Layman's Logic

Perhaps I shouldn't confess to this, but I just saw one of the Robocop sequels. After the TV series, they seem to have moved to a run of made for TV movies forming a larger story - I saw part 2 of 3+ shows. What puzzled me was a quote flashed up at the end.

It claimed to be from Thoreau, and was about man making himself a slave, or some such - "the greatest danger of man's past was that he would make himself a slave" (or government would, or something) was perhaps the first half. But the second half of the "quote" read something like: the greatest danger of man's future is that he'll make himself a robot (or that government will, or whatever).

But the term "Robot" originates in 1921 in Czech, and 1923 in English. The term "android" was in earlier use, but wasn't what the quote read. Thoreau's dates were 1817-1862. So what's going on?

If anyone sees "Robocop: Meltdown" any time soon, could you copy down the end-quote please, so I can investigate further?

Number 1 with a bullet

Danny Baker, in the Times sports section, riffs his way to the most diverting real-media article I've seen today. It's about the demise of duelling as a sport, and a duelling society in Georgia, USA, in particular. They foolishly had some contact with the media, and their past-time is being shut down, and, like any truely enjoyable article, it has at its heart a conspiracy theory/improbable link. The crucial grafs are:

"A duelling society in Georgia, in the United States — the last such in the world, it claims — has been outlawed after its members were canvassed for their views on whether Saddam Hussein and George Bush ought to meet mano a mano to decide the impending war’s victor.

Having been thrown to centre stage, it seems the fraternity, far from being the re-enactment and role-playing club claimed, had actually been holding real ten-paces-and-fire duels in local woods for many years under conditions of great secrecy.

Investigations into its history are under way and it has been ordered to disband immediately. The society’s president is quoted as saying: “Now they are digging up all over, despite the fact I have told them that we have never once had a fatality in one of our duels. Death is not the point of duelling.

“The point is to settle any disputes that arise within the membership by this ancient and honourable means. Drawing a small amount of blood is quite enough satisfaction for members. It’s a dangerous pastime, for sure, but so is motor racing.”

Poor old motor racing — dragged into the sporting safety argument again. I must say that, even though inquiries are at an early stage, I find it very hard to believe that a society devoted to duelling would only get a duel on the go if its members fell out over something.

I mean, what did they sit around doing otherwise? Yes, I suppose that they did go through the motions of being insulted at some slight or another for tradition’s sake but I bet they were pretty weak outrages.

Looking at someone all funny, adding an extra sugar to a tea or forgetting birthdays probably sufficed. Once the ritual was satisfied it must have been: “Right lads, there’s only one way to sort this out — to the woods.” And can so reckless a pursuit really have resulted in nothing more than a few minor musket-ball grazes over the years?

Wasn’t Georgia the state in which they discovered huge piles of uncremated bodies lying around in the underbrush a few months back? I don’t suggest they all perished looking for satisfaction or defending the family honour but it might be an idea to look and see if one or two of the corpses are wearing top hats and ruff-fronted silk shirts."


Go read the rest....

Go use the The Prior-Art-O-Matic, an automatic generator of patentable ideas!

"Design #1150221412

It's a breathalyser! It automatically updates your weblog when used!"

Via the Onion:

Defense Department Typo Results In U.S. Attack On Ira

ARLINGTON, VA—The U.S. Defense Department apologized to Skokie, IL, dentist Ira Nussbaum Tuesday following a bombing campaign aimed at removing the 37-year-old from power. "Apparently, the intelligence source who drafted the attack plan against Iraq failed to strike the 'Q' key hard enough," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "The 'Q' was always a little stubborn on that keyboard. Sorry." This marks the first military action taken against Nussbaum since a malfunctioning shift key prompted Ulster Unionists to detonate his Ford Taurus in 1998.

[Update:
As mentioned above, this post is not based upon a complete understanding of the situation: it appears that I jumped the gun. Something that appeared sinister had a simple explanation. The story in brief: it had appeared that a news site was editing stories it was reproducing so as to achieve a certain political effect. This was mistaken - it turns out everyone (the Times, Natalie Solent, and the Daily News Digest) comes out of this well. My apologies to the Daily News Digest for the below implications. On general principle of how I feel on-line media should deal with this sort of thing, I've posted the retraction at the top of my site (at the time), and qualified this post.]


Natalie Solent, who kindly describes me as "being the most attentive reader anyone could wish for" for pointing this difficulty out, made the unfortunate lapse of accusing the Times of censoring vital evidence in a court case, giving a one-sided account of events. This was terribly unfair on the Times, and its journalist, whose story was in fact seems slightly fuller than the Torygraph piece she contrasted it to. Like any good blogger (and unlike many a poor newspaper), Natalie has, to her great credit, issued a retraction that leaves clear all that has ensued...

