uber-blog mentions news about Nigerians being the happiest people in the world. (Some Nigerian intellectuals would beg to differ.) Writing in the October 4, 2003 New Scientist (not available online?) about research concerning The pursuit of happiness, Michael Bond writes:

While it is tempting to hold up those nations and populations that report the highest levels of happiness or life satisfaction as a model for others to follow, even those optimistic about the science think this unwise. "Interpreting the data can be a great problem," admits Veenhoven. The word "happiness" has no precise equivalent in some languages. Even in English it means different things to different people -- Veenhoven has recorded 15 separate academic definitions.

Is it 快乐 or 高兴?

Another complication is that satisfaction is not quite the same thing as happiness....

知足常乐

Another result from the surveys that conceals layers of intriguing complexity concerns wealth. Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea report lower levels of subjective well-being than their incomes would predict, and the US and certain other western nations higher. So westerners are happier than Asians? Not necessarily.

Different cultures value happiness in very different ways. In individualistic western countries, it is often seen as a reflection of personal achievement. Being unhappy implies that you have not made the most of your life. Latin American countries, which also report high happiness levels, have a similarly high regard for those with an upbeat attitude. Eunkook Mark Suh at Yonsei University in Seoul thinks this pressure to be happy could lead people to over-report how happy they feel.

Meanwhile in the more collectivist nations such as Japan, China and South Korea, people have a more fatalistic attitude towards happiness. "They believe it is very much a blessing from heavenly sources," says Suh. "One of the consequences of such an attitude is that you don't have to feel inferior or guilty about not being very happy, since happiness does not reflect your ability." Indeed, in Asian cultures the pursuit of happiness is often frowned on -- which in turn could lead people to under-report how happy they feel.

命中注定

What's more, the things that give people happiness, satisfaction and meaning in their lives vary considerably between cultures. Shinobu Kitayama at Kyoto University in Japan and Hazel Rose Markus at Stanford University, California, believe that how satisfied a person is with their life depends largely on how successfully they adhere to their particular cultural "standard".

In the US, satisfaction comes from personal success, self-expression, pride, a high sense of self-esteem and a distinct sense of self. In Japan, on the other hand, it comes from fulfilling the expectations of your family, meeting your social responsibilities, self-discipline, cooperation and friendliness. So while in the US it is perfectly appropriate to pursue your own happiness, in Japan you are more likely to find happiness by not directly pursuing it.

And there's another twist. The happiest nations -- mostly western and individualistic ones -- also tend to have the highest levels of suicide. "There are some real downsides to individualistic cultures," says Ed Diener at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "People with mental illness are in real trouble with no extended family to watch over them."

...

Survey after survey has shown that the desire for material goods, which has increased hand in hand with average income, is a "happiness suppressant".

One study, by Tim Kasser at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, found that young adults who focus on money, image and fame tend to be more depressed, have less enthusiasm for life and suffer more physical symptoms such as headaches and sore throats than others (The High Price of Materialism, MIT Press, 2002). Kasser believes that people tend to embrace material values when they are feeling insecure (retail therapy, anyone?). "Advertisements have become more sophisticated," says Kasser. "They try to tie their message to people's psychological needs. But it is a false link. It is toxic."

Kasser, who has not owned a television since 1992, wants governments to categorise advertising as a form of pollution and either tax it or force advertisers to print warning messages about how materialism can damage your health. His point is that since nothing about materialism can help you find happiness, governments should discourage it and instead promote things that can. For instance, they could support businesses that allow their employees plenty of time off to be with their families, and that practise equality through profit-sharing.

Idealistic? Of course. Yet these days even hard-headed economists tend to agree that the key to making people happier is to shift from pure economic growth -- which fuels a consumerist culture that is antithetical to happiness -- to personal growth. By this reckoning, a government's priorities should be to reduce unemployment and job insecurity, improve mental healthcare, encourage direct democracy (studies in Switzerland, where referendums are common, suggest people are happier the more they feel in control of their lives), and -- perhaps most controversially -- discourage the pursuit of status.

This last is crucial, believes Richard Layard, co-director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, since the pursuit of social status is "truly fruitless" at the level of society. So, out go devices such as performance-related pay and league tables when they are deliberately made public in order to motivate people through the quest for rank. "This condemns as many to fail as to succeed -- not a good formula for raising human happiness," says Layard.

