7 pages are for the sample ballot proper. A voter is to cast votes for (1) governor and lieutenant governor in a combined ticket, (2) comptroller, (3) attorney general, (4) U.S. senator, (5) congressional representative for our district, (6) state senator for our district, (7) three delegates for the state house, (8) county executive, (9) four at-large county council members, (10) county council member for our district, (11) four judges of the circuit court, (12 - 14) whether to allow three judges (each to be voted separately) to continue in office, (15) state's attorney, (16) clerk of the circuit court, (17) register of wills, (18) sheriff, (19) at-large member of the board of education, (20 - 22) three district-wide members of the board of education, each to be voted separately, (23 - 26) four questions on amendments to state constitution, and (27 - 28) two questions on county's charter amendment. That is a lot of readings to do and a lot of decisions to make. My wife received a similar sample ballot also (each registered vote receives one) and said to me: How do I know the position of each candidate? Good question, but I have no answer. Millions have been spent on this mid-term election (according to a survey, the total spending on campaigns for this mid-term election reached $2.3 billion for the country as a whole -- that is, administrative expenses such as printing and distributing the sample ballots, manning the voting booths, and counting the ballots are not included), but most of the messages focus on the opponent's negative personal traits, and not on what the candidate plans to do once elected or re-elected. I thought I am well read; I don't even know what candidates for the so-called top-of-the-ticket (at least 1, 4, 8 above) plan to do. Even if one has the time (and, being retired, I do have time), reading through even the 16 pages of material in the package is not easy. (In a follow-up entry [#241], I plan to use one of the constitutional amendments (no. 24) as an illustration.) All I can say is that democracy is an expensive proposition, a luxury only rich countries such as USA can indulge in it.

The Suez crisis 50 years ago (#239, Topic F)

2006-10-29T19:22:00.000-05:00

Exactly 50 years ago today, a British-French-Israeli alliance invaded the Suez Canal, in the so-called 6-day war. To mark this occasion, yesterday's New York Times had a long op-ed piece, "Stuck in the Canal". Being by a history professor in Boston, the piece was, to my way of thinking, unusually frank, even brunt, mincing no words. It began by saying that "It [the Suez crisis] was the moment when America pushed out the Europeans and then tried to take their place -- and the reverberations are still felt today." Claiming that "Britain and France had gone to war [against Egypt] in order to keep their empires," the author felt that they committed faux pas by keeping the Americans "in the dark" and by lying about Israeli's involvement. USA, it seems, had no quarrel with UK-France's action, only with their timing: "President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary [John Foster] Dulles believed that [Egypt's] Nasser should be overthrown -- some day." But Ike was "angered by British wartime colleagues who had lied and deceived him", saying that "nothing justified double-crossing the United States." This anger had an unexpected consequence: "the Treasury Department threatened to withdraw support of British currency unless the British Army left Egypt." Britain withdrew, Nassar was saved, and the "Suez crisis was over." Ike thought that his actions demonstrated that "unlike the British and French, Americans were not imperalists -- but the third world remained unconvinced. And in Europe, skeptics clamied the episode showed that the Americans intended to steal the empires of Britain and France." And Israel fared no better: "providing evidence to enemies who had asserted all along that Israel was no more than a European imperalist itself." The end result was that Britain decided to follow US's lead while France "began to build the atomic bomb." Interesting history and sober reading.

Minimum wage in USA (#238, Topic M)

2006-10-28T22:39:00.000-04:00

The miminum hourly wage in USA is $5.15. Over a year's time, a person working 2,080 hours (40 hours x 52 weeks) earns a total of $10,712. Deducting income taxes and social-security withholding, one's net earning is approximately $8,000. To a person living in a third-world country (where everything, particularly food and shelter, is low-priced), $10,000 or even $8,000 is a lot of money. But, everything is relative; in USA, one earning $10,000 a year is living below the poverty line. Interestingly, in USA, despite this below-poverty-line minimum hourly wage, it has not been changed in a decade -- it stood at $5.15 for ten solid years. During this period, salaries of members of the Congress have been adjusted ten times -- like clockwork, once a year, every year. A couple of days ago, I saw a TV image (produced by CNBC, a business-oriented program, not a campaign ad) showing the amount of time needed to earn $10,000 by various entities. Leading the pack is a financial-service institution (the one the current Treasury secretary served as its CEO before resigning to accept his new position); it takes that institution a solid 80 seconds to earn $10,000. After a couple of other listings (I did not read fast enough to catch their identity), the TV image gives "member of the House" -- he/she needs six days to earn $10,000. (In all fairness, this is a tongue-in-cheek calculation. A member of the house earns, in 2006, $165,0000. During the year, the House met 95 times/days. Thus, a member of the House earned $1,736 for each of these 95 days, or $10,000 in slightly less than 6 days of attendance.) In the caboose position is the minimum-wage worker; he/she needs 48.5 weeks to make $10,000. In today's Washington Post, I read that six states (Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio) have a ballot initiative, to be voted upon on November 7, on raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to (for Ohio) $6.85 and indexed to inflation. It is about time. In any case, I am for it (#231).

