If you read just one story today….

What an amazing article. What a brave thing to do. Too little, too late of course, but at least some Republicans are willing to admit they screwed up and are paying for their error with the blood of our own and Iraq’s people.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been offline a long time – probably the longest period ever since I started this site. I’ve been enjoying forgetting about the blog for a while, spending a lot of time with my parents and friends, and dealing with the practical issues involved in preparing for my move in 10 days (yikes) to China. So I was late to notice that China Law Blog has tagged me to reveal five things about myself that you don’t know. (Go to CLB to see more about this tagging process, and how he himself got tagged.)

Well, let me see what I can come up with. And allow me to be brief, as I’m still on vacation and vowed not to spend a lot of time on the site until I settle down in Beijing.

1. I was trained to be an opera singer. It was simply a matter of fact when I was a teenager that this would be my destiny, and I began training with a coach from the Metropolitan Opera when I was 15. I was a full bass, and my favorite role to sing was Sarastro in The Magic Flute. (So what happened? All I’ll say is that life plays tricks, and things often don’t work out the way we’d planned.)

2. My favorite hobby after classical music is cooking. I like cooking the complicated stuff that takes many hours to prepare, like paella or osso bucco or coq au vin. I baked two pies for my family’s holiday dinner (one pecan, one apple). I use no prepared foods or artificial ingredients, and I take my cooking seriously. It’s also therapy – nothing makes me feel more “harmonious” than preparing the perfect meal.

3. Although I listen mainly to the heavy-duty classical stuff like Wagner and Mahler and Bach, in 1999 I fell in love with the music of Abba – yes, the bubble-gummy, feather-light background music you’d take to listen to at the beach. Only it’s not bubble gum, it’s seriously great stuff once you get into it .(And I know I’m taking a big risk in admitting this. All fashionable pop afficionados know nothing is more uncool than Abba, but that means there are a lot of very uncool people in this world, considering Abba has sold more albums than any other group in history.) My favorite two songs: The Winner Takes it All and One of Us. But whichever I’m listening to is my favorite. And yes, again, I know how uncool it is to love Abba! Why else wold I keep it such a closely guarded secret?

4. I had two brushes with the super-famous in my life. For my graduate thesis, I interviewed Leonard Bernstein, whom I met for dinner at his Greenwich, Connecticut home in 1984. I still look back on that dinner as one of the most thrilling experiences in my life; to actually sit at the same table with Bernstein and talk about classical music and literature for hours, and then have him play his newly recorded Tristan und Isolde… The second experience was years earlier, when I saw an actor in a Broadway matinee whose performance I loved so much I went backstage and met with him and the show’s leading lady. The three of us then went walking through Central Park and spent two wonderful hours together talking about life and its myriad oddities. The actress was Marian Seldes, and the actor was at the time all but unknown, a charming and brilliant fellow named Anthony Hopkins. God, I loved living in New York City.

5. I lost more than $120,000 in the dot-com’s bursting bubble and its aftershocks. It seemed so real and such a sure thing at the time. I took a few thousand dollars in 1996 and turned it into what was, for me, a small fortune, and saw it vanish in just a few months. I learned a painful lesson and am now a cautious investor.

So whom should I tag? So many to choose from… Okay, here goes:

Lao Lu

88s

Jeremiah

PiPi

Though it hasn’t been authenticated, there seems to be good reason to believe this set of guidelines for Xinhua reporters is the real thing. Sample:

1. Physically handicapped persons should not be described by denigrating terms such as “cripple 残废人”, “one-eyed dragon 独眼龙”, “blindie 瞎子”, “deafie 聋子”, “fool 傻子”, “idiot 呆子”. Instead, the appropriate terms are “handicapped person 残疾人”, “blind person 盲人 “, “deaf person 聋人”, “mentally impaired person 智力障碍者”.