...

Carol Graham at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC warns that countries trying to deepen democratic reforms need to concentrate on keeping their "middle-earners" happy and secure. In a study in Peru, Graham found that this group, whose support no government in a developing country can do without, are far less satisfied than the poor, for they take as their reference point the very wealthy, whose income and status they will be hard-pushed to match. The poor, meanwhile, take as their reference point the middle-earners, who are more within their reach. Once again, what counts is not what you have so much as what others have.

So, for true happiness, poverty is still the answer.

I might have realized the post-colonial theory and identity politics that Edward Said's writings inspired helped provide a philosophical basis for the Taiwan independence movement. That explains some of its more ridiculous excesses. (link via A better tomorrow)

Some recent articles about Taiwan politics: Taiwan's President Pushes Idea of New Constitution By Tiffany Wu:

Facing a difficult election in less than six months, Chen has irked Beijing with speeches analysts see as part of a re-election ploy.

From calling Taiwan and China "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait to pushing for a referendum bill and a rewriting of the constitution, Chen is aiming to make the March 2004 polls a vote on the independence touted by his party versus reunification supported by the opposition, analysts say.

But the strategy has risks.

Washington, Taiwan's biggest ally, has warned Chen not to alter the island's ambiguous political status and China has criticized him for creating tensions across the Strait.

...

While the Nationalists are generally regarded as being better placed to negotiate stronger business ties with China, pro-independence supporters accuse them of selling out Taiwan by being too friendly toward Beijing.

The island is bitterly split between those who favor independence and those who favor reunification, though the overwhelming majority prefers to keep the ambiguous status quo.

John Pomfret similarly writes, Taiwanese Leader Condemns Beijing, 'One China' Policy; Chen Dismisses Fears In U.S. of Rising Tension:

Weakened by a sluggish economy and record unemployment, Chen currently lags about 10 percentage points behind his challengers for the presidential election set for March 20. His calculation is that a strong reaction by Beijing would help his chances for reelection, according to a broad variety of Taiwanese analysts and senior government officials.

"The only way he can win is if he stimulates China to react," said Tim Ting, a leading pollster in Taiwan. "There will be a line somewhere and Chen will cross it." Ting and others say that China's threats -- including then-Premier Zhu Rongji's nationally televised finger-wagging, seen as a warning to Taiwanese not to vote -- on the eve of the last presidential election helped Chen win.

...

"We have a bunch of political campaigners charting the course for Taiwan," said a senior Taiwanese government official who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was alarmed at Chen's shift. "The only way they think Chen will be reelected is if they succeed in polarizing Taiwan."

...

Chen's Democratic Progressive Party "is increasingly being viewed as a bunch of amateurs set on destroying U.S.-China relations," said the senior government official who travels regularly to Washington. "But neither Lien Chan nor James Soong has convinced anyone that they will be any better."

John Pomfret also has an interview with Taiwan's former president Lee Teng-hui: Taiwan's Top Agitator as Bold as Ever; Popular Ex-President's Campaign for Independence Fraught With Risks:

In the interview, held mostly in Chinese, he lambasted Chinese culture. "Chinese have a strange sense of history, with their obsession with 5,000 years of their culture," he said. "When you meet an Italian, you don't see him dreaming about the greatness of Rome, do you? How can modern people have such ideas? They think that everything belongs to them, even Japan, not to mention Taiwan."

"Don't just look at the Taiwanese face and think it looks like a mainland face," he said at another point, contending that Taiwan's culture is really a unique mix of Dutch, Polynesian, Japanese and Chinese strains.

There's a grain of truth there, but not much. The Chinese strain dominates the Japanese and Polynesian, and as for the Dutch strain, he must be joking.

Update

According to Report spurs denial from Chen's aide in the pro-independence Taipei Times by Chang Yun-Ping:

"President Chen never said that he 'would not bow to US pressure' as the two countries have mutual concerns on certain issues; Taiwan would also be concerned about the US tilting its stance toward China," Presidential Office spokesman James Huang (黃志芳) said.

"Concern is not the same as pressure. Being concerned doesn't mean that you're going to get involved in another nation's domestic affairs.

So they're trying to say that Chen meant that he would not bow to US concern, and that the US shouldn't "get involved".

