Quotations and notes from "Tiger Head, Snake Tails - China Today, How It Got There and Where It Is Heading" by Jonathan Fenby
"Average annual per capita income has soared from 528 yuan at the start of < > the early 1980s to 19,100 in urban areas and 5,900 in the countryside at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century."
"Sixty-five million Chinese travel abroad each year."
"The number of patent applications has risen from 50,000 to 300,000 a year since 2000{again placing China second only to the USA}".
"A Chinese publication has reported that more than fifty billionaires have died of unnatural causes since 2003; of these seventeen committed suicide, fifteen were murdered and fourteen were executed."
"Eighty million Chinese belong to the Communist Party .."{apparently 20% are women}.
Since China has such diversity of climate and terrain, "China contains 30,000 species of plants{compared to 17,000 in all North America}."
"Shanghai < > has constructed the equivalent of 334 Empire State Buildings in fourteen years."
"Religion is officially regulated with five faiths allowed: Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and Daoism - the latter being China's only indigenous creed, with its doctrine of the pursuit of the mystical way, freewheeling belief system and bewildering array of gods and demons .."
"The central bank{of China} estimates that 18,000 officials have skipped abroad in the last two decades, taking a total of more that $120 billion with them."
Friday, April 19, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Experimental Blog # 153
Quotations from "Chinese Characters - Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land", edited by Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Forward by Panaj Mishra
Here are a few quotations from 3 of the 18 contributors, 10 men and 8 women, who compose this anthology.
From Panaj Mishra:
"...the word "capitalism" scarcely describes an economic system in which a one-party state controls the major banks and companies and regulates the movement of capital. < > China has surely also adopted commonplace Western practices such as the privatization and truncating of public services, deunionization, and the fragmenting and lumpenization of urban working classes."
From Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
"It is true that China is still run by a Communist Party ... It is a Communist Party, however, that has stopped celebrating class struggle < > that the pursuit of a "harmonious society" is what China's leaders today talk about most .."
From Angilee Shah:
" ...China's economic rise is{quoting Adam Hersh} "the most rapid socioecnomic transformation in the history of human civilization."
"Some five hundred million people have been raised out of poverty since the 1980s .."
"China today is a place of great diversity and incredible people who are living through an unprecedented time."
Here are a few quotations from 3 of the 18 contributors, 10 men and 8 women, who compose this anthology.
From Panaj Mishra:
"...the word "capitalism" scarcely describes an economic system in which a one-party state controls the major banks and companies and regulates the movement of capital. < > China has surely also adopted commonplace Western practices such as the privatization and truncating of public services, deunionization, and the fragmenting and lumpenization of urban working classes."
From Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
"It is true that China is still run by a Communist Party ... It is a Communist Party, however, that has stopped celebrating class struggle < > that the pursuit of a "harmonious society" is what China's leaders today talk about most .."
From Angilee Shah:
" ...China's economic rise is{quoting Adam Hersh} "the most rapid socioecnomic transformation in the history of human civilization."
"Some five hundred million people have been raised out of poverty since the 1980s .."
"China today is a place of great diversity and incredible people who are living through an unprecedented time."
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Experimental Blog # 152
Quotations and notes from "The Terror Factory" - Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism by Trevor Aaronson
"A Senate oversight committee found in 1975 the FBI had 1,500 informants. In 1980.., 2,800 ...Six years later .. 6,000 .." Today, after the Moslem{Muslim} terrorist attacks on 9/11, the FBI has an "official roster" of 15,000 informants. The author, Trevor Aaronson, writes that the FBI has a "vast army of spies, located in every community in the United States with enough Muslims to support a mosque.."
"The FBI currently spends $3 billion annually to hunt an enemy that is largely of its own creation."
"According to government and federal court records, the Justice Department has prosecuted more than 500 terrorism defendants since 9/11."
"Of the 508 defendants, 243 had been targeted through an FBI informant, 158 had been caught in an FBI terrorism sting, and 49 had encountered an agent provocateur. Most of the people who didn't face off against an informant weren't directely involved with terrorism at all, but were .. small-time criminals with distant links to terrorists overseas."