How could a well-respected member of the blogosphere make such an error? Prompted by someone's recollection of the story in the print version of the Times, Natalie went hunting out her sources. She'd linked to the story from a news digest, assuming that a story with the same title, topic, and author, and the by-line "The Times" would be a reprint of, well, the article in the Times. Let's allow Natalie to continue the tale:

"When I first read about this story on the Libertarian Alliance Forum, I did a Google search for the names involved. I found the story as I first printed it, word for word, at a site called the Daily News Digest. It's given the byline "Simon de Bruxelles - The Times." So I thought, not unaturally, that that was what it said in the story by Simon de Bruxelles in the Times. Only it's not. Isn't that weird? Some unknown hand has edited out all the aspects that make Mr Hudaid [the victim] look bad and mitigate Mr Scott's admittedly unruly behaviour [for which he has been convicted].

I should have checked. Of course I should. It wouldn't have been hard to do. I usually do click the link, but for some reason this time I didn't. If you'd asked me five minutes later where I'd seen the story, I'd have blithely said, "Why, in the Times, of course." I'm very sorry I didn't check, only I do offer as a mitigating factor that the Daily News Digest did make it easy for me to make that particular mistake, if you know what I mean.

How do the two compare? Mr Bruxelles' version of the story begins:

"A MAN who had an argument in the street with a supporter of Osama bin Laden became the first person to be convicted under new laws on religious hatred yesterday.

Magistrates in Exeter were told that Alistair Scott, 33, was arrested after an argument with his Arab-born neighbour, Muhammad Hudaib, who was said to have shouted that bin Laden was great, September 11 was a great day, all Americans deserved to die and called him a “Zionist pigf****r”. "

Compare that to the Daily News Digest version - still credited, remember, to Simon de Bruxelles and The Times:

"A FORMER teacher who verbally attacked three Muslims has become the first person to be convicted under new laws that outlaw religious hatred.

Alistair Scott, 33, accosted the strangers in the street and began arguing about the involvement of Islam in the September 11 attacks in the US. "

So who are these Digest guys? The website describes itself thus:

"The Daily News Digest reviews the main electronic news media for items relating to British Muslims at home and abroad, Britain’s ethnic minorities, and stories which have a bearing on the image of Islam in general in the media. FAIR is not affiliated to any political or religious organisation, and does not necessarily endorse the views reflected in the items reproduced in the Daily News Digest. "

I can't help thinking that their readers would get a more accurate perception of the image of Islam in the media if the stories found there were left as the Digest found them, or clearly marked as edited - and not just edited for brevity, either."


Natalie has e-mailed the site querying their policy - updates will hopefully appear at her site. But a fascinating tale of a) the distortions that googling for a story can throw up, and b) how biased reporting by pressure groups can be.

That's the last day of the China blog. I'll give you a few days to digest it, those of you enjoying the ride, and then round up with some observations. I'm going to keep front-page links to it, so don't worry about popping away to return later.

China Blog, Day 7 – The Forbidden City, and the long road home

News off TV
Another economic indicator: Shanghai is encouraging local sales agents to create relationships with regional suppliers from less developed areas and minority areas. There are far from industry, and so produce has less chance of pollution/contamination. Therefore they can create a market for “green” foods. These don’t seem to be organic year, but are definitely the sort of premier food that has become popular in the West with wealth.

(Yet another – Steinway and Sons has a store in Beijing)

News off TV
The style of central planning (with Chinese characteristics): Shanghai has a tourism problem. It lacks an appropriate “local” souvenir [for local people] to sell to tourists. So they’re holding a competition to pick a souvenir, and then building a department store to sell all the ideas they come up with.

News off TV
A worrying mention – there was a 4.8 quake about 30 miles from my home last night.

[no damage done, it turned out]

The main thing to strike you about the Forbidden City is its scale. No space is bigger than Tiananmen Square, but several are fit to try to swallow Trafalgar Square or St Pauls. The Mall in Wsahington feels of a similar scale to Tiananmen, and may be a touch bigger. But Washington was designed that way.

The Forbidden City was built with 500,000 men from 1406-1420, in an already developed city. It’s staggering in scale. It took 2 hours basically to walk from South to North, glancing at stuff. The scale, the terrible majesty, explains a lot about Chinese history.

Beijing Airport sighting – the Ulan Bator check-in had someone with 4 Dell’s and someone with 100+ 30”x15”x15” boxes on 4 trolleys. The best way to shop if you’re Mongolian, I suppose.

Bad moments in flying: you realise you’re 5 hours out, have 5 hours left, and the nearest city of import is called Chelyabinsk. Surely there was somewhere we might know ahead (the Urals look about 300 miles ahead). Oh, and I appear likely to be about to watch an inaudible Jim Carrey movie on a dodgy tape (worse: it’s Dumb and Dumber….).