Huang yesterday said that when Pomfret asked Chen whether the holding of referendums, rewriting the Constitution and adding Taiwan to the cover of passports were part of a strategy to anger Beijing and boost his chances of getting re-elected, the president replied that "such thinking was incorrect and meaningless."

"The president said these moves were based on improving the development of the nation's constitutional system and public convenience. The president emphasized that pushing these democratic reforms has nothing to do with the issues of independence or unification. So the things the US is concerned about won't happen," Huang said.

Chen looks like he wants it both ways. He curries favor with the pro-independence people by pushing reforms that suggest independence both to them and the PRC, but then claims it won't upset the PRC.
I hope he can guarantee that. (link via A better tomorrow)

A better tomorrow shows a pic of 黑人牙膏 (Black Man Toothpaste), and in the comments Marc helpfully links to the controversy about the old packaging. I don't see anything by any of the China hands mentioning the various 黑妹牙膏 (Black Sister Toothpaste) product line. As one can see from the ads, there's nothing overtly racist about it, but the thing with black people and toothpaste is suggested by this story, in which 他所恋爱的女人，来自刚果，一个全黑的老外。朋友们背后叫她"黑妹牙膏"。真是这样的，只有她笑起来的时候，牙齿白得耀人。(The girl he loved was from the Congo--a totally black foreigner. Their friends called her Black Sister Toothpaste. It was just like that: just when she smiled, her teeth were so white they dazzled.) All of which sounds very racist.

But then Taiwan has the 白人牙膏 (White Men Toothpaste) product line. So is that racist?

(Unicode needed to view the characters.)

Is China Really Moving Toward Democracy? By JOE McDONALD points out it's not that democratic, but then cites Kenneth Lieberthal, "a scholar of Chinese politics at the University of Michigan Business School."

Lieberthal said that as changes accelerate, China could see direct elections within a year at the county level and to city-level offices by 2010. That could put popularly elected figures into positions with responsibility over millions of people.

Ultimately, he said, the ruling party could be aiming at a system like that of the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico or the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. Both stayed in power for decades by uniting a wide array of competing factions - then keeping them together by not demanding ideological unity.

In China's leadership, Lieberthal said, "the array of open disagreement over foreign policy and domestic policy issues already is much broader than it was just a few years ago."

Well, neither party is ideal, but they sound a great deal better than what the Chinese have now.

From Truck Took Probe Down Wrong Road by Sari Horwitz and Michael E. Ruane (the first of five excerpts from Sniper: Inside the Hunt for the Killers Who Terrorized the Nation). A couple of witnesses "noticed an old, dark-colored Chevy Caprice with tinted windows...."

This was no white van. It was probably not even a white man's car. This sounded like a "hoopty," a fellow detective said when he heard of the Caprice. "Man, that's a brother's car."

I'm mostly interested in the word "hoopty", but I'm sure there's something about race that someone could say.

Last weekend we saw Sergeant York (1941) with a dignified Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Brennan was enough like his The Real McCoys (1957) character that it didn't take long to recognize him, although he didn't lay on the old coot quite so thick.

Spoilers

I had assumed it was a war movie, while it's really a picture about Alvin York; the first half of the movie is devoted to his life in the hills. I was surprised by how poor and backward it was. The second half of the movie concerns his training and fighting, which is portrayed with only minimal conflict with the other characters, unlike what seems standard today. Dave Kehr dislikes the portrayal of the war, which he says "degenerates quickly and grotesquely (cf the 'turkey shoot' finale)." Admittedly the movie is pro-war, but hardly in a bloodthirsty way; York is only able to shoot at the enemy when he realizes not shooting will cost more lives. The "turkey shoot" simply harks back to his skill as a marksman back in the Tennessee hills; York is hardly triumphal about it as shown by his unwillingness to give a number to how many of the enemy he killed. It also is much less ironic with less conflict between characters than we see these days.

