china
revere | November 22, 2009Since the way Chinese public health officials traditionally save face is by covering their ass, when I hear things like this I don't automatically believe it:
"With initial efforts of containment, actually we not only reduced the impact of the first wave to China, but we also won time for us to prepare the vaccine" now being given to China's people, [Chen Zhu, China's health minister] said in an interview during the Havana meeting of the Global Forum for Health Research.
After the swine flu first appeared in Mexico last spring, China put Mexican visitors — and people from other countries who…
aardvarchaeology | August 11, 2009One of my pastimes is writing on Wikipedia. It's almost unavoidable since I use the encyclopedia daily and keep running into stuff to correct -- facts, spelling, stylistic mishaps. In the past, though, I've been really discouraged when trying to improve the articles about Falun Gong (a.k.a. Chinese Scientology). They used to be a battleground between Chinese Communist Party loyalists and Falun Gong devotees, both sides trying to cram as much propaganda into the articles as possible. Then the FGers managed to get the CCP guys banned from editing, which was excellent in itself. Unfortunately it…
razib | August 6, 2009Genetic Future says basically what I was going to say about report about genetic testing for abilities in China. Dan MacArthur notes:
Unlike a lot of commentators on this story, I've got nothing fundamentally against the idea of using genetics to make predictions about a child's future, and on guiding the activities a child engages in based on those predictions. Here's the thing, though: this only makes sense if the predictions are both accurate and relevant, and right now the predictions from genetics regarding complex traits are neither. Parents should save their money for more useful ways…
razib | July 28, 2009News story, brought to you by the same people responsible for China Strong.
Police Still Searching For Missing Productive, Obedient Woman
sciencewoman | July 25, 2009This slim novel by author Bi Feiyu takes the reader inside the world of the Peking Opera, after the Cultural Revolution and at the dawn of capitalism in China. Xiao Yanqui rashly lost her place in the opera company just when her star was rising, but now, 20 years later, she's been given a chance at redemption - a chance to return to the lead role in The Moon Opera. The novel follows Xiao as she attempts to control her body and contort back into the role of a much younger woman, despite the fact that she now has a teenage daughter of her own. Meanwhile, Xiao's understudy and star pupil wants…
razib | July 24, 2009Shanghai urges 'two-child policy':
Officials in Shanghai are urging parents to have a second child, the first time in decades the government has actively encouraged procreation.
A public information campaign has been launched to highlight exemptions to the country's one-child policy.
H/T Aziz
razib | July 22, 2009In China, a Rocky Ascent for Basketball. I love this quote:
Chinese players like Wang Yong of the Dongguan Leopards support the increased participation of foreign players. "Chinese and foreign players are a harmonious blend," he said. "I've learned a lot from them this season and feel I am a better player."
aardvarchaeology | July 15, 2009
Courtesy of my niece-in-law in Hangzhou, here's a piece of plastic hong shao rou, ç´çè, red braised pork, intended as a cell phone decoration. Yum!
razib | July 9, 2009Over at Accidental Blogger a remembrance of travels in Xinjiang/East Turkestan. I think the best model for what's going on in China right now is a race riot catalyzed by economic resentment. Uighurs seem to be attacking Hui as well as Han, the Hui being Chinese speakers who are of Muslim background (and by and large are physically indistinguishable from the Han, for example, the Vice Premier of China is a Hui).. Though China is still a poor country much of it is lurching toward modernity; the Uighurs of Xinjiang are an exception to this trend.
Related: Post from last year.
eklemetti | May 28, 2009Here's some news bits for all you volcanophiles. Enjoy the weekend!
Ubinas in Peru steaming away in June 2007. Image courtesy of Eruptions reader Mike Lyvers.
There has been a lot of press lately on the theory that a large eruption from an ancient volcanic field in China (the 260-million-year-old Emeishan volcanic province of southwest China) could be the culprit in the grand Permian extinction. I have to admit, I've only skimmed the surface of this study, but the work lead by Dr. Paul Wignall (a paleontologist, not a volcanologist - not that there is anything wrong with that) seems to…
tsmith | April 28, 2009Stories in Spanish: Costa Rica becomes the first Central American country to confirm swine flu ("gripe porcina"). A 21 year old who had traveled to Mexico is in stable condition. An additional 16 cases were examined but were negative. Brazil is also examining 11 travelers; cases are also being examined in Panama, Honduras, Argentina, and Uruguay, and Chile.