"Of the 508 cases, I could count on one hand the number of actual terrorists .."
This is a very provocative book on a very controversial subject.
"A Senate oversight committee found in 1975 the FBI had 1,500 informants. In 1980.., 2,800 ...Six years later .. 6,000 .." Today, after the Moslem{Muslim} terrorist attacks on 9/11, the FBI has an "official roster" of 15,000 informants. The author, Trevor Aaronson, writes that the FBI has a "vast army of spies, located in every community in the United States with enough Muslims to support a mosque.."
"The FBI currently spends $3 billion annually to hunt an enemy that is largely of its own creation."
"According to government and federal court records, the Justice Department has prosecuted more than 500 terrorism defendants since 9/11."
"Of the 508 defendants, 243 had been targeted through an FBI informant, 158 had been caught in an FBI terrorism sting, and 49 had encountered an agent provocateur. Most of the people who didn't face off against an informant weren't directely involved with terrorism at all, but were .. small-time criminals with distant links to terrorists overseas."
"Of the 508 cases, I could count on one hand the number of actual terrorists .."
This is a very provocative book on a very controversial subject.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Experimental Blog # 151
Comments on "The Terror Courts" - Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay by Jess Bravin
President George W. Bush created the Special Military Commission by executive order in November of 2001 to deal with the captured foreign terrorists after the 9/11 attacks on America. It seems that neither he nor his administration had any confidence in the existing American judicial system.
The "offshore" commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was authorized to use what might be called "torture lite" to obtain confessions and other useful information. The prisoners were not to be tortured to death or physically injured. It seems that they had to be in such condition that, after a day or two of rest, they could be brought into the courtroom and not appear to be injured or abused. Numerous times the author also mentions the "clandestine network" of CIA prisons that are secretly located in foreign countries, but not much seems to be known about what transpired in these places.
Jess Bravin apparently concludes that the Guantanamo military commission was actually much slower to produce results than the established American judicial system would have been. Very few convictions could be obtained because confessions or evidence produced under such allowed conditions could not be upheld. Several prisoners were released for political reasons to England and Australia.
For its own political reasons the administration of President Barak Obama has continued the military commission at Guantanamo Bay. However, substantial changes have been made; for instance, "torture lite" is no longer supposed to be used to obtain evidence or confessions. Besides that the author writes that if prisoners are actually convicted of anything, they seem to receive a more lenient sentence than they would receive from the established American judicial system.
President George W. Bush created the Special Military Commission by executive order in November of 2001 to deal with the captured foreign terrorists after the 9/11 attacks on America. It seems that neither he nor his administration had any confidence in the existing American judicial system.
The "offshore" commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was authorized to use what might be called "torture lite" to obtain confessions and other useful information. The prisoners were not to be tortured to death or physically injured. It seems that they had to be in such condition that, after a day or two of rest, they could be brought into the courtroom and not appear to be injured or abused. Numerous times the author also mentions the "clandestine network" of CIA prisons that are secretly located in foreign countries, but not much seems to be known about what transpired in these places.
Jess Bravin apparently concludes that the Guantanamo military commission was actually much slower to produce results than the established American judicial system would have been. Very few convictions could be obtained because confessions or evidence produced under such allowed conditions could not be upheld. Several prisoners were released for political reasons to England and Australia.
For its own political reasons the administration of President Barak Obama has continued the military commission at Guantanamo Bay. However, substantial changes have been made; for instance, "torture lite" is no longer supposed to be used to obtain evidence or confessions. Besides that the author writes that if prisoners are actually convicted of anything, they seem to receive a more lenient sentence than they would receive from the established American judicial system.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Experimental Blog # 150
Quotations and notes from "The Joy of X" - A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity by Steven Strogatz
"... numbers have lives of their own. ..Even though they exist in our minds, once we decide what we mean by them,..They obey certain laws and have certain properties, .. and ways of combining with one another ...they are eerily reminiscent of atoms and stars, the things of this world ...except that those things exist outside our heads."