Mao’s tomb by day – the queue was approximately an hour and a half at 8 a.m., and 500+m long (the plus is it looked to go round the building inside the fence as well). By the time we’d circled the tomb, it had built to well over 10,000 people. To celebrate 30 years of restored diplomatic relations with Japan, 13,000 tourists had been invited/arrived, and most of them seemed to be there, plus a great number of Chinese. Few if any Westerners were visible in the queue.

If there’s residual veneration in the process, that is as deeply disturbing as the continued Maoist guerrilla movement in Nepal. Except they probably won’t get the chance to kill staggering numbers of their own people (as opposed to merely large numbers in the civil war). Mao actually did it. Sadly, I couldn’t quite drag myself away without a photo under his portrait on Tiananmen Gate, I I escaped without being tempted by musical Mao cigarette lighters.

Fortunately, Dumb and Dumber was breaking up so badly, it’s been replaced by an apparently Chinese language film (starring Donald Sutherland?????????). Unfortunately, it has no sound at present, and the subtitling is mostly in Chinese.

If this is a Chinese language film, this is because, though there is a standard written script, the dialects verge on the mutually incomprehensible. A Beijing guide suggested he could only understand 10-20% of a Cantonese conversation. The converse may not be quite true, as the government has attempted to impose Mandarin language teaching nation-wide. Nonetheless, the barriers to internal communication are amazing. The standard anecdote is of two doctors, educated men, who operated together during the war and had to communicate in English.

It definitely makes things even trickier for tourists: local’s (requested) correction of my pronunciation of “thank you” varied wildly as I travelled. Eventually, I settled on “che-chez”, but not with the hard Guevara “Che”. The books transliterate it as “sei-sei” with the first syllable falling in tone. I’d stick with “che-chez” if you’re there: it’s right in part of the Yangtze, and accepted in Beijing.

One surprise about the Forbidden City, or at least the few rooms we saw, was the lack of jade. The thrones and the quarters of the Dowager Empress seemed to hardly have any (though “hardly” is still a lot at current prices). On the other hand, they were as richly decorated as might be expected, and one map’s quote of 1,050,000 precious relics in the Palace seemed all too likely. Not least as there’s enough stuff lying around for a vast hall to be given over to a display of Japanese cultural relics. Imagine a culture rich enough in history and treasure to have, just floating around the palace, an exhibition’s worth of another Empire’s history.

Reading translated Chinese – the most frequent stumbling block I’ve spotted (apart from weird duplications of letters, and the inevitable failures of translation/spelling) is that “total”, as in “total spending”, is rendered “comprehensive” in a seemingly uniform way. One to look out for.

End China Blog. Location – Birmingham. Local time, midnight. Personal time, unsure. Hours since proper sleep, 48?

China Blog, Day 6 – The Final Gorge, the Dam, and Tiananmen Square

Massive “liberalisation” of natural resources is taking place in the flood zone. Hills are clear-cut to the 135m mark, the point where water will reach when the dam begins flooding (it will reach 175m when the project is complete). Why drown the trees when you can use them now? On the North side of the Yangtze on the approach to the dam, there will be an awful lot of submerged hills or new islands – the reservoir will be pretty wide here.

Departure was delayed today by the anchors tangling. It’s amazing how jury-rigged a contraption a Chinese riverboat crew can rig up to pull and free anchors. Once it was complete, the desks were cleared for safety reasons…

Why God why? My inflight China Daily Post says that James Last, the “Gentleman of Music”, and his orchestra will be touring, starting in Beijing. Fortunately, the tour starts after I’ve left the country…

[context – today’s travel involved going from Yichang, the end of our cruise, back to Beijing]

The CDP has a profile on sociologist Fei Xiaotong, a Malinowski prize winner. It refers to the areas he hasn’t visited within China as the “Tibetan Autonomous Region” and “Taiwan Province”. Similarly with a gift shop item common around Xian – you could buy globes with countries picked out in different semi-precious stones, and Taiwan and China were always the same colour.

Oddly, as it’s still the World Service’s big story this morning, and has local impact, the North Korea Autonomous Economic Zone isn’t mentioned in the CDP, even though the Koreas do come up in a discussion of the Asia-Pacific-Europe meeting.

In Yichang, just downriver of the dam, we had a whistle-stop tour of the museum. This mostly collected pieces from an excavation on the island in the Yangtze that forms the basis for the Three Gorges Project. This was excavated to some depth before construction, recovering 5000 pieces.

The expansion of the museum to show all 5000 items, as opposed to just 3000 at present, was the justification for the “quality” part of the museum store. “Genuine” “antiques”, certified by the government for provenance and with permission for export, were on sale to fund the building work. The difference in quality was remarkable, and prices were, for once, pretty fixed, set in USD, and high. A jade bowl was $200 vs $6.50 for four green bowls the previous day. The difference in quality was pretty obvious.

