Off to Hunan

It’s that time of the year.  Or decade.  Or something.  The stars have finally aligned and YJ and I actually have time off at the same time,* so we’re packing our bags and heading to the birthplace of Chairman Mao, Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, and really freaking spicy food…Hunan.  No offense to Hunan’s most famous fat kid, but we’re going to bypass the Commie kitsch-fest in Shaoshan and instead go backpacking in the western part of the province, visiting the villages of Fenghuang and Dehang (mind the tour bus full of shouting, matching-cap wearing tourists on your right…) and the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park.

There may be a couple of places where I can get online, but I’m not planning on doing any posting until we get back on July 6.  Until then, hope your summer is treating you well and Go Sox!

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*In the last 18 months, we’ve canceled two vacations at the very last minute.  One because YJ had a story come up and the second because I needed to keep momentum going on dissertation research.  The last actual ‘family’ vacation we took was Thailand in 2007, and that little trip would probably more accurately be described

June 24th, 2009

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Iranian Fenqing?

The (increasingly nervous) supreme leader of Iran speaking on the demonstrations this week in his country:

The ayatollah reached beyond Iran to criticize “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for seeking to portray Iran as divided and accused what he called arrogant Western powers, particularly Britain and the United States, of hostile comments, saying they failed to understand Iranian society.

Change a couple of words around and this could be your average moronic fenqing comment on any number of China blogs…

A word on rhetoric for my young FQ friends…mind a bit whose words your own resemble, it says a lot about the quality of thought behind them.

June 20th, 2009

Why I teach history, Part IX: The Middle Kingdom and Middle Earth?

Now some teachers will write about their students, sharing odd or quizzical bits from papers and exams for the sake of humor.  I wouldn’t do that to my students, but OTHER people’s students…sure, why not?

From an op-ed on China and North Korea in Student Newspaper from the University of Southern State, USA*:

The Chinese mentality is nothing new. If one delves deep into the history books, they can find that the Chinese have possessed such a thought process since their earliest days. They were, and remain, “The Middle Kingdom” or “The Central Nation.” (In fairness, the Europeans have often thought of themselves as “The Middle Earth,” but they at least have the geography to back it up.)

Ok, I’m not a Europeanist, but has anyone not named J.R.R. Tolkien ever used the term “Middle Earth” when thinking of Europe?  And exactly what kind of maps do they use at this school to geographically “back up” Europe’s location in the middle of the earth?  (I’m not even going to get into the whole “let’s read WAY too much into the ‘Middle Kingdom’ translation of Zhongguo,” more experienced journalists than this kid have made the same mistake.)

Since the rise of

June 19th, 2009

“Apologies for the past are due Chinese descendants”

California Assemblyman Paul Fong (D – Mountain View) is seeking federal reparations for the discrimination suffered by Chinese immigrants coming to the United States in the 19th and early 20th century.

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Mountain View, wants us to remember that when the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York Harbor in 1886, welcoming immigrants from around the world to America, there should have been a sign posted in front that said: “Everyone except Chinese.”

Just four years earlier, at the urging of Californians, Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, for the first time barring entry to a group of immigrants strictly based on their national origin.

“Chinese people were singled out,” he said. “They couldn’t be citizens, they couldn’t hold jobs. They couldn’t own property.”

The law was repealed in 1943, and in most parts of the country it was forgotten. Growing up in the Midwest, I vaguely remember reading in my U.S. history book about “yellow peril” but knew little about the suffering of Chinese immigrants and their families. Of course, that same history book didn’t mention the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, either.

But

June 18th, 2009

Green Dam, spring break sorority girls, and Jaime Escalante (yes, there IS a connection.)

I’m not a tech guy, but I despise state-sponsored censorship, so I’ve been following the epic fail of the Green Dam software with a certain admitted sense of schadenfreude.  The whole thing has been a disaster from the start which is rather amazing given the usual attention Chinese state-owned companies pay to such things as “innovation,” “product quality,” and “transparency.”

Nevertheless, it took Associate Professor J. Alex Halderman and a team of students from the University of Michigan approximately 12 hours to uncover a dizzying array of security vulnerabilities and programming errors.

The full report is available online.  Allow me to summarize:  The sloppy programming job on this piece of crap software means that if it is installed, you’ll leave your computer more open to exploitation then a group of sorority sisters when the Girls Gone Wild Spring Break crew crashes “Free Tequila for Tiny Tops” night in Cancun.

On top of that, it’s one thing to screw something up on your own…it takes real genius to CHEAT and STILL screw it up.

“Halderman and his team discovered evidence that Solid Oak Software code may have been lifted and placed in Green Dam. It wasn’t just that “blacklisted” URL addresses

June 16th, 2009
 
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