祗許官兵放火, 不許百姓點燈 (#237, Topic F)

2006-10-27T22:46:00.000-04:00

While listening to the presenter at the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace yesterday (#236), on nuclear testing and such, I could not help being reminded of a Chinese couplet, the title of today's entry. These two lines, in English, may be rendered thus: Setting fire by government officials is allowed; lighting lamp by ordinary citizens is disallowed. (In olden-day China, candles were the source of illumination.) The etymology of this couplet is rather complex, but the sentiment it expresses is straight forward: One in power may do whatever one pleases; one who is powerless cannot do, even on a much smaller scale, what is completely legitimate and routine. Early in yesterday's presentation, the presenter asked a rhetorical question: If Afghanistan had nuclear arms, would USA invade it in 2001? He did not answer the question; it would be interesting if he did. (Though, based on his subsequent presentation, I am inclined to think that he would answer it in the negative.) How would I know? I am assessing it in terms of my own research, on the Opium War of 1840. While doing my readings, I often asked myself this very question: Were China equipped with the modern weaponry at the time (which would be cannons and gunboats), would a rogue state such as Britain dare to provoke China into war by violating her waterways? No, no, NO. Weaponry in the hands of imperialist powers is intended to be used offensively; such powers, to make their invasion easier with as little military casualties as possible, prefer that those targeted for invasion possess nothing comparable. Not for defensive purposes, not even as a deterrent. Of course, weak nations would not possess any such weapons any way. But, were such weapons in their possession, it would cause an invading power to, at least, "think twice" (using yesterday's presenter's words). Is this a bad idea?

Carnegie Forum: Rogue States in 19th and 21st centuries (#236, Topic F)

2006-10-26T22:15:00.000-04:00

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offered a forum on "Deterring America: Rogue States and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction" this morning, presented by a man (BA Harvard, PhD Oxford, and LLB Yale) who has just published a book on this subject. The book approaches the subject from three aspects: theoretical (deterrent theory), historical (asymmetrical contests in ancient Greece), and prescriptive (export control of nuclear material, counter force, interdiction). The more lectures of this type I attended, the more I see the resemblance to world situation 165 years ago. Thus, during the Q&A period, I said the following: "US has said that whichever country strikes US, that country will be completely demolished. Thus, it is unlikely that North Korea would deliver the first strike. Your historical research covers ancient Greece, which is inadequate -- Korea is in Asia; it would be more relevant to cite historical references with an Asian context. I am currently doing research on the Opium War, from a Chinese point of view. In the 1830~40, China had 29% of the world's wealth while Britain had less than 1%. Indeed, at that time, Britain was a rogue state -- using free trade of opium as the excuse to provoke China into war. China lost because she did not have the most modern weaponry at the time. Korea was colonized by Japan for the same reason. So, North Korea undertook nuclear tests as a deterrent -- as a defensive measure against imperialistic aggression. My question: Why should US fear?" The central point of the presenter's answer, as far as I could gather, was that his research is done "from the US's point of view." Later, another listener asked: "Why does US need thousands of nuclear weapons?" (A couple of days ago, I read that US is now replacing/updating 2,400 of its nuclear arsenal.) To which the presenter said: "The question by the gentleman before you (nodding in my direction) also implied as much. I really do not have an answer." The forum was advertised for last 2 hours, but it lasted barely 60 minutes.

Architects Maya Lin and Frank Gehry (#235, Topic I)

2006-10-24T11:59:00.000-04:00

The current issue of US News and World Report features America's Best Leaders; for architects, it selects Frank Gehry. A year or so ago, the 1818 Society (an association of World Bank retirees) sponsored a visit to the Corcoran Museum, having an exhibition honoring Gehry and showing off his design for the museum's extension, the winner of a world-wide competition. Earlier, Gehry's design for a museum in Balboa Spain made that town famous (it became a tourist attraction and, thus, a cash cow). Our local museum's board of directors apparently wanted to duplicate this feat. According to the docent who accompanied us on this visit, the budget for this extension was some $50 million! Being a bean-counter, I immediately expressed my displeasure. Why spend $50 million for a simple (to me) face-lifting renovation? Washington is not Balboa; one goes Balboa, perhaps, to see the museum. But one comes to Washington to conduct business -- even as a visitor, with so many attractions to cover, one is unlikely to rank a visit to a fee-paying museum among one's top priorities. Besides, with the museum next to the AFL-CIO headquarters, with the organization representing the working class and with its building facade non-descript, it is, at least to me (being a member of the working class), an insult. The docent, needless to say, made an unconvincing effort to defend the board's action. Later, as I read in the papers, the board reversed itself and the museum director resigned. The architect worthy of being honored by USNews is, in my view, Maya Lin, the architect who designed the Vietname Memorial on the mall. According to a documentary on Lin's accomplishment, her design, done when she was a mere student at Yale, encountered tremendous resistance. I can never forget the facial expression of this project's main sponsor, a businessman made rich by his Federal government contracts and made famous by his manipulating to become a 3rd party presidential candidate. His obvious disdain -- exhibiting his undisguised racism and discriminatory attitude (Lin is a Chinese-American woman) -- was barely bearable; indeed, he made Lin cry on several occasions. He actually wanted to torpedo the project by withdrawing his financial support. So what? Lin's design survived and, indeed, it has become one of Washington's most visited attractions. Lin was in Washington last Wednesday to give a talk; afterward, she was asked a question. It seems that another Vietnam Memorial is being planned, and she was aske how she felt. She chose not to answer it, which incurred the displeasure of the Washington Post reporter who covered the event, who said, in no uncertain terms, that she should have answered it. What a sadistic town Washington is!