Many other examples can be found in the post, whose author notes:

Aside from the rather predictable rules about Taiwan, it’s interesting that most of the list resembles a guide to Western style political correctness rather than the usual Communist Party list of taboo words and subject matter.

I ‘m not sure about the comparison to Western-style political correctness. Having worked at two big American media companies, I know there are plenty of rules to keep stories politically correct. But to refer to a deaf person as “deafie” or a retarded person as “idiot” is not politically incorrect, it’s vulgar and cruel and crude – at least in American English. Political correctness, to me, is much more inane and difficult to defend, like insisting you refer to black as “people of color” and to garbage men as “sanitation technicians.” These Xinhua guidelines are not inane or absurd or extraordinary. What is extraordinary is that Xinhua needed to create a formal document articulating what you’d hope would be obvious already to their professional journalists.

Something may have been lost in translation, however. Maybe in Chinese, the term translated into “deafie” isn’t as offensive as it sounds in English. When I was in Hong Kong, I’d see a small bus every morning carrying retarded people, who were referred to on the side of the bus, in English, as “spastics” – in HK, apparently, the word “spastic” doesn’t have the negative connotations it does in the US. If the words in the Xinhua guidelines are indeed as offensive as their English co-equivalents, then again I’d have to wonder why Xinhua would ever need to create such a document. Can their reporters really be so poorly trained that they’d use the equivalent of “deafie” in a Xinhua story? Or is 聋子 less harsh in Chinese?

I wrote about this two weeks ago, but I just read a moving piece in the New York Times (via CDT) by Robert Pittman, one of the scientists on the six-week expedition that combed the Yangzi for signs of the Chinese River Dolphin (baiji).

Locally, the Yangtze River is in serious trouble; the canary in the coal mine is dead. In addition to baiji, the Yangtze paddlefish is (was) probably the largest freshwater fish in the world (at least 21 feet), and it hasn’t been seen since 2003; the huge Yangtze sturgeon breeds only in tanks now because it has no natural habitat (a very large dam stands between it and its breeding grounds). The whole river ecosystem is going down the tubes in the name of rampant economic development. There is a huge environmental debt accruing on the Yangtze, and baiji was perhaps just the first installment.

The counter argument one hears out of China is that millions of Chinese people still live in poverty. The economic demands of development trump the needs of fish and the sexy megafauna, like dolphins, to which Westerners seem so mawkishly attached. (Must be all those reruns of “Flipper” and class trips to Sea World.)

But Pittman’s scientific reserve breaks down as he describes the baiji not only as a symbol of the perilous environmental condition of China’s waterways, but also as part of a legacy that belongs to all of us regardless of national boundaries:

For the Chinese, I think that losing a half-blind river dolphin and a couple of oversize fish was a fair trade for all the money that is being made there now. China is an economic model envied by most of the rest of the world, and I think that many other (especially third world) countries will be confronted with similar decisions of economic development versus conservation of habitats and animals, and the response will be the same. From now on we will have to choose which animals will be allowed to live on the planet with us, and baiji got cut in the first round. It is a sad day. I know it is their country, but the planet belongs to all of us. We came to say goodbye to baiji, but after its being in the river for 20 million years, we apparently missed it by two years.

In related news today, the United States government listed polar bears as ‘threatened,‘ marking the first time “the United States has made a direct link between global warming and the threat to a species.” The bears’ habitat, the ice floes of the arctic, are melting, depriving the bears of their hunting grounds. There has been increasing evidence of cannibalism among the bears as well as several sad reports of bears drowning in the oceans off of the Alaskan coast after they became stranded on shrinking ice floes.

We are losing some of Earth’s greatest natural treasures and too many people seem okay with this. The Bush Administration still refuses to back mandatory controls of carbon dioxide emissions, American patterns of consumption continue to favor convenience over conservation (patterns of consumption that many urban Chinese seem all too willing to emulate), and officials and business interests in China zealously insist on economic growth above all other concerns. The loss of the last few dozen of a blind river dolphin half a world away hardly seems like news here in the United States. But it should be a wake up call for all of us, regardless of where we live.
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Cross posted from the Chinese history blog Jottings from the Granite Studio

I hope you’re all enjoying a sublime Holiday season, and come back soon. Love, peace and joy.