The next day, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) with Robert Donat in the title role for which he won an Oscar, beating out Clark Gable for GWTW. This made an interesting contrast. Even though this was from only two years earlier than Sergeant York, it seems like ages; I'm tempted to say it actually captured some of the "Great War" ethos, while Sergeant York was really just a WWII film in disguise. When the war reaches the school, Mr. Chips puts far more emphasis on how many of his boys are lost than on how important it is to fight the Germans. Or was it because this was filmed in the days of appeasement? Finally, when Chips goes hiking in the Austrian mountains, and the following dialog takes place:

Chipping: What extraordinary ideas come into one's head up here!
Katherine: It's the altitude.
Chipping: Do you experience a sort of exhilaration?
Katherine: Definitely.
Chipping: As though we owned the mountain.
Katherine: To put it mildly.
Chipping: We're pretty superior persons.
Katherine: We're gods.
Chipping: Up here, there's no time. No growing old. Nothing lost.
Katherine: We're young.
Chipping: We believe in ourselves.
Katherine: We have faith in the future.
Chipping: It must be the altitude.

The novel that was the basis for Goodbye, Mr. Chips was written by James Hilton, who also wrote Lost Horizon.

Dirty cops: Police Under fire BY MATTHEW FORNEY. As the article points out, the police are woefully underpaid and overworked. Also, note that Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang is a

protégé of former President Jiang Zemin, who remains head of China's army and controls the country's security apparatus, Zhou took office in December and set out to clean up China's dirty cops.

So not surprisingly

Chinese reformers argue that real improvement will come only if police subject themselves to oversight by prosecutors' offices. But Zhou has resisted this—and has even moved in the opposite direction. Unlike his predecessors, he has been named vice chairman of the party's powerful Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, which oversees judicial matters. That means everyone from the Minister of Justice to the country's top judges must gain Zhou's approval when prosecuting sensitive cases. And he has replicated the system at lower levels by encouraging local chiefs to lead their towns' political committees, giving them the power to influence the outcome of trials. "We've got judges bowing down to police chiefs," says a party official involved in judicial reform. "How can there be hope for change?"

(link via Rice Cooker).

Wild Weekend's Hangover: Outrage Follows Japanese Tourists' Orgy With Chinese Prostitutes. John Pomfret gives some context:

Prostitution and sex tourism are huge businesses in China, played out almost in public. Practically every hotel, from no-star dives to five-star international chains, boasts a bevy of women offering oily massages and more to travelers.
...
Incidents involving Japanese in China invariably take on an incendiary quality, with the Chinese quick to take offense and the Japanese just as quickly arguing that they are being singled out unfairly.
...
Many Chinese believe that Japan's efforts to apologize for its wartime behavior are insincere. And to this day, Chinese continue to cope with the remnants of the war. Last month, one construction worker died and several others were badly burned when they unearthed a batch of mustard gas that the Japanese occupation had left behind.

In recent years, China's Communist rulers have nurtured anti-Japanese feelings among their people, according to Gilbert Rozman, a professor of sociology at Princeton University. He said that since the mid-1990s, Communist Party officials around then-President Jiang Zemin decided to use resentful nationalism as a unifying ideology to replace the communism that few believed in anymore. The government also has routinely played down any mention of the multibillion-dollar flood of Japanese aid and low-interest loans into China.

This treatment led to a backlash in Japan, where polling data, starting in the mid-1990s, began to show a dramatic rise in opposition to China. Chinese polling data reflect the same trend, with respondents routinely listing Japan as by far the No. 1 potential enemy of China.

First of all, prostitution is rampant in China; as the article points out, often with help from the Chinese security services or police. See also Peter S. Goodman's Sex Trade Thrives In China, not to mention how A village was transformed by organized prostitution.

And as I've said before, the Communist Party is probably responsible for far more deaths than the Japanese were. But that's OK. It was Mao's responsibility, and he's a "great man".

I've just rediscovered Language Hat, who argues that the use of "they/their" as a (gender-neutral) singular pronoun is "common and much needed". In the comments there's a very reasonable comment by one Henry Churchyard, who's also got a page about The singular "they"/"their"/"them"/"themselves" construction. Geez, I'm getting old and cranky, insisting on the old usage--or rather, the new usage I grew up with. Well, what about "it's" instead of "its"? As in Bush Pressing China on It's Currency By MARTIN CRUTSINGER.

Breast Implants Linked to Suicide By Marc Kaufman.

A series of studies has found a surprisingly high suicide rate among women who have had cosmetic breast implants, renewing the controversy about the procedure just as the Food and Drug Administration weighs whether to allow silicone gel implants back on the market.

Of course we don't know why yet, and it may be possible it's because the implants cause severe health problems, but I suspect it's because those who get them are more vulnerable. I wonder what the suicide stats are for cosmetic surgery in general.