It was suggested to me I couldn’t get a 1 ft sword in my carry-on luggage, try as I might.

After a diet of Britney, Celine Dion and Pink (OK, I enjoyed that track), the inflight screens are now showing Mr Bean. To add injury to insult, I smashed my jaw getting into the window seat. Boeing 737-800s have screens above the middle seats every 3 rows, and a tall man should watch out for them whilst getting it – it’s madness to have them down during boarding IMHO.

After a diet of Britney, Celine Dion and Pink (OK, I enjoyed that track), the inflight screens are now showing Mr Bean. To add injury to insult, I smashed my jaw getting into the window seat. Boeing 737-800s have screens above the middle seats every 3 rows, and a tall man should watch out for them whilst getting it – it’s madness to have them down during boarding IMHO.

Yichang museum had a quite proud display of a former king’s pottery vessel that had been recovered after thieves had passed it through Macao to auction abroad. The pride mostly came in the subsequent execution of the three thieves…

Reading through the TGP materials, you’re struck by the dangers you haven’t even thought of. Earthquake risk is obvious, but what of reservoir induced earthquake risk? Over 100 reservoir projects globally have induced earthquakes, presumably very variable in size. The mechanisms appear to be the pressure of the water on fault-lines, and the lubrication that the lake can supply. Detailled surveys have been undertaken to evaluate the risk. Apparently, there is now little risk of there being any major fault lines in the area, and an induced earthquake could only be a “six” on the Richter scale. The dam is designed to resist “seven”s, ten times as strong, which should also cover against century-plus frequency quakes of up to “four” in the area. However, it still seems worrying….

The guide, (“Ginger” – we can call her Ginger Spice…) tried to reassure us about the dam after our visit. One guest had asked about quakes and, unsurprisingly in the visitor centre, was brushed away.

Ginger’s arguments were:
1) Nukes are no concern as China is a nuclear power, and can intercept (? : “stop”, she said) them before they reach their territory/their target (unclear)
2) They can empty the dam (39 cubic km of water!) in 3 days (approx 5 times normal flow, I think), if they want to. (How that helps against a nuke strike, I don’t know – I think it doubles the natural maximum flood to do so that fast, though it’s hard to interpolate the data off the graphs).
3) A September 11th attack would fail because the mountains are 2000m high (actually 1000-1500m above sea-level, less the 65-175m of water depth (pre/post flood depths). Hence the planes would be destroyed/couldn’t do this. Saying this as we pass down a mile wide valley seemed particularly foolish….

I don’t know if it’s Hainan Airline’s policy, or just a personal role, but a stewardess standing in first class greeting boarders had on a name-tag and also a badge labelling her as “Love angel”. Now that’s service….

Cutely, the stewardesses lined up to bow to us just before landing.

Floating past to-be-submerged hills and valleys had a particularly depressing aspect towards the end of the journey. Though the clear-cut hills were a low, they were at least interesting. But the terraced farms, effectively the work of 1, 2, 3, 4,000 years, will just be drowned. The thread of history is broken as farmers are moved many miles away.

Dam facts – for even drying, cement must be in a certain temperature range, and so must be produces at 7 degrees C (by five vast plants turning out the staggering quantities of cement laid each year).

[I’ve since heard similar about the Hoover dam, which was likewise built with cooling pipes inside the concrete]

Tiananmen Square. It’s incredibly lit when we visit. The 22nd of September was the Moon Festival. The 1st of October is the Chinese National Day. So buildings remained illuminated during the week, rather than only lighting up at the weekends. Special decorations are out, with huge (100 m square) flower arrangements in the shape of a globe, a lotus flower, a river scene and a section of the Great Wall. All very impressive.

Mao’s tomb is vast, perhaps a mile around the perimeter in the middle of the square. It also features the gates of the old double city wall, before another few hundred yards of square. The “bottom” corners (those furthest from the gate to the Forbidden City and the portrait of Mao) both have McDonalds, indicating they’re a fair distance apart.

(One of the McDonalds is in the old, English-style train station. It’s now filled with banks, shops, and internet cafes – perhaps the most apt metaphor for China’s restricted net is the internet railroad…).

McDonalds and KFC both have 60 stores in Beijing, with plans to expand to 200 each by the end of 2003. The theory goes, if every Beijing resident went only once, it would take 10 years for the stores to run out of customers and have to close…

For the authentic Tiananmen Square experience, I was driven out of the square by the People’s Liberation Army. For added realism, this resulted in a “Long March” to where I wanted to be…

We were meant to return to the “top right” corner by 10.10pm. At 10, we were in the “middle left” by Mao’s tomb. We had time to make it back, but as we headed off, a soldier came up and said “Tiananmen Square”. He didn’t seem to have anything else to say (some others thrown out of the square got soldiers with more detailed instructions for dealing with Westerners). However, he was very intent on us leaving the square by the most direct route. In the end, we had to walk away from the main square before being able to double back.