I swore I wouldn’t post today, as I have to make dinner for the relatives, but this is worth a quick mention.

CHINGLISH, the often funny mistranslation of Chinese into English, may soon be harder to find as Beijing prepares to standardise translations of thousands of Chinese dishes and public signs before the 2008 Olympic Games.

The city, determined to promote itself as modern and sophisticated, is planning to get rid of translations such as the Garden of Curled Poo in the capital’s ancient Ritan Park.

It will be the more accurate “information centre”. Foreigners will no longer be able to take snaps of themselves at the city’s Racist Park – the Ethnic Minorities Theme Park – and “Slippery when wet” will replace the “slippery are very crafty” warning for wet roads.

Also at risk are the literally correct translations such as Saliva Chicken, a cold dish of poached chicken in a peanut, garlic, ginger and green onion sauce – but no saliva – and pocked-face Ladies Tofu – mapo dofu, the chilli hot beancurd dish named after an old woman called Ma. Simple typos such as Pee Soup (pea soup) and Hot Crap (Spicy crab) will soon go the way of Beijing’s old hutong neighbourhoods, which are being replaced with anonymous high-rises that the Beijing authorities consider more appropriate for the capital of a nation of 1.3 billion people.

I guess it’s a good thing, though I know some will feel nostalgia for those funny signs and menu items – if, indeed, they can really wipe them out and correct them. The article says the “Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program,” made up of language experts at BCLU, has a web site listing hundreds of terms being considered for “reform.” If anyone can provide a link it will be appreciated.

Now is the time of the year when we see a lot of “Top Ten” lists of all sorts. Here from Media Matters (via the Daou Report) are the Top Eleven (thanks to Ann Coulter) Most Outrageous Comments by right-wing commentators:

Right-wing rhetoric documented by Media Matters for America included the nonsensical (including Rush Limbaugh’s claim that America’s “obesity crisis” is caused by, among other things, our failure to “teach [the poor] how to butcher a — slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter”), the offensive (such as right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel’s question about “Barack Hussein Obama”: is he “a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?”), and the simply bizarre (such as William A. Donohue’s claim that some Hollywood stars would “sodomize their own mother in a movie”)

Given the stunning repudiation of the Republican agenda in the midterm elections, I’d like to hope these voices will be somewhat chastened in 2007 – but I’m not betting on it.

Okay, I have a ton of presents to wrap. Hope you and yours are enjoying the holidays, whatever you celebrate – I’m a Yuletide person myself…

Stupid laws and sentences have been hot topics here lately, and the latest example of a 17-year-old parolee sentenced to life imprisonment for testing positive for marijuana use is even more appalling – and terrifying – than our earlier discussion of another 17-year-old given a 10-year sentence for receiving a consensual blowjob. The background in a nutshell

Brown, who pleaded guilty to his first and only offense at age 17, was given probation after a $2 armed robbery in which the victim wasn’t harmed and had his wallet returned. But months later, Brown violated his probation by testing positive for marijuana. In most cases of marijuana violations, Texas judges – and Dean – often recommend counseling and allow the defendant to remain on probation with a stiff warning.

In this case, however, without explanation, Brown was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Last month 20/20 exposed this aberration on national television and now it appears Brown will soon be released – after serving 16 years.

I believe the US justice system is deeply flawed, but considering what it’s up against, I also feel it’s amazing that it functions as well as it does. We are lucky to have a relatively free media that can bring at least some of these aberrations to light and expedite change. But I have no illusions: For every horror story like this that the media expose, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of similar stories that don’t get told, and where the victim is not so lucky. The wheels of the US justice system grind on, protecting us and punishing wrongdoers and making sure rule of law in America works as best it can. But God have mercy on the souls of the little people who get caught up in its cold, heartless machinery. Tragically but not at all surprisingly, the poorer they are, the more likely they are to get sucked into these legal black holes. In the US, and certainly in other countries we talk about here as well.

