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January 18 Economics and World UnificationThe so-called world economic crisis reminds me that the current systems in place are based on two key poisonous ingredients: greed and fear. When things are going up, we become greedy and buy. And when things start to fall, we sell out of fear. Any system that is based on such rickety constituent elements is doomed to collapse sooner or later.
But the positive thing that is coming out of it is that we are getting a clearer picture of the interdependence of the earth's peoples and of the nations of the world. Nations can no longer stand by and allow their neighbour to squander away funds for war, especially a war in which that nation hypocritically accuses another of evils that it harbours itself a thousandfold. One nation or people cannot be allowed to protect its own insterests at the expense of the whole.
There is nothing wrong with loving one's country. Rational and intelligent patriotism is a splendid thing. But, in light of the fundamental changes affecting the world's modern economic life, which have engendered the interdependence of the nations, patriotism is undeniably insufficient, and a wider, nobler loyalty is necessary. At the very heart of this wider loyalty is the concept, not of local, provincial, national, or even continental identity, but of world citizenship. Without it, the world cannot overcome the woes that have befallen it. This declaration of the earth as one's home recognizes that the advantage of the part is best served by the advantage of the whole.
Friends, grieve not that the incompetence of the world's leaders, riding the tide of divisive forces, is becoming increasingly manifested. Whatever they say or do, the world will remain unhindered in accelerating towards its destiny. The interdependence of the planet's peoples and nations is already an accomplished fact. The keys to understanding the current economic crisis are both the truth that "the welfare of the part means the welfare of the whole and the distress of the part brings distress to the whole" as well as the reality that any suffering caused in the wake of the world's realizing its destiny stems only from peoples or nations failing to acknowledge that truth. In fact, the greater the opposition to global unification, all the greater will be the speed at which the world hurls towards it.
"Adversity, prolonged, worldwide, afflictive, allied to chaos and universal destruction, must needs convulse the nations, stir the conscience of the world, disillusion the masses, precipitate a radical change in the very conception of society, and coalesce ultimately the disjointed, the bleeding limbs of mankind into one body, single, organically united, and indivisible." January 11 2009 Update on the Mission to PlutoA while back we presented the fact that NASA has launched a spacecraft to Pluto. Such an undertaking is being called the New Horizons project. In preparing for the mission, scientists decided that Pluto is not worthy to be considered a planet. It was hitherto regarded as the ninth planet of our solar system. Because it is very small and possibly one of half a million objects, some of which may be similar in size to Pluto, floating around beyond planet Neptune's orbit in the Kuiper Belt, Pluto is now considered a "dwarf planet". Other "dwarf planets" in the Kuiper Belt have been recently discovered, though smaller than Pluto. Two of them have been named: Quaoar and Sedna. Pluto's diameter is 2,300 km, Sedna's is 1,800, and Quaoar's is 1250. For comparison, Earth's moon's is 3,500 km.
Pluto will be the last planetary body to be visited by a spacecraft. Because it is so distant, we know very little about it. What we do know is that Pluto is 5.5 times smaller than Earth or about 2/3 the size of Earth's moon. Pluto and its moon Charon would barely span the United States. Pluto's gravity is 1/15th that of Earth's. The New Horizons' website additionally points out, "Most planets have poles that point roughly up and out of their orbit planes—the exceptions are Uranus and Pluto, which effectively rotate on their sides." Pluto's orbit is more elliptical than the other planets and its orbit temporarily brings it closer to the sun than Neptune.
Technically speaking, Charon is not Pluto's moon. The two bodies are "binary planets". The website explains, "'Binary planet' is a term often used to describe any pair of worlds that are similar in mass. Each orbits the other around a gravitational balance point that is between the two—a location called the center of mass. When one object has a much bigger mass and the objects are far apart then the center of mass is close to the center of the bigger object and the bigger object hardly moves. This is the case of the Earth orbiting the Sun - the Sun's moves only 0.0003 of its diameter due to the gravity of the Earth in its yearly orbit. In the case of Pluto and Charon, … the ratio of their masses is 8:1 so that the center of mass is outside Pluto."
So the question you're wanting answered I'm guessing is where the spacecraft is now. The New Horizons rocket was launched in early 2006. Here are dates of its journey so far:
l Launch Date: 19 January 2006
l Passed the moon's orbit: just 8 hours and 35 minutes later
l Passed Mars' orbit: 7 April 2006 (just 78 days after launch)
l Passed Jupiter's orbit: 28 February 2007
Note: "New Horizons used Jupiter's powerful gravity to boost its speed and adjust its course toward Pluto and the Kuiper Belt".
l Passed Saturn's orbit: 8 June 2008
Here is the projected journey:
l Will pass the orbit of Uranus: 18 March 2011
l Will pass Neptune's orbit: 24 August 2014
l Will reach Pluto: 14 July 2015
So, currently, the spacecraft, having passed Saturn's orbit last year, is on its way to passing the orbit of Uranus which will happen in just over two years time. Here is an image showing its current position. The distance already travelled is in green and the projected path in red.