[OK, so it’s nothing too dramatic as a tale. But it’s still an anecdote, until I tell it…]

There is a “famous food market” at night, with various regional and local fried specialities. The obvious locust/scorpion/whole starling/snake/chicken heart/silk worm choices were there, curled around or impaled on a stick for frying. The “sweet” section included fried milk and fried ice-cream. I shouldn’t have been too surprised after the deep-fried pumpkin at the Captain’s Farewell Banquet on the boat….

[The Scots have little on the Chinese in this regard - with wealth may come nasty health issues]

By the “authentic” food market (started in 1984 and reorganised in 2000 with uniform stalls, broad paths, etc) is the main shopping street. Here the shops were essentially Western in style, especially in the Mall, with shops much like Gap, western shoe stores, etc. There was also a “boutique” women’s store in a couple of locations selling fully tailored suits, etc. For the rich, the quality is already there in the consumer goods market.

The guide gave us an upbeat spin on the influence of 1989, suggesting it (quickly (?)) brought openness, and that a sign of this is that the party refers to it as an “incident”, not an “accident”. It’s good not to have to master semiotics to understand the news.

China has a lengthy process to obtain a passport. Or, if you have $4,000 or equivalent in the bank, you can apply straight-off for one. An anti-tax avoidance measure, or a move from gerontocracy to plutocracy?

Weird – historically, cycles in Beijing had dynamo lights on. After a period where children had to do “eye strengthening exercises” every day in class (involving massaging around the eyes), it was decided bikes no longer needed lights, probably at a substantial saving to the state. Command economies produce odd outcomes? Nah….

Beijing Airport – the baggage collection area had a marvellous device. It was an oval cylinder in the middle of one of the carousels, showing adverts on effectively three 72 inch screens. I.e. through some sort of internal projection, it was displaying footage of ads off a PC (hidden by the base, but being programmed/repaired when I looked). Delightful technology, and pretty clear (not plasma screen quality, but comparable to a normal TV set).


End China Blog, Day 6 – dateline Beijing.

China Blog Day 5 – Messing about on the river

And I’ve been reduced to using mini pads of paper from hotels. Why no paper?

In the Gorges, and they’re magnificent. At one point, I try to photograph a single deck, no roof, saipan-style boat to provide human scale, and see an ant through the lens at resolutions that capture just part of the vista. Each gorge is, slightly surprisingly, well separated from the rest by high, but not gorgesque, valley.

What was shocking was the incidental flooding to follow the dam. The Lesser Gorges off to the North will be submerged for miles (a guide suggested 20 miles). But these valleys were, in effect, river valleys at their end in the seas; flat, alluvial plains of rich and fertile soil, probably supporting much of the population to be displaced. Along the river, there have been towns of 40-100,000 (approx – the figure for Feng du was 60,000 – no other figures available to me on the river).

An official 1.2m (and possible 2m (the Economist) will be moved. An article in the Economist a fellow traveller had on them put a slightly new spin on the tale told by the guide at Feng du. Yes, you can get what you had before, but no larger than the old “cramped apartments” without cash. The guide implied you got the same number of rooms, but these were improved and the rooms were cheap to “add” to your abode.

It is possible the townsfolk can mostly afford a little bigger place, but the country areas have little or no savings and have little chance of expansion. The buildings mostly look like Spanish hotels, but so did the old ones. Arguably, for the cities relocated “laterally”, the vices of the new accommodation are the vices of the old. The defects of the centrally planned economy are repeated, but not exacerbated. For farmers losing their land on tributary valleys, things will be tougher: they will have to move a long, long way if they are to remain farmers…

At Baidicheng (White Emperor Town), the guide’s English was (perhaps) very revealing: she always used “The People” as the description of who did, or said, or thought something where a singular referent was not right. Coincidence of her language, or Orwellian language teaching?

The best of the side-trips of the cruise was down a piddling side valley with two villages 15km up. We disembarked and boarded little row boats on the beach. Teams of six rowers, one guide (our “12 year old” turned out to be 25, married to a boatman, and have two kids), and 10-15 tourists. The upstream journey for an hour to an hour and a half was via poles, blades and men dragging us along the stream. At the end, on a pebble bank, the villagers (way before the villages themselves) had set up tables selling knick-knacks and you had 20 minutes for the men to rest before floating/poling down the river (to the rest of the village women, selling their wares).

The boats owned by the captains, the villagers trading: the free market offering the right thing for the tourists, giving them a “real” river experience, taking them down-river to places where you have to crane your neck vertically. Though buying opportunities were thrown in, it seemed to be the best use of a beautiful valley, and an opportunity for income for villages with little else going for them.