A must-read post from one of my very favorite blogs. The blogger’s take on this subject is witty and smart, and best of all, he makes two separate references to kaoya.

As an interesting accompaniment, I recommend you also watch this unusual video, in which Sexy Beijing asks Beijingers on the street their thoughts about Christmas. Some interesting comments – is it all good fun, or is it in questionable taste to put Chinese people on the spot about a topic they most likely know little about? (My own attitude is that the video was shot in the spirit of fun, not cruelty or condescension.)

News out of China has been skimpy the past day or two and I haven’t felt too inspired to post, especially since I’m on vacation. To make up for the dearth in fresh material, and to give all of us a pre-Christmas laugh, allow me to quote from a blog I stumbled on earlier today, and hope never to stumble upon again.

May of the typcial anti-war types have been out shilling the economic miracle of the Market Economy Based Dengist Revisionist Reactionary Capitalist Roader Clique and it’s impact on Red China since the 1980 Party Congress, where they Deified Mao, and Moved On To MAKING MONEY!!!! Many of these advocates of “going china” are all excited about how the Chinese are Urbanizing and just creating new Million Plus Person Metropolitan Areas where they find the ground to plant the new Factories and build the Urban Sprawl Around it!!!!!

But has anyone really THOUGHT about what this sort of MetroSexual Revolution in China is all about????? HUM???? it is about creating the very sort of radicall Leftist Leaning Blue State Types Who HATE JESUS and want to DESTROY OUR WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICA!!! Just like Nancy Pelosi and her Evil Sinisister and Satanic Voodoo Zombie Dust Bunnies Of Despair!!!!!

Can the WORLD allow this Heinous Rise in the Culture of Death and allow China to Fall to the Blue States???? NO!!!! I Say we must do our part to SAVE China from Falling to the Blue staters which would be the Fast Track To The Jack Booted Ironed Fist of China Falling To The Communist Red Hordes!!!! Something that the Satanic Nancy Pelosi and her Evil Sinisister and Satanic Voodoo Zombie Dust Bunnies Of Despair are at this very Moment CONSPIRING to make Happen!!!!!

So now more than EVER all TRUE Patriotically, and Theologically, Corrector Than Thou, must support the President and the Clear and Compelling Mandate to Rescue China From The Red Hordes Of Blue Stater-ism!!!! At most this would take a few thousand nuclear war heads selectively targetted at specific centers of Anti-Americanism and Anti-White-Christian-Americanism at that!!!! Then followed up by a token force of Holy Crusaders who would bring the True Gospel of the Great And Glorious White Christian American Way of life, and the Chinese People Would greet us with Open Arms and The Love that we had come to liberate them from the hiddeous and heinous onslaught of the Globalist Economy and their Sinister Blue Helmetted One Worlder UN governmenalist Excessive Regulaltionists!!! Who are all under the Secret Mind Control of Nancy Pelosi and her Evil Sinisister and Satanic Voodoo Zombie Dust Bunnies Of Despair!!!!!

All HAIL GREAT LEADER!!!! Because HE is keeping america amerian and free from the Dark Menace of the Blue Staters Culture Of Death!!!!

Ironically, it’s the Dems who are more likely to implement protectionist, populist Lou Dobbs-style legislation to punish China’s success, while the GOP’s big business wing goes out of its way to court China’s leaders. Well, I suppose it takes all kinds. I want to think the blogger is making a joke. Unfortunately, after perusing his site I have to conclude he really means it.

Again, I’m posting this only because it’s so odd and ridiculous and unintentionally hilarious, and because I’m a bit short on inspiration. It’s also incredibly ignorant and repellent, but hopefully all of us know that.