"The Babylonians ..numerical system was based on 60 ...Sixty is the smallest number that can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6{besides 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30}. ..Because of its promiscuous divisibilty, 60 is much more congenial .. for any sort of calculation or measurement that involves cutting things into equal parts"{such as hours or minutes or circles}.
"Quantum mechanics describes real atoms, and hence all of matter, as packets of sine waves. Even at the cosmological scale, sine waves form the seeds of all that exists."!
"...vector calculus is helping to explain how dragonflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds can fly - something that had long been a mystery to conventional fixed-wing aerodynamics."
"With the notions of divergence and curl ...{Using mathematical maneuvers equivalent to vector calculus} Maxwell's equations .. express" the four fundamental laws of electric and magnetic fields: how electricity and magnetism are related to their sources of charged particles and currents and how they interact over space and time to produce undulating waves.
The laws of probability turn individual randomness into collective regularity.
"... numbers have lives of their own. ..Even though they exist in our minds, once we decide what we mean by them,..They obey certain laws and have certain properties, .. and ways of combining with one another ...they are eerily reminiscent of atoms and stars, the things of this world ...except that those things exist outside our heads."
"The Babylonians ..numerical system was based on 60 ...Sixty is the smallest number that can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6{besides 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30}. ..Because of its promiscuous divisibilty, 60 is much more congenial .. for any sort of calculation or measurement that involves cutting things into equal parts"{such as hours or minutes or circles}.
"Quantum mechanics describes real atoms, and hence all of matter, as packets of sine waves. Even at the cosmological scale, sine waves form the seeds of all that exists."!
"...vector calculus is helping to explain how dragonflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds can fly - something that had long been a mystery to conventional fixed-wing aerodynamics."
"With the notions of divergence and curl ...{Using mathematical maneuvers equivalent to vector calculus} Maxwell's equations .. express" the four fundamental laws of electric and magnetic fields: how electricity and magnetism are related to their sources of charged particles and currents and how they interact over space and time to produce undulating waves.
The laws of probability turn individual randomness into collective regularity.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Experimental Blog # 149
Quotations and notes from "The Whole Story of Climate" - What Science Reveals about the Nature of Endless Change by E. Kirsten Peters
" ... most major climate changes in geologically recent times have occurred in a mere twenty or thirty years."
"No full climate crash has occurred in the span of written history."
" ... the Pleistocene ... alternated between long periods of cold - lasting roughly 100,000 years - and short periods of considerably warmer times - lasting about 10,000 years."
"If we think of climate change as our enemy, we will always be defeated."
" ... geologists ... realized that there must be diamond-rich rocks in Canada{in the Barren Lands about two hundred miles northeast of Yellowknife?!} that had sent a few gems thousands of miles to the south{New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illionois?!} courtesy of staggering volumes of ice."
" ... from pollen studies all around the world in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, it became abundantly clear to geologists that regional climate changes are always occurring on Earth."
"The Vostock{Antarctica} ice record of 420,000 years covers four great cycles of climate change on Earth."
" .. the jury is still very much out on the idea that relates the history of agriculture to greenhouse gases and global climate."
"On long timescales, increases in temperature, controlled by the Earth's orbit around the sun, create more methane and carbon dioxide. ... from what most scientists can tell, greenhouse gases are not the primary driver of long-term climate change on Earth .."
" ... most major climate changes in geologically recent times have occurred in a mere twenty or thirty years."
"No full climate crash has occurred in the span of written history."
" ... the Pleistocene ... alternated between long periods of cold - lasting roughly 100,000 years - and short periods of considerably warmer times - lasting about 10,000 years."
"If we think of climate change as our enemy, we will always be defeated."
" ... geologists ... realized that there must be diamond-rich rocks in Canada{in the Barren Lands about two hundred miles northeast of Yellowknife?!} that had sent a few gems thousands of miles to the south{New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illionois?!} courtesy of staggering volumes of ice."