Odd experience – listening to broken English explanations of complicated historical legends about white dragons and horses (????) and dead kings is roughly like reading a usenet rant, but with better grammar…

Ten things you didn’t know about Chinese snuff-bottles:
1) Chinese paint the inside of crystal snuff bottles with pictures of this and that.
2) This is done with thin knitting needles with the ends bent perpendicularly to make a painting point.
3) You can snort snuff from within, but liquid must be in an inner bottle as the paint is water based.
4) There are only 100 artists in China skilled in the art.
5) The largest piece (ever?) done in China is about one foot, by half a foot, by a third of a foot, and is on the former White Empress, the Isabella 5. It is made from an army surplus crystal container.
6) Er
7) That’s it.

It’s surreal to be listening to the BBC World Service (my first up to date news in 5 days) about North Korea setting up a free area. The journo is mentioning a shop in Pyongyang they just “snuck” away from the official schedule to see. Apparently, it was full of goods. Most likely, this was a store affordable and accessible only the elite, and not a sign of improving conditions for the ordinary folk of Korea. Given mass starvation there, it’s unlikely many people are buying the electronic goods on sale.

World Service, which I’ve not listened to too much before, seems to plug only four or five stories on constant rotation. Each is in increasing depth, but the breadth of coverage was lacking. It's a little disappointing - I was hoping for more local variety.

November is orange season in South China.

Most sacred/auspicious locations should be entered left foot first for men, right foot first for women (/touched with that hand).

I was delighted to see the ship’s crew buying fish off a saipan, pouring cash into the local economy.

What I miss, after 9 days away from my PC, is net access. At home, I’m a minute from answers to any questions I have, however incomplete google’s answers. Here, when I want information about the river’s dimensions, the input of the dam, etc, I can’t even get the basic dimensions to do the math to work out the detail myself, let alone see processed information.

Similarly, a guidebook from Feng du spoke of Qin Hui and his family suffering dreadful tortures in Hell as a result of his actions as prime minister which made him “the most evil man in Chinese history”. No-one seems to know who he is, and no more detail is provided. I feel compelled to know more, but can’t find anything out.

[The link above obviously doesn't give the full story. It's bad, but "the most evil"? Basically, it says:

" Qin Hui (1090-1155) when he [plotted] with his wife the murder of Yue Fei, a young general in command of an army fighting northern invaders. ...

A native of Nanjing, Qin once served as a ranking official of the Northern Song. When the Jins from the north overthew the Song, he turned his coat. Fawning upon the commander of the Jin army, he became his advisor. During the confrontation between the Jin and the southern Song, he was sent back to the Song court to be a planted agent. The Song emperor,who seekedto pacify the enemy, appointed Qin prime MINISTER. From then on, Qin tried by hook or by crook to check Yue Fei's resistance against the Jin invasion. He was indeed out to remove Yue ,a thorn in his flesh. Yue's army was advancing toward the final virtory when Qin asked the emperor to order Yue to withdraw his army. No sooner was Yue back in in Hangzhou than he instigated the emperor to kick Yue upstairs. Not long afterwards, Yue was jailed and killed on the charge of some "probable crime."

Though Qin Hui died eight hudred years ago, people today still hate him intensively. The iron figures of him and his three accomplices, first cast some hundred years ago, will kneel in frong of Yue Fei's tomb and be spat on and cursed forever"]

China is on a huge learning curve. Some merchandising is developing. Hawkers are everywhere. The CITS directs you to (connected?) stores. The commercial instinct is strong.

But, for example, on Sunday night, we tried to buy wine at dinner, and it took 20 minutes to get bottles brought to the table. The white was badly corked, the red just about tolerable. After, in the bar, the barman tried to open wine without removing the foil first (it’s as hard as you’d imagine), and again the cork was dry. The problems of storing wine upright were duly explained to a staff member with good English.

Today, all bottles in the bar are on their side, and at lunch staff dashed to offer wine by the glass. Cultural differences on the White Empress overcome: profits to follow.

End China Blog Day 5 - Messing about on the river

The Ig Nobel prizes for this year have been announced, including:

"As ever, the Brits were well represented. Statistician and ecologist Charles Paxton, from the University of St Andrews, took the biology IgNobel.

He and colleagues had a paper on the courtship behaviour of ostriches published in the journal British Poultry Science.

The research showed why the birds got excited when humans came near their pens.

"The ostriches were more interested in humans than they were in each other," Charles Paxton told the BBC. "The ostriches fancied the humans."

The scientist said his team were delighted with their prize. "We are all very proud," he said.
....
Interdisciplinary Research: Karl Kruszelnicki, of the University of Sydney, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button lint - who gets it, when, what colour, and how much.