It's not just the Chinese. Oh, No: It's a Girl! By Steven E. Landsburg. He suggests

parents, on average, prefer boys to girls. The preference is stronger elsewhere in the world, but it's plenty strong in the United States too.

(via Jane Galt).

My search for chewy cookies continues. Earlier I tried to:

• Remove the cookies while their centers are not quite cooked through.


• Substitute 1 to 3 tablespoons of liquid sweetener for an equal measure of sugar.


• Use egg yolks instead of whole eggs.


• Reduce the baking soda or baking powder slightly.


• Use tapioca flour

That didn't work all that well, though.

Now I'm glad to see the Washington Post tackle the tough issues: Tough Cookies
Science Tackles Baking Process To End Grumbles Over Crumbles, By Guy Gugliotta:

Also, noted Shirley Corriher, the Atlanta-based author of "Cookwise" and a former research biochemist at Vanderbilt University, "If you sprinkle some water on the flour first, you can make gluten before you add the shortening. With more gluten you can make a cookie so strong you can stand on it."

According to Mad Science Nation, I should also:

• Use all-purpose or even bread flour.


• Use brown sugar or honey.

Rich man, poor man: the Economist on income inequality in China.

Chinese Girls' Toil Brings Pain, Not Riches By JOSEPH KAHN

While multinational corporations like Motorola and Intel pay employees middle-class wages to work in world-class factories in this country, the sizzling export sector still relies heavily on smaller operations, both locally and foreign-owned, that assemble toys, clothes, shoes, tools, electronics, decorative items and cosmetic goods. Many measure profits in pennies on the dollar and squeeze workers to make their margins.

...

Court cases involving unpaid wages, illegal contracts and life-threatening working conditions are common even as China becomes richer, suggesting that cut-throat capitalism and sweatshop factories are as much a part of China's economic revolution today as they were the early days of industrialization in the West.

Note that multinationals are generally treating the workers better. It's also interesting that people trust the system enough to bring cases to court--or is that a measure of their desperation?

Addiction: A Brain Ailment, Not a Moral Lapse, by JANE E. BRODY. I've heard it before. And there's no easy solution:

[T]here is clearly not one route to recovery. Some addicts manage to kick their habits without any outside help; others require monthlong inpatient programs and continued reinforcement, either professional or lay. Still others may need a year of outpatient treatment plus aftercare. Many former addicts find that support groups of fellow former addicts like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous help them maintain their drug-free status.

Update

We usually have a donut on Sundays (for breakfast; for lunch we have my famous baguettes), but last Sunday we didn't, and last night I had a dream about a donut shop here that doesn't exist. This craving shows I'm a donut-aholic in desperate need of treatment. Is there a D. A. (Donut-aholics Anonymous)?

Chinese Leader Makes Vague but Firm Call for More Democracy By JOSEPH KAHN. Hmm, we'll see.

Surprise, surprise. Not Quite Piling On the Homework: Most Students, Studies Find, Should Probably Be Hitting the Books Harder by Jay Mathews

The popular notion that America's students are overburdened with homework is largely a myth -- and, if anything, too many don't do enough homework, according to national research being released today.

The article mentions parents who think their kids have too much homework. I'm guessing they're not Chinese.

Catching up on my reading at The Volokh Conspiracy, where there's lots of good stuff, I see Tyler Cowen and David Adesnik don't think much of Robert Pape's suggestion.

Jonathan Rauch cites Isabel V. Sawhill, a liberal, and a former Clinton administration official, who says we've

got to stop thinking of people as passive victims of the economy and whatever the social safety net provides. Liberals have too often emphasized the income-to-behavior link without also recognizing that there's a behavior-to-income link as well.

"" Her research show that if the poor worked full-time, got married, stayed in school, and stopped at two kids, the poverty rate would drop to less than 4 percent. But at the same time,

More kids are born into high-risk homes, with a single mother who dropped out of high school, an often absent father, fitful employment. More kids are also born into low-risk homes, where married parents with college degrees earn high incomes. Fewer kids are born in the middle, to married parents with high school degrees and at least one full-time job -- the sort of home that formed the backbone of the postwar middle class. "In other words," Sawhill writes, "as a result of changes in work and family patterns, today's children are getting a much less equal start in life than the children who were born a few decades ago."

(link via Eugene Volokh)