" ... from pollen studies all around the world in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, it became abundantly clear to geologists that regional climate changes are always occurring on Earth."
"The Vostock{Antarctica} ice record of 420,000 years covers four great cycles of climate change on Earth."
" .. the jury is still very much out on the idea that relates the history of agriculture to greenhouse gases and global climate."
"On long timescales, increases in temperature, controlled by the Earth's orbit around the sun, create more methane and carbon dioxide. ... from what most scientists can tell, greenhouse gases are not the primary driver of long-term climate change on Earth .."
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Experimental Blog # 148
Notes and quotations from "Restless Empire - China and the World Since 1750" by Odd Arne Westad
This history of modern China begins with the Qing{also sometimes called Manchu} dynasty, which ruled for almost three hundred years, from 1644 to 1912. Even during the 15th century Chinese were emigrating along trade routes to other settlements in Southeast Asia; Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Java, Malaya, and Thailand. In the 19th and 20th centuries, besides the United States and Canada, Chinese also emigrated to Cuba and Peru. Eventually totalling about 20 million people, over 75% had gone to Southeast Asia.
Today, the author says, about 40 million people of Chinese descent live outside of China, compared to more than 350 million people of European descent who live outside of Europe.
Beginning in the 1830s several European powers began incursions into China for their commercial advantages. By the end of the 19th century these European powers were joined by Japan. "In 1911 ... an army mutiny forced the mother of the last emporer, the four-year-old Puyi, to issue his abdication. By imperial decree, China became a republic ..."
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 abruptly terminated Japan's occupation of China. However, the vigorous support of the Soviet Union gave the victory in the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP. There followed a very thorough "sovietization" of China, which possiblly cost an additional 4 to 5 million human lives.
However, the author calls the Great Leap Forward campaign, which ended in 1961, "the greatest man-made catastrophe in human history". Odd Arne Westad writes that an estimated 45 million people died from hunger, illness, or exhaustion.
"During the 1960s, China went through a period of isolation and increasing irrelevance in international affairs." "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was by far the largest and most intense government campaign in Chinese history. It killed fewer people than the Great Leap and it affected the economy less, but in terms of people's daily lives and of lives ruined and made meaningless it was far worse."
Odd Arne Westad writes over another one hundred pages to end his book on a somewhat more positive note.
This history of modern China begins with the Qing{also sometimes called Manchu} dynasty, which ruled for almost three hundred years, from 1644 to 1912. Even during the 15th century Chinese were emigrating along trade routes to other settlements in Southeast Asia; Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Java, Malaya, and Thailand. In the 19th and 20th centuries, besides the United States and Canada, Chinese also emigrated to Cuba and Peru. Eventually totalling about 20 million people, over 75% had gone to Southeast Asia.
Today, the author says, about 40 million people of Chinese descent live outside of China, compared to more than 350 million people of European descent who live outside of Europe.
Beginning in the 1830s several European powers began incursions into China for their commercial advantages. By the end of the 19th century these European powers were joined by Japan. "In 1911 ... an army mutiny forced the mother of the last emporer, the four-year-old Puyi, to issue his abdication. By imperial decree, China became a republic ..."
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 abruptly terminated Japan's occupation of China. However, the vigorous support of the Soviet Union gave the victory in the Chinese civil war to the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP. There followed a very thorough "sovietization" of China, which possiblly cost an additional 4 to 5 million human lives.
However, the author calls the Great Leap Forward campaign, which ended in 1961, "the greatest man-made catastrophe in human history". Odd Arne Westad writes that an estimated 45 million people died from hunger, illness, or exhaustion.
"During the 1960s, China went through a period of isolation and increasing irrelevance in international affairs." "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was by far the largest and most intense government campaign in Chinese history. It killed fewer people than the Great Leap and it affected the economy less, but in terms of people's daily lives and of lives ruined and made meaningless it was far worse."
Odd Arne Westad writes over another one hundred pages to end his book on a somewhat more positive note.
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