Chemistry went to the Illinois researcher who gathered many elements of the periodic table, and then built a four-legged table on the theme of the periodic table.

Mathematics: Two Indian scientists came up with a new method for estimating the surface area of elephants.

Literature: Two US researchers wrote a colourful report on The Effects Of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting On Reading Comprehension.

Peace: A Japanese team got the prize for promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a device that translates a dog's barks into Japanese.

Hygiene: Eduardo Segura, from Spain, won his IgNobel for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs.

Economics: Twenty-eight companies shared this prize for "adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world".

Medicine: Chris McManus, of University College London, was able to show that ancient sculptures of men wrongly had a larger left testicle (in nature, the reverse is true, apparently!)

The physics IgNobel went to Arnd Leike, of the University of Munich, who was able to show that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay.
"He and a Nobel Laureate went out for a beer in Harvard Square before the ceremony to try to replicate the results," Mark Abrahams said."

More details are at the Ig Nobel home page

Via Kuroshin

A depressing little story about the world. The Chinese businessman lined up to be the BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | N Korea trade zone leader has been detained by Chinese police, allegedly on tax evasion charges. The Beeb speculates China's angry at not being consulted over his appointment, and there's mention of stories in the foreign press about the guy's business dealings. I'd been quietly optimistic about this whilst in China (I think it gets mentioned in tomorrow's China blog), and its sad that one chance for part of North Korea to be sorted out may be slipping away.

BBC News is reporting that a French oil tanker has exploded off Yemen. The Yemen government denies it's terrorism, whereas the French say that a small boat filled with explosives rammed the tanker, which would make this incident very similar to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.

If it is terrorism, it looks as though the "sophisticated" approach of the French hasn't brought them too many benefits. A tanker carrying oil from the Gulf might carry 78,000 metric tons of oil (I don't know how typical that amount is). The price of Brent crudel in 2002 is apparently $175.70 per metric ton. So the price of the oil alone is the best part of $14m.

China Blog, Day 4 – Carry on down the Yangtze

We’re 400 miles away, and I’ve already become amused by the repeated references to the “Great” Three Gorges dam project in our morning briefing. It culminated with the host referring to it as “the greatest project in over 5000 years of history”. Just after seeing the Wall and the warriors, this seemed doubtful (though I may change my mind when I see it). The daunting opinion of another guest as to a) the strategic liability of the dam even to ordinary weapons and b) the possible implications of the dam failing were very disturbing.


[I'll have lots to say about the dam in days to come. Here's a summary of arguments for and against, tilted to the anti side. The slant is surprising, as it comes from a site called ChinaOnline.com. Except that it's address is China Online Inc., 900 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 2800, Chicago, IL 60611, USA...]

The company tour manager has argued that the relocated population is happy with being moved: they are being moved to “a higher level …in every respect” (as they are being moved both up slope and to better housing). This may be reasonably true in this area – the water rise will be 10-20m. In winter, water levels are well up anyway, so a lot of buildings are already 10m above the current water levels. Hence the moves won’t be too far. Lower down the river, things may be trickier. The new, higher, buildings do look a better quality than the low-level hovels.

[These/a> links have pictures of housing higher up the banks]

I found a copy of the China Daily Post from Friday (two days ago), borrowed from a Canadian gentleman. It mentioned the Moon festival, and the practise of giving “moon cakes” to family on the day (it’s the second biggest festival of the Chinese year). The CDP was concerned about the promotional activities involved. Apart from advert balloons, producers were including gifts up to and beyond CD players, such that some sell for USD 2,420. The CDP worried about missing the point of the tradition (a la Christmas in the West), but also about the potential for corruption. When you’ve got problems, they tend to crop up in the least likely places…

Traffic – the CDP says currently 1.8m motor vehicles are to be found in Beijing, rising to 3m in 2008 on current projections, or 2m if “restrictive policies” are adopted. They’re trying to promote cycles (of which there are more than 10m in Beijing at present), with cycle lanes, etc, planned for Beijing 2008. Interestingly, there’s mention of arguments against “restrictive policies”, and the suggestion that pricing and taxation should be used to manage traffic, not regulation.

Yangtze navigation – there are occasional huddles of people on the riverside, waiting for ferries. Amused by the sight of a small “bus shelter” a few metres above the water level.

We visited Feng du, “Chinese Hell”. A potential killer insult emerges: apparently, ya ma is the King of Hell….

It’s a fascinating place, with standard issue trials, judgement, and release to heaven or Dante-style torture in hell. The merchant who altered his measures was down to be weighed by his balls for eternity, and the adulterer/cheat to be cut in two (one half for each woman?). Neato.