In case you're wondering what AU is: most of us have heard the term Astronomical Unit but I'm guessing most of us don't know what it is. One AU is the average distance between the Sun and Earth, which is about 150 million kilometres.
In case you're wondering how fast the spacecraft is going. Its speed is reported in "heliocentric velocity" which is its speed with respect to the Sun—in kilometres per second. It is travelling at a heliocentric velocity of 17.41 km/s, meaning that it is zooming along at 62,676 km/h. Well, it's no Star Trek Enterprise, but, boy, that's fast!
For additional info on the mission to Pluto, visit:
January 10 Coffee, Tea, or Me?As I've mentioned before, I don't drink booze. For one thing, I can't stand the taste of the crap and for another, why would I want to consume something that robs me of my faculty of reason—what differentiates humans from animals? In the West, people respect my choice. But, in China, Chinese men often don't. They can't understand why I ask for tea when dining. "Beer is a man's drink," I'm lectured. My response is usually, "Tea was invented in China; beer was invented in Iraq. Are you a Chinese man or an Iraqi man?"
Let drunkards be drunkards, I say. Chinese women have a lot more sense, avoiding the Babylonian intoxicant. But let's talk about two drinks I do dig: tea and coffee.
For All the Tea in China
In Canada, we usually have tea by placing a teabag in a mug of hot water. But in China, tea is taken differently.
The first time I had tea in China, I was given a glass (without a handle) of loose tea inside. When I tried to pick up the glass, I burned my fingers. So I let it cool down and then picked up the glass from the very top and sipped. Then I got a mouth full of tea leaves that I had to spit out. I asked my Chinese friends why they don't use a mug instead of a glass. They told me the tea looks beautiful and the purpose of the glass is so that you can look at the tea. I pointed out that there are mugs of glass, and you could both look at the tea and not get your fingers burned by holding the handle. They looked puzzled, like I was suggesting something futuristic.
Then I asked why they don't use a teabag. They asked what the purpose would be. I said that it would allow you to avoid eating the tea leaves. Then they asked me what was wrong with eating tea leaves. I didn't have an answer for them. They also pointed out that the tea in the bags may not be the best quality and the freshest.
There's nothing wrong with the way tea is done here. I'm just prepping the foreigner for the different way in which tea is served.
I've gotten my Chinese wife, Carolyn, into teabags and mugs. She now takes her tea this way, and I usually prepare mine the Chinese way with loose tea leaves. But I use a cup with an inner receptacle that has little holes, so I don't eat the tea leaves. When preparing tea this way, you should dump out the first pouring of hot water because the tea leaves are dirty. They may have been dried on the road, you never know.
Green tea is more popular here than black tea. The Chinese call black tea "red tea". The Chinese rarely add milk or sugar to tea. If they do, they call it "milk tea". There are special iced milk teas here, some of which have small balls of jelly candy which they call "pearl candy". They call it "pearl milk tea".
How Do You Take Your Coffee?
Coffee is becoming increasingly popular in Shanghai, especially among the younger generation. But just like the tea, things are different. The question, "How do you take your coffee?" is never asked. Why? Because the Chinese take their coffee only one way—with milk and sugar. In fact, they've never heard about taking it any other way. And when you point out that some take it black, with cream only or with sugar only, they are very surprised.
One time an American friend and I were at a Chinese restaurant and were surprised that they served coffee. We ordered some. They brought it out and they had already added both cream and sugar without asking us first. He takes his black and I take mine with cream only.
Whenever I go to a Chinese friend's home, and he offers me coffee, I have to first make sure that he's not preparing it from one of those packets that contain coffee, milk powder, and sugar. And then I have to tell him not to add any sugar. I always receive a puzzled look, like I'm insane for not having it with sugar.
I was curious to see a breakdown in a coffee survey to find out how most people take their coffee. I surfed the net and found one such survey at www.howstuffworks.com (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/survey905.htm). The survey was conducted on 30 October 2003 and was answered by 3,330 people. The results are as follows:
With Cream and Sugar: 46.2%
Black: 23.7%
With Sugar Only: 12.1%
With Cream Only: 11.5%
According to the survey, iced coffee was much less popular than hot coffee. That's another case in point. I would say, just from observation, that iced coffee is at least as popular here in Shanghai as hot coffee. In fact, when you order coffee, they will always ask you if you want it hot or iced. In the West, of course, they will assume you want it hot unless you tell them otherwise. January 01 Classic Albums of the 1980s: Part 4/4In the mid to late 1980s, three great albums came out.