In Asia, South Korea is examining a possible case, while China's stepped up its efforts to look for cases (and blocked import of pork from the US and Mexico).
Most of the cases that are being examined have traveled to Mexico…
razib | April 25, 2009One of the major problems in most societies, subject to "great sorts" of various kinds, is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations. For example, if one of the first things that someone finds out about me is that I am an atheist, there is a general presupposition that I am a Left-Liberal. It is true that there is a robust relationship between atheism and liberalism in the United States, the problem I have, as an admittedly illiberal atheist, are those who believe that atheism entails liberalism. In a specific instance I…
illconsidered | February 21, 2009The emergence of China as a dominant economic power is an epochal event, occasioning the most massive and rapid redistribution of the earth's resources in human history. The country has also become a ravenous consumer. Its appetite for raw materials drives up international commodity prices and shipping rates while its middle class, projected to jump to 700 million by 2020, is learning the gratifications of consumerism.
A very sobering read.
illconsidered | February 18, 2009In the climate debates, I hear it all the time: why should the US do anything when China and India are the fastest growing and largest emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet? Though I make it a personal policy to never discussion mitigation policies with characters who will not even accept the reality of the problem, the question does, on its own merits, deserve a thoughtful answer.
Clearly, climate disruption due to accumulating greenhouse gases is a global problem and requires a cooperative and global solution. We all share the same planetary atmosphere, and CO2 is a well mixed gas in…
revere | February 11, 2009The Chinese like chicken. The biggest restaurant chain in China is Kentucky Fried Chicken (2300 in 500 cities). The source of supply is always close. China raises more poultry than any nation on earth. But that poultry also has outbreaks of bird flu, and there have been eight human cases in the last month. Any relationship? The eight cases are not clustered and appear sporadic. But the Ministry of Health has said the human cases appeared in areas where there was no reported bird flu, which puzzled them, since it is conventional wisdom that human cases result from close interaction with…
edyong | January 30, 2009On Tuesday, I wrote a short essay on the rightful place of science in our society. As part of it, I argued that scientific knowledge is distinct from the scientific method - the latter gives people the tools with which to acquire the former. I also briefly argued that modern science education (at least in the UK) focuses too much on the knowledge and too little on the method. It is so blindsided by checklists of facts that it fails to instil the inquisitiveness, scepticism, critical thinking and respect for evidence that good science entails. Simply inhaling pieces of information won't get…
aardvarchaeology | January 26, 2009
Happy Chinese New Year, everybody! Today is the first day of the year of the Ox according to the farmers' calendar.
The Rundkvist family is heavily secularised, to the extent that I have let slip almost all Western observances and have very vague ideas about the Chinese ones. So, to learn what this day is traditionally about, I turn as always to Wikipedia, and learn that I should:
Welcome the deities of the heavens and earth.
Not eat meat.
Not cook.
Visit the most senior members of my extended family.
Hire a lion dance troupe.
Give money to my kids.
Set off fire crackers.
Of these…
aardvarchaeology | January 24, 2009My lovely Chinese wife came to Sweden with her family at age seven and grew up here. This has given her an unusual level of bicultural competence. I like to quip, lewdly, that she's a dual boot machine with two operating systems and the most awesome hardware, man. She's like this typical bright Swedish middle-class chick who somehow happens to know everything about China and looks like an Imperial princess.
So I can't really say that we have grappled with and overcome our cultural differences. She pretty much does that for me on her own. But there are some details where our different…
revere | January 22, 2009Readers want to know what I think about the bird flu situation in China, where four human cases have been reported in the last couple of weeks. I haven't said anything about it so far, which is normal for me. I usually like to wait for more information. There are dedicated and smart flu bloggers out there who spend more time collecting scraps of information than I do. Check out fluwiki forum and CureEvents, for the latest word, all accurately reported by top rank flu bloggers like crof and Mike and a number of others (it is dangerous to start naming people because you inevitably leave out…
zooillogix | October 28, 2008As reported in the NY Times and elsewhere, an auction of 108 metric tons of ivory took place today in Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The buyers were exclusively from China and Japan. Not surprisingly, this sale has raised the ire of animal welfare groups, such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
You might be surprised to learn however that this was a legal auction sanctioned, and in fact run, by CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. So here are the facts:
* All of the ivory sold comes from government…