You got grabbed by appropriate ghosts if you committed various sins such as lust, etc. The drunken ghost seemed aimed at me. The guard said the “intellectual ghost” was for Bill Gates, and the “lecherous ghost” for Bill Clinton. Looks like suckers called Bill can’t get an even break in China.

[This sequence of photos shows some of the ghosts. The "intellectual" and "lecherous" ghosts are missing, sadly. I don't know what the first one you see is. This is the "cheeky" ghost, who's far more innocent than the picture looks - he's a prankster of sorts. The one after that is "Jezebel" ghost. I can't place the others.

Below's a picture of one of the tortures, though I'm not sure exactly what this is for

]

The City of Ghosts (Chinese Hell) is up on a high hill and will become an island when the dam is complete. But the people of Feng du (60,000 of them) lived in the valley bottom. They’re being relocated wholesale to the opposite bank of the Yangtze, up 20+ metres. The guide seemed genuinely happy with his new apartment. The new buildings look better from a distance, though that may be mostly a new lick of paint. The old seem to have been crumbling even before 80% of the population moved over and demolition to salvage bricks and building rubble began.

What you got depended upon what you had, plus what extra you would pay. The deal doesn’t look that shabby if you do indeed get at least an equivalent apartment. The main problem may be some lost tourist money, and having to cross the river each day to get to work. Otherwise, for these people, the dam doesn’t look to be too much of a bad thing.

Mystery of prior days solved – the baggage claim areas at airports had lots of cardboard boxes coming through. At first, I thought it random stuff of local travellers. However, the Chongqing airport had many boxes, apparently collected by Japanese, not Chinese, passengers. I used my first “information strike” with a fellow guest to get an explanation: “cheap electronics”. Apparently the best way to pack stuff like that is properly in its own box, then in bubblewrap, then in a second, sealed box. Two more strikes and it’s my round.

Wonderfully designed toy I didn’t stop to buy: a ping-pong bat with a whole in the centre. There are 5 or 6 chickens on top with strings from them through to a ball underneath. As you move the bat circularly, the ball pulls the opposite string most, causing the chicken heads to depress and “peck” in turn. Simple, yet effective.

Things you don’t see in China (but would somewhere richer) – newsagents in vaguely touristy areas. In the West, or somewhere with slightly more foreigners, you’d have papers. Most places, there or in a tourist shop, you’d be able to buy notepads (with “souvenir” designs or not). Here, nothing. All high margin tat. Tomorrow, the paper from the fax machine beckons for these notes. Cigarettes,` of course, are on prominent display, but from specialist shops.

(Addendum – AIRPORTS don’t sell paper, though they do have Chinese translations of business books. Mintzberg’s “The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning” stood out for me, but they also have collections of the thinking of business leaders, etc. Oddly, titles are in English as well as Chinese. As in Japan, it may be becoming “cool” (as well as denoting foreign “expertise” – there's perhaps a belief in authority (as I understand there was in Meji Japan) that foreign knowledge can be imported to native purposes without structural change).

Amusing idea of the day – not all buildings will be demolished before the flooding. Some will be left so that they can run submarine tours of the flooded sights.

Presumably it’ll only work if the Yangtze becomes less cloudy. Standardly, hitting standing water causes running water to shed silt. Particles are carried in suspension in virtue of (mainly) the speed of the water. Experiments today suggested surface flow in the Yangtze is at least 2 m/s (7 km/h) in normal conditions. IIRC, flow beneath the surface would be faster.

Hitting a lake slows water, causing it to shed particles (in oceans you get a delta, as in some lakes). But the river will run still, as the water will be flowing in a regulated way to generate power. So, if it flows there will be turbulence, preventing submarine viewing – and it can’t not flow. The solution may be to do with the depth of the lake, but it seems like a pipedream.

My second “information strike” was more prosaic, but again helpful – to eat bony fish with chop-sticks, the “formal” way is to eat the piece of fish, suck the flesh off the bone, and then extract the bones with the chop-sticks to discard. That is the “proper” way. Practical solutions, I leave as an exercise for the reader.

A (possible) reason for a (certain type) of “progressive” sympathy with totalitarian regimes – they may keep the buildings of Buddhism, Orthodox Christianity, etc, but they try to empty them of their (moral/intellectual) contexts. Similarly, the historic flummery may be maintained (in reproduction?), but actual governance is from shiny halls. How could this fail to be progress, freeing man from his chains, and who cares about the details of the new arrangements?

On the off ramp at Feng du, two stalls were selling apparently original copies of Mao’s Little Red Book. An ingenious recycling of a formerly (compulsorily) revered item to profit from tourists – a more moral souvenir than the lighters, perhaps, though I still didn’t buy one.


End China Blog, Day 4 - On the Yangtze

The 3 Bruces also link to Google fight, where you can see the result for the fight between uk and france

The 3 bruces have a link to the latest amusing twist on Friends Reunited: Taliban reunited