1. HUMAN'S LIB by HOWARD JONES (1984)
 A British factory worker and accomplished pianist, who had spent part of his youth growing up in Ottawa, released his debut album which topped the British charts. He differed from other new wave artists by presenting high-wheeled optimism. With cold war tensions at their climax, Human's Lib caught everyone off-guard. For the album he marketed himself with a winning fashion style of spikey blond hair beneath a black beret and a black-and-white chequered shirt beneath a black trench coat. Not only was Jones able to compose first-rate music but was also praised for his thoughtful lyrics and performance skills. He used a mime named Jed Hoile in his early concerts. Below are some lyrical excerpts:
I don't wanna be hip and cool
I don't wanna play by the rules
Not under the thumb of the cynical few
Or laden down by the doom crew
From "New Song"
Your beliefs, philosophy, don't give us peace
Destruction of our enemy does it make us right
And if you took them apart and destroyed them all now one by one
This still won't make it work, no
From "Natural"
(Well it's time for a change)
Well I've lost lots of friends
(I've got to move on)
By sticking to my ground
(There's got to be more than this)
I don't give a damn
(The feeling is strong)
Just look what I've found
From "Hunt the Self"
Music critic Mike DeGagne writes:
'Human's Lib is fuelled by the non-stop synth-pop hooks and brightly textured melodies that went on to be a trademark of Howard Jones. His brand of spirited keyboard-and-lyric exuberance lent itself to a large part of the mid-'80s, especially in Britain. The tracks on Human's Lib are energetic and colourful, coming to life the best on "New Song," … and on the finely structured "What Is Love?," … . While both of these songs rested at the bottom end of Billboard's Top 40, they went to number three and number two, respectively, in the U.K., with the album going all the way to number one… . Outside of the singles, the album still holds well, with efforts like "Hide and Seek," "Conditioning," and "Pearl in the Shell" following through with a buoyant but orderly techno-pop keenness mustered through his clean use of the synthesizer.'
Best tracks: "New Song", "Hide and Seek", "What Is Love?" and "Pearl in the Shell".
2. STRANGE CHARM by GARY NUMAN (1986)
 The godfather of electronic rock released his third album on his own label, Numa Records. It was his darkest album in a long time. He used a lot of new technology, like digital samplers and struggled much with making them work. But in the end the results were brilliant. The album, clearly influenced from Blade Runner (and it includes a sample from the film's spoken soundtrack), is just as dark and atmospheric. Strange Charm is less noisy and more hauntingly beautiful than his previous three efforts, includes a couple of ballads, soulful choruses, echoed piano effects, and Arabic-tinged string arrangements. Numan, who has always been good at re-inventing his own music, takes a dramatic turn here, with something not only different from what everyone else was doing but different than anything, he himself had done before, not only in substance, but in style as well. Its opener, "My Breathing", one of the best songs of the year, makes the case for originality in music:
I've been listening to the new dj
What's all this 'original' con?
We all live in the same museum
We all rearrange the same old song.
3. LIKE A PRAYER by MADONNA (1989)
 After dominating the 80s with a squadron of hits, the queen of pop finally released an album that was consistently great from start to finish. Indeed, many regard this as the Italian-American's best album. Part of the reason for its appeal is that she uses a variety of musical styles in the album, from rock guitaring in the title track to the funky beats of "Express Yourself", from the deep soulful piano of "Promise to Try" to the haunting and melodic "Oh Father".
Best tracks: "Oh Father", "Promise To Try", "Like a Prayer", and "Pray for Spanish Eyes". The New YearCarolyn and I went out for dinner on December 25th. One of the better western restaurants in the city - Element Fresh - had a Christmas special dinner. It was pricey (RMB 388 for a dinner for two), but it turned out to be well worth it as it was the best meal I've ever had in Shanghai. I had beef and Carolyn had fish.
On New Year's eve, there were two outdoor concerts in the city - one at Xin Tian Di and one on East Nanjing Road. Due to the cold weather, we opted for watching them at home on TV rather than attend them. They were quite good. I believe Sandy Lam and Eason Chan performed at the former venue, while Angela Zhang and Jeff Zhang performed at the latter. There was also a televised concert held in Hunnan Province.
Carolyn and I both have over a week of holidays for Chinese New Year. We plan on ushering in the year of the ox by going to Beijing. It will be the first time for both of us to visit the Chinese capital. |
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